"Full responsibiliyt"? Really? How are you doing that exactly? By still getting your full paycheck and bonus while you fired twelve thousand humans because you didn't consider that the economy after years of a pandemic might be volatile?
I suspect that's the reason for saying that. If you feel the need to blame somebody - blame me ( not other people or external conditions or shareholders ).
Ultimately it is his fault - even if it was forced on him be shareholders - he'd have the option of resigning ( following orders isn't a good excuse ).
In terms of the effect on him - you are assuming he isn't somehow human, and somehow these decisions aren't personally very hard to take.
In the end it comes down to whether you have a company culture of firing people the first mistake they make or not. Most people would suggests that's a bad company culture.
Whether they should have chased unsustainable growth is an interesting matter. I think the culture damage that large layoffs can have, particularly to companies that previous have always been growing, is substantial and underestimated.
ie the people left are often demotivated.
I once worked at a startup that let ~20 people go ( just under 10% ). The company was reasonably successful in keeping the best people in the short term, but motivation was right down and many of them drifted away over the next year or so.
The reason this is irrelevant is because it's not what Western society values. If he is sincere about taking responsibility, he would either resign with no compensation, or take a severe paycut for failure. If a CEO is handed a bonus when the company does well, then it must follow that their head rolls when it doesn't.
"Taking heat" should be part of the day-to-day of a CEO's job and not the "punishment" for failure.
> In terms of the effect on him - you are assuming he isn't somehow human, and somehow these decisions aren't personally very hard to take.
Humans are perfectly capable of doing horrible things and justifying it to themselves; me claiming that his words of "taking full responsibility" is a corporate platitude doesn't imply that I don't think he's human. I'm sure at some level he probably feels emotions the same way I do, but I also think he's somewhat removed from the consequences of his decisions.
We all do it to some extent (don't think too hard about the labor behind your phone or computer). Doesn't mean it's not crappy.
That seems like something the board/shareholders/market would reward him for, not punish him for. Who would punish him and why for the inhumanity of firing lots of people? Not the board, not the California state government, not the Federal government. Maybe that would be a role for an employee's union?
Moreover, if we're going to reward this individual when times are good purely for being in charge at the right time, then shouldn't it go both ways? Shouldn't we punish him when things are going bad, for example the tail end of 2022?
I'm not a business person, it just seems like if I were an investor with Google [1] then that's how I'd view it.
[1] I don't own any Google stock directly, but I suppose indirectly I own some via ETFs and an index fund.
ETA:
The reason I mention this is that I don't want to "punish him for firing lots of people", but because the people that were fired were the only ones punished for his bad leadership.
That being said, none of what you said justifies his empty "I take full responsibility" statement. It's hollow and it achieves nothing. Well, nothing good related to those fired that is.
What did the employees do with their additional compensation? Did they save it? Are they trying to use the fact they worked for Google to increase their network?
At what point is it the employee’s responsibility to assume that no job is permanent?
Yes, a job is a business transaction and employees should be aware of that. I don't think anyone here disputes it. I certainly do not. That has literally no bearing on the fact at all on whether or not the CEO claiming that he's taking "full responsibility" is an empty platitude.
No one is accusing Google of slave labor here, but that's the claim you're defending.
ETA:
Whether or not the employees should be viewing working for Google as transactional, it's still a frustrating pain in the ass to be fired from a job. They have to spend some amount of time with no income. They have to go through an annoying interview process of people masturbating to whiteboard problems. Their next job might not pay as well. If they weren't at Google very long (<1 year) then that's still going to look bad on a resume.
It's a frustrating experience. No one is claiming that the CEO of Google should go to jail or anything, but if he's firing 12,000 people because of his bad decisions, him claiming that taking "full responsibility" is just an empty statement and it's frustrating.
Why would I believe anything my CEO says in that regard who I am 7 levels removed from and I’m one of only 1 million+ employees at the 2nd largest employer in the US? I know I’m just a number.
> Their next job might not pay as well
As hinted above, I also work for BigTech, so I’m in no way bitter about their income. But how large of a fiddle should I be playing for someone who might not make $300K - $400K and might have to sully themselves and be a corporate dev making “only” $150-$170K like most of the 2.7 million devs in the US (as I did most of my long career)
And because I don't believe it, and because I think it's an outright lie, it's more frustrating.
Are you suggesting that just because a lie is common, it's no ok to point out that it's a lie? I guess I respectfully disagree.
Also, it's not like I asked you to cry over the people fired from Google, I was just explaining that it's an annoying pain in the ass to be fired from a job, even if they do find something relatively quickly. A negative pay delta, from experience, objectively sucks, even if the pay you ended up with is livable.
