Google layoffs: Sundar Pichai-led company fires entire Python team for ‘cheaper labour’

Google's death spiral will take a while but it's clearly circle the drain.

It will likely never completely die the same way IBM never died but it will stop being the desired placed for new graduates.

Please treat this as an explanation, and not an apology for big tech. If you work in tech, or are thinking about it, understand the rules of the game :

1. First, a new skill goes hot - maybe functionally superior, may just be a trend. In tech, it’s always the new shiny.

2. Demand for skills outstrips supply

3. Salaries go up !

4. Big tech flex, offer big money to hoover up the talent. Sometimes it’s for projects, sometimes it’s just to keep them out of the hands of competition, in case the trend becomes a standard

5. Time passes

6. Chasing big salaries, lots of people acquire the skill.

7. Supply outstrips demand, skill becomes a commodity.

8. Salaries come down

9. Big Tech is still paying huge salaries, for skills that may have stopped trending, but at the very least - are now available at market at a much lower rate. If you include globalisation, it could be 30% of what they are paying.

10. The high salary hires get cut, because there’s a new skill trending, or, the same skill is now available at much lower rate .

11. Everyone is shocked !

This has been tech workers life cycle for at least 30 years, and I don’t see it changing

Sundar Pichai-led company

Is that really a better description than just saying Google?

Cheaper labour in the most expensive town in a country that is well known for high labour costs?

Sundar Pichai will go down as one of the worst tech CEOs. Dude appears as such a nice guy from podcasts I've listened with him but really awful at his job and has zero consistent personality. He's a straight up corporate robot with no original opinions or idealogies. Unfortunately, none of that is visible or really matters because Google has infinite source of ad money so any KPIs are made irrelevant.

Google, who was famous for employing Guido van Rossum (creator of Python) is now firing their python team. I wonder why they didn't reassign them to the ML/AI division.

Guido van Rossum is working at Microsoft now.

Ahhh, the truest sign of a company in decline, cutting costs by firing talented people.

Making CEO decisions, is easy for AI. Cant AI just replace these CEO's more readily than programmers.

I think this is the first time in my life I read the words cheaper and Munich in the same sentence

The only staff who need firing is Sundar. Google and android should have been easy better by now but he made them stagnant.

Android is still the best mobile os but it could have been even better under better leadership. Plus they could have enabled and experimented with the OEM's to allow for additional hardware buttons, button remapping, a native Dex on all Androids, official gcam port to all OEM's so they don't need to make their own camera algorithms and even the cheapest droid could have had flagship level cameras.

And we haven't even touched on software yet....

Fire his useless ass

Cheap labor = moving entire python workforce to other countries.

Capitalism 101

For a blissful moment I thought the headline was saying "Google Lays Off Sundar Pichai"

Before I got the hyphen I was starting to get down on the floor.

Get fucked Google

I’m really starting to think Google has gone to shit now.

CEOs are sociopaths.

Honestly he’s doing a great job of slowly killing the company.

Everyone needs a union

München is not cheap city to reside in nor are the suburbs.

Has this CEO done anything good?

Lot of knowledge to just throw out there, Sundar.

Let's hope your documentation can handle it, or a whole lot of important stuff is going to take forever to fix if/when it breaks

google is in a free fall

https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/29/google_python_flutter_layoffs/

Perhaps a bit better source. At least a bit less irritating to read.

Out of curiosity, does anybody know how big was the team?

Was the former python team working on the surface of Io?

Prepare to see more. They want low cost developers now.

If all of us fire all of our employee at the same time, then all of us hire each other employee again, we will got them cheaper.

...why isn't he hiring hindu people instead? 🧐

am i still banned I can't tell

God damn indian.

Not sure about this but love that Google is finally getting rid of all these commies.