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Noodles_Crusher t1_j7f5z7k wrote

Reply to comment by andrewrgross in [OC] How Google makes money (its 2022 income statement visualized as a Sankey diagram) by IncomeStatementGuy

>The main thing I take away is that company-wide layoffs don't seem to be motivated by necessity.

-21% Net profit yoy.

Also, Alphabet's number of employees through the years:

2021 was 156,500, a 15.67% increase from 2020

2020 was 135,301, a 13.79% increase from 2019

2019 was 118,899, a 20.38% increase from 2018

2018 was 98,771, a 23.29% increase from 2017

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/GOOG/alphabet/number-of-employees

don't get me wrong, layoffs suck, but even after cutting 12k people they're still way above last year's initial headcount.

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dinosaur-in_leather t1_j7fa8s9 wrote

Pandemic hires seem to have displayed old and paternity talent in Google...

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Noodles_Crusher t1_j7fds5z wrote

I don't have any insight into that, we're just discussing headcount at this point.

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dinosaur-in_leather t1_j823gl7 wrote

Does a head count include the individuals who are expecting parents??? Does it include the individuals who just had kids and got fired??? It's a massive number of illegal firings Google came out and said that they miscalculated severances most likely trying to stay within the legal limits of firing paternity workers. Google do evil

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andrewrgross t1_j7hi4sy wrote

The issue I have is that these companies have clearly internalized a belief that layoffs are a tool with no downside and embrace them casually as a part of deliberate, planned strategies.

They didn't need to hire that aggressively. And if any pressure against layoffs existed, they almost certainly wouldn't have.

Layoffs are a part of the trend towards "blitzscaling", which I think is irresponsible in startups, but unconscionable in established firms.

Look at those numbers! They grew their staff 23% in 2018? And then 20, and then 13, and then 15... The company is 24 years old! There is no reason for them to be trying to double in four years! Especially not in the midst of a global upheaval.

My point is that the hiring managers were paying people to relocate in 2022 when they knew that many of those people were likely going to be out of a job within months. We need to stop normalizing this kind of labor economy. Think of the kids who have to move to new schools only to suddenly have an out of work parent while they're trying to reorient themselves. We build the economy. There's no reason to make it so heartless.

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Noodles_Crusher t1_j7hujmj wrote

>There is no reason for them to be trying to double in four years! Especially not in the midst of a global upheaval.
>
>they knew that many of those people were likely going to be out of a job within months.

that's a lot of assumptions based on nothing but opinions, unless you're saying that you've got a clear idea of what the people that were hired were doing in the company.

I get it, layoffs bad - and yet, more people (not less) do have jobs thanks for those hiring sprees.

I see it as a net positive, you do you.

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