[jjjjoe]

The reason the word "inept" keeps coming up is just how opaque and senseless to the rank and file the January 2023 layoffs were. High performers, low performers, newest hires, most tenure: we saw all kinds of heads roll. I saw a team lose its sole TL with a decade+ of tenure on the team, then turn around and hire 4-6 people to try and catch up. A growing deployment team was actively hiring before and after it got a 6% haircut.

The simplest explanation would be that every cost center/P&L had to offer up 6% of its people, regardless of that cost center's overall trajectory, place in company strategy or open headcount. And that every cost center's VP or general manager or whatever just got collared by HR, was given a list on a piece of paper and couldn't leave until they chose 6% by ...whatever metric they came up with on the spot.

Whatever actually happened I'll never know, but what I've seen was 100% compatible with that theory. Which in turn looks pretty inept.

[willio58]

> I saw a team lose its sole TL with a decade+ of tenure on the team, then turn around and hire 4-6 people to try and catch up.

My god.. That's pure ineptitude and I'm sorry for anyone at that company right now. This basically sends the message "doesn't matter how good you are, we're going to spin the wheel every so often and if it lands on you you're out"

[foofie]

> This basically sends the message "doesn't matter how good you are, we're going to spin the wheel every so often and if it lands on you you're out"

The conspiracy theory that's making the rounds is that these rounds of layoffs from tech firms have zero to do with financial reports or economy downturns, and are instead a coordinated effort, along with RTO policies, to wrestle negotiation power from tech workers and put downward pressure on tech salaries. Hence the apparent lack of criteria and indiscriminate layoffs complemented with hiring rounds.

I recall that a FANG ordered managers to decimate their teams while ramping up hiring on teams located in the same building, and HR openly rejected the idea of even having employees in the chopping block interview for those positions.

[EvanKnowles]

We had this, but HR moved so slowly that the (good) guy that was fired was still there when the new guy arrived.

[MuffinFlavored]

> I'm sorry for anyone at that company right now

The average total compensation for an engineer is $250k-$350k/yr+

https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Google-Software-Engineer-Sa...

https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Google,Citrix,UKG,American%2...

[CamelCaseName]

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

[ryloric]

If you have some ambition and desire to work hard, large parts of Google were already wrong places to be in 2010-11.

I went in bright eyed, excited about the challenging work I would get to do, but instead found inept co-workers happy to do minimal amount of work while enjoying the perks and chilling most of the time. Couple that with the undeserved air of smugness many co-workers carried and the cult-like social environment... it was already not a great place to be, at the very least the team I was part of.

[belter]

Its almost like Developers need...A Union....

[avidiax]

Google has a union (AWU). It is currently protesting in support of Gaza.

[berniedurfee]

One possible explanation is that companies try to avoid discrimination lawsuits by laying off employees in a way that provides plausible deniability of discrimination.

That tends to mean broad sweeping layoffs that select whole orgs, functions, lines of business or locations.

Often that means rehiring (sometimes the same people) to rebuild what was lost by some broad sweeping blind decision.

There’s also some gaming that goes on beforehand to protect key people by shifting them around to get them out of the selection group.

So yes, opaque and senseless may have been a purposeful strategy.

[trashface]

Probably age discrimination. Fire broadly and you'll catch a lot of older workers, then rehire younger later.

[Ferret7446]

Was the TL in a high cost area, and the replacements junior SWEs in low cost areas? It's likely that they have a set budget for human resource (for lack of a better term), so they're cutting the "high cost items". Unfortunately, institutional knowledge/skill doesn't show up on a spreadsheet.

[winrid]

the better term would be "people"

[jjjjoe]

I've been on the receiving end of that kind of "reorganization" and this didn't look like that.

EDIT: Specifically, replacements were not "cheap".

[MichaelZuo]

Making it an even percentage across the company is pretty common, it prevents middle management infighting and horse trading over who has to cut more and who gets to cut less.

The actual decisions about which specific individuals, after the percentage is arrived at, however seems questionable if what you say is true.

[jjjjoe]

This thinking is taught in MBA programs but does not map onto real businesses. If you're in the ice cube business and you made the profoundly unwise decision to set up vending machines in Inuit communities, you don't recover by laying off x% of both your Alaskan retail and Caribbean Cruise wholesale businesses.

[the_70x]

No matter what. Capital wants results and dividends.

[slowmovintarget]

"The AI just auto-fired [6%] of the company!"