What you're saying isn't contradictory to criticizing the CEO.

Yes, a job is a business transaction and employees should be aware of that. I don't think anyone here disputes it. I certainly do not. That has literally no bearing on the fact at all on whether or not the CEO claiming that he's taking "full responsibility" is an empty platitude.

No one is accusing Google of slave labor here, but that's the claim you're defending.

ETA:

Whether or not the employees should be viewing working for Google as transactional, it's still a frustrating pain in the ass to be fired from a job. They have to spend some amount of time with no income. They have to go through an annoying interview process of people masturbating to whiteboard problems. Their next job might not pay as well. If they weren't at Google very long (<1 year) then that's still going to look bad on a resume.

It's a frustrating experience. No one is claiming that the CEO of Google should go to jail or anything, but if he's firing 12,000 people because of his bad decisions, him claiming that taking "full responsibility" is just an empty statement and it's frustrating.

And every CEO makes empty statements. Do you also believe the “we are family” bullshit? The DI&E initiatives? Did you believe the “Do no evil” motto they use to have?

Why would I believe anything my CEO says in that regard who I am 7 levels removed from and I’m one of only 1 million+ employees at the 2nd largest employer in the US? I know I’m just a number.

> Their next job might not pay as well

As hinted above, I also work for BigTech, so I’m in no way bitter about their income. But how large of a fiddle should I be playing for someone who might not make $300K - $400K and might have to sully themselves and be a corporate dev making “only” $150-$170K like most of the 2.7 million devs in the US (as I did most of my long career)

I'm sorry, but how does me pointing out that a CEO's statement is a hollow meaningless platitude imply that I believed any corporate bullshit? Doesn't that suggest the opposite, that I don't believe it and I am pointing out that it's a frustrating meaningless gesture?

And because I don't believe it, and because I think it's an outright lie, it's more frustrating.

Are you suggesting that just because a lie is common, it's no ok to point out that it's a lie? I guess I respectfully disagree.

Also, it's not like I asked you to cry over the people fired from Google, I was just explaining that it's an annoying pain in the ass to be fired from a job, even if they do find something relatively quickly. A negative pay delta, from experience, objectively sucks, even if the pay you ended up with is livable.

I find this mentality of "I used to have it worse so therefore I lack all empathy and that makes me a badass" to be an extremely frustrating perspective that people on HN and Reddit have. I don't really see why you felt the need to personalize this.

I’m not complaining about “having it worse”. I had two 3000 square foot houses built in the burbs, off of my corp dev compensation over the years, went on plenty of vacations and had a good middle class life.

I’m saying I don’t spend energy being “frustrated” about what a CEO says who doesn’t know me from Adam. My energy is better spent reading between the bullshit and preparing myself.

Do you also get frustrated by politicians lies?

Again, cry me a river for people who can’t live off of 3x+ the median wage in the US instead of 7x+ Yes I’m in the latter group.

I’ve changed jobs 8 times in my career not counting two or three contract jobs. I have it down to science now. It would be harder for me in this hiring environment admittedly.

I made damn sure I didn’t suffer from lifestyle inflation when my compensation went from working at a 60 person startup in corp dev to BigTech. For me it’s more like “it was fun while it lasted” and I used the money to increase my financial stability.

> Do you also get frustrated by politicians lies?

Of course I do. I don't enjoy being lied to, even if I know they're lying to me. I also do think that lies should be called out when exposed, even if they were obvious.

I never claimed that they "couldn't afford" to live off "3x+ the median wage", and this is now the second time that you've claimed I have. I said it's frustrating to have a negative pay delta, no matter how much the before and after is. This really should not be controversial or difficult to understand, which makes me think you do understand it and are conveniently playing ignorant.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but looking at any of the messages in this thread, I don't think anyone is "worried" about the ex-Googlers, despite your insistence to the contrary. Of course they will probably be fine, engineering is a pretty cushy gig. No one asked you to pity them, I just mentioned that a negative pay delta sucks and you've repeatedly gone off on some moral high-horse about how you're good about saving money.

That's fucking great, but please don't take this the wrong way, I really do not care about your spending habits, so I do not know why you keep bringing them up, other to do the "badass lack of empathy" thing I mentioned before.

ETA:

Also, is someone impersonating you? I see scarface_74 and scarface74; is this some way of laundering dislikes so they don't pollute your main account?

> That's fucking great, but please don't take this the wrong way, I really do not care about your spending habits, so I do not know why you keep bringing them up, other to do the "badass lack of empathy" thing I mentioned before

Yet you care about a CEO and calling them out on a random internet site that they will never see?

My advice is a lot more actionable than worrying about a CEO or politician’s lies - save money, live below your means, don’t be a victim of lifestyle inflation and always be prepared to get another job.

Both accounts are mine and neither are getting negative votes. I just noticed that I’m logged into one from my phone and the other from my computer. At one point I made a mistake of setting the “noprocast” to a month and locked myself out. I created the other account with a similar name specifically because I didn’t want to be accused of astroturfing - ie having two separate accounts to seem like I’m agreeing with myself

> Yet you care about a CEO and calling them out on a random internet site that they will never see?

Google's CEO's decisions are far more consequential to me than your spending habits, so yes I think it's more prudent to call it out than worrying about how you save money.

Based on the numbers you provided a few posts up, I've had more jobs than you (14 in the last 11 eyars, and currently unemployed), so I'm well aware of how fragile a job can be, and I do save money pretty aggressively as a result of that.

