A billionaire wrote this letter to Google a year ago. How likely is that Google's layoffs and actions since then are at least partly because of this?
Our civilization rewards behavior like this, while literally punishing pro-social behavior like teaching.
Think about what that says about humanity. Our values are wrong and our entire species strives to elevate practicing sociopaths.
Our values are wrong and our entire species strives to elevate practicing sociopaths.
Not our entire species. Only the fans of capitalism. Unfortunately a few of them are quite powerful.
Most of us without meaningful capital are either forced to do it in practice with our labor, or be cast out to serve the owners in another way: as capitalist scarecrows. Our homeless exist on purpose, it wouldn't be that expensive to provide minimal shelter. They exist to die slowly and publicly of exposure, and constant police capital defense force harassment, to terrify the capital batteries into continuing to show up to their jobs to produce value for their owners.
One way or another, those without capital are forced to serve the owners. Nothing "voluntary" about modern market capitalism, short of slitting one's own throat.
You will serve the owner's insatiable greed directly, or you will serve as an example and threat to the others.
our society just rewards capitalism. it's a simple economics problem, really. same product being made with fewer people to pay means company stock value goes up. if we really want to change, we need to flip that model over or heavily regulate it. things like increased hiring, pay raises, and societal contribution should be things that dictate the worth of a company to society, but we don't speculate on stocks based on non monetary things like that. we just care about the bottom line at the end of the day...
The so-called "job creators," everyone
This guy needs to win an all expenses paid trip to view the Titanic.
So I see you found the recipe for my 10 microsecond billionaire salsa!
what a fucking absolute psychopath
please lay off 150000 thanks
So I can get some more zeroes on my balance sheet that I don't need and will never use. Cheerio!
But he's still correct. Having too many people on way too inflated salaries isn't good business sense. Over hiring can hurt people's careers, too.
I work in tech.
The average time a software engineer, regardless of level, stays at a big tech company is around 18-24 months. That, surprisingly, hasn't changed with the market slowing. Many are still taking jobs at a higher level at smaller companies, or leaving to do other things.
Given the severance paid out for many of these employees, alongside the operational damage caused, it's likely that the people they laid off or forced out would have already left for another role. Funny enough, many of the companies that laid thousands of people off are still hiring external candidates, or people on boomerang deals to return to the company after 6-12 months.
It was always a short-sighted move, triggered by everyone else doing the same thing. While you're not wrong, I don't have enough faith in these companies to run things for the benefit of their current employees.
I read his wikipedia article and I must say I was somewhat confused. He does not eat meat, he advocates urgent action on the climate crisis and has given over billions to children's investment f (don't know if this is a good charity or not). And yet he is an asshole enough to ask a company to fire tens of thousands of employees so his investments are more profitable on short term. It is entirely possible that he does not eat meat because he thinks that it is healthier and would make him live longer (typical billionaire). Moreover he was directly affiliated to the mentioned children's charity through his wife so god knows what is really going on in there. Also after their divorce his fund is no longer contractually tied to the foundation so don't know if he is regularly donating some parts of his profit there anymore.
The Human Fund
Yes though initially it was contractually giving certain parts of its profit to children's fund foundation which existed before TCI and was a charity. After his divorce though the contractual donation was apparently cancelled. The aims written for the foundation all look nice but some are vaguely termed and I don't know to what effect were they able to (or try to) achieve it.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Children%27s_Investment_Fund_Foundation
He does not eat meat, he advocates urgent action on the climate crisis and has given over billions to children’s investment f (don’t know if this is a good charity or not).
None of these make you a good person. You can do all these things, believe in them, and still be a bad person.
Could be, I would still be interested to know however why an emotionless asshole would be doing these. Does he still feel the need to repent or want to feel morally superior to your average asshole rich person? Or does he just use them as a facade to prevent being blamed as %100 narcissistic sociopath? Or maybe humans are complicated enough that they can spiritually melt firing tens of thousands of people for profit and climate/environment activism in the same pot and don't feel contradicted about it.
You can put whatever you want on Wikipedia. You don't think PR firms have longterm Wikipedia editors on retainer for this sort of thing?
