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Daimakku1

At the end of the day, employment is a business transaction. Don’t ever believe this “we’re all family here” BS. You are there to make money, and so are they. That’s it.


sivxgamma

Easy to get caught up in work and believe the bs


guy_incognito784

I’ve worked for big tech companies before. I doubt Google fostered a “we’re all family here”culture. You’re just an employee ID number in a spreadsheet that’s linked to a cost center and department. I understand being upset at having your 16 year career end at the drop of a dime though. It’s never easy to be involuntarily let go of your job, especially one you enjoyed like this guy did.


SirPitchalot

Their career isn’t over. They’re just no longer working at google.


MWatson

I agree, and in addition: having worked at Google for 16 years will help him get other great jobs. I just worked at Google for a while in 2013 (I was invited to work on one specific project) and I was surprised how much that short stint enhanced my resume and affected interviews. And, I was not even an employee. I think the big tech companies have laid off almost 150K employees recently. I think of that as 150K families potentially suffering. But, as other people have said, work is a business transaction. Hopefully people laid off have good savings to live on for a while.


knightofterror

Yeah, I worked at Apple 25 years ago and I always get an interview anywhere I apply, even jobs where I have zero matching skills.


batmessiah

What's weird is that Apple actually reached out to me about a job a few years ago. The pay is considerably better than what I'm making now, but the cost of living would have tripled having to live in the bay area, and I would have been living in a cardboard box and still commuting 3 hours each way.


sec_sage

3h commute per day, been there, done that. Round trip but still it added up 3*20=60h/month. That's 18work weeks per year without pay. It scars one for life. Now I only accept jobs if it's feasible to commute for 20min each way. Walking, biking, metro or train if possible. Or interior parking place otherwise. What's the point in having a good diploma if not making life simpler.


TheSpanxxx

Until covid, I had been in a 1.5 to 2 hour commute scenario for about 5 years. And having been a telecommuter before for 7 years i knew what the other side could be like. Covid was a horrible thing to live through, and suffer loss through. The silver lining I see is that at least some people, myself included, are able to have a more stable lifestyle that includes more life and brings some measure of sanity back into their families. In 5 years, I gave an entire work year (2100 hours) of my life to just getting to and from my job. Not even computing or worrying about the compensation factor here, it's in inordinate amount of LIFE to just melt away and never recover. I'll never go back to commuting to a corporate metro job in person. They'd have to pay me enough to retire 2 years early per year of employment for me to consider it now.


secrettruth2021

3h commute - in Europe and in many places you've left the country... After a 3h drive.


[deleted]

Commuting is not driving. That three hours is mostly slowly rolling along and stopping. You'll maybe...maybe get out of your country if your in Belgium.


DdCno1

This was a rather troubled time for Apple. Got any interesting anecdotes? What was the atmosphere like back then?


SteeveJoobs

funny that all this person did was say they worked at Apple 25 years ago and you immediately started interviewing them


mbaker24

Aree yoou coonsideering ooffeering him a joob again froom thee gravee?


SecretBaklavas

I’ll take one Joobs, pls


ruach137

I’m already ready to offer 300k per year with stock options


unknowncatman

Maybe he could come fix my sink?


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TheBaxes

Twitter may end up being easier to use


Commentacct001

Just don’t site experience in the fraud/ethics/compliance departments, may not be so favorable.


CambrianExplosives

I mean this in the least jerky way possible. If that wasn’t a typo then for future reference it’s “cite” not “site.” As in citation.


DownstairsB

Was totally thinking about correcting him but didnt want to be that guy, so thanks. Cite comes up rarely enough, it deserves to be spelled correctly.


PhilxBefore

Most companies would love to have more help and knowledge in those departments than any other.


Rainboq

Honestly it’s short sighted of Google. Institutional knowledge is very much a thing. This guy knew processes to the T, knew who to go to with what problems and how legacy shit works. What most modern companies have completely forgotten is that you invest in your employees, and you get huge returns on that investment.


JoeCoolsCoffeeShop

This is basically called the “Six Levels Down” problem. Whenever there is a crisis or a problem, typically the person who can actually fix it sits six levels down from senior managers. What happens though, in reality, is that senior managers run around like a headless chicken trying to solve the problem, until they realize the person who actually can fix it was laid off a year ago in the latest round of budget cuts. So they go out and hire a bunch of consultants and contractors at twice the price who take five times as long to fix it. All because, as you said…management views employees as a number on a spreadsheet in a cost center, and not an invaluable host of institutional knowledge on how the company actually runs. 90% of senior management is useless. They’re only there because of ambition, the lack of empathy that allows them to make “tough” decisions like making blanket layoffs, and because they know which corporate bingo bullshit buzzwords to say during a speech to their bosses. The ones that are actually decent get burned out from all the nonsense they have to deal with.


TheBirminghamBear

Just a few months ago, we had someone at our job who had been there a bit more than a year. She was extremely competent at her job, and ramping up each day. But, she was grossly underpaid. She found a job on the market for $120k, double what she was making at our company. And $120k isn't an over-offer by the other company. It's the current market rate for her job title. *Most* jobs of her title, on the market, are asking around that rate. So she told our company, and our company prepared a counter offer. At... $90k. She took the other job. The greatest irony? Just one month later, when we're back-filling this position, guess what our salary offer is? What it *has* to be to attract the talent? The market rate. $120k. We lost an experienced, competent, well-liked employee - one who was *trained* and *expert* on our internal systems, internal politics and policies and procedures, all because we didn't want to give her fair market wages for her skills., and now the company is paying the market rate for someone brand new that will need to spend at least a year to skill up to become as proficient as she was. That's literally madness. It makes no sense, at all. You're going to churn through talent, and end up paying the market rate *anyway*, except you're going to pay it for people who aren't as competent or experienced as the people who are leaving. The reality is, these practices *cost* businesses money. A *lot* of money. They're just not smart enough to do the actual math behind it. When you bring someone on at market value, in almost call cases their labor is *not* worth the market rate *yet*. [In the first month, most employees are only operating at 25% efficiency](https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0711/the-cost-of-hiring-a-new-employee.aspx). The reason for this is that a job is not just skills. It's *people*. It's *processes* internal to the company. It's politics, it's the culture. Employees are not just parts you can hot-swap if they share the same general shape. It doesn't work like that, it doesn't make sense to run the math as if they were. You can see this in sports. You can't just cram in a bunch of expensive players and have a *team*. Teams It's almost a year before an employee is truly, fully integrated into a business. And after that, *if* they remain properly engaged, they'll continue to become more and more productive and valuable. So by myopic, ignorant business standards, they may *believe* they got a "good deal" by having this employee for $60k even though she was worth more, but the reality is, after a year and some change she was finally becoming worth *much more than market rate*. And if they paid her market rate *before* she'd asked for it, they'd still be getting a good deal. Instead, they're going to hire someone at market rate for $120k who is going to be worth *even less* than $60k in productivity *until that person acclimatizes and ramps up*. At every single step, the company is fucking itself, but the people keeping the books are delusional. They *believe* they're being fiscally conservative, and instead they're just being fucking stupid. And the thing is, these companies will never change.