I find this mentality of "I used to have it worse so therefore I lack all empathy and that makes me a badass" to be an extremely frustrating perspective that people on HN and Reddit have. I don't really see why you felt the need to personalize this.
I’m saying I don’t spend energy being “frustrated” about what a CEO says who doesn’t know me from Adam. My energy is better spent reading between the bullshit and preparing myself.
Do you also get frustrated by politicians lies?
Again, cry me a river for people who can’t live off of 3x+ the median wage in the US instead of 7x+ Yes I’m in the latter group.
I’ve changed jobs 8 times in my career not counting two or three contract jobs. I have it down to science now. It would be harder for me in this hiring environment admittedly.
I made damn sure I didn’t suffer from lifestyle inflation when my compensation went from working at a 60 person startup in corp dev to BigTech. For me it’s more like “it was fun while it lasted” and I used the money to increase my financial stability.
Of course I do. I don't enjoy being lied to, even if I know they're lying to me. I also do think that lies should be called out when exposed, even if they were obvious.
I never claimed that they "couldn't afford" to live off "3x+ the median wage", and this is now the second time that you've claimed I have. I said it's frustrating to have a negative pay delta, no matter how much the before and after is. This really should not be controversial or difficult to understand, which makes me think you do understand it and are conveniently playing ignorant.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but looking at any of the messages in this thread, I don't think anyone is "worried" about the ex-Googlers, despite your insistence to the contrary. Of course they will probably be fine, engineering is a pretty cushy gig. No one asked you to pity them, I just mentioned that a negative pay delta sucks and you've repeatedly gone off on some moral high-horse about how you're good about saving money.
That's fucking great, but please don't take this the wrong way, I really do not care about your spending habits, so I do not know why you keep bringing them up, other to do the "badass lack of empathy" thing I mentioned before.
ETA:
Also, is someone impersonating you? I see scarface_74 and scarface74; is this some way of laundering dislikes so they don't pollute your main account?
Yet you care about a CEO and calling them out on a random internet site that they will never see?
My advice is a lot more actionable than worrying about a CEO or politician’s lies - save money, live below your means, don’t be a victim of lifestyle inflation and always be prepared to get another job.
Both accounts are mine and neither are getting negative votes. I just noticed that I’m logged into one from my phone and the other from my computer. At one point I made a mistake of setting the “noprocast” to a month and locked myself out. I created the other account with a similar name specifically because I didn’t want to be accused of astroturfing - ie having two separate accounts to seem like I’m agreeing with myself
Google's CEO's decisions are far more consequential to me than your spending habits, so yes I think it's more prudent to call it out than worrying about how you save money.
Based on the numbers you provided a few posts up, I've had more jobs than you (14 in the last 11 eyars, and currently unemployed), so I'm well aware of how fragile a job can be, and I do save money pretty aggressively as a result of that.
And yet, having been fired and laid off multiple times, you know what? It still always sucks, and I can have sympathy for any human going through that, even if I know most of them will land on their feet.
In tech, if you are properly prepared (in general ignoring the current tech hiring market), a layoff should be no more than a minor inconvenience if you live in a good market or especially now with more jobs going remote.
And a “good market” doesn’t mean the Bay Area. It means almost any large metropolitan area if you are willing to sully yourself and be a corp dev and don’t care about bragging to your friends that “you work for a FAANG”.
> At what point is it the employee’s responsibility to assume that no job is permanent?
Nobody claimed jobs are permanent and that everyone must be protected. Don't fight straw men, tearing them down isn't impressive in any discussion.
If you really wanna dance like that: I am a contractor by choice and changed no less than 10 jobs in the last 7 years and I take 2x less than you, and that's in a good year. I know better than many SV privileged people how rough can it be and I could even claim more "badassery" than you if we start digging deep on the experiences that we both have (for example, I got no real estate of my own even at 43 year old; asking "why" is a completely separate topic; another example is learning to self-onboard in an afternoon).
But that wasn't the topic and I'll ask you not to shift goal posts.
Reading deep into your replies it seems you basically got in here to say "don't complain you spoiled youngsters, work hard like I did instead". I mean OK, cool for you if that makes you feel validated -- we all need that, it's a very fundamental human need so I'm not judging -- but I still don't see how that is related to the topic at hand.
...which is: some of us take issue with empty platitudes said by CEOs and call them out. Yes I know Sundar Pichai doesn't read HN. Hope you didn't intend that as a mind-blowing revelation. This is a public forum, people choose to vent frustrations sometimes.
> I’m saying I don’t spend energy being “frustrated” about what a CEO says who doesn’t know me from Adam.
Cool, you have an opinion what should I expend my energy on. And I disagree with your opinion. Absolutely nothing you can do about what I expend my energy on. Moving on.
