I have appreciated our recent dialogue concerning Alphabet’s cost base. I am encouraged to see that you are now taking some action to right size Alphabet’s cost base and understand that it is never an easy decision to let people go.
I argued in my previous letter that Alphabet’s headcount has grown beyond what is required operationally. Over the last 5 years, Alphabet more than doubled its headcount, adding over 100,000 employees, of which over 30,000 were added in the first 9 months of 2022 alone. The decision to cut 12,000 jobs is a step in the right direction, but it does not even reverse the very strong headcount growth of 2022. Ultimately management will need to go further.
I believe that management should aim to reduce headcount to around 150,000, which is in line with Alphabet’s headcount at the end of 2021. This would require a total headcount reduction in the order of 20%.
Importantly, management should also take the opportunity to address excessive employee compensation. The median salary at Alphabet in 2021 amounted to nearly $300,000, and the average salary is much higher. Competition for talent in the technology industry has fallen significantly allowing Alphabet to materially reduce compensation per employee. In particular, Alphabet should limit stock-based compensation given the depressed share price.
I hope to have further dialogue with you on these matters in due course.
Some people transcribe posts on the internet as a matter of public service.
A picture of text is not particularly accessible to the blind. But written text, well they can zoom that significantly without reducing clarity, if they have some vision…or they can use any text-to-speech tool.
I don’t know a lot of poorly sighted people though. I’m assuming that they have some sort of font packages they use that scale well to large sizes for increased legibility, just like there are fonts specifically to help with dyslexia.
All fonts scale well since they are vector, so a blind person would not need a specialized font. If you want to learn about how some blind people use computers here is a video about one persons workflow.
Remember when a rich asshole got an itch to see the president of a university fired and just crawled up her ass until it happened? Sundar knows what someone with resources and a grudge can do to your career.
We don’t begrudge you your rectal fixation but if you could please avoid using the words “asshole” and “itch” in the same sentence that’d be appreciated. Apt though the comparison may be.
I think anybody with their finger on the pulse of the tech world could have seen this coming and it’s a natural consequence of a decade of incredibly low interest rates vastly inflating the sizes and valuations of these companies past where they naturally should be
That is to say, any random person can tell the CEO of Google to cut back their headcount, but that doesn’t mean that’s why they did it
A sign of morons and psychopaths being in charge of the world’s largest companies is that they have access to more talent and manpower than they can even use. Expanding operations would be a clear solution, even if no longer at economy of scale they will produce more revenue in diminishing percentages. It’s like being both Rome and the Barbarians.
Every time some boneheaded CEO follows the whims of these billionaire types, the press should start running articles as though the company’s days are numbered.
“More sudden layoffs! Is Google worried about its own long term prospects?” … “Google’s stance has changed from cutting edge innovation and growth to shoring up its flagship products in the hopes it can weather the storm. Battening down the hatches is the order of the day, and anything not deemed ship shape is left to flounder until it sinks.” Cite that most companies only cut staff like that when they’re looking to artificially inflate their valuation for some reason. Question if the impact of any recent bad moves are worse than expected.
The press should circle layoff-prone companies like sharks until they stop listening to stupid advice.
Make them stop and THINK about what they’re doing first. Teach the people in charge how to recognize when they’re being manipulated.
We give CEO’s entirely too much leeway to do incredibly dumb shit.
Carly Fiorina, John Roth, Frank Dunn, Mike Zafirovski, I don’t know if John Riccitiello is it at fault for the unity debacle, but he should have been able to stop it, John Wendell Thompson, Bob Allen, Kenneth Lay, John Sculley, Stephen Elop (How the fuck do you destroy NOKIA?!?!), Martin Shkreli, Carol Bartz, Leo Apotheker, the list is ENDLESS.
C levels have too much power to make RADICAL decisions and the fact that boards of directors are broken-record-skipping on the words “short term profit” is what keeps causing it to happen.
The billionaires and other CEO’s are on Ron Vachris’ ass every time there’s a group call because he keeps making them look bad, but he’s proven that his way is SUSTAINABLE.
It’s time to nudge things back into healthier directions.
“Reduce the ‘headcount’ but profits must not decrease by one single penny.”
Said no one who understands how businesses work, ever. If capitalism actually worked the way these people claimed it worked, we wouldn’t have so many idiot billionaires.