Yea, I am sure that happens all the time but I don't really wanna dismiss a piece of information without any further evidence just because of my priors. That is why I posted it here to see if anyone has seen other stuff about this charity which I have heard for the first time.
he thinks that it is healthier and would make him live longer (typical billionaire)
I'm pretty sure there are a lot of people who aren't billionaires who do this. I'm not sure "wanting to live longer" is necessarily a billionaire exclusive trait
Yea for sure but I think you miss my point. I am wondering whether if he is a vegetarian because he cares about the environment and animals or just because he thinks it is healthier.
Most bad things in human history have been done by good, kind people.
Dear anyone,
Please kill Christopher Hahn, rape his corpse, impale him through the anus with a spear, display his severed head at the entrance of the city, use this obvious heroic act to make your introduction to politics, with the ultimate goal to get a law passed that get psychopaths like him treated young, or simply disposed of if it's too late and they've hurt (or intend to hurt) too many.
I mean, if you're not busy or anything. Thanks.
Yours sincerely, because I hate myself and want to die, frfr on God no cap, just kill me if you see me, everyone can help with the execution, I give you explicit permission, regardless of local laws,
Christopher Hahne
I love it that on the othe r/ site, you would have been banned for a few weeks for this.
Eat the fucking rich
This is like MAGA mentality but for the poor.
Dear everyone,*
Fucking snowflakes removes this. You're no better than shiddit.
A Lemming wrote this comment to everyone a year ago. How likely is that Hahn's death and dismemberment since then was at least partly because of this?
(I know it's not much, but accidentally reading 'Christopher HeHe' at the end of that letter made me chuckle)
Can we, you know, eat this guy right now?
Yes, just get physically close enough to him and go for it.
If you can live with the consequences, you are free to do absolutely anything you want to do on this life.
I'm down. Gotta find the best recipe though.
Layoffs make no sense when companies can afford to retain their workers. Layoffs typically hurt companies for 3 years after they happen: https://hbr.org/2022/12/what-companies-still-get-wrong-about-layoffs
They's 2.75 years more than next quarter, and that's as far as the horizon is for publicly traded companies.
I just got laid off last month and I was a revenue generator.
The decision came down from the board as a part of a total restructure that eliminated my position, which was transitioning to be in line with the ‘new’ direction. The day after I was laid off I had an 80k deal come through, and I was set to bring in double what it cost to keep me on in 2024. That revenue would have continued to grow, and now they have no one to pick up that work and carry it forward. It was a stupid decision and I let them know how I felt about it (respectfully, didn’t want to burn any bridges) in my exit interview and when I attempted to negotiate my severance.
Oh, I very much doubt that he's the only billionaire who's written a letter like this to Google in the past year.
They've written one like that to every tech company. It's probably just so they can repeat the conditions from before they got sued for colluding to depress employee wages. This has the same effect, except this time it's not collusion, it's doing their fiduciary duty because shareholders are demanding it.
I think the comments are cutting Alphabet too much slack. Yes the billionaire is heartless, but he isn't wrong. Alphabet was careless. They binged on talent because they did not, and do not, place significant weight on the consequences of their hubris. Why? Because ultimately it is the workers that have to pay the price, not the executives that hired carelessly. If you do not force management to care, they won't.
I always think of Indeed and their CEO. They too hired too many too quickly and were forced to fire. What did the CEO do? Not only did the company make sure the severance package was generous, the CEO took a pay cut too.
I have heard that sometimes they hire talents just so the competitors don't get them, so talented people end up doing bullshit jobs and the salary discourages them from moving to more interesting but risky endeavors.
Edit: source https://www.businessinsider.com/google-meta-staff-do-fake-work-says-vc-keith-rabois-2023-3?r=US&IR=T
The thing about Google is that they have one of the highest profit-per-employee metrics in the whole industry.
Fuck, Id like to reduce a certain headcount.
1,000 billionaires, 1 guillotine.
... and lets say reduce for about a 100.00% ... this marginal, poor, repressed, scrutinized group of (technically) people need to be put helped out of their misery, it's the humane & eco-friendly thing to do.
Make him head of the board, and off with his head, and that's how we all get ahead!
TL; DR We're making a lot of money, but we could be making more if we fuck over 120,000 people that built the thing that is making money.
