-At a former employer, the upper management managed to one-up this by telling those of us still working there that we were the damaged goods; during an all-hands meeting where it was announced that we were to acquire a competitor, our CFO managed to blurt that
'We've learned from past acquisitions, and this time we will ensure that the onboarding experience is a good one. We can not and will not end up with a repeat of our former acquisition, where the bulk of the people we were interested in, left...'
Oh, for the usual reason, I guess. When the acquired company was to be integrated into ours, lots of effort was expended on stating that the new company would try to take the best bits of both companies to make us even better yada yada - after which, any project they'd been working on was promptly killed off, to be replaced by projects we had been working on. HR then promptly proceeded to maim any and all agreements between the old company and the unions, after which pay grades were 'harmonized', which basically meant that all employees of both the aquisitor and the acquisitee (if those are even words...) found themselves taking a pay cut.
The only thing which made me stay on for a couple more years was that we had a couple of customers which were an absolute delight to work with. They are now customers of my current employer and still a delight to work with.
Sorry that was a rhetorical comment, meant to imply that the top performers understood what the current management was like and noped the hell out of there
Thank you. I figured as much, but I will admit if still irks me a bit how what was mostly a good company was run into the ground, so whenever I am given half a chance, I vent. :/
Don't blame Google yet. This is Forbes fabricating a story for clicks, and the Independent parroting it uncritically. It's possible (and IMO likely) that Google will undergo layoffs (but you don't need to be Nostradamus to predict "company will undergo layoffs" during a recession), but both Forbes and the Independent appear to be misrepresenting their speculation as special knowledge.
Yes, this is not a real story. Pure speculation. No real sources.
IMO as a Google employee, I don’t see layoffs happening. The company has started hiring again. My coworkers are flooded with interviews. We’re still having holiday parties and other “fun” spending seems to have returned. I have no inside knowledge, that’s just my own personal observation.
I don't want to be a party pooper but it's unlikely that Google will not undergo some sort of reduction in workforce. I really really hope that I'm wrong but based on the messaging this will happen.
Interesting: two conflicting reports from inside Google (assuming they are really working for Google). Perhaps only some departements are affected from reduction in workforce.
With the exception of companies going under or closing divisions or departments what kind of companies shave off “high performers”? Sure some high performers could erroneously slip trough but the intent is predominantly to lay off poor performers (sometimes high earners or older employees, but not usually)
Layoffs can be horizontal (cut departments or divisions) or vertical (rank and cut the bottom).
In horizontal layoffs, usually a lot of talented people and even turn-key teams are available on the market.
Sometimes companies try to turn horizontal layoffs vertical by offering internal mobility for high performers from the cut teams, but sometimes they don’t.
Publicly stating that layoffs are purely vertical is very bad for the employees who are laid off as they no longer re-apply with the “benefit of doubt” that they may have been caught as collateral damage in horizontal layoffs.
Layoffs are often about retrenching on verticals we think we can turn a profit on. If decreasing your overhead by 5% makes or breaks your company then you don’t have a viable business model.
You can have plenty of people who are very good at a skill you either don’t need or have an oversupply of bus numbers on. At least a third of the people in any group you shut down completely are going to have been good people. More than half if the problem was in management (which is usually is).
You’re dunking on these people and telling the rest of the universe not to hire them. But we already knew Google was shitty so this isn’t exactly news.
Going from default dead to default alive is huge. But a 3% profit margin just keeps you alive until some disaster occurs and then you’re still dead.
Going from 5% to 10% might be leverage in the market, but you were still going to limp along anyway. When I’ve been at startups trying to do things like this, it’s very clear that the investors have in their head some notion of multiplying your profits. Every company I worked for that pulled this ended up cutting to the bone later. I don’t think that’s a coincidence.
These days I’m not sure labor is a big enough part of the cost mix for a 10% layoff to actually show up as 5% margin. I pulled that out of my butt and now I’m having second thoughts.
This is Bain Capitals MO actually.
The whole point is to layoff the highest paid people and have the company coast along on previous momentum, making the profit look better so they call sell it off.
Layoffs are because management screwed up. It's blame-shifting.
And let's not act like you can actually truly quantify employee performance generally. It's largely guesswork and politics in the hands of the said management-who-screwed-up doing the layoffs.
One of the wisest people I ever met was in a meeting, after another Fortune 250 bought our Fortune 250 (as a "merger of equals," which ended up in a textbook raid). The question at hand was: "What do we do about all the people who are going to quit and leave?" His response? "I'm more concerned with all the people who quit and stay." This keeps echoing in my mind as I read about these tech layoffs, 25 years later.
When you are the size of Google I’m not sure how to tell managers across the company to assess poor performers and _not_ have it leak to the press. It’s not like this is a company press release.
The NBA has extreme requirements. You can be an incredibly talented athlete and not be in the NBA. If you bring have what it takes you are out.
At Google, or any large company, there are plenty of people who for various reasons just aren’t good performers but don’t get cut. The requirements to stay on there are not “extreme”.
it's deliberate, and necessary to achieve the intended effect. these statements and mass firings discipline developers as a class. it serves as an excuse and monetary whip to inflict desperation and reduce compensation generally across the board.
you can agree or disagree if it's honest or justified, but materially that's whats happening.
