Google’s CEO faces employee questions about layoffs — “Why has there been such an extraordinary effort to limit the internal visibility of layoffs announcements?”
Employees are mad about layoffs and what some perceive to be a rushed AI strategy.
Google’s CEO faces employee questions about layoffs — “Why has there been such an extraordinary effort to limit the internal visibility of layoffs announcements?”::During a recent TGIF all-hands meeting, Google CEO Sundar Pichai addressed what sources describe as a growing morale crisis inside the company.
Each and every one of us deserves to work for a company that cares enough about its employees that they don't need a union.
That failing, we need protection from the companies we work for and the only viable opportunity at this point are in fact unions.
Edit: Jesus should I take it back and say that everyone deserves to work for a shithole company with no union protection? I said it would be fucking nice if companies could be nice but unions are needed for protection. Either you're all corporate boot flickers or you can't read for s***.
Of course we all deserve that kind of employer! Unfortunately, the entire problem is that employers aren’t generally like that.
It’s like saying we shouldn’t need laws against murder if people would just stop the killing, or we shouldn’t have XYZ problems with youth if only the parents would do a good job, etc.
We should not base our decisions on the fact that a few companies are generous enough to treat their employees well. Those are exceptions, and will always be exceptions. Capitalism doesn't reward you for doing it beyond some good PR.
Sometimes, those companies aren't even as generous as it first appears, anyway.
I've been a member of 3. They made for adversarial relationships between management and employees, with union leadership banking our fees. They cause other problems, like you can't fire the slacker, so people abuse it, pushing the load onto us conscientious workers.
There are places for them, they aren't good for tech.
your unions are ass then if you see them that way. but you also don't bring up any of the useful things unions probably did for you behind the scenes. provide legal protection? contract negotiations? COLLECTIVE BARGAINING? hello?
Unions only work when union leadership is actually working for the betterment of the entire unit, rather than personal clout.
I was in a union that ran well, protected employees, and had a great working relationship with management. Issues were handled efficiently and effectively with the contract in place. Then union leadership changed because a retiree rallied to become president, and the effective president stopped trying so hard because of it. So leadership changed and that union went downhill. Current leadership handles issues so poorly, nothing gets resolved and raises are not going to be as high as they could have been negotiated too. The current leadership values the provided lunches at the negotiation meetings over discussion of the actual topics, and working together to come to an agreement for everyone.
Another union I was a part of prior to that was for a big box wholesale store. I was sexually harassed in front of customers by another union member. The meetings were facilitated by management and the union. Management had my side on the issue, but the union advocated for the harasser due to years of service and seniority. They couldn't even guarantee I wouldn't work with him again. I eventually left that job, for multiple reasons, but a big one was that experience really broke me. I never felt comfortable working around that person and knowing that my voice would always be lesser compared to anyone who had just worked there longer.
I’ve been working in tech for close to thirty years now mostly with larger tech and financial companies. For my parent’s and grandparent’s generation, you could reasonably expect lifetime employment at the same company. Work well and you’ll be treated well.
This started to change when I began working in the 90s and especially after the 2001 and 2008 recessions. Since then, it’s gotten much worse.
Companies don’t want to treat all employees well anymore, just their top talent that they want to retain. Who cares what the rest think because they’re transient anyway and won’t be around for more than a few years. Build around your top people and view the others as interchangeable parts.
Don’t bother investing in the rest of your employees. Just hire when needed, fire those you don’t like, who aren’t a good fit, and who are too old. Firing is one of their top tools if they want a quick cost reduction to boost their stock price.
Maintaining the upper hand of the employee/employer power dynamic is much more desirable than properly treating the people who work for you. If the employees don’t like it, they know where the door is. They’re replaceable anyway. That’s why employees have lost the RTO battles.
As an older worker, I despise how cutthroat the corporate world is now. I feel like I’m about to be tossed out with the trash.
Well everyone is being told they are special and top talent until they aren't. Then it's to late since there is a stigma attached and others don't want their shadow cast in them.
This is interesting because firings I've been involved with nearly always cut the important staff first because they make the most. The more valuable, the more you get paid and therefore the more you save when they go.
I worked at a big company, after 16 years they let me and many of my coworkers go. I ended up at a late stage start up. They were starting to become more "corporate". Now I work at an early stage start up. They actually care. I am not sure I will ever take a job with a company that is publicly traded again.
“While answering a question about whether any executives had been laid off or had their compensation lowered, he said that, since rolling layoffs began this year, a “higher proportion of directors and VPs have been impacted than levels one through seven.” He also suggested that having to make the cuts is punishment itself. “Part of leadership is also making the tough decisions that are needed.”
Lol, if only the people being fired had someone to fire, then they could punished instead of fired.
No joke, I think he should be tried for crimes against humanity for how he's lead the merciless sodomizing of of our access to actual information.
If found guilty then he should have a chance to walk out unscathed. Five obscure questions. One computer. One elaborate limb removal device.
For every obscure piece of information he can actually find the answer to within the first 100 pages of results (don't you wish the other pages were real now, you fucking sack of shit?) He loses a limb. If he can't find the info at least once, he gets to watch his limbs get cut off one before it's off with his head and into the nearest, largest sack pile of actual shit we can forget his worthless body parts in.
It would be on youtube and the special would be like 8 hours long. The ad revenue and their utter lack of a sould would keep the executives engaged enough to not repeat his mistakes.
Also I don't know if this counts as internalized racism but I think Indian CEOs are mostly yes men trying to implement as much rent seeking as possible. Adobe, Microsoft, Google. 3 major tech companies which have been heavily pushing subscriptions but haven't released any innovative product.
Being a bit closer to the C-Level of a larger company, I can assert that greed, lack of vision and jumping on bandwagons is not exclusive to one nationality.
Yes but I feel like my countrymen are much more prone to people-pleasing (or in this case board-pleasing) because of our culture. We're just expected to bow to authority.
That's what all companies do. It's always a surprise, and it's done that way in order to control the situation. That's why when you quit, it should also be a surprise. Fuck them.
We have so many laid off engineers that if they were to band together to form a company with all the knowledge they have, I’m sure they’ll be better than the company they worked for.
They aren't. When the answers are unsatisfying, as we know they will be, questions like this can be a precursor to convincing your coworkers to unionize.
I’m coming to you with fresh reporting from inside Google, where I obtained audio of CEO Sundar Pichai addressing employee concerns about layoffs, the company’s AI strategy, and more.
All of that below, plus more on the “urgency” push by ByteDance’s CEO and my notes on Meta’s big week.
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