> My energy is better spent reading between the bullshit and preparing myself.
A lot of us do that plus "get frustrated about what a CEO says". These two things are not mutually exclusive.
> In tech, if you are properly prepared (in general ignoring the current tech hiring market), a layoff should be no more than a minor inconvenience if you live in a good market or especially now with more jobs going remote.
Yet again, nobody claimed otherwise. And what you say is true and applies to many tech workers, yes.
You seem to have misunderstood the intent between the comments replying to you though. You seem to think some privileged spoiled youngsters "cry you a river". No. We're adults with a lot of battle scars who are jaded by the fact that CEOs are 100% immune to any consequences from firing people.
OPINON: They should be liable, criminally liable even. The "taking full responsibility" part should come at the price of your mansion being taken away from you, sold on auction and the money divided between the fired people, and you the CEO having to live in a cramped apartment for a year (enforceable by the bracelet on your ankle). There should be REAL and INCONVENIENT consequences.
You could disagree. That's fine. What's not fine is completely misrepresenting what was said and insisting that people are spoiled and/or "expending energy" on stuff you feel should not be discussed.
Well cool, feel like you do. I am free to keep doing what I want to do while completely ignoring your opinion.
Hope this clears it up a bit for you, though reading your deep replies makes me think you came here with an agenda and stick to it no matter what is said to you. Which, if true, makes my comment a complete waste of time but hey, it's my time to waste and I enjoy wasting it sometimes.
I think no such thing. I was excited when an intern I mentored got a return offer at 22 making as much as I made when I was 44 before getting into BigTech.
I didn’t exactly struggle making what I was making over the years. During that time I had two big houses built in the burbs and I had a comfortable life. My lifestyle didn’t change any after going from corp dev -> BigTech. The extra money just went toward increasing my financial stability.
When new computer grads ask me for advice, I tell them to “grind leetcode and work for a FAANG” (tm r/cscareerquestions) - even though I never did that to get my $BigTech job - and make all the money they can.
I tell them how to play the promotion game and focus on politics, work toward “scope” and “impact” to get ahead - again even though that’s not a game I’m playing.
> No. We're adults with a lot of battle scars who are jaded by the fact that CEOs are 100% immune to any consequences from firing people.
I’m also jaded. But to the point where any job is merely transactional and I don’t take it personally when the transaction of “trading labor for money” is not seen as mutually beneficial to both parties.
> They should be liable, criminally liable even
Who was “inconvenienced” by making $250K+ for a few years and getting laid off with a severance?
You are a contractor, I consider every job a short term contract that could disappear. I wasn’t inconvenienced at all by making a lot more money at BigTech than I did at the 60 person startup I left even if I had gotten laid off.
If you are contractor making “half as much as I am” - which by the way I’m on the lowish end of BigTech compensation - would you not take a contract for two years that paid you a total of $100K+ more than your average compensation?
> Hope this clears it up a bit for you, though reading your deep replies makes me think you came here with an agenda
As someone whose career has a longer arc than most people on HN and have been on both sides of the “average software engineer compensation” and “BigTech compensation” divide, and has had 6 jobs since 2012 (the other two I kept for 3 and 9 years respectively before 2012), I can’t really muster any outrage at a CEO. I don’t expect any better.
It’s more like the tale of the snake and the old lady.
> I’m also jaded. But to the point where any job is merely transactional and I don’t take it personally when the transaction of “trading labor for money” is not seen as mutually beneficial to both parties.
Yeah same. It's a transaction and I've made the mistake to look favorably -- almost friend-like -- at people who hired me, and got burned every time, long ago. Never again. Story for another time, likely never, but suffice to say that I was fairly innocent and believed in long-term partnerships based on me being useful alone (i.e. the only metric; turns out there are a lot more, yeah I was stupid).
Getting fired because the CEO had lunch with a Microsoft representative and he figured we will no longer work with the tech I was hired for and will look for new devs, or getting fired because you carried a single project that made $300_000 in a weekend on launch and they didn't want me to start asking for % of profit -- and a few other such cases -- opened my eyes.
> Who was “inconvenienced” by making $250K+ for a few years and getting laid off with a severance?
F.ex. having a tenure of only 5-6 months in a FAANG, sometimes 18 even, doesn't always look good on a resume. Or simply being fired at this exact time, people can do the math and they rush into judgement and figure you were the bottom 10% cruft that needed to be pruned. And you can't ever change their minds and give them the facts, they already made up their mind and view you negatively. It's maddening but with time I started making my peace with these brain bugs that many people have.
But yeah, I'll agree it is very far from critical.
> If you are contractor making “half as much as I am” - which by the way I’m on the lowish end of BigTech compensation - would you not take a contract for two years that paid you a total of $100K+ more than your average compensation?
