New Wisdom Report
Editor: Aeneas so sleepy
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[Introduction to New Wisdom]With the investment in the “gold-eating beast” of AI, and in turn the replacement of employees. The layoffs, which will continue for a full year, have transformed Google from a bastion of innovation and a comfortable hotbed for Silicon Valley engineers into a cold, gloomy place. Employees are demoralized, complaining about executives, and some say all Google leaders are boring and dull. The scary thing is that this wave of layoffs in Silicon Valley will be slow for a whole year.
We have entered the happy atmosphere of the New Year here, but on the other side of the ocean, in the Google office, it is all gloomy and gloomy.
The once joyful Google offices are now filled with the haze of layoffs.
The layoffs, which are expected to last a full year, have left what was once the most vibrant place in Silicon Valley losing its former luster.
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Last year, Google conducted its largest layoffs in history, laying off a total of 12,000 employees.
Recently, hundreds more employees have been laid off as Google decides to focus more on AI.
Pichai: Sorry, layoffs are still a whole year away
CEO Pichai stated in an open letter to all employees last month——
“We have set ambitious goals and will invest in key areas this year.”
“In order to leave room for investment, we had to make some difficult decisions.”
The scary thing is that Pichai mentioned that although the scale of layoffs this year will not be that large, it will last throughout the year.
After lunch, the door card cannot be opened.
One afternoon in October 2022, when a Google employee returned to Google’s Cambridge office after lunch, he found that his worker could no longer open the revolving door.
Only then did he realize that he had been laid off.
Soon, more and more Google News engineers found themselves laid off. More than 40 people were laid off in the news department, some of whom were later assigned to other departments, while others were not so lucky.
At Google, experiences like this are becoming increasingly common.
Following last year's massive layoffs, layoffs have continued in recent months, leaving employees feeling uneasy.
Dozens of former and current Google employees said the layoffs have affected their jobs, with project progress significantly slowed down.
During working hours, everyone had no intention of going to work. Instead, they were busy asking each other which teams would be affected and who would be next on the “death” list.
Google is no longer a Bay Area retirement factory
The ever-looming haze of layoffs has completely changed people's long-term views on Google.
In the past, this place was not so much an office as an “inventor community” that encouraged innovation and thinking outside the box.
Working here is fun and different.
Now, layoffs are still ongoing.
Google spokesperson Courtenay Mencini said that Google is now working hard to simplify its organizational structure and allow employees to focus more on the company's core projects.
He also emphasized that the current personnel adjustments are not comprehensive layoffs, but part of normal business adjustments.
Employees revealed that as Google vigorously develops AI products to compete with Microsoft and OpenAI, the atmosphere in the workplace has become increasingly oppressive.
As the competition intensifies, many workers in technology fields feel their importance has diminished.
“It's only 4:30 in the afternoon and the office building is already empty.” Dr. Hirsh Theriault lamented in a LinkedIn post.
“There was a time when neither I nor many people I knew would mind working evenings and weekends, either to ensure a successful presentation or just to kill time. That no longer exists.”
In fact, compared to large technology companies such as Meta, the scale of Google's layoffs is relatively small. Compared with recent large-scale layoffs at companies such as Xerox and live-streaming platform Twitch, Google's layoffs represent a much smaller proportion of the company's total workforce.
By the end of 2023, Google's number of full-time employees will be 182,502, a decrease of only 4% compared with the end of 2022.
And Google's profits are also growing – profits in the last quarter of 2023 reached $20.7 billion, a year-on-year increase of 52%.
But what these layoffs directly bring about is a fundamental change in the way the company operates, including redistribution of work groups and streamlining management levels.
Employees complained that the restructuring measures were chaotic and poorly communicated.
The layoffs were chaotic, with Google failing to tell the groups that relied on the team when YouTube cut jobs from the vendor management team responsible for approving purchase orders to ensure content moderation companies were paid.
Fortunately, some employees have the opportunity to regain their positions.
As layoffs resumed in January, a Swiss employee at Google created an internal document to allow employees to track layoffs since the company, which rarely informs employees about layoffs.
The document has become an important source of information for Google employees, along with news reports, social media and office rumors.
“From a human resources perspective, it's a nightmare,” said Meghan M. Biro of the staffing firm TalentCulture. “This completely shakes up Google's image as a great employer.”
Contrary to what employees perceived, Google claimed that leadership had communicated clearly when making changes to the team.
Some employees warned in interviews that some of the layoffs could disrupt business units struggling to cope with complex tasks.
For example, in January, the hundreds of employees Google laid off came from its core engineering department, which is responsible for the company's infrastructure and various tools.
No one is participating in experimental projects anymore
In fact, Google has long encouraged employees to work on experimental projects. Moreover, employees are indeed doing “very innovative and ambitious things” in various fields.
But over the past year, participating in such experimental projects has become “dangerous,” according to four anonymous employees.
