
Google cuts jobs at cloud-computing group - pgodzin
https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-cuts-jobs-at-cloud-computing-group-11581719153
======
mattlondon
I don't have any knowledge of this, but it sounds to me a lot like a typical
everyday re-org or "defragmentation" that happen frequently.

Defragmentation example: they have a team with 12 people in California, 5 in
New York, 2 in Seattle and 3 in Zurich. They decide to move all roles into one
location instead of having the team split all over. If you don't want to move
with the role, then you need to find something new.

Alternatively perhaps they just merged some teams and there were surplus folk.
In my experience (unrelated to any of this) in rapidly growing orgs,
teams/functions often get duplicated/semi-duplicated as different parts
independently spin up teams to deal with some need. Ultimately these end up
getting rationalised as time progresses.

If they were doing big layoffs of engineers etc, I think we'd have heard about
it o we Twitter/blogs/comments/etc by now

~~~
corentin88
I hope you’re right. My team have chosen Google Cloud. With every news like
this one, the risk that Google will shutdown its cloud division seems more and
more likely to happen.

~~~
coldtea
> _My team have chosen Google Cloud_

Why though? AWS, Azure etc all look much more competent and friendlier to
customers, and without Google's history of killing services they don't care
for anymore...

~~~
dustinmoris
Azure is not competent or customer friendly at all. I've been using Azure on
and off since its very first days and despite me telling every client that
they're better off by using AWS or GCP because it will cause their dev teams
less headache, and cost them overall a lot less in engineering cost (time
spent by their engineers fighting with Azure instead of building a product)
there's still every so often a non technical idiot who got sucked off by some
Microsoft Partner manager and trapped in this shitshow of inconsistent, slow,
buggy and constantly broken cloud services which Microsoft offers.

~~~
thoughtexprmnt
Not discounting your experience, but we have clients in all three, and our own
experience is that Azure support and service is _significantly_ better than
AWS and GCP, to the degree that we primarily recommend Azure for that reason.

------
randomguy-gcp
Many theories and opinions . Here is an observation from someone involved with
GCP more than many of you (especially more than the WSJ journalists) - These
job cuts are not an indication of the health (or lack of it) of GCP division.
From the familiarity I got as a partner, it's probably the consolidation of
the sales function. Inside Sales Reps (ISRs) being moved to Field Sales Reps
(FSRs) and some of the ISRs being asked to find jobs elsewhere because the
strategy is to avoid duplication of efforts and close more deals.

~~~
KptMarchewa
>being asked to find jobs elsewhere

One of the worst euphemisms for being fired that I've heard.

~~~
skj
Elsewhere _within the company_.

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rurban
So the new boss is from Oracle, who hired new managers from SAP and Microsoft,
they are hiring like crazy and cutting some old jobs. Looks like they are
trying to get rid of internal critics, resistance. Interesting wars

~~~
stingraycharles
Do you have a source for this?

~~~
mmmBacon
Why is this so hard to believe? Politics is a real force.

~~~
stingraycharles
Of course it’s entirely possible, but if it cannot be backed up with facts
it’s just speculation / rumor.

------
pgodzin
> Google said it is cutting jobs at its cloud-computing unit as part of a
> reorganization aimed at improving operations at the business that has become
> more central to parent Alphabet Inc.

> Google on Friday said “a small number of employees” have been notified their
> roles have been eliminated. Google didn’t specify how many roles are being
> cut and said it was working with affected employees to find them new
> positions in the company.

------
pcurve
I don't get it. Company that is flush with that much cash couldn't find new
roles for the 'small number' of people that were impacted? I'm thinking they
used the good old "your position is being eliminated due to business reasons"
excuse to get rid of people they didn't want to keep.

It's a common HR tactic.

~~~
vtail
I hate to be that guy, but I want to point out that more people not always
equate to more output. E.g. if you create a "controller" role, they would try
to justify their existence and create more work/overhead for others.

And you would be surprised how many roles in big bureaucracies are
"controller" roles by nature.

~~~
namelosw
It's good to point it out.

In the third world, if you hire 100 people for a 5-man project, people end up
doing nothing but their own things. It's bad but it's obvious that something
is going wrong.

In the first world, if you hire 100 people for a 5-man project, people end up
to invent and justify 100-man's job. Everyone's role would become their
identity, everyone is busy and hardworking. The output is high, they would
also have fancy analytics and reports.

It's hard for a person to believe a 100-man busy project actually only needs 5
men.

~~~
smt88
> _In the first world, if you hire 100 people for a 5-man project, people end
> up to invent and justify 100-man 's job. Everyone's role would become their
> identity, everyone is busy and hardworking. The output is high, they would
> also have fancy analytics and reports._

This is such utter nonsense that it's hard to believe you've worked in any
human organization.