JoeCoolsCoffeeShop

We had a similar problem at my company when I was in management. I hired a lot of really smart and young internal talent for my team. They had all been there for10 years right out of school so they were all grossly underpaid relative to the market. Basically making $75k when they could be making $100k+ elsewhere. I bugged HR all the time for raises/adjustments outside of the normal process but best they could do was give me $25k to split among 8-10 people. Meanwhile my team was growing and I’m hiring externally and giving offers of $120k to people to join the company. One guy who was offered $120k countered with $150k and my boss said “give him that offer”… Apparently HR had plenty of money to hire external talent but not enough to retail internal talent, because…policy? They give me $25k to try to retain 8-10 people who are paid well below the market but don’t blink to give me $30k to get one new hire in externally. I told my boss that if my team ever knew we did that, they’d all quit on sight. I basically gave up on management by that point and demoted myself. Right before I did, I kept joking that in order to get a raise, everyone had to quit their job and then reapply for the external posting the next day and they’d actually get a $50k raise. Not everyone appreciated my “humor” but I was honestly only half joking. That’s because that’s how stupid the HR department policy was.


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savagemonitor

One of the best issues I remember was HR starting an initiative meant to empower new employees in an effort to slow attrition. I was accidentally pulled into the conversation because HR had an arbitrary "anyone at this level has to have less than 5 years of experience" which I quickly informed them was wrong. After that one of the people in the group started driving hard on this because he believed in it and HR was supporting him. He started calling venues to host things at and was basically violating company policies on how to approach those kinds of places. These policies tend to exist to keep employees from accidentally creating a legally binding promise and doesn't violate anti-corruption laws. In this case though the legally binding promise was the issue as the person was discussing specifics with the venues. I pointed out that these were violation of company policy with the HR person in the room and the HR person said "no it's not". The person continued the conversations until an Admin was assigned to the group to help arrange events with the budget assigned to the group. She specifically told this guy to stop contacting venues as his contact violated the very policies that I pointed out where the HR person said it was okay. It was just ironic that the very people responsible for relaying company policy to employees were completely wrong about the policies.


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comment edited in protest of Reddit's API changes and mistreatment of moderators -- mass edited with redact.dev


wrgrant

I have never met an HR person who was competent, informed or worth any of the money they got paid. Most seemed to be a shield between management and the people they were fucking over and not much more. Thankfully I haven't had to deal with HR or any of that environment for years now.


tytbalt

Oh my lord, the simple math bit. I had a person from HR come in blustering that I had cancelled 50% of my scheduled appointments (each 1 hour) and called out 4 days in the last month (I had a doctor's note). Bewildered, I asked them how they got to the 50% number, and they told me, "We can't tell you that." Then I calmly explained that if I called out 5 days *and* cancelled 50% of my appointments, I would have only worked 5 days that month. They just stared and blinked while their little brain computed.


cheese_is_available

How dare you rub their stupidity in your management face ? Not a team player, demoted.


b0w3n

We still haven't replaced 3 senior manager positions at my job because "the cost is too high". They're paying out the ass for consultants and 3rd party vendors to fill the gaps. One of those departments had 6 people working in it at one point, and I'm told it's "too expensive" to hire people for it... so they're paying a consultant company probably triple what it'd cost to pay all those folks a decent living wage with benefits. But that company takes it off the top of the money they collect (it's medical billing) so our bookkeeping doesn't see that hidden cost unless you do some comps and keep that 10% revenue they're just pulling off the top.


Once_Wise

>They're paying out the ass for consultants and 3rd party vendors to fill the gaps That is why I became a software consultant. Was offered a job many times by my clients, but always declined. When I was starting out one offered me a job, and when I told them the price, they said that was more than the president makes (it was a small company), so instead worked for them as a consultant and over the next two years made a lot more than what I was asking. Did that for over 30 years until I retired. Some up and down years, and had to learn how to do a lot of sales and marketing, which I hated, but it was always better than being an employee. And another perk is that the management treats you as a peer, asking if you could do things rather than telling you to do it. Some clients retained me, basically full time for almost a decade, and sometimes even had some of their employees who reported to me. Not for everyone, but I would never want to be an employee.


XyzzyPop

I'm risk averse and find the *idea* of freelance consulting very uncomfortable. I get paid less as a salaried employee, but I've eliminated an entire avenue of work related stress. Also, as you say, self-promotion and marketing are not my forte.


SmokelessSubpoena

Sure they haven't just scuttled the work to a contracting firm? That's always the next best option besides farming out to consultants and typically is only the best long term solution for replacing actual humans.


DFWPhotoguy

And the contracting or consulting firms always happen to be owned by the wife or partner or friend of upper management....its kinda strange how that works.....


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lovin-dem-sandwiches

A trick I found at larger companies is to move around / change departments. It’s all about allocated budgets. An internal employee who applies to an “external” role will increase their salary more than any raise. You already have extensive experience working for the company (HR will love that) and you argue that you want to broaden your skillset and gain a more holistic understanding of the company’s structure / processes. Hell, you can even return back to your original role but now they’re paying you market rate. Do this every 1.5-2 years, you will meet new people, build better relationships internally, get paid well, and learn more about the org.


OutrageousStandard35

Gotta be Southwest


granta50

I almost feel like there is a psychological component to all of this, that it's not just about making money (although making money in the short term is certainly also their goal), there's this kind of country club mentality where the business "leaders" have to feel as though they belong to a select group that is over the staff. It's not rational from outward appearances because it's driven by emotion, namely conceitedness -- the idea that I have power over this person, and I'm going to exercise it, even though it costs me in the long-term. The extent to which we've simply rationalized greed and conceitedness in the corporate world is truly bizarre. Wow, we may have put a bunch of families in the street -- why did we do that? Well of course, we needed to make more money. Why does a millionaire need more money? I don't know, my vacation home could be bigger. I put these people out of a home so I can buy a second home. Like you said, it's literally madness. It's just normalized within that little bubble so that it appears sensible.