What a trash bag of a human being.
He's just a finance guy. They don't understand maintenance & ongoing operations/support of software can take nearly as many people as development. They hear "pRoJeCT dOnE" and wonder what those employees are working on after launch.
The comp cut thing is going to be interesting to see play out, because that comp is why most people put up with working at places like that. They’re selling their morals. And I can’t honestly blame them that much, considering how unforgiving and brutal the socioeconomic system in this country has become.
I thought the comp cut was the most telling part.
"Stock price is low, so you should reduce employee's stock options"
He sees employees' stock options as competition for the stocks. Add in the job cuts he wants and the company will be selling all those employee's unvested stock options at a low price.
And of course stock prices shoot up soon after job cuts
I think asking for lowered compensation is definitely shitty and he should be condemned for that.
However, can someone explain to me the vitriolic opposition to downsizing/layoffs whenever this topic comes up?
I don't see how anyone has a right be hired and work at X company. It is, after all, their company and their decision. Surely we can all agree that sometimes companies make strategic mistakes in terms of hiring and need to correct them later on. Also, circumstances could simply change, products be canceled or no longer need as much manpower etc.
What am I missing?
In millions 2021 revenue: 75,325 2022 revenue: 76,048
Revenue is neither stagnant nor decreasing. Only reason to reduce pay and headcount is to increase profit at the employee's cost. All corporations will get to an operational standpoint that reducing costs through better process and materials is no longer feasible and the only avenue to increased profits is to begin extracting wealth from the employee's via layoffs and salary reduction.
It's also a fairly reliable indicator that the glory days of the business are over, and they're pivoting from innovation to capture / create new markets and products to a conservative stance protecting their dominant position at the expense of everyone else - customers, staff, suppliers, vendors...
It's possible to run lean and innovate, but at this phase of the business lifecycle, they're not retooling to remove redundant management and organisational bloat - they're cutting the "doers" responsible for building the product because they know they're now in a position to sell the same old BS and just crush new market entrants that would drive continued improvement.
Revenue isn’t profit though. Revenue is income before expenses, and payroll and benefits are expenses.
Take a look at New Zealand's approach to this issue. We have much stronger laws for our people and we have a thriving economy regardless.
Companies nees to really think about hiring staff as the process for firing in and of itself, let along laying someone off is a difficult and costly one.
This results in two main things; 1, when a company changes direction or a project gets cancelled - they try as hard as they can (and have the legal obligation to) to place you on a different project but you keep your role. 2, if that is not possible, they need to help and support you when it comes to either finding a new and different role within the company, or find a role elsewhere, by providing interview training or help with your CV.
This does not apply for contractors, who get treated more like employees do in America and are a way for companies to avoid the risk of over recruitment, at the expense of having to pay someone twice the market rate.
Just because that's how it's been done in our system so far doesn't mean it's right or fair. Those numbers he mentioned are people that this company promised a job to. Some of them may have upended their lives for this. This guy brings no value other than lending his parents money out and what he's saying will ruin the lives of many people for several months. Why should he have that power? Those employees should be taken care of because they were promised a job to support their families with.
I'm not against it in it's entirety partly because of the point you made, it is their company after all.
What I am against is the intent behind cutting employees.
First, it's just irresponsible to grow a company outside of what it can sustain. But in the end, the company survives and profits while the employee is now unemployed. The worker suffers because the top fucked up.
Second, corporate greed. It's fucking up people's lives for profit it technically doesn't need to continue to exist and be successful.
It's a human sacrifice to an entity that doesn't even exist.
His suggestions are to maximize share values, namely his.
I imagine it is because many of us have had it happened. We worked hard and did what we are supposed to do and now have to suffer because of another person's mistake. A mistake that they are shielded from. It isn't like the upper management is going to get fired because they overhired.
Additionally it tends to come in waves and that seems to be more based on what they think they can get away with not based on what the market is actually doing. One of my main vendors just did that to their engineering department. They are publically traded and their financials are fine.
It's cuz being laid off means a lot of stress. The job search, the anxiety of not having money, and also knowing that the government will let you go homeless. Seeing a billionaire easily messing with thousands of lives is disturbing.