People in the first and third world are not different species. A lot of white-
collar first-world workers provide no value to their company at all.

~~~
balladeer
Interesting.

There are two contradicting unsubstantiated observations, or let's just say
blatant generalisations, one gets downvoted another flourishes.

~~~
hn_throwaway_99
smt88's post was downvoted because it completely misunderstood the point of
namelosw's post. smt88 wrote "A lot of white-collar first-world workers
provide no value to their company at all." Well, in my reading of it, that was
exactly namelosw's point. That is, the social pressure in first world
countries, and the fact that so many have their identity tied up in their job,
demands everyone looks 'busy' even when they are not really doing anything of
value.

------
btown
Why would Google even take the risk of this PR, vs. just moving these people
into R&D inside the Cloud group? I feel like this clickbait headline will
frighten markets more than the bloated headcount expense.

~~~
qeqeqeqe
Amazon lets people go regularly, I don't get what the issue is.

~~~
austhrow743
Google has recently had a leak about potentially cutting cloud. Afaik Amazon
hasn't.

~~~
rvnx
But isn't Cloud their biggest growth opportunity ?

------
neonate
[https://archive.md/OCc3B](https://archive.md/OCc3B)

~~~
jwilk
↑ archived copy without paywall

------
neil_s
Nothing is happening to Google Cloud overall. This is just a small org where
two teams were doing similar stuff, so they got merged. This made a few roles
redundant, so those folks will be looking for new roles within Google (Cloud).
How this made for a WSJ headline, IDK. I couldn't read the whole article
because paywall, but the first few lines do mention that it's a tiny number of
employees affected and they can look for new roles.

Note: I'm not authorized to speak for Google, but hopefully this addresses
some of the panic in this comment thread.

~~~
ec109685
It still seems strange they don’t need more of this person’s role and would
instead eliminate it:
[https://twitter.com/whyhiannabelle/status/122810842950535168...](https://twitter.com/whyhiannabelle/status/1228108429505351680?s=21)

It isn’t a good look.

“This morning I learned that my role at Google has been eliminated. If you've
got an opening for someone who's in Kubernetes and containers security,
focuses on content, advocacy, and communication, and has an OSS background,
holler!”

~~~
PunchTornado
why? do you think cloud marketing people are hard to find?

~~~
ec109685
If it's growing like it should be, why would they be cutting her role (e.g. it
wasn't performance related, so they aren't going to backfill).

~~~
PunchTornado
an industry can be growing and still do well with less marketing/advocacy.

------
petilon
_Google generated $8.9 billion in cloud sales last year, up 52.7% from $5.8
billion in 2018 and $4.1 billion the year prior._

Doesn't sound like Google's cloud business is in trouble.

~~~
onion2k
If it costs $10bn a year to run that would mean it represents a $1.1bn loss,
and it should be killed if Google can't turn it around. Revenue is a terrible
metric to judge something on.

~~~
petilon
I was pointing to growth, not revenue. A business that doubled its revenue in
two years is great to have, even if it is not currently profitable.

~~~
scarface74
So if I sell $1 bills for $0.90, I guess I should be glad if my “revenues
grow”?

~~~
bretpiatt
Do you have any evidence to believe Google Cloud Platform is negative gross
profit?

My background in the industry would lead me to believe GCP (just the
infrastructure, not the applications) is 70%+ gross margin with the hardware
(and data center) cost (depreciation if capitalized) above the gross margin
line.

For a business at that growth rate running a GAAP negative net income is easy
to do while still building a high quality profitable long term business.

~~~
scarface74
I’ve made no statements either way. I was responding to the relatively naive
idea that increasing revenue without profit was a measure of “success”.

But, cloud companies don’t just have to worry about hardware and
infrastructure. They also have to worry about software engineers, “enterprise
sales solution architects” and a whole host of other costs.

------
coverband
[https://outline.com/38xHGT](https://outline.com/38xHGT)

------
sjg007
Can someone with an MBA or a business understanding explain why they would
even make this announcement if it is a small number of roles in the company?
Why not just reorganize? I don’t get it unless it’s a signal to the market
that the execs are looking at cloud compute.

