@heyjovo@tech.lgbtThe idea that Google needs to lay off 12k people or that doing so will result in any meaningful changes to its bottom line is ludicrous. This is an HR Satanic Panic.
@heyjovo No, it's wallstreet theatre -- laying people off shows that they're dealing with the drop in revenue by cutting expenses. And the numbers have to be large because of FB & Twitter. I'm curious of Apple (who traditionally always run lean) will follow.
It won't do anything to their actual moneys, but it'll cause a bit of a jump in the stock price.
@kithrup @heyjovo Nah, that's not for wall street. That's just to allow middle managers to say: "Are you sure about not coming back to the office? There are 12.000 ex-employees on the street. Btw forget about that inflation adjusting raise you asked for."
Its not about the 12.000 that were let go, its about discipline for those who stay.
@Sweetshark @kithrup @heyjovo I think both. Snatch back control over the workforce, and make a little short-term stock market money in the meantime.
@Sweetshark @kithrup @heyjovo it's class warfare.
@Sweetshark @kithrup @heyjovo What was the line?—"The layoffs will continue until morale improves."
@Sweetshark @heyjovo That would only be true if these kinds of layoffs were uncommon in times when people weren't working from home.
They're not. They're performative, and aimed at bolstering the share price.
@heyjovo Really want to know the distribution across job roles for all these cuts.
@heyjovo in the 90's tech companies would do anything in their power to hang on to their people. They even paid people they might not need until later to just sit around. I knew an engineer for Sun who told me he was bored to tears and had nothing to do at work. He went into the office for a few hours a day, answered some emails, looked out the window a bit, waited for something to happen... nothing... waited some more... and went home.
@jeff7091 yeah, I remember during the dot-com crash, it seemed like everyone was getting laid off left and right. I was in position to hire someone and I quickly realized most of the people the other companies let go weren't from their A team. I did eventually find the perfect hire, but it was ten times harder than I expected given the pool I had access to.
@heyjovo DHH said the quiet part out loud: the scare it's about shifting the balance of power from tech workers back to bosses.
https://world.hey.com/dhh/the-waning-days-of-dei-s-dominance-9a5b656c
@heyjovo this is why we refer to them as Human Remains
@mmasnick@mastodon.social@heyjovo dammit, the term "HR Satanic Panic" is soooooo good.
@heyjovo It also smells of collusion between Google, Amazon, Twitter, + ? Muskrat started the purge, now the others are falling in line. The same way the airlines collude with each other over airfares.
@heyjovo it juices the share price & gives them cover for firing their lowest performers. They'll be hiring that many people over the next few years.
@kgoldsholl
I was let go from my (startup) tech job ~6 months ago. They are now hiring people with my skill set again 
@heyjovo same with Microsoft, I think they're one of the better tech companies(Ha!). But firing 11K people, makes me wonder if they just never thought of shifting employees with the skill sets to areas of their business that are still growing and could use the extra people to help speed up that growth.
@heyjovo a friend who is an amazing worker and has been there 12 years was laid off. The layoffs look random!
@Sonikku@techhub.social@heyjovo @SwiftOnSecurity same with MS layoffs. You want me to believe you have to fire 10k people at the same time you want me to believe you have to spend $68 billion on buying Activision?
@heyjovo https://news.stanford.edu/2022/12/05/explains-recent-tech-layoffs-worried/
“Moreover, layoffs don’t work to improve company performance, Pfeffer adds.”
@heyjovo This is coordinated, by the 0.01%, who are tired of software engineers having the leverage to dictate their terms of employment.
@ariadne@treehouse.systems@heyjovo @deadsuperhero mmm, it depends on who the 12k are. i could definitely save google a lot of money if i were allowed to fire 12k people. unfortunately the 12k that got selected are mostly in departments that have very little impact to project spend.
@ariadne@treehouse.systems@heyjovo @deadsuperhero (this isn’t to say that i agree with the necessity of the layoffs. more that i am baffled by what got cut.)
@ariadne @heyjovo @deadsuperhero Kicking out 12k employees would not safe Google a meaningful amount of money:
@ariadne@treehouse.systemskicking out 12k random employees? no.
terminating specific projects which are loss leaders? yes.
@ariadne @heyjovo @deadsuperhero How can something that eats 0.85% of your revenue be a "loss leader"?
@ariadne@treehouse.systemsagain, it has nothing to do with the staffing costs, and everything to do with the projects which exist strictly to keep specific talent locked in so they don't go to competitors.
you kill those projects, and lose the locked in talent that is only there because of those projects, and you save billions.
stadia and the employees centered around it is an example of this.
@ariadne@treehouse.systemsother examples: waymo, the at last count 5 different chat applications internally competing with each other (3 of which not yet publicly launched), project zero (explicitly created as a retention program for key security researchers and is largely run for PR reasons), half the shit google cloud offers, ...
@ariadne@treehouse.systems*handwaves intensely in the direction of Google+*
@ariadne@treehouse.systems(though stadia and G+ have already been cut, but there's PLENTY more on the inside that needs the same treatment)
@ariadne @heyjovo @deadsuperhero "It's not staffing costs, it's project costs." And those come from what? The HW?
"You save billions!" Yeah, but in a company making 257 of those, 1.5b is still negligible. 
@heyjovo cybersecurity people about to make a ton of money from all the now extremely vulnerable systems no longer being managed
@heyjovo like HR have a say on it... never forget that decision come from the top, HR doesn't do layoffs for fun, it's actually a ton of work, even more so in a multinational company
@btaroli@federate.social@heyjovo @SwiftOnSecurity I honestly wonder if it’s simple opportunism. Oh look, everyone else is doing it so we can too without standing out. Or maybe they don’t want to stand out for not doing it. Damn corporate teenagers copying each other. Be your own corporate person!
@heyjovo hedge fund manager says jump, google ceo asks how high.