Google, Amazon among big names in tech axing jobs this week More tech jobs are on the chopping block this week, with Amazon, Google, Snap and Zillow all cutting staff. A Google spokesperson confirmed the Chocolate Factory laid off some employees belonging to a team in charge of consumer complaints, though declined to give an exact number. "The gUP (Google Users & Products) team …
Never make the mistake of thinking that a corporation cares about you.
Do only as much work as is necessary.
In fact, do as little as you can without repercussions.
The moment the spreadsheet indicates you are surplus to requirements, you'll be dismissed, and no one will remember any sacrifices you've made.
>>> Do only as much work as is necessary. In fact, do as little as you can without repercussions.
Perfect recipe to be part of the next batch.
>>> The moment the spreadsheet indicates you are surplus to requirements, you'll be dismissed, and no one will remember any sacrifices you've made.
Translation: During the hiring interviews, I promised I would do a good job, but then I limited myself to the "necessary" (as decided by my own good self) and pushed back on the rest. I failed to make myself useful, helpful and a team player. Now I got the boot and I fail to admit I was looking for it. So, I blame it on "the system". System => bad, individuals => good. Paycheck => good. Benefits => good. Work => bad
LOL.
Yep, "Do only as much work as is necessary" is a surefire way to make sure you're on the next layoff shortlist, and of course when you get the boot it'll always be somebody else's fault, or unfair, or because the company doesn't appreciate you. Whatever happened to personal responsibility?
No wonder AI and robots are so popular, noone wants to hire workshy losers.
Years ago I worked with a lady who worked directly with super senior people, and now chairs the board of a massive UK company - so she's no slouch.
Redundancies were coming and I said something along the lines of "they'll never get rid of us, we are too important / create too much good tech / the business needs us etc etc etc".
She looked at me, kind of sad at my naivety, and said "you don't understand, the company doesn't see you as a chess piece with skills and function, we are all draughts / checkers pieces to be moved and discarded".
I've thought about what she said a lot over the years, and wow she was right...
"We're constantly evolving our teams to meet shifty business priorities"
Customer, user and employee all more shafted than Vlad III's house guests.
I suppose one day none of these firms will attract anyone other than green card aspirants.
Actually I think that must have been "shitty."
"We're constantly evolving our teams to meet shifting business priorities and continuously improve the level of service we provide to our customers and users. The changes we rolled out will assure that we have the right people in place to do that removed anyone with ethics."
admittedly, this is mostly massive tech companies who decided during the pandemic to just hire everybody they possibly could, without thinking about why they needed that. Other companies still want people with technical skills. While some of them clearly want people with technical skills who are happy being paid a lot less than others, they still want the skills and some are willing to pay what is needed to get them. Just because the big tech companies are cutting back on hiring doesn't mean the entire profession is in a poor job market. It's calmed down from the craziness it once had, but the skills are still necessary and in demand.
... you can protect your position in a company is to make sure that you will cost them more by being on the outside than within. Either provide a valuable service that will cost them an arm and a leg to purchase on the open market. Or have a copy of the bosses' answers to the Purity Test.
Oh, and make sure they know who is actually doing the work in their organization.
"Oh, and make sure they know who is actually doing the work in their organization."
Don't be daft. Bosses NEVER know who actually does the work, and they don't care that they don't know. They didn't get where they are by either doing the work, or by knowing who did.
Every large organisation follows the same pattern of cyclical "downsizing", and in most cases they find out only afterwards that essential stuff isn't getting done and then have to re-hire. Large business is run only by people with a "bums on seats"* attitude. To them every single employee is not merely a commodity, they are a divisible commodity expressed in FTE, and in total lower FTE is always better. Look at IBM for an organisation run by the universe's most literal, least imaginative bean counters, for whom that isn't so much a statement as a religion. But on the right side of the pond, it's equally true, and true between public, private and "third" sectors.
* Slightly different connotations between UK and US readings of that term, but both work.
cyclical "downsizing", and in most cases they find out only afterwards that essential stuff isn't getting done and then have to re-hire
A good while ago, I got made redundant from a European tentacle of a US tech firm - I was a unix/network admin and got let go on the basis that "it's a network function so the guy based in California can do it".
He gave in his notice about a week later. Oh, how I laughed. By that point I had another job doing the same sort of stuff but better paid (and no need to deal with the US' chronic inability to understand European time zones - when the IT director schedules an all-hands meeting at 3:00pm California time and then whinges that none of the Europeans attended then you know there's a problem..)
I'm surprised that they even had anyone left in the music team.
The App went from a buggy, but usable player, where you could create playlists, listen to whole albums and was overall pretty good.
However, with every "update" it got more buggy and more unreliable then...
Earlier this year, they decided to switch to a Spotify model for the free version. People lost all the playlists, purchased music vanished, the app constantly crashed, it would just stop playing, if you got it working in the first place and was generally unusable.
If you think this is over exaggeration, on Android it went from about 4.6* to 2.7*. Given how many reviews there were in place before, it takes a huge amount of bad reviews to force it down that much.
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