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Comment by hn_throwaway_99 | Hacker News Reader

Wow, just wow. I have no doubt that Google has a lot of excess to cut, but IMO I always see it as the death knell for large companies when they start a nickel-and-dime approach to cost cutting. I can certainly see the argument for cuts where they are needed to improve focus, and lots of the FAANGs had too many "frilly" expenses in the past 5-10 years, but cutting expenses that improve your employee's productivity is just totally boneheaded. I'm reminded of when Bernie Ebbers (of WorldCom scandal fame) railed that employees were "stealing coffee" because the amount of coffee used per filter was out of whack - nevermind that WorldCom was about to collapse in a giant accounting fraud. Obviously I don't believe the fraud aspect applies to Google, but the "focusing on the wrong shit" definitely does.

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Indeed. At a former employer, when they announced removing free soda, I assumed they were about to stagnate very hard. Compared to the costs and profits of flying hundreds of sales engineers around weekly and any executive-level expenses the cost rounded to zero. It was routine to hear about the $200/person dinners for big groups of leaders when courting visiting customers. So when they start cutting something as cheap as soda maintenance, they're definitely desperate and going to cut all the wrong expenses.

Coincidence or not, their stock has slowly fallen and they've lost their shine since then.

I think "broadly cutting tiny costs" means the company is done believing in itself.

Reminds me of this article:

https://steveblank.com/2009/12/21/the-elves-leave-middle-ear...

Yeah, I talked to a project manager who was in the loop on one of these things once. They took suggestions for cost-cutting measures and apparently lots of people suggested getting rid of the soda (not me - I drank probably half a gallon of Sprite Zero a day back then). She said that for a global company with a couple billion in revenue, the soda costs were about $50K/year. Which tracks - these were fast food style fountains and my understanding is that the profit margins at retail are huge.

> death knell for large companies when they start a nickel-and-dime approach to cost cutting

Nickel and dimming would be requiring approvals and paperwork to buy a stapler. This is Google just not buying them. That seems reasonable at a tech company?

Nickel and dimming is when you are looking for cost savings that aren't even rounding errors in operational costs. Quietly not buying things that aren't getting used is fine. Announcing it as a "cost savings action" is borderline nuts in light of what that signals.

Note that none of us are discussing the fitness classes. Staples, though? Seriously? How did that make the memo?

“If you need a stapler or tape, the receptionist desk has them to borrow.”

So each stapler use requires, say, a 5 minute detour (minimum, not counting lost focus or queueing) to the receptionist. At Google salaries, that's easily $10 in cost, so it's difficult to conceive how Google is expecting to come out ahead in the bargain.

> Obviously I don't believe the fraud aspect applies to Google

Not literally fraud, but that headline makes me wonder what Google is hiding and if they are close to failure.

Up to now, I assumed all the acting was there to prop the stock prices. But the nickel-and-dime things can't save enough to impact anything.

Yeah this will be interesting. Either Google still believes people go to work at a faang for a reason other than the comp or they are expecting higher attrition to avoid paying severance?

Google is starting to look like an IT episode of "Triangle of Sadness" - https://youtu.be/VDvfFIZQIuQ

The rich are the Phds and the Management is a crew asleep at the Helm...suddenly Kubernetes takes a whole new meaning...

It's just as likely (more so, given this is Google) that management is looking for a _visible_ sign of cost-cutting to pass a message to staff that times have changed, so chilling effect on raises/bonuses and probably increased attrition (which is more cost-effective than down-sizing and doesn't make headlines).

I am sure their finance people can read the expense %ages just as well as HN commenters: e.g. changing your cleaning supplier to a much cheaper one could actually save more $$$ but will not be staff-visible for a while. Perks are mainly signals, not cost centers.

Source: led down-sizing and kept perks when I wanted to retain people, reduced perks where I preferred some additional attrition.

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