Nearly 25,000 tech workers were laid off in the first weeks of 2024. Why?

Re:Nearly 25,000 tech workers were laid off in the first wee... by thenanyu on Sunday January 28, 2024 @12:37PM (#39167886)

Google is a massive company. There are some incredibly unprofitable departments that have a negative impact per employee.

When cutting back at that scale it’s never performance based on an individual level. Its performance based as a business unit.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Nearly 25,000 tech workers were laid off in the first wee... by lesuorac on Sunday January 28, 2024 @02:34PM (#39169019)

Well; I think you're going to have a great deal of trouble showing that the 6% layoff in 2023 was targeted to "incredibly unprofitable departments" considering basically every department had fired employees.

But also Google then spent like 8 months of salary per fired employee (severance & etc). Surely it's cheaper to figure out how to move the employee from the unnamed "incredibly unprofitable department" to a profitable department. Like Google had 186,779 employees end of 2022 Q3 which drops down to 182,381 in 2023 Q3.

---

To get back onto the article, it does make the claim of "tech company workforces have largely returned to pre-pandemic levels".

[ Parent | on HN ]