What actually happened is that, many months ago, Google announced it would start marking a larger portion of people per performance cycle as low performers. That’s it.
Only recently a bunch of news outlets are trying to spin it as a layoff and running away with their own narrative. It’s quite literally fake news
What is happening is that a lot of people want to hate Google so there’s a lot of demand for “Google bad” articles like this and all the inaccurate ones about RTO, truth be damned
There's legal implications that I don't understand fully. But laying off people you have already defined as poor performers can be a hedge against lawsuits for wrongful termination including the WARN act (and other state laws).
For what it's worth, I wouldn't look negatively at someone who was fired due to alleged poor performance. Poor performance means different things in different context when rated by different people.
I do not think I personally know any googlers so I might be victim of marketing, but unless they are HR dept ( yes, I don't like HR ), from where I sit, even 'low performing' Google dropout is likely a steal for a company.
But now that I thought about a little more, I think I understood one more layer to this. Google is telling the other employers: 'You can pay them less you otherwise would have.'
I have to admit that this entire employer vs employee cycle has left me speechless over and over again ( 'we are in this together', 'commute is good for you', 'we will be even better together', 'RTO now!', 'RTO later since some of you ungrateful bastards are not willing to budge', 'Recession would bring those people in line'.. ). It is absolutely stunning and we are actually expecting our CEO to deliver speech in Dec on the economy as a whole, so I am sure we are all somewhat anxious.
even 'low performing' Google dropout is likely a steal for a company.
I'm not so sure about this. Most companies work in a level of chaos and mess I think most Googlers wouldn't be able to go adapt too very easily.
I find it's very hard to hire people that can work productively through the chaotic and dysfunctional way most companies I work at operate. This is not to say we still don't deliver valuable, even highly profitable things. It's just that we're not often working as a 25 year old mature corporation with decent management would.
I've not worked at Google but from what I've told, it sounds leaving Google for most other companies is like going from first class back to coach and I don't think that is an easy adjustment for many.
If Google is only laying off poor performers, why hire anyone who has recently worked at Google? Guess you better work harder or be shunned from the industry. Google is a very evil company these days.
Still, no reason to give the same priority to Google’s poor performers when you can poach people moving the needle at other companies with salacious offers of higher salary and better benefits.
Because "didn't perform" without any explanation is just defamatory. It could be health, family or work issues. Or surprise, surprise! the evaluation could be wrong and they over-hired post covid boom.
I'm not if you are serious or not, but in case you are: it is extremely difficult to assess someone's performance at work in a fair way, especially in tech. The ways to measure performance like LoC are largely inadequate and say nothing about the quality of one's work. And in some areas like DevOps, good luck assessing someone's performance - you can discover your mistake once that person you've fired is gone.
Usually in large orgs there is multi-layer reviews, and this is a quite efficient indicator;
if the colleagues say that you are not doing your job well
+ the managers say you are not doing your job well
+ the people under you say you are not doing your job well.
+ the customers say you are not doing your job well.
Then why an employee would even stay in a company where literally everybody thinks they are not helpful ?
When you are a relatively large customer/partner of Google, you sometimes interact with genuine impostors, who are not helpful, but you still have to go through them because there is no alternative.
So a bit of clean up in the bad elements is actually good for both bottom and top line of the company.
If everyone is saying you’re not doing your job well then they might have a point. The issue is that’s it’s often just a PM or EM saying it and no one else. Firings are often made based upon how the manager feels and that’s all it takes.
People who ruffle feathers of PMs and EMs are often the best performers but get axed for questioning authority. But are they fired for asking questions? No - they’ll be axed for “performance” when in reality it’s more due to not wanting anyone to undermine their authority/job security.
I’ve worked in SV for a while - it’s extremely political and not based upon meritocracy at all. People who get promoted are most often the biggest boot lickers and average performers.
Most firings I’ve seen are pure bullshit and are only due to someone in an authoritarian position wanting slaves and not engineers.
> if the colleagues say that you are not doing your job well
> + the managers say you are not doing your job well
> + the people under you say you are not doing your job well.
> + the customers say you are not doing your job well.
How often is it actually that 1 employee is exposed to all of these groups simultaneously, and all of them are technically qualified and have visibility and insight to pass the judgment about the parts of performance that were under that employee's control?
My bet is somewhere asymptotically approaching 0.
My follow-up question to this would be - how did this person even pass the interview process to get into a position where there are people under them?
I completely agree, but we are talking about two different things. If my colleagues, customers, people from other departments say I'm not doing my job well, I should be fired - but immediately, without waiting for any global layoffs.
However, yearly performance reviews are a joke. At least in all places I worked at, and in spite of various efforts by the management to rationalize them. And I'm saying this in spite of getting great reviews all the time.
The notion of "poor performers" is a sign of bad management. They bloat the company to where they can no longer get their billion dollar handouts, er, payouts, and then take it out on people who actually care about their jobs and claim they are "poor" at it. While scaring the shit out of everyone else.
I know there are going to be a bunch of bros who think, "Yeah, that's not me, I'm fucking Tony Stark," but in reality, part of their brain will noodle on this gaslighting whether they want it to or not. So it really affects everyone.
It is a sign of toxic rot in a culture when they start branding people this way. But it's Amazon, it's a synonym for toxic.