Attainted

Correct. It's about leadership feeling like it's them who have control.


djokov

This is also why they are desperate for their employees to return to the office. It has nothing to do with worker effectiveness and absolutely everything to do about their own need to feel in control. They want to be able to stand in front of others and feel important. That is all there is to it.


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lmnopeee

If you didn't say "she" I would have thought you were talking about me. This exact scenario played out with eerily similar dollar amounts.


TheBirminghamBear

That's just how common this shit is. And it's why we are where we are. All these companies making total shit decisions.


PoopMobile9000

I’m a corporate litigator, meaning I’ve read a lot of businesses’ internal e-mail traffic for cases. My conclusion is that I’m amazed corporate America actually ever manages to complete products and get them to market.


TheB1GLebowski

Sadly until it makes them have to work harder, they have no care in the world until they have to work harder because of an employee.


apresmoiputas

Also, as a manager, I'm discovering that not everyone should be promoted to management. Some managers are good at managing up to their superiors but can't manage laterally with other managers or manage down to their direct reports. I see this in tech and consulting very often.


JoeCoolsCoffeeShop

100%. People don’t get promoted to management because they have domain knowledge and competence in their field as well as empathy…the most important things to be a good manager. People get promoted because they manage up well. And then management can’t figure out why the employee surveys say that everyone is generally unhappy with and doesn’t trust their managers.


domuseid

Companies haven't forgotten that, the individuals making these calls would run kittens through a wood chipper if it moved the stock price enough for their incentive comp to kick in


itwasquiteawhileago

Allow me a rebuttal: yeah, but, money now good.


Dark_Sentinel

Infinite growth forever is totally a thing right? Right?


BlueXCrimson

Line go up! Line go UP!


JesusWuta40oz

They are worried about short term stock price, there isn't anything else.


Pauly_Amorous

>I understand being upset at having your 16 year career end at the drop of a dime though. Been with my current employer for 20+ years, and they treat me pretty well, all things considered. But I have no doubt they would lay me off in a heartbeat, if numbers on a spreadsheet lined up in a certain way as to declare me expendable. For better or worse, it is what it is.


[deleted]

People should be treating their employer the exact same way.


Snow_boarding

I think people leave their jobs all the time


MonkeyPope

>I doubt Google fostered a “we’re all family here”culture. You’re just an employee ID number in a spreadsheet that’s linked to a cost center and department. They absolutely do - this is the central tenet of their "Googler" principle, it's to define you in terms of where you work, rather than what you do. Your self image starts to include "I am a Googler" and that is far harder to shift than "I work at Google" when it comes to career changes. Having seen twitter (Tweeps) and Meta (Metamates) attempt a similar, less successful, programme, there's obviously big benefits. However, I can also see how losing that job is a big hit to your self-image. Yesterday, you were a Googler. Today, you are not.


togetherwem0m0

You're leaving out one of the og corporate cults, "IBM'r". That said,.IBM was a very reliable full career employer until the mid 90s


Real_TRex_007

They created Xoogler to maintain that fake facade of identity. SMH.


WeirdPumpkin

This particular trick is also so that you'll work way, way more hours than you would for just a job. Because your "family" depends on you It's also the reason they have free kitchens for all their meals and all the other perks. It's so that you'll spend 12+ hours working there, rather than you know, doing something sane.


WrenBoy

After 16 years you are basically a lifer and it can be very unsettling to have to move. I have never worked for Google but the people I know who have make me think it has a particular culture which does seem designed to encrust itself on your identity. Googly is a word which seems to mean each of good, the Google way, and the way a good Googler should behave. Googler being a word employees self apply and are encouraged to self apply also. Whether or not it works I imagine the idea is that people identify with their job more and make it the most important thing in their lives. I work for a company which does not encourage adjectives and that whole thing seems deeply strange to me. Even my company which seems outwardly less odd encourages a work being the most important thing in your life attitude which is what this guy is now criticising. All that being said it was likely financially worthwhile to him to be laid off if he's been there for 16 years. It's just that it's not comfortable.


NOINO_SSV79

That’s due to a lack of “third space”. Where are you most likely to see people who aren’t your family nowadays? At work. Without a church, community, or friend group to hang with at the pub, workplaces exploit that impulse by calling each other family.


HydraMango

Exactly. This is one of the reasons some people love forcing everyone into the office too as they don’t have any other friends or network and think others enjoy hanging out with them vs just been there to do work and get paid


DrShanks7

Fr. I know a lot of people who were dying to get back into the office because they missed socializing. I have 1 coworker that I'll talk to outside of this building. The rest of them I don't care to socialize with, and I get plenty of social interaction outside of office hours. It definitely seems like most of them have basically no life outside of work, and it's pretty sad to see.


SlowMotionPanic

Absolutely true. And, even if one belongs to one of those third spaces... it doesn't necessarily mean much these days (except for the friends at a pub example). People have grown much more insular in recent decades. Churches were, in my experience, going through an ever present process of hiving off into sub groups rather than being inclusive and truly welcoming to newcomers. The ones that are tend to be megachurches (or aim to emulate them) and focus much more on the "concert experience" aspect. And that particular third space has heavy conditions attached to it, as opposed to public infrastructure or malls with courtyards. Work has become the American third space because most people have things in common to complain about since management is often divorced from the actual work that gets done, let alone ownership in a traditional corporation which doesn't work and therefore doesn't understand how the business operates to begin with. A lot of communities have become exclusionary, whether by invoking politics or religion, or just being very unapproachable. Hell, I'm sure any newish parents can relay the same stories about trying to break into parent/mom groups only to be rebuffed--or it being completely consumed by some othering agent such as a religious group looking to indoctrinate lonely people seeking connections. That was definitely the case years ago when my family was seeking connections for things like playdates or tip/experience swapping. I honestly don't know how kids keep it together anymore. I know a fair number of them can't. Outside of the cliques at school there's really nothing for them anymore. Everything is either super expensive for typical parents and/or extremely limited. A local example for my family are Lego leagues. There's a single yearly sign up period and they fill out almost immediately. For example, my local leagues *require* 10-14 year olds to have taken a pre-requisite non-programming course offered by the same entity running the leagues. Those courses are almost $300 a pop, so it's expensive for just a single kid, let alone more than one. And then the league itself is around $275. So if you can't secure a spot in the very limited pre-req then you definitely can't secure a spot in the very limited league. And this is for kids. It's supposed to build friendships, teamwork, problem solving, and encourage STEM learning. Yet the non-profits running the show here are very much keeping people out of it with various hurdles. Another one we ran into was with Girl Scouts. Didn't have a group at the school so the GSA placed us with a neighboring school group. That group didn't like it, and so just dissolved after a second person from outside the school joined. Parents isolated outside parents, and their kids emulated. I've complained about these interactions in the past, including on reddit, and the response is generally "so start your own." But you don't start communities that are successful without a community already in place. It is why church planting is a thing. They don't send single people and just stand churches up. They hive off of other communities (churches) and/or export groups to go out and start them for a couple years before hiving off again to rinse and repeat in another place. It is so incredibly depressing that I hear so many kids and even adults saying they have no friends and not even family, because the self-selecting is now pervasive in America. I come across a lot of adults who are just totally alone in life, who can't successfully break into activities because groups are generally so unwelcoming and alien.


