Google Layoffs in the Thousands with More to Come This Week
thenextweb.com
thenextweb.com
I think Google's practices are disturbing. The fact that they use NDAs on everything and skillfully avoid "legal requirements" of all sorts make me wonder what is actually going on behind the scenes. The men in charge could really be up to anything.
Those of us who believe the "don't be evil" motto are getting duped. The information about what happens in the company is very tightly controlled, so if there are any creepy measures in effect, we won't know about them. Google is not better or worse than any other company, but we are led to believe that it is.
Until we really know what happens inside ("how the food is made"), we should withhold judgment about whether the company is good or bad. It's a setback for objectivity that a lot of smart people hold Google up as some golden standard, when the information available isn't good enough to make any generalized, overreaching judgment.
As for the layoffs, this seems like a turning point in the company's history. Things are going to look different in the future, with the stock having turned a pretty dramatic peak (stock market crash or not). Google won't become unprofitable, but the market obviously believes that its growth is slowing. Apparently with agreement from the powers that be.
Re: comment--I have many friends at Google who I talk to pretty much everyday. It IS a great place to work. It all depends on the person though. Many people love it, some probably wouldn't enjoy it.
This article is rubbish though. Like, if this were an essay and I was grading it I'd give it a D-. Where are the sources? Is the author an employment lawyer, because he seems to be pretty confident in his assertions.
"that is why you probably have never spoken to the same person twice at Google and that is also why there is somebody new on the job and most times you know more about their job than they do."
This "quote" is from another flimsy blog and makes no sense.
Are they doing the whole do no evil thing? Probably not. But they are hardly a sinister organization with plans for world domination using your google search history to black mail you into doing their bidding.
I suppose you could possibly craft a less likely to succeed story but it would take some work: [Scientology: Why George Bush's plan to install Vista on your iPod is a good idea]
Seriously, if something was really wrong at Google you would hear about it. It doesn't take much to leak information anonymously and the chances of getting caught are virtually zero.
This article states they are acting within the law not outside of it.
The NDA's are there to hide information they don't want in the hands of their competitors. I would think even the tiniest bit of information can be used by a competitor to extrapolate what is going on behind the scenes in Google.
Regardless of what you feel personally about Google, you must admit that they have manipulated their public image skillfully.
I am sure, Google in the very near future will prove this quote right if not already.
Many people would argue that it's the fault of those businesses for designing their business to utterly depend on a high organic ranking or a good Adwords quality score, but like the smoker with lung cancer, knowing who to blame for the fact that an inscrutable entity has power over you is little comfort.
What if "the algorithm" is vast underground matrix-like hives of third world sweat-shop workers relentlessly ranking pages?
cut to the 30 second zoom-scene with the spooky techno music
The article: Google laid off hundreds with rumors of maybe 1000 to come
The headline: Google Layoffs in the thousands with more to come
And I'm guessing terminating temporary workers are not counted as layoffs.