Not a bad email, and a decent follow up on the ones that are affected.
It is also a reminder that killing yourself slowly at the workplace is meaningless. Management has no responsibility to you, and no promise is certain.
It’s your responsibility to take care of yourself.
My take, don’t be bitter. Take the severance as soon as possible and get back on your feet.
Having Google on your resume is a very good thing.
Hear hear re: not letting work consume your life. Seeing someone else say that was very refreshing. It’s so true that when you’re gone, the company hardly notices. Being let go with no severance and zero days notice was the last straw for me to ever put my soul into a soulless company again.
Luckily there are cool ones out there worth putting yourself into. I managed to find one. Weirdly I now seem to enjoy staying up till crazy o’clock hacking away or doing stuff over the weekend. But only because it’s so much fun; it’s still a selfish motive. Lots of devs really believe that they have a duty to the company or whatever, which is a huge mistake —- one I made too many times.
> Lots of devs really believe that they have a duty to the company
I don't think it's just devs, it seems like a broader "tech culture" or "startup culture" thing, where everyone acting like they're in some weird cult, fully devoted to their company is their entire personality.
I did an internship at a place like that in university. It was generally a fine place but it was weird how I added some people I worked with on social media (something I rarely do now) and ALL of their posts were about the company. I don't know if it was ass-kissing for promotions or something but it always felt weird and alien to me. It wasn't even a particularly small company where everyone knew each other, it was like 300 people across multiple floors of a building.
I think it's probably runoff from everyone trying to be 2009 Google. Would you believe there was a foosball table, and an open work area? Wacky!
What you’re seeing is actually a remnant of pre-startup culture. In late 20th century corporate America, there was no social media, but it was 100% expected that someone serious about their career would passionately describe how they’re working at the best company ever and they’re so lucky to have a chance to be there. If anything, the innovation of tech culture is the idea that being mercenary is even an option for getting ahead in your career.
> I don't think it's just devs, it seems like a broader "tech culture" or "startup culture" thing, where everyone acting like they're in some weird cult, fully devoted to their company is their entire personality.
For me, a Big Red Flag in job interviews is when a potential employer says "this place is a family."
I already have a family - I don't want to work somewhere where they expect that my entire life will be consumed by my employer because "we're family."
It sounds like what you're experiencing is a sense of freely-chosen duty to the company, rather than that duty being taken for granted. It's perfectly okay to choose to feel duty to your employer. A company can earn your respect and sense of obligation, and then instead of resenting the demands it makes on your time, you can feel a genuine sense of shared purpose that drives additional levels of commitment.
The kind of company I'm on the lookout for has definitely shifted over the years. When I was younger, the thought of working at Google and Amazon was very enticing. Then Amazon adopted some fairly regressive HR and business strategies and lost its luster in my eyes; or maybe my view of their existing practices just shifted as I grew older. Now Google is trending in the same direction. At this point in my career I'm on the lookout for smaller companies that are oases and have somehow managed to avoid the HR and business trends that have been adopted by the tech industry on the model of people like Jack Welch, the consulting firms and private equity.
Yup. My employer benefits, but the fact is, I’ve waited basically my whole life to be in the position I am now. If I don’t make a significant research contribution over the next decade, I likely never will.
Three years ago, I was a peasant, scratching out a living (metaphorically as a researcher) using google colab GPUs to experiment. Today I find myself a king, in command of a cluster of GPUs with so much memory and power that they could host GPT-3 four times over. Today that cluster comes online, and you better believe I haven’t felt this excited since I was 10 and my parents got me a playstation 1 for Christmas. I’m gonna final fantasy 7 the heck out of these gpus.
I have literally everything a researcher could possibly dream of. Or at least me. Every single one of the ideas I’ve been brewing over the last few years can now be tested, analyzed, and discarded — and it’s only a matter of time till I find the gold among them.
My daughter’s on the way in T-minus 7 months. I’ll be keeping my life balanced. But damn it feels good to finally have a research target plus resources plus skill. I’ve been playing a game of “choose two” till now.
...or colleagues. it's quite easy to start thinking that if you enjoy what you do so much so that you stay up late, then everyone else should feel and do the same.
> Hear hear re: not letting work consume your life
This isn’t what the comment you’re replying to said. They just said don’t let work slowly kill you. I think there are plenty of people whose work consumes their lives whose work isn’t also slowly killing them. And if you disagree with that I guess I’d say that everything is slowly killing everyone.
Yep, that works until the founders hand the keys of the truck to a random CEO who sends the whole company (and yourself) into what all companies look like.
Significantly better than the tone-deaf email Satya sent Microsoft employees, which continues to cause undue anxiety for employees who have no clue if or when they'll be laid off over the next 90 days.
It's actually better for workers when layoffs are announced in advanced. They can prepare for it and not make an important financial decisions e.g.: buying house while waiting
Does anyone have a summary of what laws need to be abided to in EU, Canada and other countries that prevent them from rolling this out at the same time as the US?
