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Re:Ask HN: Where are laid off employees gathering? by sahila on Monday February 20, 2023 @12:09PM (#34870145)
The number of engineers isn’t the limiting factor competing against google, it’s the innovation/talent. While most engineers even at google aren’t working on hard problems, there’s a few who’re solving distributed computing/gfs/page rank/etc and those individuals are definitely not being laid off. The others use their tools to solve business problems.
Re:Ask HN: Where are laid off employees gathering? by JohnFen on Monday February 20, 2023 @01:22PM (#34870997)
I don't think it's the number of engineers or the innovation/talent. I think it's the sheer economic advantage of being a huge multinational corporation.
Re:Ask HN: Where are laid off employees gathering? by ChuckNorris89 on Monday February 20, 2023 @01:49PM (#34871350)
>economic advantage of being a huge multinational corporation

I just left a huge multinational corporation that despite its economic power was wasting millions/billions and not achieving anything in the tech space due to huge mismanagement, as everyone at the top was completely clueless but well connected and good at bullshitting and too busy fighting private wars just so they can climb the corporate ladder to coast for massive paychecks. Basically very wealthy crabs in a bucket.

Money and talent aren't everything. You also need competent leadership who can steer the ship in the right direction and are motivated to bring value to the company not just to themselves.

Re:Ask HN: Where are laid off employees gathering? by JohnFen on Monday February 20, 2023 @01:52PM (#34871382)
Right. That sort of thing is why I don't think their advantage is the number of engineers or innovation/talent.
Re:Ask HN: Where are laid off employees gathering? by twblalock on Monday February 20, 2023 @02:12PM (#34871590)
It's pretty clear at this point that Google's bigness is holding it back.

Milking money from ads is all they can do. Innovation is very hard when everything has to go through many layers of approvals and there are constant re-orgs. People are fighting over small slices of the pie, rather than growing the pie.

If the ad money stops rolling in, Google is done.

Smaller, more agile companies are usually where innovation comes from. Google accomplished most of the good things it did when it was small.