After all, Google not only closed Area 120, its internal incubator for incubating new products and services, but also changed its X strategy – a “dream factory” dedicated to building new companies.
Nowadays, almost no one is willing to apply for the so-called “20% time”. And it used to be a way for them to explore ideas that interested them outside of their regular jobs.
This is especially unfortunate for Rupert Breheny, who has worked at Google for 16 years. He spent most of his time in Zurich, where he helped develop the Street View feature in Google Maps.
“What brings you to Google is passion,” said Breheny, who was laid off last summer. “You can have fun working on any project.”
Employees: We can no longer have confidence in Google’s future
The morale of Google employees has been greatly affected, and more and more people are talking about the “economic recession.”
According to foreign media The Verge, Google employees can submit questions to the town hall, and colleagues will vote on whether they are willing to answer the question.
On February 2, the top-voted issue was “the growing rift between leadership and employees.”
In the former Mountain View technology giant, bastion of innovation, and comfort zone for engineers, the relationship between employees and bosses has become increasingly tense.
“I know executives are excited about the future of Google, but what’s there to be excited about when we could be fired at any moment and never get to share in that future? If we lose our jobs and equity, Google is stepping on our heels. We don’t get much reward for our hard work and success.”
The Verge reported that Pichai even said some employees were “grateful for the layoffs.”
He said that the changes in layoffs have made employees truly feel the improvement in work efficiency. Some people will write letters of thanks: “I am very grateful to the company for simplifying complex and repetitive structures.”
As he said, Google is going through a moment full of uncertainty. For Google, this is the first time in history.
Google software engineer: We were betrayed
Former Google software engineer Ian Hickson said deviations from company norms left many employees feeling betrayed.
Hickson joined Google in 2005. In 19 years, he has witnessed Google's astronomical growth.
In November last year, he wrote a blog announcing his resignation and said: Google has completely changed.
Previously, he spent nine years at Google's Flutter division, which develops application tools. He praised Flutter for representing “Google's young culture”, with internal transparency, work/life balance, and decision-making driven by data.
However, dramatic changes are taking place.
“Google's culture has been eroded. In the past, decisions were made with the interests of users and Google in mind, and then it became the interests of the people who made the decisions first. Everything started to become opaque.”
Hickson said that last year's 12,000 layoffs were “non-oppressive mistakes” caused by stock market pressure. The haze of layoffs has caused everyone to reduce risk-taking.
“After seeing the best of Google, it's so frustrating that Google has become like this.”
Today, no one can articulate what Google’s vision is, and morale is at an all-time low.
In fact, many executives were not the final decision-makers on the layoffs, but they did not resist, further damaging morale.
Google employees blast: All leaders are very dull
In a recent LinkedIn post, Dr. Hirsh Theriault lambasted Google’s leadership.
Let me be frank: Google doesn't have a single visionary leader. From the C-suite to the SVP to the VP, without exception, they all appear extremely dull and hollow-eyed.
Google hasn't launched a single successful executive-driven project in years. Sometimes, VPs will hit the jackpot and announce, “We need a new chat app/AI-first demo for the developer conference!” However, this usually just leads to chaos and ultimately a terrible event. The project was half-finished and was laughed at.
If they don't reach 100 million users within six months, they will easily abandon the project and shut it down. This reminds me of a joke algorithm I learned in college – BogoSort. The algorithm randomly rearranges the elements. If they are arranged in order by chance, it is completed.
Some Google executives may be qualified to serve as referees. Although I can't say who it is, in my more than 8 years of observation, I feel that I have definitely seen it. They point a direction, and subordinates rush in to try out the possibilities, and occasionally some of the attempts succeed and produce something cool.
Now, these boring, hollow-eyed leaders are trying to work in a vague direction (AI) while killing their cash cow. Given their lack of real vision, they desperately need subordinates to bring them creative ideas.
At the same time, the company has been continuing to lay off employees over the past 6 to 12 months, across all departments including engineering, sales, support, user experience, product, data science, SRE, and more. This kind of layoffs appears to be random and disorderly, destroying the organization's knowledge accumulation and destroying the originally well-functioning team.
Maybe the layoffs aren't completely random. But they refused to provide any reason other than “we're excited to focus our resources on the highest priorities,” making it seem random.
It seems to me that they themselves don't know what their real priorities are. They are waiting for subordinates to come up with more specific plans in the direction indicated. Meanwhile, all middle leaders are trying to protect their teams (and themselves), trying to guess which direction the VPs might find attractive. If you as a leader guess wrong, you and your team will be cut.
A general mood of nihilism has spread. “Well, I guess I'll keep working until I get fired.” Many people are reluctant to leave because of their “golden shackles.” Although the salary is attractive, no one is willing to work overtime. At 4:30 in the afternoon, the office building was already half empty.
Many people I know, myself included, used to be willing to work evenings and weekends, not because of work pressure, but out of interest. Those days are gone forever.
