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Comment by CamelCaseName | Hacker News Reader

Is it possible they did this on purpose to expand their team size?

No that's absolutely bonkers and an edge case. 5 women don't have a baby in 1.8 months, and headcount has been frozen-ish since late 2021 unless you're Bard, so we're looking at someone dangerously stupid sticking their neck out to over-compensate, for no good reason, and inexperienced with basic tech shibboleths.

Also, the large firing decisions in January 2023 and January 2024 were made up several steps up the ladder. There's been probably just as much firings done informally inbetween, and to your point, some were very purposeful: multiple people in Assistant org. reported independently that new directors and their couterie were grafted onto the org, they were shuffled onto "Still Very Important" Assistant teams, then the not-so-important Assistant teams were let go en masse.

> 5 women don't have a baby in 1.8 months

They have 5 (or more) babies in 9 months, which is precisely the point of empire building: being able to handle more than one priority.

Sure, except, it was 1 employee replaced by 5, and there isn't headcount backfill.

I don't find that story believable, you don't layoff then open backfill or let alone multiple roles on the team. The handful of Googlers I spoke to are now in smaller teams handling the same workload. If true it must've been some AI related team

Good for you, i guess? It was absolutely as stupid as they describe. There were multiple teams that were literally interviewing people to join and then laid people off in the middle of it. My own team was trying to fill multiple positions and then they fired one of us (long tenure, good perf) and told us we could hire backfill as long as it wasn't the experienced, useful person we just let go. We explicitly asked and the answer we got was that this stupid shit was somehow protecting alphabet.

Absolutely, and tick more boxes on things other than merit and 'gets the job done'.

Not uncommon. Take out the old guard and hire new people for empire building.

no.

If you think managers everywhere dont employ this tactic i have a bridge to sell you

Absolutely. There was a leaked memo iirc from Microsoft that prohibited "exceeds expectations".

And then there's the antipoaching https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antipoaching

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