> why does a company with many billions in the bank need to lay off anyone

At big tech, efficiency matters more than people. It has always been the case, but it's more exacerbated lately. Google know they will probably never take Apple's #1 spot, but they want to get as close as possible.

> The first is roughly why does a company with many billions in the bank need to lay off anyone.

I suppose for the same reason as even if you have money in the bank I'm sure that you don't keep subscriptions and running costs that you've determined are no use to you or you think are not worth it.

When I cancel a subscription to Disney+, no one loses their job. I think that's an important distinction.

It's completely irrelevant. And, yes, reducing you spending does lead to job losses.

I strongly disagree; my reduction in spending doesn't lead to job losses at any particular company. Perhaps if said company is providing such little service that many people choose to reduce their spending by all spending less on the same company, job losses would result.

In this case we're talking about a lot of people at a pretty far remove from the employees being laid off. This is very different from what is happening at Google UK. So much so that I don't believe the comparison is at all useful.

Its the perfect comparison.

Reduced spending on goods and services reduces revenues, which reduces profits and often leads to lay offs.

Sure your individual decision to cancel Disney+ doesnt mean someone gets fired.

But if you and 500,000 other subscribers cancel, people do get fired and you contributed to it.

If I subscribe to Disney+, chances are I'm not also subscribing to another streaming service. As a result, people get fired and I contributed to it.

> I strongly disagree; my reduction in spending doesn't lead to job losses at any particular company.

It'll lead to fractional joblosses based on the amount you reduce your spending. Are you upset because Google is bigger than you and if you and they do the same relative actions, their absolute numbers will be much bigger?

If you dump your trash in the park, it'll be barely noticeable. If Google does it, it's no longer a park. Yes, but it's still the same thing, you're just a lot smaller than Google.

Your decision to cancel a subscription is more like the decision to lower a departments budget by an almost immeasurable amount.

But they do. The budget for the next productions will be slightly smaller. Yes, it's small but they add up.

Well, in aggregate and over time they do.

Well there should be rules against this. NYTimes is vital to Democracy and needs your money.

>The first is roughly why does a company with many billions in the bank need to lay off anyone.

because it's a for-profit company, not a jobs program.

I'm not sure the distinction here is all that useful. From the point-of-view of the UK government, employing people and paying taxes are important roles companies like Google need to play. It seems to me that the rules around redundancy have been put in place to discourage just the sort of layoffs Google is trying to put in place (i.e., lay off N% of everyone).

Google employees could have volunteered to share their outsized salaries with their laid-off colleagues.

Is that really true? I believe that this is exactly the sort of negotiation in which Google UK decided they wouldn't participate.

You don't need Google UK to give money to people you know. Get together with them, exchange contact details, set up a recurring payment from your account, done.

Can’t I just spend someone else’s money instead?

>From the point-of-view of the UK government, employing people and paying taxes are important roles companies like Google need to play.

That's only true in the vaguest sense, and not something that's inscribed in law. According to a link someone else shared[1], the only real requirement is for google to do a "consultation". There's no requirement or duty to keep people employed.

[1] https://www.gov.uk/redundancy-your-rights/consultation

This page outlines the rights of the person being laid off, there are a couple other pages out there that outline the responsibilities of the company[1]. Among other things there is a requirement to notify the UK government if they plan to let go of 20 or more employees. It's clearly stated[2] that this information goes directly to job assistance and training for the unemployed.

It's up for debate but I do think this indicates that the UK government is concerned about companies laying off a large number of people. In my opinion, this and the rules around the fair selection process are designed to make mass layoffs less attractive to companies.

In regards to how the activities of a company like Google appear to any regional government, I do think the two most important functions of that company are to employ people in the region and pay taxes to the regional government. They do not seem vague to me and, in this case, we have laws on both sides: some that deal with taxes and others that deal with employment and layoffs.

[1]: https://nhglobalpartners.com/employee-redundancy-in-the-uk/

[2]: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/redundancy-paymen...

The entitlement is off the charts. People have completely lost perspective on how money is made and where they fit into the money making machine.

Maybe? Or maybe you have lost perspective on what purpose money actually serves and whether a model that hyper prioritizes it over the well being of people might not be the best approach.

Counter-point: The money-making machine exists to serve people, not the other way around.

Yes; but the shareholders - not the employees.

Serve the shareholders. Not employees, and certainly not the government of the UK.

