Do you think that comparing someone's CO2 emissions with the average and pointing out that it is much higher is value-free, just a totally neutral observation for no reason? That the commenter is fine with it? Or even that it's a good thing?
> How was the relationship? Did you feel like the first 6–12 months were perfect, but then you started drifting apart and having arguments every week or two?
Not OP, but in a somewhat similar boat. Please don't assume they broke up. For example, my partner died.
I think that your comment was generated by Eliza, and hereby vote for you to get a karma boost for being Legit Old School, then an immediate and permanent instant ban.
I'm joking, of course. If your comment was generated by Eliza it would have started with "How do you feel about 'I think your comment...'" :)
Maybe it was the right decision at the time to lay them off? I think that's why he got the bonus, actually! I'm sure the layoff was difficult for him as well: he certainly lost a lot of goodwill with his workforce and I'm sure the internal politics were tricky for anyone involved.
No one is getting "punished" - there was no promise of ten years of employment from Google. Like when an employee leaves, you wouldn't say they're "punishing" the employer.
> Maybe it was the right decision at the time to lay them off?
It probably was the right decision to lay everyone off. What was not the right decision, and this should have been obvious, was hiring 10+k more employees than you actually need because you assume that this free money will last forever. He was almost certainly aware and signed off on this mass hiring. Other companies didn't make this mistake; Tim Cook didn't take a bonus that year to avoid mass layoffs.
> he certainly lost a lot of goodwill with his workforce and I'm sure the internal politics were tricky for anyone involved.
He probably did, because he's a bad CEO. He was right to lose goodwill.
> No one is getting "punished" - there was no promise of ten years of employment from Google.
No, there isn't a legal promise or anything, but people go to these BigCos primarily for stability. If you want an exciting job with lots of interesting new things, it's much easier to find that in a startup, but startups can be frustrating because they're inherently unstable. This is partly why startups tend to be made up of very young people; it's much easier to deal with volatility if you don't have a family.
You're obviously not "entitled" to a job, but the people who run Google aren't complete idiots; they know people are joining BigCo because they think it's going to be relatively stable. They depended on that in order to do all this overhiring.
Well I hope people won't perceive this (nonexistent) stability in the future.
I'm not trying to "absolve" Google, nor do I think they're guilty. They used their reputation to hire people. It turns out that needs to be updated. Perhaps in the future they will do things to improve their reputation again? Who knows...
It just feels a little victim-blamey. Google manipulated thousands of people, and they got screwed in the process. Should they have known that big corporations are evil? Maybe, but I'm not going to blame someone who was misled by dishonest people.
If you're agreeing that they misled people by using their reputation in a way that's dishonest, how are they "not guilty"?
I agree Google's reputation misled people. But importantly, I don't think Google can be held accountable for their reputation and for what other people believed.
To give a somewhat contorted example: If people believe you give 1 Bitcoin to anyone who can recite the whole Beowulf, they will perhaps spend a lot of time learning Beowulf, forgoing other things. Then they find out you in fact have not promised them that and that you have no such obligation. I don't think you've misled them! Do they have a right to be angry with you? Or should they have checked with you what the precise conditions were before upending their life?
If I happily let them waste their time reciting Beowulf on purpose under false pretenses then I would be a douchebag.
Google knew that people would join based on a perception of stability. Did they hire 10,000 people knowing that they would fire them six months later? If so, they are jerks. If not, then they are so categorically idiotic as to think that they will just have free money for forever and interest rates would never ever go up. In either situation they are bad.
> absolutely no one is smart or productive enough to justify $692m in pay.
Upper management isn't paid based on how smart or productive they are. Google has like 400 billion yearly revenue. A CEOs decisions have enormous consequences, if a CEO can make slightly better decisions than another, it'd be easy to justify $692m in pay.
That said, I don't believe Sundar Pichai is a great CEO. He's might be an ok bean-counter, not sure, but I'm pretty sure one can get cheaper bean-counters.
> they could hire thousands of engineers for that money.
reply