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Comment by OrangeMonkey | Hacker News Reader

Google pauses hiring for 2 weeks. Google earnings call in 6 days (about a week).

If they were going to beat earnings, it seems like they wouldnt take this action. If they were going to lose on earnings, and if they were going to have to layoff as a result (two big iffs), I would expect that they would stop all hiring. Like they just did.

Lot of big iffs but is there a better answer here?

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You don't have to "lay off" to shrink the workforce though. 100s (1000s) of people naturally quit Google every month. You can just extend a freeze until you hit your employee target, unless you are in a rush (like need 30% reduction NOW).

People don't leave organically at the same rate no matter what. If the economy is in the toilet and nobody hires you're basically stuck where you are and grateful to have a job.

So Google had roughly x% attrition rate for many years, for real. Even when a lot of engineers were leaving, it didn’t put a dent because of their hiring. That x remained almost constant for years. That might be what OP is referring to.

> nobody hires you're basically stuck where you are and grateful to have a job

Well that’s true. It’s also possible to live below your means with a fat emergency fund and just not worry about that at all.

To do a layoff properly you don’t want to lay off people who joined a month ago, or just gave up a job to be there, or rescind offer letters.

To do that, you first need to pause hiring for a bit to provide some gap in the pipeline.

Then you can do an organized layoff with respectful amounts of severance.

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