At least, advance notice which might be long depending of the country, probably at least three months in France. Plus, Google will have issues justifying a cut for economic reason in much of Europe. They remain very profitable even if less than before so they might need due cause to fire people.
Generally speaking European laws protect the employees more than the shareholders. You can't really just employ a lot of people when things are doing well expecting to fire them if there is a downturn. It encourages companies to be more conservative regarding hiring which can be both a blessing and a curse.
> You can't really just employ a lot of people when things are doing well expecting to fire them if there is a downturn.
Well, you can, but not as direct employees. The usual way is to enter a service contract with a different company who hires the employees and assigns them to work on bigcorp's tasks for 100% of their time. If bigcorp wants to cut costs, they just let the contract with the other company lapse and that company can fire their employees on the basis of "my own economic outlook is bad because we lost the bigcorp contract".
I thought this was a reason Europe has struggled in tech a bit - hard to try things out. I also thought this was why lots is “on contract” - it’s better not to bring people into your actual team (which must have some negatives)
In Japan for instance, you simply cannot fire someone without notice in these situations. You also have to prove that you've tried a whole lot of measures to avoid layoffs, such as reducing exec compensation, asking for voluntary resignations, etc. And I believe there needs to he some actual evidence layoffs are justified in the first place, same as in France I believe.
Strictly speaking, forcing a worker out in these recent tech layoff cases is going to be difficult. I'd expect both in Japan and other countries there will be much more generous severance package offers for "voluntary" quitting. The majority of workers will way that against the reality of staying in a company they know doesn't really want them anymore.
For NL: Those severance packages generally have to be applied broadly so everyone can make the choice. They usually result in the ones who know they can easily find a job moving on and the rest staying and thus don't happen that often. In general they let term-limited contract expire and offer people in early retirement. Doing layoff's when you are making a massive profit is not easy, it might be doable but it's not easy.
Fun part: Sometimes you cannot chose who you fire, the age distribution in the company may not change so firing everyone older than 45 is not an option in general.
The notice in the US is not a notice in the way you would apply it in Japan (or how common sense would dictate). It would be illegal to block someone from accessing company systems or premises just because you tell them "officially you are terminated in 60 days".
That "giving notice" is used in the message is because of some law (I forgot) that requires this time but also permits to actually block people from working as long as they are paid.
They way this kind of thing is usually done in the EU to avoid the hassles of proper layoffs (that need justification and come with restrictions - e.g. in Bulgaria if you've done layoffs you can't hire on the same position within the same unit in the next couple of months) is to propose a mutual termination - we'll give you X months of pay (where X > what the employee would get legally if laid off), you sign here you agree to leave immediately. It's sometimes a bad idea because in that case you're sometimes not eligible for regular unemployment (depends on thr country of course) because you agreed to leave your job, so you have to be sure you'll find a job afterwards. Sometimes it's a great idea because you get a pile of cash and you're "winning" if you find a job faster, or if you want a nice break.
If you make layoffs of over 100 people in the UK, there needs to be a 45 day consultation period with representatives from the groups of people affected. This sometimes means people end up in a horrible situation where they are in a pool that have been told their jobs are at risk but not whether they are actually being made redundant, though presumably it's more fair, and allows staff to volunteer themselves for severance if they so choose.
In some places, a company can't just fire people because they feel like it. In Germany, where this is called a "Betriebsbedingte Kündigung"[1] you have to make a socially adequate choice based on how long someone has been at the company, whether they have kids, etc. and you also have to prove that there isn't an open position elsewhere in the company.
This varies in the EU IIRC for example here in Sweden if you plan to fire more than 5 people you need to alert the public employment agency and employees 2 months in advance and the union which the company has collective bargaining agreements with. There is usually a negotiation between the union and the company on the forms of the fireing.
Yeah Satya’s note was bad for several reasons, not the least of which is he sent it right after attending a private Sting concert. Starting to wonder if rather than being an exceptional leader, he just benefitted from following Steve Ballmer which would make almost anyone look better in comparison.
Also, it clearly states there are layoffs! Anyone skipping over corporate jargon could have easily missed the single line with "btw, we'll lay off 10k people" in Satyas mail.
I'm so rapidly becoming someone who just feels no guilt. It's balance against the abject anxiety I feel no matter what day or time of day it is. The balance against waking up on in a panic that's it's 9:30a and I missed 2 hours of EU meetings only to realize that it's Sunday and everything is fine and I'm supposed to be relaxing. It's clearly not healthy.
But yeah, I've got a FAANG(+? what's it called now? I think I'm in whatever the new one is called now?), and the market isn't _so_ bad, I think? But at the end of the day, the checks clear, and it's mostly on me to decide and act on the prerogative that software is just software, and I need to chill. (But it's really hard...9s are addictive...)
> The balance against waking up on in a panic that's it's 9:30a and I missed 2 hours of EU meetings only to realize that it's Sunday
The thing that's been messing me up, is the completely unhealthy schedules that are typical when you work with people all over the world. For instance, I got up at 6am today, my first meeting was at 7am. In the meeting were people in three countries and at least five timezones.