Corporation works to maximize benefit for shareholders at the expense of its employees: "What do you expect, this is capitalism working as intended."

Employee works to maximize benefit for themselves at the expense of their employer: "Ugh, what entitlement."

>The entitlement is off the charts.

People are just sick of corporations causing havoc in our lives.

> People are just sick of corporations causing havoc in our lives.

Corporations have brought most of us ridiculous amounts of prosperity.

That's what they'd like to believe! Corporations didn't build the interstate network, provide stable economic conditions, or create a literate, educated workforce.

They generated the wealth that people paid taxes from to fund those things. You think any of that stuff is free?

Are you under the impression that taxes and came after capitalism?

In some countries, corporations are seen to be in service of both their employees and their investors.

E.g. German employee reps on boards

Then they should be more careful opening offices in foreign jurisdictions

If the company was never going to hire again this might make sense, but laying off 12k people to just re-hire those roles in a year is counter productive.

The absolute cost to not laying them of is a small proportion of the cash in the bank, and the company would have maintained the pretty great culture it had, kept the loyalty that has otherwise been burnt, and saved on future hiring costs.

I agree, and it's worth remembering next time conservatives start calling oligarchs "job creators" or whatever slavish euphemism they come up with next.

Only to pay out severance and rehire the same number of people along with all the expenses associated with rehiring over the next few years. Also, the reputation of Google being one of the most stable companies to work for is sullied, likely never to return to its prior luster. All of these things hurt the long-term profits and reputation of the company as well.

> The first is roughly why does a company with many billions in the bank need to lay off anyone.

This shows an utter misunderstanding of how businesses or finances of any kind work and would completely discredit anyone who tried to use it as an argument.

Just because that's how most large business operate doesn't mean we should blindly except it as "just how it's done". Everyone has a right to complain about how an organisation is run, and entitled to push them to put employees before maximising profit.

Personally I think society could benefit from being a little more people focussed rather than profit driven.

Can you elaborate on your statement for dummies? (Only if your argument isn't companies exist only to maximize profit, that one I understand and reject).

Even if they exist for the good of their employees, should they employ everyone until they run out of money, or should they operate competitively? Having billions of dollars, or even being profitable, has no relationship to sustainability of carrying extra employees in a competitive market. I don't expect you actually want to have a discussion though.

> should they employ everyone until they run out of money

I dont know that, but I know they should keep their employees if they made 13 billion in profit last year. I would like to understand if this is anything apart from greed.

The idea that companies only exist to make money for the owners/shareholders is not a law of nature. Heck it’s not even a very old idea but is probably about 50 years old.

The fact that so many commenters here seem to think it’s akin to a law of nature is an absolutely fascinating study in the effectiveness of propaganda.

Propaganda for what?

There must be some maxim like "reality is the best propaganda" that's already out there

Most developers at Google, the rest of FAANG, startups, etc. get a big part of their compensation as stock. They _are_ shareholders and profiting handsomely from it so of course they're firmly aligned with the pro-shareholder, pro-corporate viewpoint.

Yet, somehow, people are failing to understand this and attributing it to propaganda? To tweak the parent poster's words, the fact that so many commenters fail to realize that is an absolutely fascinating study in how common ignorance is of how people's bread is buttered, even their own.

Slavery being bad is also not a law of nature. It's an agreed upon convention in society though. Ideas don't have to be intrinsically true for them to be powerful and acted on.

It doesn't matter what you accept of reject. The owners set the priorities not the workers or the general public.

The owners don’t operate in isolation, they live in society with other people.

That’s true, but so far society had supported free markets.

So why are you not the one that has to adopt to society?

Why are you in the comments if you don't even want to discuss anything? Me accepting and rejecting is in the context of an HN thread where people like to discuss things.

Does it matter what you accept or reject? The business’s owners determine the goals of the business.

> Only if your argument isn't companies exist only to maximize profit, that one I understand and reject

The fact that you do not like reality doesn't make it less real.

Companies are created to make money for founders and investors. And if they need to shed load to make those people more money, this is how it is going to be. You can always boycott Google and use/buy any of their products if it makes you feel any better about them firing people.

The whole system is made up, I prefer to make it a different way. That is why I reject it, and vehemently advocate for changing this. Advocacy requires me to point out the cruel and unnecessarily unfair nature of this sytem.

Even if they are entirely employee owned, having thousands of staff working towards goals that you're no longer trying to meet or are unproductive is a bad idea. You need to employ & deploy your people in a productive capacity (however that is defined, it could be pure research, not profit motivated).

