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?
Hedge fund. He doesn’t care about the employees or the company. Just the money he can make trading the stock.
I want to make money off of Google stock too, but I also want their shit to work so I can make more money in the future.
I mean if he catches wind their products stop working to the point consumers react, he can just sell his stock and move on to destroy another company.
Hey remember when Google Drive lost thousands of customers data for the past 6 months? That was in November.
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I own a little Google stock. I don’t mind they pay their employees a shit ton. I want them make good products. I’m not a fan of most their products but that’s just me
lol sorry to break it to you but a few bucks in fractional shares doesn’t count as “owning a little stock”
🤣
I own about 250k of Google stock. So a little bit. I don’t own more because I don’t like that you are the product.
So what you’re saying is we start the burning with him?
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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.
I can’t afford that much paper
Which is another reason we need to start burning things. can’t even afford paper.
“Man, if I just had the Death Note.”
Holy hell, if some fairly rational person got such a book and did their research on who needs to be written down the world would probably look a lot different in a short amount of time.
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.
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”
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?
Most of them are not. That’s the beauty of a cash cow like Google. They’re working on things that may be profitable in the future. By cutting the future, you’re cutting future growth.
It’s why I dislike hedge funds. They’re stripping value instead of creating value.
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.
But then, an R&D organization doesn’t have short term profits.
Correct. R&D only creates future value. Usually in the VC model, R&D is done by individuals or small groups and then funded (bought) by VC to get it to market. So even though the R&D do-er can cash out their future profits for immediate profits, the value of that R&D can’t be realized immediately.
I personally think the VC and legacy models are currently competing, and VC is winning out. As we see here, even large, established companies aren’t immune to impinging VCs.
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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.
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
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.
Not any better at all.
35k is a pretty huge amount better than 150k. Are you just trying to say that it sucks either way? Because that I agree with, but when we criticize things, we should at least have the numbers right.
Yes, I’m saying he’s a psychopath regardless of the numerical error. He’s talking about destroying the livelihood of tens of thousands of people, just so he can make some more money he doesn’t need, and could never spend. So it doesn’t really matter if it’s 30k, 40k, or 150k. He would propose anything that benefits him personally, regardless of the suffering it causes.
If you work at Google you’ll probably bounce back just fine.
the tech sector is in a bit of a jam right now…it’s actually pretty hard to find work
You don’t think firing 150,000 people is better or worse than firing 40,000? Ok.
I’m saying his complete disregard for these employees as people, with families, and lives, is unaffected by the difference. He’s proposing to fire 30,000+ people so that a number in his portfolio can grow. A number that he doesn’t need, and will never spend. He’s a fucking psychopath, regardless of it being 30k, 40k, or 150k.
So I can get some more zeroes on my balance sheet that I don’t need and will never use. Cheerio!
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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 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
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's_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.
I don’t think it’s that deep, personally. I truly believe someone can analyze their behavior, like eating meat for example, and have moral or health-related objections. This in no way means they aren’t a rich asshole billionaire. At the end of the day, he’s watching his bottom dollar as an investor. I’m sure everything comes second to that for him.
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.
You’re so desperate to think in black and white, it hurts to read the result.
Is that your 1000 tones of grey view of me? lol…
I think the sentiment is that despite any charity or goodwill, he has no reservations in stepping on people in the name of profit. Starting from the position of billionaire = evil, any attempt at explanation becomes an indefensible justification.
I wouldn’t generally trust a billionaire to make the humane decision for anything but that is not why I was surprised here. My starting position here is him asking a company to fire tens of thousands of people and lower the pay of more for a more profitable short term investment. I do believe that most people are selfish to some extent but I think people like this are more selfish and hence why my attempt to explain his seemingly more charitable acts from a selfish point of view.
Additionally, I think these people have so much drive to achieve power, it becomes aggressive to the rest of humanity at that point. Sort of “directly and consciously hoarding water for personal gains and comfort during a horrible draught” kind of aggressiveness.
He sounds similar to those insufferable effective altruists. Most of these people have a genuine skill in something narrow, and the willingness to walk all over everyone in pursuit of the ‘highest score’ achievement on their ‘net worth’.
Yet they’ve convinced themselves that only they can save the world, so they have to make as much money as possible by any means necessary in order to fund misguided charities. They’ll burn down the planet and anyone necessary to make money so they can save it.
Sir Chris is still in control of his charity, so really all that money he gave them is still in pursuit of his own goals, the charity is only spending money it makes through its investments. So whilst it sounds so generous to donate billions to charity and I’m sure it brought him great publicity, it’s little more than a tax-efficient way to attempt to bring about societal changes that society didn’t ask for.
I’m sure it was also nice that whilst he ‘donated’ billions to the charity, when it came to his divorce settlement, that was taken out of his ‘personal fortune’ which amounted to less than a billion.
So don’t give him that much credit.
Most bad things in human history have been done by good, kind people.
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.
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.
How do you negotiate severance? You’re in absolutely no position to negotiate anything. You have zero leverage.
With piss and vinegar and a sincere belief that you deserve better, but with the clear understanding that you’ll likely get nothing.
So set your sights on something realistic and smaller.
I got them to sell me my work laptop for well below its depreciated value (14” M1 MacBook Pro kitted out with memory and storage for $800) which is what I went in hoping for. I had some real strong arguments for more severance which were all expectedly shot down, so when I asked for a discount on the laptop, I got it and I won.
In my case I knew the worst that would happen is they say no. That’s not gonna be true everywhere so there can definitely be some risk of losing the severance all together by asking for more, but if you have a good relationship with management and know they’ll come to the table in good faith it’s worth the time. If nothing else you come to the table and let them know you understand what the severance is all about (the non disparagement clause is all they really care about) and sometimes that’s enough to get them to give you something more.
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.
the “fiduciary duty” isn’t a real thing.
they can fire and change who governs the board by using their majority share holder votes (which has been selecting short term max profit guys) but it’s a myth that they have a legal responsibility to return anything to shareholders
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Uh… its not illegal for an investment to not make money?
Fiduciary duty is real, in many jurisdictions at least. It means that the executives of a company are required to act in the best interest of the shareholders. In 99% of the cases what shareholders want is maximum profit.
But really, in almost every case where someone is found to be guilty of breaching this duty, it’s because they actually actively did something fraudulent. Otherwise it’s much easier for the shareholders or board to just fire the problematic people and get new ones. It’s not like being incompetent is a crime.
for source you can look at eg. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiduciary
This goes through the legal cases in the US and UK that establish it isn’t generally a requirement to maximize shareholder value above all else: https://legislate.ai/blog/does-the-law-require-public-companies-to-maximise-shareholder-value
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.
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
puthelped 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!
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.
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.
Imprison him and seize his assets.
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
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.
My comment is in relation to the content in case you’re being serious…
All fonts scale well since they are vector, so a blind person would not need a specialized font. If you want to learn about how some blind people use computers here is a video about one persons workflow.