I am not opposing you deliberately but nowadays? It's 50/50. Not all money is worth the stress. I get what you're saying though, if I was convinced that I can protect my mental health then yes, I absolutely would take that deal.
> I can’t really muster any outrage at a CEO. I don’t expect any better.
We 99% agree here. I can't muster any outrage about almost anything these days. Personally, I realized that I've lived in a fantasy most of my life (how that is possible when most of my life has been hardship, don't even ask because I can't answer that to this day) and got dead-focused on adapting and being a realist.
With me being a fairly paranoid and thorough programmer, you can probably guess that I turned into a bitter cynic in a matter of weeks. :D When you remove what's blinding you from reality but you're already smart and perceptive (I hope), it takes very little time to start seeing the world exactly like it is.
So yes, I can predict most corpo bullcrap and am usually seeing it a mile away.
My bitterness and occasional caring and ranting (like in this very thread) stems from the fact that it's extremely toxic and discouraging to be able to see how are things happening, what's their motivation and even their very likely conclusion... and not be able to do anything about it... yeah, it can ruin my mood and throw me into a grim broody state of mind for half a day.
I don't view it as a negative thing necessarily. I like it. Means I can still feel and not be completely detached like a robot making scientific observations with zero engagement.
But yes, it's a fine line to walk. Lean a little bit on the one side you start getting these pesky unhealthy things called expectations and thus get disappointed, lean a little on the other side and find out you wouldn't care about anything unless a nuke turns your life upside down.
It ain't easy to be both (a) smart and perceptive and a realist, and (b) excited for life. I am trying every day.
Words are cheap; hell, I can say that I take full responsibility for the Google layoffs. I have never worked for Google but I did about as much as Sundar Pichai to take responsibility for the layoffs.
I guess it's better than some approaches such as "we can do better."
>Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata will slash his pay in half for the next five months, following disappointing financial results for the Wii U and 3DS maker.
>Other members of the Nintendo board will take a pay cut ranging between 20 and 30 percent of their salary.
https://www.gamespot.com/articles/nintendo-ceo-slashes-salar...
Google is not a private company though.
> The type of people working for Google will be the first to get hired when the economy picks up again
So instead of spending the time looking for a job, possibly relocating, settling down, getting used to a new workplace, etc, and staying there, they get to do all that and then do it again. This is not a trivial set of events to have to redo.
> if you really care about the impacts of boom and bust don't worry about what the private sector is doing
This makes zero sense.
> link
No thanks.
The distinction I’m making is between public sector and private sector, not privately held versus publicly traded
>> if you really care about the impacts of boom and bust don't worry about what the private sector is doing
> This makes zero sense.
No it makes 3 sense.
The private sector will always boom and bust. If you try to solve that with regulation you a) can’t and b) just make it harder for smaller businesses to compete.
Only the government can offset the whimsy of the private sector and prevent the inevitable boom and bust cycles of private investment from destabilising society.
Well of course it is, isn't it? It's not state-owned, right?
Touting that as the only reality that could exist is not knowing the past, shareholders-first mentality and extract-as-much-profit-as-possible types of business are a thing from the 80s onwards, after Welch gutted GE's engineering prowess to become just another financial scheme.
Finance capitalism is the main issue, businesses are supposed to provide value to society first which they can profit on after.
Survival basics are to help yourself first and then help others. Since neither people nor businesses can survive without generating money, this situation we are in seems natural.
Take away people's dependency on money for basic needs, and you will get a lot more businesses that can safely operate for the good of society first and profit second.
You can look at basically any capitalist during the Gilded Age or the 1920's and see plenty of clear cut examples of them valuing profit substantially more than "doing the right thing". They didn't treat their workers terribly well, they destroyed large chunks of the environment, and they became richer than anyone could possibly imagine.
Sure, people like Carnegie would later talk about "social responsibility" of rich people, and to some extent I'm sure he even believed what he was saying, but that doesn't really detract from the fact that he still fundamentally made most of his money off suffering of others.
This is just an idea that I have, I'm not sure if it's even true. In any case, corporate speak is and always has been tuned to what the public expects of the corporation (current example is the whole LGBTQ+ signalling). Don't get it twisted: corporations aren't people and they don't really have feelings. They don't care about you; they're incapable of caring about you.
My understanding is that a lot of people who were fired were only hired in 2021 and 2022, just to be let go in the tail end of 2022.
But in a normal tech hiring market, I’ve given up full time roles for a six month contract to perm role that paid slightly more. But built my resume.
I would have definitely jumped at my current $BigTech remote role where I made over $150K more over two years than I was making at a 60 person startup I left even if I had known the job would have lasted two years. No I wasn’t laid off. This is purely hypothetical.