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?

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.

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.

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?

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?

Don't need to burn things, the letter is already addressed by that which needs to be burned.

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.

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...

So I see you found the recipe for my 10 microsecond billionaire salsa!

He's saying lay off to 150k, not by 150k. He says getting down to that would be a 20% reduction, so that puts the then-current headcount at ~188k, so get rid of about 35-40k people.

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.

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.

Imprison him and seize his assets.

The Children's Investment Fund Management (TCI) is not a charity, it is a hedgefund. Even this letter was sent on behalf of TCI. They're apparently one of the most activist investors out there. And not activism in a good way, their only focus is maximizing profits. So activism means: demanding lay-offs, doing unsolicited take-overs of other companies, etc. And then after a few years dumping the company again. They themselves probably have all sorts of thoughts about how they play an important function in an economy because they are ruthless and force changes in the markets. To put 'children's' in the name is just a scam that aims to make them sound innocent. But just this fact tells you a lot about how these people operate. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Children's_Investment_Fund_Management

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.

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?

You're so desperate to think in black and white, it hurts to read the result.

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

Most bad things in human history have been done by good, kind people.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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

All well and good, but the thing is... Even the narrative that workers now have to pay for the CEO's mistakes gives the CEO an unjustified excuse.

Nope. Alphabet is insanely, embarrassingly profitable and was during their first layoffs. There is no reason why they needed to fire anyone. If they committed to their workers a fraction of they level they demand their workers commit to them, they would not have done the layoffs.

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.

I love it that on the othe r/ site, you would have been banned for a few weeks for this.

Eat the fucking rich

Dear everyone,*

WTF

(I know it's not much, but accidentally reading 'Christopher HeHe' at the end of that letter made me chuckle)

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?

Fucking snowflakes removes this. You're no better than shiddit.

What the actual fuck.

No, have faith. I am one of the people who would rather starve than work at Facebook and Oracle.

Correction not even shrink. Even if ita acceleration starts to slow down they throw a tantrum

Raise taxes for every employee cut. Every job cut in a tax year increases the corporate tax on profit for that year.

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?

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

like a swollen udder in the hands of a meth addict

...just wow

the press should start running articles

The press is literally and explicitly owned by the billionaires advocating these job cuts.

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.

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.

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.

Markdown link is the other way around [text](link)
On lemmy, you do it like this so it embeds inline:
![](https://imgflip.com/s/meme/Zorg.jpg)

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

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2022/11/15/billionaire-hedge-fund-investor-urges-alphabet-to-cut-costs-no-justification-for-salaries-that-are-too-high/?sh=3309d3003d97

The letter from their (TCI) website -

https://www.tcifund.com/files/corporateengageement/alphabet/20th January 2023.pdf

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.

https://www.investopedia.com/new-class-of-global-elite-have-emerged-8357556#:~:text="Centi-millionaires" are individuals,a wealth advisory firm said.

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.