The Big Names are actually filled with so many smart and productive people that it doesn't matter who they lay off.
The more I read about this stuff, the more I realize that a lot of is out of sheer luck of hitting product market fit. Google monopolized open internet ads 20 years ago and except for protecting their moat they haven't done much else, 90% of their money still comes from there. They're trying to expand with the cloud, but they're a distant 3rd or 4th.
Have you forgotten this is the same company that had a backroom non-poaching pact with Apple (and probably other SV firms) a decade ago? And got caught red handed and got in a shitload of trouble for it?
When I joined Google in 2011 they were still dealing the fallout from that.
Its as if someone has forgotten that they can increase revenue instead.
It still hasn't stopped, though it may have slowed a bit in its increase. But there's no danger on the revenue front. Just danger on stock price, because investors really want Number Go Up continually.
So the moves last week were really about making investors think Google is Doing Something and exercising downward pressure on wages.
Its a sector-wide move to put downward pressure on wages and bargaining power, and Google is only a small part of it.
Ads is a money printing machine. The most important roles there are SRE, data centre, and ops/infra jobs that keep the machine up and running.
"Profits [in Q3 2022] were at $13.9 billion, down from $18.9 billion in Q3 2021"
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/10/google-profits-plumm...
The layoffs had nothing to do with getting rid of low performers, it was a way of putting everyone on notice that it doesn't matter how well you perform... management has the power, not you.