I have pretty much never seen an article that made me just about laugh out loud regarding layoffs, but this one did, about the last round of layoffs at Google – https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/20/tech/google-layoffs-employee-culture/index.html
Few specific points, informed by the fact that I lived and worked near there for two decades…
1) Google had the nerve to lay off people who'd been there for long periods of time – very experienced, highly educated, senior people, hardcore Silicon Valley types who'd never been laid off in their lives, never met with anything but success and flattery, never encountered obstacles or ill fortune of any kind. I know/knew a few of these people, and these folks have never even had to file for unemployment!
2) Google laid off TONS of very senior people. Presumably, their salaries were so inflated that the top kicks realized that even with stupidly hiring tens of thousands of people during the pandemic, they could still keep five people for every one of these senior techies they canned. Probably get more work done, too. AI might be coming for all of them.
3) Dear God, the horrified screeching of these people permeates this article. Shocked, SHOCKED, I tell you, that “there is an abiding devotion to revenue and seemingly endless growth. And that comes without any thought to employees’ welfare in the end.” You gotta be kidding me. What, you're not the pampered workling of the upper class after all? Your status as a member of that upper class is subject to revocation? Whatever will you do with that $2M 3BD/2BA home that you bought in the right school district so your precious kids could be indoctrinated into the same compliant work culture you happily embraced?
4) “'A lot of us workers at the bottom are just confused about where tech is headed,'” a former employee said.” At the bottom? LOLZ. Get back to me in five years and let me know what it feels like to be at the bottom.
Wow. I've always called these people The Anointed, because they always seemed to effortlessly coast through life. I've contracted in these companies for almost a decade, with no paid time off and, sometimes, folding tables in a hallway to work on. Meanwhile everyone else had offices that look like apartments – when they could be bothered to show up. I'll never forget it. Google, Microsoft, Facebook and others are all majority contract labor. These are the people, in the article, on the other side. Glad to see some of them getting their fannies spanked for once in their lives.