Copied straight from Wikipedia, In November 2022, Chris Hohn on behalf of TCI wrote an open letter to Sundar Pichai (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundar_Pichai), CEO of Alphabet (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphabet_Inc.) and Google (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google).[16][17] In the letter, Hohn stated that Google's headcount was too high and should be reduced.[16][17] He also stated that there should be more effort to reduce losses in its self-driving unit Waymo (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waymo).[16][17] On January 20, 2023, Alphabet cut 12,000 Jobs which was 6% of its workforce.[18] On the same day, Hohn issued another let ter to Pichai stating that there should further job cuts with a target of 20%.[18] The letter also states that management should address excessive employee compensation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Hohn
Why blame them for pointing the obvious?
Yea responsibility solely lies with leadership. If the company grows 10% and you are increasing headcount 20% something is way off. No new products or revenues from Google for years but everyone was happy to join and where those cringey hats on linkedin to show they got diversity hired.
Bro roasted lot of people in one comment
Fault is with Google for what lead to it, not some guy advising them to do it. People will blame everything… Biden, investors, except the company leadership itself. Apple did no such layoffs.
They are all to blame, including Sundar, Chris Hohn, and American corporate law itself. If you don’t know about fiduciary duty, there are points where the company’s hand is forced. Investors like Chris Hohn have the power to sue for a breach of fiduciary duty even if they are minority shareholders. These lawsuits are rare but would require company leadership to argue that not laying people off led to greater long-term profits for the shareholders. The letters were like a veiled threat pressuring Sundar to take action. Apple only avoided layoffs because they were smart enough to avoid over hiring in the first place. People act like it should have been easy to avoid overhiring but that is just BS and Tim Cook is arguably the best CEO in the world right now. Random Blinders would have no ability to run a company at that level, but of course plenty of Googlers wish Tim Cook were leading our company instead. Many factors contribute to layoffs including all of the above, and it is simplistic to think you can rule out any of these variables. None of these variables is sufficient to cause the layoffs on its own, it is always the interaction that produces the effect.
There's no way anyone can prove in court whether layoffs did or did not return in profits. This case will be thrown out. Like people have nothing better to do
Don't blame him. Blame Pichai and tons of useless seniors in Google.
You only see the useless seniors. He's the invisible hand in the background shaping how the companies run to maximize short-term profit.
So OP do you think pichai is a good ceo???
If your company leadership is deciding what to do based on what some investor want Google to do, then the problem is with leadership. Consider this - toysrus was a great company that actually did really well. They had competition from Amazon, but so did every retailer at that time. Nothing that they couldn't have handled. Bain and co bought it, sucked up all the liquidity in the company and caused it to go bankrupt. That's regular breakfast for these "investor" companies. There is exactly one set of people who are responsible for this and that is Google leadership. That's it. Anything else is trying to shift blame away from the truth
American corporate law is commonly misunderstood. Certainly company leadership does not have carte blanche to do whatever they want. (More information in my comment above.)
What do you want Google to do? Not listen to Hohn and stay bloated and over hired?
He addressed waymo. Did google cut it?
Yes. Many contractors and some full time
Fire pichai!
Who are you asking?
Chris Hohn 😂
Activist investors are not making the calls in Google's c-suite, but the street does expect the company to be able to address these mofos and classier investors (think Vanguard) who are asking the same questions in quieter forums. It sucks, but we did overhire for far too long. The tech recession+ai trends are forcing us to correct this, not some random white male investor.
So.. it's ok to call out that he's a "random white male"? I'm curious how everyone would react if I referred to an investor as, "just another black woman" or, "a random Asian"... You could have just said, "some random investor" because that was the only relevant part.
Amazon stop acting like you don’t know what color Wall Street investors are
From the Wikipedia "In recent years, Hohn has become an outspoken advocate of urgent action on the climate crisis, and a prolific contributor to the cause." Yep, he is evil.
Lol, get a grip. Equating meeting the challenge of climate change as 'evil'. What must you think of his efforts to address child poverty in developing countries? Communism?
Trying to subjugate the world using a make-believe "crisis" is definitely evil.
Apparently this dude owns a bird seed worth of google stock compared to market cap. He’s a pump and dump investor
They just do their job, don't blame them, work for them and help them draft next open letter to pichai and collect your paycheck from them
Frankly, he could write the same letter to increase the headcount and then short the stock. At least, minions will make money that way.
Lol it’s not like he needs the money. He’s just a greedy billionaire representing everything wrong with our society. Would you have the same blame-free attitude if he were killing thousands of people for that next hundred million too? Because layoffs have been shown to increase all-cause mortality for those affected.