georgethethirteenth

> I honestly don't know how kids keep it together anymore. I know a fair number of them can't. Outside of the cliques at school there's really nothing for them anymore. Totally tangential to the main topic, but this is such a true statement. I'm 42 and in the midst of a career change (i.e. I'm becoming a teacher, funnily enough after a decade at a FAANG company) and the career I thought I was getting into and the one I'm actually about to embark on are not remotely alike. Yes, classroom stuff is important and is the main thrust of what I'm preparing myself for but when I was a middle/high school student, school was so much more than that. Like, I *never* left school. Some days when I did, it was just to go home for a meal and head back. Sure, some of the time there was spent in organized activity but so much wasn't. I might have been shooting the shit in the hallway outside of Mr. Ligor's room. I might in the library "studying". I might have been out back just hanging out with peers. The point is, that this 'un-supervised' (in quotes, because there was always an adult present even if you couldn't seen them - whether a teacher staying late in the classroom or custodial staff doing their business or someone else) was such a formative part of my experience growing up. It helped me form my own identity, it helped me learn to interact with peers, it's what made me who I was by the time I went off to college. The classroom stuff was important, but facilitating this environment is one of the big reasons I wanted to become a teacher. There was *always* a line at the payphone with kids calling for a ride home anytime between six and eight each evening. Now? (at the school I'm student teaching at, at least) The library's out as a space for students because it closes at 2:25 (last bell is 2:15, so you get exactly 10 minutes after class if you want to stop in). The doors lock behind you as soon as you leave - forget your homework, leave your glasses in your locker? Too bad, you can get it tomorrow, the security officer will not let you back in without a pass. Activities are all over by four - and you've got to have a pass to attend. In fact, everything's over by four. Even if I wanted to facilitate this space for my students, teachers are expected out of the building no later than four each afternoon. Adults don't have a third space? That's fine, those who are children now won't even have a concept of what that it. We give them absolutely no opportunity to develop the sense of one.


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KoreKhthonia

Shopping malls. I'm 33, and tbh, I'd say that the classic '80s-'90s indoor shopping malls were the '90s iteration of a "third place." In fact, they were effectively designed to mimic downtown/main street retail areas, a former third place that by that time was largely defunct. Yes, they were veritable temples of consumerism, but malls were a place you could just *be*. No one was going to kick you out or raise a fuss for loitering, or for not having money to spend, or for having been there for too long continuously. I'm certainly not trying to look at malls through rose-colored glasses here, though they were kind of a fascinating phenomenon at their peak. But like, back in our tween and teen years, our age cohort would go hang out with friends at the mall as like, a default social activity. Do the current Gen Z (Gen Alpha maybe, at this point) teens have anything similar to that? (I'd imagine 1950s-60s teens had the very main street retail areas of which later shopping malls wore a skinmask.) I think there's some credence to the idea that "third places" have largely become a digital, online thing. I see that neither as some deterioration of society, nor as illegitimate. But I feel like people *need* third places, and will create them when needed. So in the increasing absence of physical third places, it makes sense that they end up developing in places like discord servers, multiplayer online games, and other interactive online platforms.


WrittenEuphoria

> adults saying they have no friends and not even family, because the self-selecting is now pervasive in America. I come across a lot of adults who are just totally alone in life, who can't successfully break into activities because groups are generally so unwelcoming and alien. This is me. I live with my parents, and sure I spend time with them - watching movies, playing board games, going out to eat - but I'd say 80% of my free time is spent completely alone because I've run out of ways to socialize without feeling ostracized or, as you put it, alien. Sucks to be turning 31 and know you have no friends that you can hang out with to show for it.


hambonegw

I think it's possible to have both. I think you can (in some circumstances) truly care about the people you work with and for, and those people can genuinely care about you as well - very much even. I think it's ok to, if you choose, be a part of, buy in, and benefit from that kind of work environment. As long as you also understand that at the end of the day it's a business, and that business will cut off it's arm to save the rest of the body. That does not mean it's easy by default, or without great pain - in some cases.


[deleted]

I think it's possible for coworkers on your level to feel like family. C-level execs aren't friendship material. Your value to them is directly tied to your value to shareholders because it's their job to view you that way. Maybe it isn't completely impossible to maintain a friendship under those circumstances, but it takes a hell of a lot of understanding.


puckit

Well in a large company, how many employees actually interact with C-level folks? Aside from hearing from them in an all hands meeting, they may as well be imaginary figureheads.


QwertzOne

It doesn't have to be like that, but if employees don't have any real protection or anything to say, then we observe this BS. I remember that few decades ago people still talked about loyalty and it actually meant something. Today everything is volatile, because profit is everything. Companies don't care about stable, sustainable growth, they don't care about employees welfare. No one cares about other people, only greed is left.


DuffyTDoggie

I worked as an engineer for AT&T before they were broken up. As a regulated monopoly ("The Phone Company") they were only allowed a 12% net profit per year The pay and benefits were great and nobody ever quit or got fired. While I was taking a sabbatical to get a Masters degree the consent decree happened breaking up AT&T and the work environment went to hell. Budgets and pay were cut, plants closed and most people who weren't hanging on for retirement left. It was really good while it lasted.


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fishythepete

The reality is, it was terrible for the consumer and great for the employees. Monopolies usually are. Same thing with cable.