Not so long ago, Google was truly a magical place. But now, just when it needs talent capital the most, executives are selling it. In this environment of fear, who can create the ideas that will usher in a new era? This is indeed sad.
If my team was cut, I wouldn't be able to do good enough work to hold myself together, nor would I be able to align with any unclear high-level strategy. So, I guess I just have to stay here and do my job until Google no longer needs me.
The wave of layoffs in the technology industry continues to emerge, why is this year so cold?
2024 has just begun, and the technology industry is facing another wave of layoffs.
In early February, Snap announced that it would lay off 10% of its employees, followed closely by DocuSign, which also announced that it would lay off 6% of its employees, or approximately 400 positions.
Coincidentally, identity recognition software company Okta also announced that it will lay off 400 people, accounting for about 7% of its total employees.
According to data from Challenger, Gray & Christmas, the technology industry laid off nearly 16,000 employees last month, the most since May 2023 and second only to the financial industry (23,238 people).
Looking back at the beginning of 2023, a decade-long boom came to an abrupt end. In order to drastically cut costs, technology giants such as Amazon, Google, and Meta have laid off more than 200,000 positions in just a few months.
In January 2023 alone, more than 108,000 technology jobs were eliminated.
In comparison, the layoffs in January 2024 seem to be “insignificant”. According to TrueUp, fewer than 45,000 jobs have been eliminated.
small but durable
So why is there still a gloom hanging over the entire technology industry?
The reason is that technology companies have chosen to continue small-scale layoffs this year rather than making large-scale layoffs all at once.
In 2023, layoffs will be like ripping off a Band-Aid, all at once. In 2024, the process of layoffs will be like slowly peeling off a band-aid, which makes people feel particularly painful.
Take Google as an example. In January 2023, it announced a massive layoff of 12,000 people. But this year, hundreds of people were laid off first in the consumer hardware department, then hundreds in the advertising sales department, and so on.
Amazon carried out its largest layoffs in history in January 2023 – laying off 18,000 employees in one fell swoop. Recent layoffs have been smaller and more concentrated. For example, the One Medical and Pharmacy departments laid off hundreds of people this week.
In addition, some employees said that the company adopted a “quiet layoff” strategy, as Amazon's CFO refused to say last week that the layoffs had ended.
At the end of 2022, Meta announced that it would lay off 10,000 employees. This year, the company has taken more targeted efficiency improvement measures, such as reducing management levels.
CEO Xiao Zha recently said that this approach of “smart troops and streamlined administration” will become a permanent part of the company's future operations.
Entrepreneurship “massacre”
At the same time, a wave of startup closures is occurring.
While this doesn’t involve a massive loss of jobs, it’s equally traumatic for founders who are struggling and investors who are watching their investments go up in smoke.
So a flurry of bad news, coupled with comments from senior management suggesting the situation may be far from over, creates an unsettling environment for employees.
AI “rectifies” the industry
In addition to controlling costs, major technology companies are also significantly increasing investment in AI.
Some experts pointed out that the recent large-scale layoffs in the technology industry are mainly new strategies adopted by companies in pursuit of more efficient and streamlined operating models.
However, this process may be slow, as we are still exploring which tasks can be replaced or simplified by these technologies.
“Automation is a major driver of this change,” said Anna A. Tavis, an expert in human capital management at New York University. She explained that companies are telling themselves: “We need to act now, and the sooner the better.”
On the one hand, some companies are freeing up more funds for the development of AI; on the other hand, there are also companies that see the benefits of using AI to replace or assist work originally done by humans.
For example, language learning app Duolingo announced last month that it would lay off 10% of its contract workers and plans to use AI to complete some content creation work.
According to laid-off employees, Duolingo’s explanation is that AI can generate translation content, provide alternative translation solutions, and other almost all tasks. Each team only needs to retain a few “content reviewers”. Their job is simply to check the quality of AI-generated content and then publish it.
Moreover, Duolingo not only uses GPT-4 to support its premium subscription service Duolingo Max, but also developed its own proprietary AI model “Birdbrain” for personalized course content.
In addition, with the support of the LLM craze, the application of AI has also expanded beyond the technology industry.
For example, UPS is using machine learning technology to optimize its charging decisions for customers, resulting in a dramatic reduction in the number of people needed in its pricing department.
Coupled with today's reduced transportation demand, UPS officially announced the elimination of 12,000 positions, and these positions are unlikely to be reopened after business resumes.
References:
https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/google-workers-company-culture-pichai-18653877.php
https://www.businessinsider.com/tech-layoffs-way-down-from-2023-why-so-grim-2024-2
https://www.challengergray.com/blog/job-cuts-announced-by-us-based-companies-surge-136-to-82307-to-begin-2024-financial-tech-lead/
https://www.wsj.com/tech/tech-industry-layoffs-jobs-2024-44a0a9dd?mod=tech_lead_pos1
https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Jobs_of_Tomorrow_Generative_AI_2023.pdf
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/05/technology/google-layoffs-work-culture.html