Where I live it works a bit like this.
A company can hire you and give you a temporary contract, usually a year, but it can de shorter. After that they can do that again and again. But after 3 temporary contracts (at most 3 years) they have to give you a permanent contract.
The advantage of this permanent contract is that you can quit, but if you don't and the company wants to fire you they have to compensate it financially. This usually is part of the contract you signed, but it's 1-3 months of salary per year you worked for this company.
So of you get fired after 5 full years, you will get somewhere between 5 to 15 months of salary when you go.
So companies don't fire you without really having a good reason and even if you are fired, you have extra money while searching for a new job.
One of my friends has been at the same company for a long time and he told me it would cost them 150K to fire him.
My disgust with it is that it's simply a call to reduce labor not that there should be less people working on x or we should stop working on y. He views that this many people can't be productive simply because he wants the company spending less on staff so his profits or share price goes up. It's short sighted but since investors only care about the next quarter it doesn't really matter to him.
You're not missing anything, this is just the business cycle at work.
If he thought $300,000 was a lot, wait until tech workers start avoiding his company (aka the Meta tax).
Or maybe workers wont give a fuck and will just take whatever job is in front of them.
No, have faith. I am one of the people who would rather starve than work at Facebook and Oracle.
Image Transcription: Text
Dear Sundar,
I have appreciated our recent dialogue concerning Alphabet's cost base. I am encouraged to see that you are now taking some action to right size Alphabet's cost base and understand that it is never an easy decision to let people go.
I argued in my previous letter that Alphabet's headcount has grown beyond what is required operationally. Over the last 5 years, Alphabet more than doubled its headcount, adding over 100,000 employees, of which over 30,000 were added in the first 9 months of 2022 alone. The decision to cut 12,000 jobs is a step in the right direction, but it does not even reverse the very strong headcount growth of 2022. Ultimately management will need to go further.
I believe that management should aim to reduce headcount to around 150,000, which is in line with Alphabet's headcount at the end of 2021. This would require a total headcount reduction in the order of 20%.
Importantly, management should also take the opportunity to address excessive employee compensation. The median salary at Alphabet in 2021 amounted to nearly $300,000, and the average salary is much higher. Competition for talent in the technology industry has fallen significantly allowing Alphabet to materially reduce compensation per employee. In particular, Alphabet should limit stock-based compensation given the depressed share price.
I hope to have further dialogue with you on these matters in due course.
Yours sincerely
[Signature]
Christopher Hohn
What the actual fuck.
Some people transcribe posts on the internet as a matter of public service.
A picture of text is not particularly accessible to the blind. But written text, well they can zoom that significantly without reducing clarity, if they have some vision…or they can use any text-to-speech tool.
I don’t know a lot of poorly sighted people though. I’m assuming that they have some sort of font packages they use that scale well to large sizes for increased legibility, just like there are fonts specifically to help with dyslexia.
His intestines would make for a good rope.
He's asking for layoffs because we raised his taxes OBVIOUSLY otherwise he would be calling for MORE jobs!
Raise taxes for every employee cut. Every job cut in a tax year increases the corporate tax on profit for that year.
Greed is a mental illness
Hey, I wanna sell Alphabet stock. Make the balance sheet look good so I can unload!
This guy looks like evil John Oliver:
Lol there's a stub titled "investor activism" under which this letter falls under. Jesus fucking christ, when you're a billionaire it's not "activism" it's just straight up human manipulation
Why is he knighted? I want to be knighted. Is it only billionaires that are allowed knighted?
You can duel him to the death and take his title.
Why is Hohn dictating to Sundar and why is he listening to him? Shouldn’t Sundar know and decide whether Alphabet has enough employees or not?
Remember when a rich asshole got an itch to see the president of a university fired and just crawled up her ass until it happened? Sundar knows what someone with resources and a grudge can do to your career.
I think anybody with their finger on the pulse of the tech world could have seen this coming and it's a natural consequence of a decade of incredibly low interest rates vastly inflating the sizes and valuations of these companies past where they naturally should be
That is to say, any random person can tell the CEO of Google to cut back their headcount, but that doesn't mean that's why they did it
"This thing employs people who produce AMAZINGLY profitable and world famous stuff."
