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- Sundar Pichai said Google cut manager, director, and VP roles by 10% as part of an efficiency drive.
- Google has sought to boost efficiency by reducing layers and reorganizing teams.
- The company has been facing challenges from OpenAI and other AI rivals.
This seems pretty typical. Feels like Leaders only have one lever to pull. Things are going badly? Let’s ReOrg, that’ll fix it.
Instead of doing the smart thing and identifying smart individuals within the company and putting them all in group letting them solution.
My guess is the outcome of this will be google having an unofficial marriage with gambling companies as they are the last customers to pay for Ads and see a big positive result
ooooh, cut the CEO roles by 10% next
10% of 300k. Ooooo. But not the bonus, of course, which is the real salary.
Starting from the top.
I wonder what the process was for choosing specifically 10%. Why not 8.7%? Or 13.9%? Surely an efficiency drive would have some sort of structured/analytical approach to it?
Some nerd probably wanted to be able to say they literally decimated their management teams
Sounds good to investors
After an engineer is there long enough, they’re likely to become a manager. They’re way more expensive to keep around. Google wants to lay them off and churn them for college grads. Looks better for PR if they say it’s an “efficiency push” rather than “we don’t like to retain employees because it’s expensive.” So this was definitely an arbitrary number
To be fair, it’s totally possible that they just have too much management. Then you get into a case where a very large portion of everyone’s job is endlessly trying to keep in any with various management and you end up with too many managers competing for not enough work which makes the environment more political
Certainly possible, and I’ve definitely been a part of orgs with just too much management, but I’m wary of Google saying that, considering how many products they kill every year. I’m sure there would certainly be space for their employees to expand horizontally if their product lineup wasn’t so volatile
This isn’t as true in tech companies as it was in traditional companies years ago. Most high level engineers take an individual contributor role that allow you to be promoted without becoming a manager. At Google it’s called a staff role. At Amazon it’s a principal role.
Surely an efficiency drive would have some sort of structured/analytical approach to it?
LOL
Or even 200% ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Imagine they did this that way: „hey Bob, I’ve some good and some bad news for you. The good one fist: you got promoted to Manager/VP/Whatever. The bad one: in order to make the company more efficient we’re letting go of some higher staff. So, you’re fired. Pack your stuff and fuck off until 12pm, manager Bob!“
I mean I’d still put VP on my resume if I’m him
