this post was submitted on 02 May 2024
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Google is laying off more employees and hiring for their roles outside of the U.S.

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[–] [email protected] 220 points 7 months ago (2 children)

The latest cuts come as the company enjoys its fastest growth rate since early 2022, alongside improving profit margins. Last week, Alphabet reported a 15% jump in first-quarter revenue from a year earlier and announced its first-ever dividend and a $70 billion buyback.

Repulsive.

[–] [email protected] 104 points 7 months ago (4 children)

So they ditch the people who helped make them successful? What kind of ass-backwards strategy is this?

[–] [email protected] 107 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

"Juice the next 3 months."

Thats it. Thats the whole strategy each exec uses until they leave.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 7 months ago (1 children)

How can I get one of these jobs? Important detail I’m not rich.

Seems like a low skill job.

[–] Daft_ish 12 points 7 months ago (3 children)

Quick answer this one question.

You are given a button that upon pressing kills 100,000 people. The button does nothing else.

Do you press the button?

[–] Promethiel 20 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Of course not. Why would I risk limiting our market share that way?

I demonstrate synergy and the ability to run an agile ship by instead outsourcing development of an app charging 1,000,000,000 people $15 monthly for the privilege of pressing the button and posting that they weren't it this month.

Then I press it, because we must make sure our actions align with increasing shareholder value.

[–] Daft_ish 12 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Sir, please wait by the door for your hummer limo straight to the upper crust.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago

And if no, how much money would it take to get you to push the button?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

No… No, why would I do something like that?

[–] Daft_ish 9 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Ahh, see you have a conscience. Sorry you're not billionaire material.

I would have accepted:

"Yes, for the mere thrill of it"

"Yes, they deserve it"

"Yes"

"No, that isn't nearly enough"

"Yes, it's my right"

[–] [email protected] 26 points 7 months ago (1 children)

There's a recent podcast talking about this if you're interested - https://omny.fm/shows/better-offline/the-man-that-destroyed-google-search

TLDR; they fired the guy largely responsible for building google search and replaced him with the guy running google ads.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 7 months ago

Yup, and that's why monopolies are bad. Once you get a dominant position, the way to increase profits is by abusing your market position. And publicly traded companies need to increase profits because that's what shareholders expect.

In this case, reducing the quality of search means people need to search more often, which means they see more ads. As a double-whammy, if you improve the relevance of the ad results while reducing the relevance of the regular results, you get more click-through on the ads. So Google has little incentive, while it has a dominant position, of having a good search product. They'll only care again if that dominance gets threatened.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

It’s called

Late Stage Capitalism

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

I already made this comment on a completely different post, but it's funny to see it's fruition. McDonald's executives bitching that fast food price increases have priced a lot of their low income customers off their menu... like they had no hand in it

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Yes. They have let go people that worked there for over 15 years.

I believe what Mark Zuckerberg said about the tech layoffs, streamlining by getting rid of more management roles.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

I could imagine them letting AI (or offshore workers) manage everything, and keeping the managers around with chatbots reporting in to the managers, so they wouldn’t know they were being replaced.

[–] Wrench 28 points 7 months ago

"Do no evil" was abandoned long ago.