"It also has way too many people working on producing stuff, based on my analysis which began and ended with counting up how many people and what it costs to pay them."
"Time to kill the people. Then it'll only be the profitable stuff, and none of the cost of the people. I'm amazed no one has realized this yet."
Edit: Honestly, he's not exactly wrong. My fairly-uninformed impression is that the structure of Google is that a relatively small search-and-Youtube advertising department brings in an absolutely unending river of money which can be used to fund pretty much whatever the rest of the company feels like working on. I still feel that it's pretty unlikely that his assessment is based on a full understanding of how the company got to its present dominant position and how to properly steward the whole thing along in a stable fashion. I think he wants to wring it for any dislodgeable pennies like a swollen udder in the hands of a meth addict.
like a swollen udder in the hands of a meth addict
...just wow
Whenever I hear of another billionaire I'm filled with a kind of tearful revulsion.
Every time some boneheaded CEO follows the whims of these billionaire types, the press should start running articles as though the company's days are numbered.
"More sudden layoffs! Is Google worried about its own long term prospects?" ... "Google's stance has changed from cutting edge innovation and growth to shoring up its flagship products in the hopes it can weather the storm. Battening down the hatches is the order of the day, and anything not deemed ship shape is left to flounder until it sinks." Cite that most companies only cut staff like that when they're looking to artificially inflate their valuation for some reason. Question if the impact of any recent bad moves are worse than expected.
The press should circle layoff-prone companies like sharks until they stop listening to stupid advice.
Make them stop and THINK about what they're doing first. Teach the people in charge how to recognize when they're being manipulated.
We give CEO's entirely too much leeway to do incredibly dumb shit.
Carly Fiorina, John Roth, Frank Dunn, Mike Zafirovski, I don't know if John Riccitiello is it at fault for the unity debacle, but he should have been able to stop it, John Wendell Thompson, Bob Allen, Kenneth Lay, John Sculley, Stephen Elop (How the fuck do you destroy NOKIA?!?!), Martin Shkreli, Carol Bartz, Leo Apotheker, the list is ENDLESS.
C levels have too much power to make RADICAL decisions and the fact that boards of directors are broken-record-skipping on the words "short term profit" is what keeps causing it to happen.
The billionaires and other CEO's are on Ron Vachris' ass every time there's a group call because he keeps making them look bad, but he's proven that his way is SUSTAINABLE.
It's time to nudge things back into healthier directions.
the press should start running articles
The press is literally and explicitly owned by the billionaires advocating these job cuts.
Hmmm.... I get a certain vibe from this letter. I swear I have seen it somewhere before
Markdown link is the other way around [text](link)
On lemmy, you do it like this so it embeds inline:
Sundar Pichai getting roasted by his peers for not being hardcore enough lmao.
"You barely emaciated the livelihoods of any workers this year, Sundar. Lookit how happy your employees are, it's a fuckin disgrace, mate. Take a look at the stock price. It's fookin depressed mate!"
"Reduce the 'headcount' but profits must not decrease by one single penny."
Said no one who understands how businesses work, ever. If capitalism actually worked the way these people claimed it worked, we wouldn't have so many idiot billionaires.
I feel like there aren't enough heads turned on investors who could care about employees even less than companies do.
They even have more bargaining power than any employee or protester to make the company do what they want.
What these big giants were trying to do is scoop up as much talent as possible so they don't end up at a competitor, even if that meant some employees would be getting very light workloads. that's one of the many reasons too Google keeps starting new projects and killing them a few years later.
Summarize the letter into one or two sentences and read it in Mr Zorgs voice.
Yup, spot on.
Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg
I know this added nothing but I had to get that out.
News articles - https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/nov/15/major-investor-calls-on-google-owner-to-aggressively-cut-staff-and-pay
The letter from their (TCI) website -
https://www.tcifund.com/files/corporateengageement/alphabet/20th%20January%202023.pdf
I can't feel too bad for people who made $150 an hour to knowingly exploit the entire world just because they got fucked over.
And that's how the owners control us in perpetuity.
Blue collar vs white collar.
The homed vs the homeless for lowering their property values.
Red vs blue and the race wars too.
Etc.
