Google RIF at Area 120
Google CEO Sundar Pichai, speaking at the Code Conference last week, suggested the tech company needed to become 20% more efficient — a comment some in the industry took to mean headcount reductions could soon be on the table. Now, it seems that prediction may be coming true. TechCrunch has learned and Google confirmed the company is slashing projects at its in-house R&D division known as Area 120. The company on Tuesday informed staff of a “reduction in force” which will see the incubator halved in size, as half the teams working on new product innovations heard their projects were being canceled. Previously, there were 14 projects housed in Area 120, and this has been cut down to just seven. Employees whose projects will not continue were told they’ll need to find a new job within Google by the end of January 2023, or they’ll be terminated. It’s not clear that everyone will be able to do so. https://techcrunch.com/2022/09/14/google-cancels-half-the-projects-at-its-internal-rd-group-area-120/ #layoff #layoffs #rif #tech #faang #gafa
TechCrunch
Those people will find a better job somewhere else. Come to Meta 😀
Lol and join a sinking ship
Exactly, jump from a leaking ship to a sinking ship.... 🤣
how many people were at area 120? i’ve never heard of this group/department
It was comprised of 14 teams, so I'd assume about 140 employees.
6 months to find a new job internally? Doesn’t sound like the gulag people were thinking of
Google makes no sense. They have more money than God. Ads prints revenue with a margin rate that makes every other company look poor. I agree they need to get more productive. But you don't get that productivity by slashing the moonshots/research etc. You get more productive by just being more productive. Shifting those engineers to already overstuffed teams isn't going to do anything.
It makes perfect sense. Google is a public company and has a fiduciary obligation to maximize shareholder value. The moonshot projects they were working on were clearly a product of high valuations during the boom times. For example, in the article, they mentioned they worked on an AirTables competitor. Now that the boom times have ended, the AirTables like moonshot projects have a lower exit value and thus a lower ROI. If the ROI isn't that great, they should cut. And they are creating new jobs to stuff in. They have to take open job reqs that would have been filled by others anyway. In other words, if they don't get a job, they are laid off, if they do get a job, they don't hire an external candidate.
Having a ton of money don't mean shit. Only that you make more than previous quarter.
Instead of doing all this why not just stop free food ?
“Find a another job by January 2023” LOL I spoke with a bunch of hiring manager and they all said their headcount was frozen till January. Sounds like a softer way to layoff “We gave them a chance to find another role!”
How many employees are there in Area 120? Smart as they are, all will find inside Google or someplace else.
It was comprised of 14 teams, so I'd assume about 140 employees.
Honestly, this article reads like someone was butthurt about their small project getting deprioritized and revenge-leaked to techcrunch. Google has like 200k employees, this impacts like 20 people. The actually interesting thing here is that a small part of Google did this now - because l it means bigger parts will do it soon, it just takes longer to get it through the ranks and approved by HR
So layoffs coming ?