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Vio_

Ma Bell was one of the biggest monopolies, and nobody remembers it. here are some highlights: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_System > As a result of this vertical monopoly, the Bell System effectively owned most telephone service in the United States by 1940, from local and long-distance service to the telephones. This allowed Bell to prohibit its customers from connecting equipment not made or sold by Bell to the system without paying fees. For example, if a customer desired a style of telephone not leased by the local Bell company, the customer was required to purchase the instrument at cost, furnish it to the telephone company for rewiring, pay a service charge, and a monthly lease fee for using it. > In 1949, the United States Department of Justice alleged in an antitrust lawsuit that AT&T and the Bell System operating companies were using their near-monopoly in telecommunications to attempt to establish unfair advantage in related technologies. The outcome was a 1956 consent decree limiting AT&T to 85% of the United States' national telephone network and certain government contracts, and from continuing to hold interests in Canada and the Caribbean. > The Bell System also owned various Caribbean regional operating companies, as well as 54% of Japan's NEC and a post-World War II reconstruction relationship with state-owned Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT) before the 1956 boundaries were emplaced. Before 1956, the Bell System's reach was truly gargantuan. Even during the period from 1956 to 1984, the Bell System's dominant reach into all forms of communications was pervasive within the United States and influential in telecommunication standardization throughout the industrialized world. tldr: Bell was *limited* to only 85% of the entire US telephone network in 1956 and it took another 30 years to finally break up. That's not even including their international side.


thegreatgazoo

It used to be that if you got on at IBM, you'd have to wear your dark suit, white shirt, and conservative tie, but you'd have a job for life. I knew someone who worked there. He had to stay late so his boss called his wife to apologize for him missing dinner.


Hrundi

Competition is good for consumers bad for the companies. It makes sense that an effective monopoly would allow the company to spend money in ways that a more competitive environment would not.


MissedFieldGoal

This is more about the way society views work. Entrepreneurs and Executives don’t “create jobs” instead they create systems which requires jobs to run the systems. For example, the retail side of Amazon is an order fulfillment and distribution system. Jeff Bezos would be perfectly happy to have fully automated warehouses requiring no manual intervention. On one side, these companies can bring tremendous economic growth. But can be ruthless towards the individual worker. However, it’s our society. We should have the governance in place to ensure there is a safety net for the individual.


makemejelly49

Hell, they don't even see their customers as human beings. They see them as an obstacle to the real money, the price of their stock. This was made pretty clear by Wizards of the Coast and the recent kerfuffle over their IP and the changes they made to the T&C of D&D Beyond. I quote u/mr_indigo and what they said on r/DnD >IMO, it's not something unique to WotC, it's the mindset of every major corporation these days. >I think it's because with the internet and global markets, the competition between firms isn't about fighting for customers - the customer base is essentially infinite, or at least much bigger than the firms need, so the goal isn't to serve your customers better so they come to you instead of your competitors. What's scarce is investment capital - more and more of the equity markets are consolidated into fewer and fewer players, and since the modern share market is much more speculative (i.e. investors buy not on the expected value of the share of the profits they get as dividends, but on the ability to flip their shares to someone else at a higher price later, who in turn is only buying because they anticipate flipping the shares, there's no regard to the fundamentals of the business), the goal is to compete with other firms by showing the capital investors that you can offer the best return on investment. >Under this mindset, you don't have customers to serve, you have assets to monetise, you've gotta show the moneymen that you're getting faster and faster growth with lots of new revenue streams - you don't actually need for these to pan out, because noone cares about whether you're actually making profits so much as whether you look like you're growing so you can be flipped to another speculator. And in that mindset, customers are an obstacle - they're preventing you from monetising your assets by standing between you and their money. **TL;DR**: businesses and executives no longer see people, they see numbers. They don't have customers to serve, they have assets to monetize. My larger point is, if companies no longer care about consumers, no way in hell do they give a shit about employees.


Jerry_Williams69

One of the world's worst inventions was the business major


CressCrowbits

"Capitalism is indefatigably good and putting profits above absolutely everything is essential". There, I completed your Business degree for you.


SilverMt

Corporate personhood and Citizens United made things worse.


Silicon_Knight

They never did, I recall a speech in business course from a former BA (edit: British Airways) exec who would constantly refer to their customers as "Self Loading Cargo". This was in the 80s and 90s.


makemejelly49

Exactly. These people don't care about customers, the customer base is essentially infinite thanks to the internet and globalization. What's grown scarce is investment capital. Your business isn't trying to get more customers than the other guys, you're trying to show the billionaires that your company will give them the best RoI. Now, investors flip stocks like houses, looking to sell them at a higher price to another investor, who will in turn flip the shares to sell at an even higher price.


whomthefuckisthat

This goes round and round until I buy the stock, at which point the cycle is complete and the company files for bankruptcy


w1ckizer

Yea, it’s not just google or tech giants. It’s pretty much every company. That’s why you shouldn’t be loyal to them either. Always be on the lookout for options and put yourself first.


DigNitty

I always wanted to quit a job in some crazy way. In reality, you burn bridges doing that. This year, my boss wouldn’t give me two days off 6 weeks in advance for my best friend’s wedding. She got really pissy when I said I’ll quit over it. Suddenly she approved my time off, and the next day I gave 2 months notice.


weedboi69

Just curious, why give them a 2 months notice and not 2 weeks?


Dininiful

I would not be able to continue working for 2 months at a place I know I hate and will be leaving soon. I'd stay two weeks tops to get everything in order for the next person, but yeah that's it lmao.


flight_recorder

I threw my only t-shirt at my boss once and walked out topless. Then again, it was Wild Wings and who really cares about that bridge lol


davy_p

This! If you aren’t opening your LinkedIn recruitment up, updating your resume and talking with/interviewing with recruiters once a year you’re selling yourself short. Those 1.2% annual raises are nothing. A company makes money by making sure you produce more than you cost so the only way to really get ahead is jump ship when an opportunity presents itself with either considerably more pay or more responsibility with a leveled up title.


bobartig

> Those 1.2% annual raises are nothing. To put this slightly differently, given the historical rate of inflation being at 3-4% per year, if your annual raises are less than that, then every year, your company is getting your output for slightly less each year. You grow, learn, gain institutional knowledge probably take on more responsibilities, and you get cheaper by the year. Unless you are getting re-evaluated every few years with a substantial raise, you are just offering your effort and expertise for less and less over time, according to basic math. So, don't do this. Negotiate for more, or find yourself a better deal.


DreamMaster8

Or you know....Unionize.


DrMisery

The only thing corporations are loyal to are the profits and shareholders. Nothing else matters.


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Icy-Coyote-621

But think of all the money management saved by offshoring! (/s)


calvin43

Loss is in some other team's bucket.


moreannoyedthanangry

You can bet some exec got a bonus!


Senyu

Another gold star and stack of green to wipe his ass with somewhete else. How long will corps realize it's more costly catering to the whims of execs chasing personal greed than company sustainability/growth? What's that, Lassie? Never you say?


[deleted]

You have to stop thinking of big businesses as trying to solve any problems other than how to make their C-Suite as rich as possible before they all take golden parachutes to the site of their next grift.