~~~
paxys
It's not an announcement as much as a legal obligation to disclose, and news
sources just pick up on it.

~~~
stygiansonic
This is correct. In many jurisdictions, when a certain number of employees are
laid off in a given amount of time, they are required to disclose this to the
government.

For example, California has the WARN act:
[https://www.shouselaw.com/employment/warn-
act.html](https://www.shouselaw.com/employment/warn-act.html)

~~~
sjg007
So this is a WARN act announcement?

~~~
stygiansonic
If it is you can expect it to show here in a few days:
[https://www.edd.ca.gov/Jobs_and_Training/Layoff_Services_WAR...](https://www.edd.ca.gov/Jobs_and_Training/Layoff_Services_WARN.htm#ListingofWARNNotices)

------
holografix
At least one person is taking the news as “I need a new job” situation.

[https://twitter.com/whyhiannabelle/status/122810842950535168...](https://twitter.com/whyhiannabelle/status/1228108429505351680?s=21)

------
chvid
What is cloud computing here? Is it some of Google services such as Mail or
Drive. Or is it the cloud hosting competing with MS Azure or AWS?

~~~
DevKoala
GCP

~~~
jkaplowitz
Yes, but also other products like G Suite.

------
xchaotic
How to cut expenses by a million a year? Fire 3-4 software engineers.

------
rammy1234
Will this ever happen to Amazon (AWS) which is in hiring spree ? when you have
surplus, can't they easily cut loose some when plans didn't go the way it was
supposed to.

~~~
yaitsyaboi
Amazon does this kind of thing all the time. It's very rare with engineers--
they just get moved around. But if you have some reorg, you don't need two
sets of marketing folks.

------
sidcool
It could easily be attributed to automation than business troubles

------
bigcohoneypot
Sad. I hope it works out for the smart hardworking googlers.

------
springwell
this kind of news is why no one wants to use gcp in case google decides to axe
it completely

~~~
tzury
No one wants to use GCP?

You mean, no one except: Home Depot, Target, PayPal, eBay, HSBC, SAP, and
thoudands more...

------
tanilama
Is this a sign Google is not going to compete in Cloud anymore?

Can't see how this is not going hurt customer confidence.

~~~
manigandham
It's a basic reorganization of a trivial amount of jobs for a trillion dollar
company.

No it's not a sign that they're going to stop competing in one of the most
profitable sectors that they've had an offering in for over a decade.

~~~
tanilama
What I am worrying now is that Cloud is supposedly a fast growing sector they
should double down on investing.

This doesn't look to me as a hyper growth focus trajectory TBH

~~~
manigandham
They _are_ increasing investment and are arguably the first "cloud" computing
company to exist and offer a product to the public.

They might not catch up to the others but it'll still be a highly profitable
product suite. I don't see what there is to worry about. GCP also includes
Google Maps and GSuite by the way, which have lots of customers.

------
DyslexicAtheist
I'm going to make an outrageous prediction: due to the changing geopolitical
landscape which has been going on since 9/11, loss of trust in the US as a
"leader" that can keep the data safe, we will move away from the cloud and
back to a model where data sovereignty trumps all else.

This will be enabled by changes to the underlying infrastructure - moving away
from BGP and adopting (BGP backward compatible) protocols like SCION[1], as
currently implemented by Swiss carriers, which allow improved traffic shaping,
and more importantly: jurisdictional geo-fencing.

We'll also see more legislation by the EU to level the playing field against
US companies who currently do business with a Double Irish Dutch sandwich.

The current model where the US is the only cloud provider with virtually no EU
based competitor and where EU data is locked into US corps is unsustainable.
Europeans trust into US companies has never been strong to begin with and
current politics (+horrible foreign policy) will reduce it further.

The cloud is dead imo. Because in a climate where national interests are
suddenly more important than partnerships and international trade, the cloud
is more of a risk than anything else. The US makes that same case too,
illustrated by their hostility towards Chinese products (I'm not defending
China here at all btw).

[1] [https://www.scion-architecture.net/](https://www.scion-architecture.net/)

edit: I have to dig up this quote again from Aral Balkan's recent talk at the
EU parliament: _" You are acting as an unpaid Research and Development
department for silicon valley. Because if a startup here succeeds, it gets
bought by Google or Facebook. If it fails, we pick up the bill."_:
[https://video.lqdn.fr/videos/watch/861c07f7-7e9b-4e64-9765-c...](https://video.lqdn.fr/videos/watch/861c07f7-7e9b-4e64-9765-cf1de592c8a0)

~~~
stupidcar
The feeling into "fact" flow:

Step 1) "I don't like thing"

Step 2) "I really wish thing didn't exist."

Step 3) "Thing is probably dying/dead."

Step 4) "If event happened, it would really show thing is dying/dead."

Step 5) "Event can happen."

Step 6) "Event will happen."

Step 7) "Event is happening!"

Step 8) "Events 1, 2 and 3 can/will/are happening which forms a narrative
proving thing is dying/dead."

Have you considered a career as a journalist?