This trend where people are located all over the planet leads to a scenario where it's not unusual for me to be taking 7am meetings while also working on infrastructure at three in the morning because that's when the maintenance window is.
If we were going to an office, nobody would tolerate this ridiculous schedule.
But since most of us WFH now, it's just become increasingly common that we're working 20 hours days, but there's a bunch of gaps scattered between a 7am start and a 5am end.
You couldn’t pay me enough to work at 3AM. I suppose it’s up to each person to know what they will tolerate, but that one is a deal breaker for me and always will be.
"9s" are brought up in reliability discussions. They refer to the number of 9's in an uptime metric like 99%, 99.9%, 99.9999%, ...
See also "march of the 9s"
Per my experience, nothing beats the "i work on what i love and passionate".
Coorporate environment of course has some advantages, for what they called "the real world experience". But it doesn't mean they're more capable than "lonely hackers" that can build his own universe by the weekends.
the only thing that beats "i work on what i love and passionate" is "i work on what i love and passionate and therefore I'm well paid" and "i work on what i love and passionate and therefore I'm well paid with a great work life balance"
It feels a little crass to me to judge the wording and character of layoff emails, as if some of them are satisfying artistically and others are unsatisfying to consume somehow.
At the end of the day, a layoff email is a layoff email. Sugarcoating it is just PR.
“It’s only a layoff email if it came from the layoff region of France, otherwise, it’s just a sparkling pink slip”
As a sort of corollary to what you said: being loyal to a company is foolish because companies cannot return that loyalty.
There may be some borderline exceptions with very small companies (less than 10 employees), but in general a company isn't capable of being loyal to individual employees. Just keep in mind that in your relationship with your employer, you only have value insofar as you generate profit for them.
while I agree with the attitude you promote. But it is not that simple. If your visa is attached to your job, you are pretty much fucked. Same goes if you decided to leave your previous job just to join Google (because it was your dream) and now you are let go - you are fucked.
So yes, it is your responsibility to take care of yourselves. But it is hard to be prepared for everything and layoffs like this one doesn't make it easier.
The email/comms might be okay, but this is still their fault and will ruin people's lives. Most (if not all) companies are shit and don't give a shit about you. We're just a necessary cost.
Having Google on one's CV is probably better than not having worked there at all. Sure being let go is painful but I would keep the term "ruined lives" for people getting serious diseases or experiencing loss of the loved ones.
Suicide rates surge after layoffs. Assuming it's "okay" just because they were in a big company earning more than most is disingenuous in my view.
For the company this is a blip. It'll probably even make some profit for shareholders. For the people it's almost always life-changing and for the worst.
it absolutely sucks ass and is a major psychological hit. Also, when lesser brands decide to follow the trend these companies so prominently follow, it will be even worse.
Having Google on your resume is not a good thing depending on who's reading it. Googlers generally need to be extensively re-trained on reality outside of companies that cargo-cult Google's practices, and I'll have some questions about the moral compass of anyone who shows up with Google on the resume.
That tech stack concern and attitude only affects a small-poulation collection of startups.
"Morally opposed to Google" affects a tiny sliver of professionals who boycott Google products or choose to use it despite allegedly being opposed to it.
If you go from Google or similarly large company to a small startup, there's a radically different reality and workstyle required. Any time I see someone with big company experience especially their immediately previous role, it's an orange flag. I know to dig into why a startup and whether they are willing to "repent" their previous ways.
BigCo employees are much more likely to call unnecessary whole team meetings, unnecessarily drag out feature planning, drag their feet on getting MVPs out in favor of a entirely complete solution, propose doing things "the way <x> does it" and it's like "... cool, we don't have the resources and headcount to support that really."
With that said, generally these people have a much deeper knowledge of their particular stack, are valuable to have as long as you can harness them correctly and direct their energies towards much later in the startup.
I guess the problem for affected soon-Xooglers is more like, they've been laid off hence could be seen as underperformers. Moreover, they hit the marketplace in quantities, which makes for a bad negotiation position. Also, I'm wondering if top talent at Google not laid off this time around might soon look elsewhere and leave the sinking ship before it's too late - after all, Google hasn't really diversified despite lots and lots of investment and it's not clear at all top coders are really needed to keep a maturing business going (or are actually still working on eg Search or other key tech considering its demise) over the last 5+ years).
One of my most talented colleague worked at Microsoft in his previous job. My worst experience was with a HR from Twitter, with all the political views and speeches from California, it was awful. She killed the spirit of the company in less than a year.
I have to wonder what your own resume looks like that you maintain such a large blacklist. I can't help but think that a great many corporations won't live up to your standards.
It is also a reminder that killing yourself slowly at the workplace is meaningless. Management has no responsibility to you, and no promise is certain.
It’s your responsibility to take care of yourself.
My take, don’t be bitter. Take the severance as soon as possible and get back on your feet.
Having Google on your resume is a very good thing.