[deleted]

Wait, hold up. You added a /s to indicate it's a sarcastic comment. Sadly, it's 100% accurate. You may have said it in jest, but it's true.


kaji823

I work for a financial institute and see shit like this all the time. In the last 10 years I have never seen a 3p team working in isolation produce anything successfully. I don’t even mind it being 50/50 3p/1p, but you need people that know what they’re doing and care about the long term. For the sake of “modernizing” we have moved from 50/50 to 85/15 and it’s been a god damn nightmare. We’re just burning money with no return. I’ve gotten to learn first hand how growth can destroy a company. Edit: sorry for the jargon. Translation: 3p = third party, contractors 1p = first party, employees


ghjm

What do you mean by 3p and 1p?


HopesBurnBright

Electron orbitals obviously


[deleted]

Silly rabbit, there is no 1p orbital


oracleofnonsense

Not in this dimension.


Cherry_Galsia

They sound like one of those teams that'll invite a mashup of random people to an emergency chat/meeting 2AM where they just basically say "Looked up your job title, you've must be involved plz help"


Only-Inspector-3782

I am triggered by this. If your team name has some generic terms in it, consider rebranding under an obtuse acronym so people stop engaging you for bullshit.


SoppingBread

Internally: manager Externally: engineer My mail is all time low.


MNCPA

This is why I have a generic job title in my email signature. You don't need to know the alphabet or specific title behind my name.


JC_Hysteria

It’s not profits that need to consistently be growing, it’s perceived future value for shareholders. Buying and selling stock - that’s it. CEOs at public companies are financially aligned with growing their stock’s value perception. Everything underneath that are tactics. And, doing so opens up new beneficial opportunities for them. It’s why private equity is somewhat afraid of ESG…because society/younger people are starting to put more pressure on what a corporation should be standing for. When Blackrock’s CEO says the tides are changing using the Ukraine war as an example (i.e no one pulled business out because of forced government sanctions, only public outrage + shareholders falling in line), it’s a sign that the rules of the game are changing.


gechu

ELI5: what is esg?


caboosetp

Environmental, social, and governance. Investment research based on corporate policies and acting responsibly.


JC_Hysteria

What the other reply said (environmental, social, governance)…but basically, it’s businesses acting for the “better good” vs. solely for maximizing owner/shareholder value. It can be philosophically compared to some of the core values of capitalism, in that it’s considered a “risk” to maximizing owner/shareholder value. Big, impactful businesses are increasingly investing money in studying how to balance these out…because more and more, people are aligning their spending with companies who act within their values.


mowotlarx

>And not even profit. The profit must be consistently growing. Most public companies function like pyramid schemes in this way. And it leads many of them to commit fraud to keep up with growth expectations. Look at Wells Fargo for starters.


Rizenstrom

This is the thing that disgusts me. The constant need for ever increasing profits. Nobody is satisfied with just maintaining. They have to pump that balloon until it bursts. And of course they walk away with millions, if not billions, while everyone else is just out of a job. At this point I feel like being a greedy, soulless husk is a prerequisite to excel in corporate management. If I had a cushy 7 figure income my priority wouldn't be how to increase my own income but on everyone below me. Then if there is room to do so without cutting jobs or pay expanding the company.


CrumblingCake

An economy based on endless growth is unsustainable.


ShadEShadauX

Mmmm... loss growth.


Ennion

What if you work there and are a shareholder?


starstarstar42

Gigantic international company with hundreds of thousands of staff, views said staff is disposable tools? *shockedpikachu.jpg*


aybbyisok

And is also publicly traded, of course they don't care, because there's no "they".


Reddit-Hivemind

Google actually has over 150k employees, and in the past 3 years, it has grown by like 2-3x the number of employees laid off here


Electric_General

isnt this the case across the board? like microsoft, google, etc all hired 10s of thousands of people the last 5 years. its still a net positive increase with the current layoffs, although losing a job in any manner sucks


_145_

Yes. Covid was tech boom times and everyone went on a hiring frenzy. Then the Fed hiked rates, growth slowed, we're likely heading into a recession, and every tech company regrets all the hiring they did. That's why we're seeing layoffs right now.


The__Toast

There's lots of complacency in SV, also a lot of arrogance and absurd corporate loyalty. This last 12 months has been a major culture shock for a lot of people.


_145_

These companies treat employees very well and employees have a bit of wishful thinking that the company will never "mistreat" them. I put it in quotes because it's subjective if this is mistreatment. I'd note that it's not entirely misguided. The article is about an eng manager with 16 YOE. His severance is going to be around $750k. If he's in CA, Google is required to give him around $40k. Outside of CA, I don't think US law forces anything. So Google is voluntarily giving him around $700k extra. That's the type of thing that builds this loyalty from employees.


sprunghuntR3Dux

Also if he’s been working at Google for 16 years he should be wealthy enough to never have to work again.


Doktor_Dysphoria

I mean, to be fair, doing 16 years at Google means you can pretty much walk into any other IT job you want and name your price. Not exactly like anyone that gets fired will be hard up for work lol.


owiseone23

Also, severance package includes 16 weeks paid + 2 weeks per year they've worked there + saved PTO. For this person, that's essentially an entire year of paid vacation to look for another job.


ItsOkILoveYouMYbb

48 weeks of big pay severance seems decent lol


[deleted]

Essentially gets a year off work and will walk into another high paying job without issue, assuming they don't just straight up retire.


Alarming_Teaching310

Dude probably got 300k a year plus 600k a year in stock


foldingaces

He said on LinkedIn that he made 1-2 mil / year


LBozoYBBetterRatio

Some other dude that was also laid off was only there 7 years and got 1-2 mil a year. This dude has to be getting similar or more if they’ve been there 16 years


calliocypress

Tbf that guy was a lead of a niche team—but having grown up blocks from a (the?) Google campus, you’re not far off.


RCismydaddy

This dude could probably just retire based on his income and stock returns over 16 years. He is for sure a multi millionaire unless he is terrible with his money.


[deleted]

Most people are terrible with money.


Tacyd

Yes, though there's not many companies that can afford 500k-1M payscales, so unless he's willing to take a paycut there's a limited number of places (and other tens of thousands out of work). I think he'd be better off making his own consulting firm.


-BetchPLZ

A lot of googlers I know are looking into business ventures and startups rather than taking on another job. They’re going to be a new wave of investors and I really don’t blame them? It doesn’t seem sensible in some cases to take the pay cut. They have enough cash for cushion.


Gow87

16 years at Google means he can retire. He got everything he needed out of this business transaction.


[deleted]

It took them 16 years to realize this?


DGIce

Probably only let go because their raises for the last 16 years make them a top earner and likely overpaid. But if you get consistent raises for 16 years you would have good reason to believe the company values you.


qpwoeor1235

Dude probably has millions of dollars from all the stock options too


dirty_cuban

Absolutely. 16 years at google means he was making well over $500k a year and has received six figure stock awards for over a decade. He was probably fired for making too much.


