I guess Google and other FAANG-type companies must work in a different way that I can't comprehend if they can just randomly decide to fire 10% of their workforce.
If 10% of the people on my project were fired, our customers would sue us for not delivering on the contracts we signed.
Because it's worked in the past and they can afford it, they've continued drilling countless holes. For example, their many incompatible messaging systems [1].
Some of the holes seem to have been drilled without any regard as to whether finding oil in that location is even possible.
Presumably they hope to cut down on go-nowhere drilling, while still doing some drilling, in the areas where an oil strike is most likely.
[1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/08/a-decade-and-a-half-...
Honestly, 90-ish% of Google's revenue comes from ads. Almost every other product area there is just a financial loss unless it's supporting search&ads. They keep making "bets" to try to diversify the revenue stream, but it never works. Hence why I don't think this will be the last round of layoffs.
It will be interesting to see how this shakes out and what parts of the org and what roles this affected.
(Worked there for 10 years, so find this all... sad and interesting)
b) Google grew by 30k last year.
c) Google is such a profitable company, because their revenue is not directly tied to number of employees.