Big tech expanded a LOT during the pandemic. Too much.

Google hired 30,300 people in 2022! (and 21k in 2021)

While layoffs are tough for everyone (especially those losing the job), if you expanded too fast, I think that an early reset is probably better than burning through more cash to deal with a bigger problem later, when you then might have to make deeper employee cuts than if you'd acted sooner.

After these layoffs Google will still be a LOT bigger than it was a year ago.

> While layoffs are tough for everyone

That's the thing though, its not tough for everyone. Its only tough for the employee, the employer gets more money. Its not tough for them at all.

Having had to sack 90% of staff that worked for me at one point, I'd disagree and say that it is pretty tough on both sides.

That said, I meant it was tough on all employees, not just those fired, to be going through layoffs.

Paying people to work on stuff that doesn’t doesn’t generate value is also tough on the employer.

Even if layoffs are the correct decision now, the company playing fast and loose with over expansion and thus their employees is absolutely worth criticizing and protesting over.

The company with billions of dollars in the bank will have teams of people assessing risk management. But apparently those assessments didn’t address the human risk of over hiring tens of thousands of people to such a degree that they ‘need’ to dispose of them at the first sign of trouble.

Other sectors of the economy didn’t see such drastic layoffs so they can’t claim it’s a widespread and unforeseeable problem. They made a risky bet that had a real human cost, and people are right to wonder what’s the point of mega corps if they’re not any better at this than a small or medium business.

It's completely reasonable. Google's motives for doing this are no more honorable than they were the last time they were caught setting up a wage fixing cartel:

https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/apple-google-others-...

evidently different arguments are allowed in different countries, so if Google wants to have a presence in that country it should follow the standards of the country or it will run into problems of the sort now being experienced.

It really depends though, if you work anywhere for less than two years, they can basically fire you (as a person) for no reason at any time. It's only after two years of continuous employment that you gain more rights.

> In the UK there is, in summary, a right to a fair process – where _roles_ are eliminated, not _people_. That when there aren't enough roles for the people left, they are selected for layoffs in a fair way with transparency on how choices were made.

So go to court? I highly doubt Google is susceptible to a walk out or a strike.

Unfortunately this is where the law falls short, the maximum penalty for this is low. Good for protecting those on minimum wage from exploitation, but not great for holding higher paying employers to account.

Surely companies should be expected to follow the law, rather than just saying "haha sue us, i bet you can't afford it"? Otherwise it's just an abuse of the legal system, not to say that doesn't happen of course.

However as far as i remember, in the UK you can take an employer to an employment tribunal and you receive free legal representation. Although i do remember something about the Tories trying to remove or limit the legal representation, not sure if it happened.

> The first is roughly why does a company with many billions in the bank need to lay off anyone.

Because they aren’t the welfare office?

That people can’t see that tech is experiencing the results of a bubble popping is beyond belief.

You’re right. This should be a teaching moment for innovative tech companies, to avoid growing a physical presence in most of Europe as much as possible. These employees will rarely be a source of innovation or high performance for the company. And contrary to reason, all the advanced social benefits somehow end up being a vine strangling your ability to compete than the ideal that frees you from worrying about basic needs in pursuit of higher goals.

> And contrary to reason, all the advanced social benefits somehow end up being a vine strangling your ability to compete than the ideal that frees you from worrying about basic needs in pursuit of higher goals.

It's like the AI alignment problem, but between corporations and people.

That’s a great analogy. Both of which boil down to the fundamental fact that we are flawed in the sense that we can’t perfectly turn our intentions into action.

(sorry for the off topic reply)

Hi pjmorris! I'm the person from this thread > https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34400463

But now I'm throwayayes_2 due to losing lots of my personal data during house flooding last month.

I wonder if you still have any spare laptop for me! Sorry to disturb this thread & thank you!

Hi, throwayayes_2. I still don't have a spare laptop. Even if I did, shipping from the US to Indonesia would be a challenge. I am hoping someone reading here who's closer to you and who has a spare laptop can help you.

Hi pjmorris! No worries & thank you for the reply!

Everyone else in this thread is stating that a company has no higher goals than profit.

Well, why else would you start a company?

To pay taxes!

Building Tesla or OpenAI or Amazon or Google or Netflix or Moderna or Apple is a higher goal than merely surviving/putting food on your table.