Interviewers don't know whether your projects were successful or not (and often don't care, I don't remember ever being asked this type of questions, SWE interviewing has always been mainly technical for me).
The number of degrees of freedom between any two people is remarkably small. As someone who has interviewed and hired perhaps two or three hundred people over my career, it was rare that as an interviewer I didn't know more about the interviewer than their resume stated. Later in my career, the depth of information in "ATS" (Applicant Tracking Systems) applications at companies has only gotten deeper. Social media posts, comments on HN :-), peer analysis from others hired from the same company, Etc.
What is more, from Google's perspective, a lot of their hiring teams who used these systems to screen candidates were contractors and have often been laid off when Google needed to make better numbers. They didn't just "forget" everything they knew, a number of them with whom I worked, contacted me post Google employment after setting up their own business as recruiters.
Not saying its good or bad, just that it is important that a lot of information exists that "follows you" around. The longer you work, the more senior you become, the more it fills with a ratio of "haters/meh/supporters" info.
The thing that always annoyed me and I had to ASK recruiters to send me candidates that matched but their "whisper network" suggested they were problems/losers. Sometimes just getting past that screen is really tough for someone.
EDIT: sometimes the wording is tricky.
"Recruiter will supply all sources of information consulted prior to offering candidate for consideration, if it is discovered that undisclosed sources were used, recruiter agrees to forfeit their fee."
Employed on site recruiters you can have a good conversation with and say "Even if you hear they are not good, if they check the boxes on where we're looking I would like to review." Which, given they are evaluated by candidates delivered rather than candidates hired, works out.
Changing depreciation schedule has no impact on revenue. It only affects costs and therefore profit.
Public companies can change their depreciation schedules at any time and accounts use that fact to change their "losses" in a way that is most beneficial to the company. Too much profit so have to pay taxes? Depreciate things faster. Not enough profit to appease the investors? Depreciate things more slowly.
Not sure what trick you're referring to. Buybacks are the new dividends; they accomplish the same thing but in a more tax-efficient manner for investors.
What is good about buybacks for investors is that you can choose how to time your sales, which can result in tax benefits. Dividends you pay tax on a schedule that might be less suitable to whatever financial massaging investors might want to engage in.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%26P_500_Dividend_Aristocrats
A bonus 1% tax on buybacks was recently added by the Inflation Reduction Act, and Biden has called for that to be increased to 4%. If the tax is high enough, more companies will go back to paying dividends.
Some things that stood out to me, changing depreciation rules to “magically” generate $770M in revenue. Traffic acquisition costs down for the quarter (I think this is the first time in like 10 years it has gone down). And a stock buyback which does the “let’s pretend our stock is going up” trick. (IBM has been a master of this for years).
None of it looked very hopeful for the future of Alphabet. A friend of mine who was in the “sudden layoff of entire projects” wave is starting to feel better about having gotten out with a severance package. I told them (as a survivor of a couple of layoffs back in the dot.com days) that there are pluses and minuses to being picked or being passed over. But everyone gets reminded to polish up their resume and start looking at the alternatives. If you still work there, keep an eye on the people you know are the ones who “get things done” as they will often be the first to leave as it is easier for them. Folks who have moved from cancelled project to cancelled project will find it harder as interviewers will be unconsciously biased against applicants who have never worked on a successful project/product.
Take heart though, when “gorilla/monster/dominant” technology companies die, their former employees fertilize the field of new ideas and, at least as I’ve observered over the last 40 years, new greatness emerges.