~~~
noelwelsh
This response is just rude and adds nothing to the discussion.

~~~
lr4444lr
It is rude, but the OP says "the cloud is dead" What!? That deserves to be
called out.

~~~
captain_price7
OP prefaced by saying "outrageous prediction" \- admitting plainly its pure
speculation. If s/he didn't do that, that would be something that deserves to
be called out.

~~~
ohyeshedid
Stating you're making a wild claim, in advance, doesn't mean you can avoid the
responses to it.

------
scarface74
December 2019

“Google Brass Set 2023 as Deadline to Beat Amazon, Microsoft in Cloud“

[https://www.theinformation.com/articles/google-brass-
set-202...](https://www.theinformation.com/articles/google-brass-set-2023-as-
deadline-to-beat-amazon-microsoft-in-cloud)

 _The clock is ticking for Google Cloud.

The Google unit, which sells computing services to big companies, is under
pressure from top management to pass Amazon or Microsoft—currently first and
second, respectively, in cloud market share—or risk losing funding. While the
company has invested heavily in the business since last year, Google wants its
cloud group to outrank those of one or both of its two main rivals by 2023,
said people with knowledge of the matter._

~~~
astrodust
What are the Vegas odds that they blow the whole thing up if they don't end up
#1?

~~~
scarface74
Given Google’s penchant for cancelling projects and their inability to do
anything profitably outside of advertising?

~~~
manigandham
Cloud computing is already extremely profitable, and well above their
10-figure line for a sustainable project.

AppEngine has been around for more than a decade. GCP might not catch up to
AWS but it's not going away.

~~~
scarface74
Is it profitable _for Google_?

~~~
manigandham
Yes.

~~~
scarface74
Your conclusion is based on?

~~~
manigandham
Like I said, it's double-digit billions product line and has a 10+ year
history. And internal metrics show lots of profit margin comparable to AWS,
although you'll have to find someone to share that with you in person.

~~~
zelly
Thanks just bought 100k

------
killjoywashere
WSJ has gone hard Murdoch, particularly against Google. In conjunction with
comments by Peter Thiel, Trump, and other conservative commentators, it's
pretty clear there's a coordinated effort to cast Facebook as a "fair and
balanced" face, and to do that, they need a libtard heel, and Google is
apparently it.

What's interesting is that Trump easily has more of a beef with Bezos as the
owner of the Washington Post, but it's seems the conservatives have a harder
time casting the world's richest man as a snowflake when he runs a brutally
lean business and launches rockets.

~~~
scarface74
The WSJ has never been a Trump supporter.

------
szermer
I haven't seen this mentioned yet, but perhaps this 'leak' to WSJ was
calculated to remind some folks thinking of unionizing that layoffs are a real
thing in this world.

~~~
lonelappde
You are saying that someone in management orchestrated a layoff to motivate
employees to unionize faster to negotiate better layoff compensation?

------
jorblumesea
Are they trying to ensure that Google Cloud fails? I feel like all this does
is just spook potential customers.

------
webdva
Google Inc. is cutting jobs? Is this actually a move by automation’s machinic
desire to displace human laborers or human capital? Pieter Levels, an expert
in startups, said that “Netflix wants to have _less_ employees, but each one
now paid higher. For example, they'll pay one million dollars per year for one
engineer instead of paying $300,000 per year for three engineers each.” This
is actually making me anxious to the point where I’m trying to pick a skill to
appease a machinic desire’s new and progressive, if a little anti-
anthropocentric, labor production power and capital market demands so that I
can satisfy a certain power-law probability distribution function’s
optimization.

~~~
manigandham
I don’t see anything technically wrong with that approach. The top performers
are usually outsized contributors compared to the bottom tier or even mid
level coworkers. It’s better to keep a very high performing team even if it’s
more expensive.

~~~
rtpg
You do sometimes get weird effects from top heavy structures like that though.
The classic example is Google hiring “super good people” for them to end up
doing pretty low level (but important!) ops work

To take Amazon as an example, you can hire a bunch of high performing
engineers but you still need people actually putting stuff into boxes so they
get shipped (robots nonwithstanding)

~~~
manigandham
You can have high performers in every position, not just software engineering.

~~~
rtpg
Sorry, you're definitely right about that.

I guess I was thinking about "ambitious" people who see certain kind of work
as beneath them. I feel like if you had a room full of million dollar
engineers than a lot of "papercut"-style issues wouldn't get fixed.

There's a rumor that for a while Valve had this problem because to many people
wanted to make games, and not enough wanted to maintain Steam