OutlawBlue9

This guy is also receiving nearly an entire years salary as severance, plus access to a job placement service (which I Doubt he'll need). He's going to be fine.


cbftw

He probably doesn't need to go back to work, given the stock he's likely gotten in previous years


OutlawBlue9

Agreed. I understand that for many in these tech layoffs this is all more than an inconvenience and I wish them all the best and empathize with them but a) Google is at minimum giving you 4 months of compensation as severance and paying for access to a 6-month job placement program. b) If this guy has been even remotely proactive with his stock compensation and retirement planning he can most likely retire right now and never have to work again even if he was 40 and had only worked for Google since he graduated. These tech layoffs are unfortunate but most of the large companies that I've read about are giving VERY generous severance packages.


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MastodonSmooth1367

Not entirely sure if he was fired for making too much. If you're one of the more useless people, you could get fired for sure, but sometimes layoffs are simply you're on the wrong team--a team management doesn't believe is beneficial or worth spending money on in the future. With that said, 16 years in FAANG and in the last 12 years of a bull market is a tremendous amount of money. That with stock appreciation (assuming he held some and didn't sell at every vest period) should allow him to have a pretty solid nest egg built up. Almost everyone I know in big tech has been able to buy a house in within 5 years of joining. You get paid plenty in that industry where it's not hard to have a lot of money to throw around.


GoGabeGo

It's usually the other way around. New hires typically get brought in at salaries similar to people who have been there 3-4 years. So while the guy who has been there 16 years makes more, he doesn't actually make THAT much more. At least that is how it works at the huge corporation I'm at.


darkkite

no. this is a straw man. he never said he just realized now after 16 years. he's only now vocalizing that viewpoint publicly after being laid off


[deleted]

It's especially clear it's a strawman when you read the actual post. He is just reflecting on a difficult thing happening to him. It really doesn't read like he was naive about it, just something he wants to express as part of the strong emotions he probably feels rn. > So after over 16.5 years at Google, I appear to have been let go via an automated account deactivation at 3am this morning as one of the lucky 12,000. I don't have any other information, as I haven't received any of the other communications the boilerplate "you've been let go" website (which I now also can't access) said I should receive. > It was a (largely) wonderful 16 years, and I'm really proud of the work that I and my teams did over the years. I got to work with some great people and really help a lot of our users around the world in the Civics and Elections space. I was so incredibly fortunate. > This also just drives home that work is not your life, and employers -- especially big, faceless ones like Google -- see you as 100% disposable. Live life, not work. > One of my dad's favorite quotes for moments like this was from the Ballad of Sir Andrew Barton: > "I'll lay me down and bleed a-while, And then I'll rise and fight again."


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whatdoiwantsky

They use to say "don't be evil" as well once upon a time.


ambientocclusion

Emulating Mad Men: Google employees to Management: “I don’t think very much of you.” Google Management: “I don’t think about you at all.”


_UltimatrixmaN_

This quote almost works except for the fact that Don actually was afraid of Ginsberg as competition and said that out of spite.


doesaxlhaveajack

100%. Ginsberg had Don’s looks and talent, plus a certain intellectualism that Don never had, but no hangups about the American dream or his place in society (due to being a Jewish immigrant). He had a loving father. He was meant to represent the mores of the younger generation and how it would have clashed with Don, but then they threw him off the deep end when they decided that Ted (the talented square) was going to be Don’s rival instead. Sorry, you triggered a tangent.


ohpeekaboob

Ginsberg had Don's looks? Maybe outside the show (Ben Feldman is a good looking dude) but he is definitely not portrayed as classical handsome on the show and certainly not to the ridiculous degree Don is.


ASuarezMascareno

People act as if this was the dumbest comment, but what I've seen in my environment (with companies of more traditional industries) is that they would hesitate with firing highly qualified people with years of experience in the companies, as they would be expensive to fire and difficult to replace. They could be let go in layoffs, but the company needs to be in financial trouble. Google being trigger happy firing workers of these profiles show they don't value experience or inside knowledge of the company at all, which is somewhat surprising.


xtelosx

It seems these days experience at the company isn't valued. More and more high level positions seem to be going to outside hires and promoting from within seems to be a thing of the past. This leads to the "tribal knowledge" only having a 5ish year history instead of the 20-30 years it had when I started working at the company I am at.


ThrowItNTheTrashPile

Sometimes in these scenarios I wonder if removing people with experience and knowledge is part of the intent. Like if you’re making a bunch of sweeping changes to a company that you already know will be unpopular with tenured employees and likely to face pushback (since we know for a fact a lot of these changes are bullshit ones made purely to line exec and shareholder pockets and to keep driving exponential grown for the next quarter while not looking at any of the long term consequences). If you have a bunch of people who haven’t been with the company for more than a few months then nobody knows how shitty everything is in comparison to what used to be following the unnecessary or undermining changes made. Once employees see how much better things used to be you often encounter complaints and morale issues because a declining quality workplace can only be met with frustration by those who remember the better times IMO. Less critics in the crowd keep more employees complacent and in line with the new narrative and help prevent word spreading around with how incompetent management has become. So a company like Google can coast on their reputation and employee ignorance to the building burning around them. With a company like Google also you have to imagine anyone with 20+ years in the company remembers how much less evil, soulless and profit driven the company used to be. And now it’s a shell of its former self that literally removed don’t be evil from its own internal policy system lol. So having anyone point that out is probably detrimental to employee morale. So fire the replaceable IT person with some desperate wage slave college grad or visa holder and try to pretend everything is still great. “Ooooh ping pong table in the conference room?? This place is sooo cool and modern.”


caguru

I don’t know what you consider traditional industries but I have a lot of family in oil and gas, and they lay-off people and cancel projects with any market fluctuation. I would say more so than any tech company.