There are only 3,000 billionaires on Earth. Extrapolate that down to people with triple digit millions in net worth, about 28,000 people on Earth worth more than 100 million, and you've found humanity's common enemies manipulating us into beating one another down when not making them more money.
Our common enemies are tiny in number, a few tens of thousands lording over billions, but they manipulate us into fighting each other.
Irish immigrants and African free men were dangerously close to joining forces against the "captains of industry" in New England. Solution? They made the Irishmen into cops.
There are very few people on this earth who make $150 an hour in an ethical way. The employees of google are not that people.
The leopard ate their face.
Those people are the best argument for increasing wages and conditions across the board.
Say whatever about big tech, it's undeniable that they have been immensely successful - financially, in innovation and cultural significance. We can then go, "see if you treat your employees well and pay them well they give a shit about your company and perform well". That's how we leverage the good conditions of one group to fight for all groups. Divided, we fall.
There isn't enough energy on the planet for everybody to make that much per hour.
Constantly trying to reduce cost base is BAU.
Somebody put Hohn’s head on a pike already.
Doesn't even question what employees are possibly doing. Just says there are too many and they must be put out on the street. Says the people who are left are making too much money.
I say this a lot but....seriously....when do we start burning things?
My hatred of the owner class is matched only by my disappointment in my fellow humans for not only taking it, but often defending it.
The people we struggle for have abandoned their humanity. That's what it takes to be one of society's supposed winners or be in their good graces: practiced sociopathy.
And half of the peasants fantasize about being the sociopaths instead of ending their reign and this despicable con game of an economy.
Summed up concisely. I've unfortunately given up hope that anything can be done or can improve. It feels the fight, whatever fight there ever was, has been lost.
I’m genuinely not super revolutionary but I didn’t get halfway through this letter before coming to the realization that this person needed to not exist anymore and same for anybody else of the same ilk.
If you don't have a list of people in society that need to burn you aren't paying attention hard enough.
He says they aren't needed "operationally" but Alphabet is not supposed to be merely operating anything. They are supposed to be inventing and experimenting and pushing the envelope. This discontented billionaire just wants ever-increasing rent on existing IP and should be called out as a simple landlord and not called an investor at all.
Yeah, I'm not sure I really get this whole "reduce employment" logic. Like if some product just isn't profitable and you lay off the employees you hired to work on it, that's not surprising, but if the employees are doing something profitable, and you actually needed to hire that many to get whatever it was you hired them for done, shouldn't it be more profitable to a company to keep them, even if one had a large number?
Moreover, if all the oligarchs are doing it, and they are, who will be left to buy their products/services?
They're breaking their own ponzi scheme economy for a few more quarterly profit boosts because there's nowhere else to grow/metastasize. Media companies are making less media. Food makers are making less product types. Their profit is coming out of gutting workers and their ability to produce what their economic sector produced in the first place.
This is a terminal stage market capitalism fire sale. The snake is eating its own tail having conquered the board.
It makes quarterlys look good immediately before the problems show up later
It's the mindset of someone who wants to cash out which is usually all ultracapitalists
The source matters, too. This is a dude exploiting people and hoarding so much needed wealth. To an obscene amount. Like, he has more than enough to do everything he could possibly dream of, for the rest of his life. And long after he's gone, all his descendants will be set and will never have to worry about money for their entire lives...
So what does this psychopath obsess about? "Please kick people out into the street and reduce the pay of anyone who remains. Number go up... Fuck em, got mine lol"
Because he doesn't care. He's looking out for himself.
"Hey Googs, you have too many employees and that's cutting in my investments. Shitcan 150,000 so my investments go up and I make more billions kthxbye"
The funny thing is... what are the operational requirements of an R&D organization?
As far as I can see, it's nothing, by definition.
Anyway, does the rich person there not understand that? Also, what is the value of an R&D organization where people are demotivated?
The rich person only cares about short term profits. They want to liquidate any good will and long term preparedness. Once the host corporation has been sufficiently bled of value, the parasite will move on to the next source of value it can find.
Don't need to burn things, the letter is already addressed by that which needs to be burned.
Well yeah I mean eventually that as well but....you know....things in ....its....general vicinity first.