> Google said it planned to maintain Waze as a stand-alone service and didn’t plan to conduct any layoffs as part of the reorganization.

Counterpoint - why would Google announce layoffs to the WSJ before it even happened? It’s possible that it’s in the works…

You can't criticize a company for something they haven't done...

But you can still remain suspicious, see what happens in the coming months, and make yourself an opinion at this point.

> make yourself an opinion at this point

I suspect you mean, "at that point", talking about after "the coming months". If you do indeed mean today (at this point), then I'm actually curious why you think forming the opinion now isn't hasty.

I indeed meant ‶that″, I'm not a native speaker.

The subtleties of this and that sort of elude me, just like these and those.

That is very understandable, even many native speakers get the same sorts of things confused. Your comment just didn't seem so controversial as the lighter text suggested so I was hoping to clear that up. Thanks for confirming!

They don't need to do a layoff to do a layoff. If you just set the (new) HC to 0 or significantly below replacement rate, you get reduction in staff just due to churn. When teams are sizeable, even with very low churn they lose employees over time. And then if you are more insidious, you can start introducing unpopular measures "in the name of business" that increase churn.

This is much better than layoffs for employees.

Looking at the size of the severance packages that Meta, Stripe etc. have been giving in recent downsizings, I think I'd rather be laid off.

That’s reducing costs, not layoffs. Words have meaning.

Totally down to eat my hat and join you if it happens. My pitchfork's looking quite lonely.

Look at Stadia. They were flying out developers and all kinds of things the day before it was cancelled.

I'm open to changing my mind here so which are you suggesting:

1. Google did the Waze Maps/Maps merger to appease TCI so they could prevent layoffs

2. The Waze Maps/Maps merger is unrelated to the TCI memo

I am saying that this move is largely unrelated to the TCI memo. The WSJ article goes further:

>In September, Mr. Pichai said he wanted Google to become 20% more productive and indicated the company could merge teams working on overlapping products.

TCI's memo highlights five areas they think need to be adjusted, none of which Alphabet acquiesced to with this restructuring.

Ok, so then who is pressuring google to take these actions?

To be frank: don't know, don't care, and I don't need to have an answer to that question in order to be able to disagree with your original point. You came to this thread telling Googlers that the blame for this lies with TCI. I was curious, so I read TCI's memo and the WSJ piece. Now that I've done so, I simply find your assertion far-fetched, for these differences:

  TCI
  - Sent letter to Alphabet in mid-November
  - Holds a mere .5% of Alphabet's market cap
  - Asked for headcount reduction
  - Asked Alphabet to pay employees less

  Alphabet
  - Publicly commented in September that they intended to combine overlapping groups
  - Combined overlapping groups
  - Didn't lay anyone off

That's it. At this point, given your slightly elevated tone in your most recent responses, it's starting to feel as though you began commenting with an axe to grind, and are now left holding an axe but are unsure what you should do with it. Maybe just put it down?

I appreciate the exchange

The genesis here was me keying off of related phrases within the WSJ piece:

"...Amid Pressure to Cut Costs"

"...faces pressure to streamline operations and cut costs"

Ok, great. So, my question is where is this pressure coming from?

"The activist hedge fund TCI Fund Management called on Alphabet to aggressively cut costs last month, writing in a letter to management that it thought the company’s head count was too high"

This is the WSJ suggesting that there is a link (granted they do not give confidence intervals) between these things. You could argue that perhaps WSJ is just poorly suggesting that there is a general "background radiation" of "pressure" related to Google.

So it's not like I'm just fabricating this link :)

But since you asked, the larger point and the particular axe I have to grind (that is permanently attached to my hand) is that investors have more power than the collective google employees do, do not have employee interests in mind at all, and Google management and the board will always align with investors NOT employees.

Why do they need pressure to combine two teams that work on extremely similar apps?

Who is pressuring you to leave these comments?

> wanted Google to become 20% more productive

... so, 16.33% headcount reductions?

If they intended to maintain it as a separate app, why did the leader of it leave? Knowing Google, I find it hard to believe that Waze under the Google maps lead will get resources and continue.

> If they intended to maintain it as a separate app, why did the leader of it leave?

You don't have much experience with corporate acquisitions, do you?

The Acquiree CEO always leaves after a year or three, unless Acquirer is a company like Cisco that's really good at it. Why?

Because Acquirer has middle manager drones, who continually complain about the how Acquiree is not "aligning with our strategy." Eventually, Acquiree's CEO gets sick of it and quits.

But you're right - they won't maintain it as a separate app. Because those drones can wear anyone out.

To be clear I was talking about the departing CEO of Waze, Neha Parikh. Not the founder that left a while ago.

Also I’m very familiar with acquisitions particularly at Google.

I know very little of this, but why would they want to continue with multiple map products?

They won't. I was in Google Maps. They bought Zagat -- remember them? They had the best restaurant reviews in the U.S. pre-Internet. How much have you heard of them lately

Zagat was a loss. But it was also basically a creature of a different era when foodies filled out paper surveys and the results were a pretty decent guide for other foodies. Once it was opened up to the plebes, the results got increasingly bad for that audience as everything got more and more algorithmic. (And, yes, it sort of hung on for a while but it deteriorated more and more.)

Not sure what Google ultimately got out of Zagat rather than maybe a bit of kickstart for restaurant ratings.

It was Marissa Mayer who made that deal. I distinctly remember her saying the goal was an editorially written review for every business on the planet.

Tim Zagat invited us all to visit him if we were in MYC, to get a good restaurant recommendation (and reservation? I'm not sure if he said that).

My dad, who was an executive at a large non-tech company, used to get restaurant recommendations by calling the restaurant critic at the city's newspaper. Different times in a much less scalable world.

>If they intended to maintain it as a separate app, why did the leader of it leave?

... I'm not arguing whether or not they intended to keep the apps separate? If you want to know why he left, he's already told you[1].

>Knowing Google, I find it hard to believe that Waze under the Google maps lead will get resources and continue.

Sure. Agreed. That's not what this comment chain was discussing, though. You sure you responded to the right post?

[1]https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-did-i-leave-google-stay-s...

>If you want to know why he left, he's already told you[1].

The article clearly states that SHE left with no explanation why:

Waze CEO Neha Parikh will exit her role following a transition period

You're referencing an article that is over a year old about a completely different person.

I mistakenly thought that that individual was referring to the founder's departure, not the CEO's termination post-restructuring. That's my bad.

The Waze founder left a while ago.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-did-i-leave-google-stay-s...