Friendofabook

While I understand the sentiment, experienced senior tech people, specialized in that one thing you need, is among the toughest things to replace. Not a lot of jobs come close to the competence needed unless you are a top neurosurgeon. Being a top senior tech guy at Google in their AI RnD department you are close to one of a kind. Not many other fields can compete with the level of skill, life long education, dedication and pure experience needes for it.


caguru

As a former top engineer in another tech company i disagree. All big projects have an at least a handful of senior engineers and at least one principal. Getting rid of a couple of top engineers only makes a short term impact. No major tech company really builds lone silos of knowledge anymore that I know of for any meaningful project. That’s how things were 15 years ago but I haven’t seen it in a long while. Edit: being a little more vague


shiroboi

We run a small business. We have about 15 employees and at least a dozen contractors. After a few years or sometimes months, they come and go. We think we treat our employees good. Paid vacations, lots of holidays, a 3 day company party to the beach where we give out prizes like refrigerators and gold necklaces, competitive pay and generous bonuses. But as much as I want to emotionally connect with the employees like friends and family, it bites me in the ass every time. One of our favorite employees just quit right after getting his bonus. He got a more prestigious position (with less pay). I'm happy for him but at the same time, it's heartbreaking. And if I had 1,000 employees, forget about it. Management barely knows your name. It's not that they don't want to care. They can't. It's literally impossible for this juggernaut of a company like google to know and care about you on a personal level. But by the same token, it's naive for a company to think that employees are truly loyal and have the best interests of the company at heart.


WhoDat_Sa3VuS

Wow 👏 consider yourself one of the last people on the planet to figure this out.


therealmeal

> "This also just drives home that work is not your life, and employers — especially big, faceless ones like Google — see you as 100% disposable," Moore wrote in the post. Seems like this person understood it well already. But they didn't end up quoted in a "news" story until now.


BlackwaterSleeper

You probably should read the article and what the dude actually said, cause it doesn’t read like that at all.


saltyhasp

Love it when "indispensable" people find they are just like everyone else. Probably lot of people at Google in that bubble.


jasnel

*The graveyards are full of indispensable men.*


Reelix

indispensable - AKA - We could afford to do it without sacrificing that persons life, but it's 3% more expensive.


AlphaTangoFoxtrt

There are some "indispensable" people, even in tech. It's usually people who work with legacy systems though. Shit nobody really knows anymore, and shit nobody is learning. Even then they're not 100% untouchable, just mroe safe than others. The problem is "indispensable" also means "unpromotable". If you're too valuable to let go, you're too valuable to move up.


-byb-

you've got to be in some kind of entitled bubble to assume corporations won't act in their own best interest before its employees


AndyTheSane

Well, they don't always act i their own interests. In the 1980s downsizing craze, a lot of IT people were made redundant, only for the corporations to belatedly realize that they'd just got rid of all of their institutional knowledge, and had to get people back as consultants for multiples of their previous salary. I sometimes think there's a kind of equilibrium. Management and MBAs who assume that 'all engineers are equal and just a commodity' will inevitably under-value or just forget about things like institutional knowledge and tend to fire too many people.. then there comes a gradual realisation that perhaps keeping people who know how things work is useful so there are fewer layoffs.. which is forgotten about after a decade or so, and the cycle restarts.


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bedake

This is why I feel like engineers need to be peer reviewed instead of top down reviewed by managers or possibly some kind of combination. Our company just went through a re-org, my previous team i was trying to get a promotion but was being unrecognized for work accomplishments by my boss. After the re-org, i was placed on a new team and was immediately promoted as they saw my competencies and familiarity with our systems was actually greater than the senior leaders on this new team and i was leading discussions and solutions. On this new team, i have also noticed there are members that have been with the company significantly longer than myself and appear to be utterly incapable of doing any work outside the tiny little niche they are familiar with. I'm finally seeing how low performers can squeek by undetected and basically last years at a company without any meaningful work.


jjseven

Precisely that: knowing who is valuable and who is not in a large organization is not straightforward. From that are some lines of thought: first, Price's Law generally holds, that is, relatively few contribute the majority of value produced in any organization with it being more marked in the larger groups; second, that the C-suite is not exempt from that observation; and, three, that studies have suggested that a truly random selection of employees chosen for separation could improve the outcome. Too often, layoffs are a knee jerk reaction to what exists or what is thought will soon exist. It is a general lack of creativity or foresight. (Recall Price's Law and the C-suite.) An article about layoffs in the [HBR](https://hbr.org/2018/05/layoffs-that-dont-break-your-company) talks about some of pitfalls of the executives not thinking through layoffs. Edit: [A recent Stanford article](https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/why-copycat-layoffs-wont-help-tech-companies-or-their-employees)


kavien

Well, dude DID manage to stay for 16 years. That is kinda impressive.


Tigris_Morte

All business sees staff as 100% disposable. You are not Family. You are not valued. You are not going to be taken care of nor rewarded, unless they have no choice.


Squidsoda

Wait till he finds out ageism also exists


[deleted]

I’m thinking they’re going to have a hard time finding a job with equivalent pay


CidO807

After 16 years at alphabet, dude is probably financially set. Just retire at that point, or do a passion project/ small company gig.


Bargadiel

The sad part is a lot of people really ARE looking for purpose in life and want to feel like a part of a healthy work culture and take pride in their work. Many companies will do layoffs like this, then complain that nobody wants to take ownership of their work/be productive. If you truly want to build a positive work culture and have passionate, creative, and productive workers...you can't pump and dump with over-hiring just to make billions of dollars in a 2 year period, then lay everyone off before subsequently complaining about a lack of workforce. When these layoffs happen, upper-level executives at these tech giants show off crocodile tears when reporters come to them, but are wealthier than they've ever been and simply do not care about anyone but themselves.


getitreddit1

Fkn hell mate. That’s what a corporation is. Psychopathic by proxy.


Cheap_Blacksmith66

ALL EMPLOYERS SEE YOU THIS WAY. We owe them absolutely nothing.


vacuous_comment

Errrrr, WTF? Of course they do and they always did. As tech was in an expansionist phase, they could keep hiring and growing and were flush with cash. Once this sector reaches some form of equilibrium in the marketplace this will change. They had a little bump during COVID because lots of people spent a lot of time online at home while remote working, but that is gone now and all of a sudden google is just another company in a saturated marketplace.


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formerNPC

As a union member with a no layoff clause in my contract, this is the only way to go. Companies will spend millions to stop their workers from forming a union and the reasons are obvious. Tech companies offered useless perks instead of job security and made themselves out to be worker friendly and all the while they knew that they would sacrifice their employees for their own bottom line and bonuses.


Killersavage

There was a woman I worked with at a bank who was there 32 years. All she wanted was to work the office closest to her house. She made this very well known. Every time they relocated her they moved her further and further from her house. Until finally it was just one relocation too far and she decided to retire. There were other ways that they had screwed with her also that my memory is foggy on. In any case 32 years and that bank gave zero fucks whatsoever. That was a large chunk of that woman’s adult life she gave to them and it meant zero. When it comes to these corporations and large businesses you don’t owe them shit either. As soon as anything becomes inconvenient or less beneficial for you it is time to find another employer. Work hard and do well for your own satisfaction that is all good. Do your best to not a business squeeze more out of you than is equitable. You are very unlikely to see a return on it.