this post was submitted on 11 Jan 2024
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Google confirms it just laid off around a thousand employees (www.theverge.com)
submitted 1 year ago by Powderhorn@beehaw.org to c/technology@beehaw.org
25 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

So it continues.

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[–] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 34 points 1 year ago

When we spoke to Mencini earlier this evening about the Google hardware layoffs, she did not mention the other layoffs — but did write that “a number of our teams made changes to become more efficient and work better” and that “some teams are continuing to make these kinds of organizational changes, which include some role eliminations globally.”

I'm getting really tired of corpo doublespeak. No Google shill, I don't believe you are becoming more efficient, or right sizing, or whatever euphemism you think will soothe me over. You're fucking firing people. Call it for what it is.

[–] StenSaksTapir@feddit.dk 31 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This can only mean that Google is about to axe a product that people like and instead introduce a new chat app.

[–] DarkFox@pawb.social 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They have. They've announced they're going to cut a bunch of features from Assistant.

[–] Lells@kbin.social 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

@DarkFox That's good to hear, it wasn't shitty enough as it was.

@Powderhorn @StenSaksTapir

[–] XTornado@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

They probably want to join it with Bard or similar.

[–] DarkFox@pawb.social 1 points 1 year ago

Very true. It's been months since I've used it for anything other than replying to messages on Android Auto.

[–] Annoyed_Crabby@monyet.cc 28 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I guess they're rather impatient about the promised economic depression so everyone hop on the layoff train to accelerate it.

[–] melroy@kbin.melroy.org 8 points 1 year ago

I think it also had to do something with Google Assistant that get replaced by LLMs, as stated in the article.

[–] onlinepersona@programming.dev 8 points 1 year ago

Spyware company not doing so hot as expected, has to justify existence to investors.

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[–] jarfil@beehaw.org 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

“a number of our teams made changes to become more efficient and work better” and that “some teams are continuing to make these kinds of organizational changes, which include some role eliminations globally.”

That sounds like they're eliminating some profile globally. I wonder which particular role they don't need anymore, that required a profile so specific that they couldn't reassign those people to some other role.

How ironic would it be, to learn that they finally managed to fully replace some profile with an AI, so they no longer need humans for that role?

[–] meteorswarm@beehaw.org 4 points 1 year ago

It's mostly software engineers, and distributed across almost every team.

[–] qyron@sopuli.xyz 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I smell a recession forming!

[–] zaphod@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If you're so sure you should run off and short the S&P 500.

[–] qyron@sopuli.xyz 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The only thing I'm sure of is death and taxes.

I'm risking that statement because I'm seeing a good deal of events similar to what happened the last time we went through one (the world) and the big companies starting to let go people is like the canary in the mine.

[–] coffeetest@beehaw.org 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Last global recession generally considered 2020 I believe i.e. covid. Before that 2008/9 sub-prime housing. I don't see either of those events happening now. Could you be more specific?

[–] qyron@sopuli.xyz 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Good morning.

Let's call that example the canary in the mine but I'm seeing many similar situations where I live.

Being in a less than urban area, there is still a bit of industry around and some factories are cutting staff and a few have already shut down operations, especially in sectors more closely related with end user products (clothing, footwear, yarn, etc). Industries with ties to industrial use (metal working, construction materials, wood and derivates) are keeping afloat but only replacing workers that go into retirement or that for some reason or another just quit, and these industries, in my understanding, are keeping afloat because of the hard push into more sustainable and efficient houses, which is forcing a good deal of public investment into large renovation projects and funds.

Parallel to this, bakeries, coffee shops, small businesses that rely on consumption, are shutting down. For me, this implies there is less money floating around.

Paired with the hike in housing...

[–] coffeetest@beehaw.org 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thanks for your observations and I won't argue them. The problem with a word like recession is that we're in what I see as, the poor get poorer, the rich get richer. The middle class, what's left of it, is mainly moving toward being poor. That said, the "smart" economy people will say "we are not in a recession and in fact the economy is good." And it is good, very good in fact - for the privileged. Wealth inequality is the issue, at least in my view.

[–] KevonLooney@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

Exactly. This person is noticing a local recession and believes the entire world is like their small town. It isn't.

Recessions have causes and "housing expensive" is not a cause. In a recession everyone loses, not just "some factory workers" or "people who rent". This person is describing the effects of situational unemployment, which can hurt small towns reliant on only one industry.

[–] zaphod@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Because FAANG is the entire economy? Please.

Step out of the SV bubble and you'll see the economy is fine. The fact that tech was dumb and overextended themselves during and shortly after COVID while relying on ZIRP to fund those expenditures doesn't mean everyone else did. Stir in changes to tax treatment around R&D that disproportionately impact tech and and no one should be surprised that industry might be getting hit while the rest of the economy ticks on just fine.

[–] qyron@sopuli.xyz 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You are going to have to unfold all of those acronyms before we can move forward with this conversation.

I don't have the palest of ideas of what you are trying to convey.

[–] zaphod@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

ZIRP - zero interest rate policy. Very common term for anyone following macroeconomic policy since 2008.

Given the group we're in I hope I don't have to explain the rest.

[–] qyron@sopuli.xyz 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Thank you.

But... Why do you assume I have instant knowledge of acronyms because I opted to insert a comment on a topic that teased my interest? Does it pressuposes anything about my person?

[–] toothpicks@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

Nice abbreviations!

[–] coffeetest@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago

Google has something like 140k employees (Wikipedia 2021).

[–] autotldr@lemmings.world 1 points 1 year ago

🤖 I'm a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles:

Click here to see the summaryGoogle just confirmed to The Verge that it’s eliminated “a few hundred” roles in each of these divisions, meaning Google has confirmed layoffs of around a thousand employees on Wednesday alone, if we use a reasonable definition of “few”.

We asked Google spokesperson Courtenay Mencini to say if this was the complete and total number of job cuts in this round of layoffs, but she stopped replying at that point, only confirming existing layoff reports at 9to5Google and Semafor.

The New York Times reported on the engineering team layoffs too.

When we spoke to Mencini earlier this evening about the Google hardware layoffs, she did not mention the other layoffs — but did write that “a number of our teams made changes to become more efficient and work better” and that “some teams are continuing to make these kinds of organizational changes, which include some role eliminations globally.”

If so, though, it won’t work: The Verge is among the news outlets that takes a hard line against planted information, and we pride ourselves on finding the bigger picture.

Parent firm Alphabet employed 182,381 employees as of September 30th, 2023, so roughly a thousand job cuts would only be around half a percent of the company’s total.

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