And yet, having been fired and laid off multiple times, you know what? It still always sucks, and I can have sympathy for any human going through that, even if I know most of them will land on their feet.

They may be “consequential” to you but you can’t do anything about either and he neither knows you or cares about your thoughts on HN.

In tech, if you are properly prepared (in general ignoring the current tech hiring market), a layoff should be no more than a minor inconvenience if you live in a good market or especially now with more jobs going remote.

And a “good market” doesn’t mean the Bay Area. It means almost any large metropolitan area if you are willing to sully yourself and be a corp dev and don’t care about bragging to your friends that “you work for a FAANG”.

I don't live in the Bay Area, I live in NYC, and until somewhat recently worked for Walmart. I did used to work for Apple but that was years ago, and that was the only exposure I've had to FAANG.

You are kind of talking past me and @tombert btw. And you seem to have come here to claim some badassery on your part, and that we shouldn't expend energy on "being frustrated".

> At what point is it the employee’s responsibility to assume that no job is permanent?

Nobody claimed jobs are permanent and that everyone must be protected. Don't fight straw men, tearing them down isn't impressive in any discussion.

If you really wanna dance like that: I am a contractor by choice and changed no less than 10 jobs in the last 7 years and I take 2x less than you, and that's in a good year. I know better than many SV privileged people how rough can it be and I could even claim more "badassery" than you if we start digging deep on the experiences that we both have (for example, I got no real estate of my own even at 43 year old; asking "why" is a completely separate topic; another example is learning to self-onboard in an afternoon).

But that wasn't the topic and I'll ask you not to shift goal posts.

Reading deep into your replies it seems you basically got in here to say "don't complain you spoiled youngsters, work hard like I did instead". I mean OK, cool for you if that makes you feel validated -- we all need that, it's a very fundamental human need so I'm not judging -- but I still don't see how that is related to the topic at hand.

...which is: some of us take issue with empty platitudes said by CEOs and call them out. Yes I know Sundar Pichai doesn't read HN. Hope you didn't intend that as a mind-blowing revelation. This is a public forum, people choose to vent frustrations sometimes.

> I’m saying I don’t spend energy being “frustrated” about what a CEO says who doesn’t know me from Adam.

Cool, you have an opinion what should I expend my energy on. And I disagree with your opinion. Absolutely nothing you can do about what I expend my energy on. Moving on.

> My energy is better spent reading between the bullshit and preparing myself.

A lot of us do that plus "get frustrated about what a CEO says". These two things are not mutually exclusive.

> In tech, if you are properly prepared (in general ignoring the current tech hiring market), a layoff should be no more than a minor inconvenience if you live in a good market or especially now with more jobs going remote.

Yet again, nobody claimed otherwise. And what you say is true and applies to many tech workers, yes.

You seem to have misunderstood the intent between the comments replying to you though. You seem to think some privileged spoiled youngsters "cry you a river". No. We're adults with a lot of battle scars who are jaded by the fact that CEOs are 100% immune to any consequences from firing people.

OPINON: They should be liable, criminally liable even. The "taking full responsibility" part should come at the price of your mansion being taken away from you, sold on auction and the money divided between the fired people, and you the CEO having to live in a cramped apartment for a year (enforceable by the bracelet on your ankle). There should be REAL and INCONVENIENT consequences.

You could disagree. That's fine. What's not fine is completely misrepresenting what was said and insisting that people are spoiled and/or "expending energy" on stuff you feel should not be discussed.

Well cool, feel like you do. I am free to keep doing what I want to do while completely ignoring your opinion.

Hope this clears it up a bit for you, though reading your deep replies makes me think you came here with an agenda and stick to it no matter what is said to you. Which, if true, makes my comment a complete waste of time but hey, it's my time to waste and I enjoy wasting it sometimes.

> Reading deep into your replies it seems you basically got in here to say "don't complain you spoiled youngsters, work hard like I did instead".

I think no such thing. I was excited when an intern I mentored got a return offer at 22 making as much as I made when I was 44 before getting into BigTech.

I didn’t exactly struggle making what I was making over the years. During that time I had two big houses built in the burbs and I had a comfortable life. My lifestyle didn’t change any after going from corp dev -> BigTech. The extra money just went toward increasing my financial stability.

When new computer grads ask me for advice, I tell them to “grind leetcode and work for a FAANG” (tm r/cscareerquestions) - even though I never did that to get my $BigTech job - and make all the money they can.

I tell them how to play the promotion game and focus on politics, work toward “scope” and “impact” to get ahead - again even though that’s not a game I’m playing.

> No. We're adults with a lot of battle scars who are jaded by the fact that CEOs are 100% immune to any consequences from firing people.

I’m also jaded. But to the point where any job is merely transactional and I don’t take it personally when the transaction of “trading labor for money” is not seen as mutually beneficial to both parties.

> They should be liable, criminally liable even

Who was “inconvenienced” by making $250K+ for a few years and getting laid off with a severance?

You are a contractor, I consider every job a short term contract that could disappear. I wasn’t inconvenienced at all by making a lot more money at BigTech than I did at the 60 person startup I left even if I had gotten laid off.

If you are contractor making “half as much as I am” - which by the way I’m on the lowish end of BigTech compensation - would you not take a contract for two years that paid you a total of $100K+ more than your average compensation?

> Hope this clears it up a bit for you, though reading your deep replies makes me think you came here with an agenda

As someone whose career has a longer arc than most people on HN and have been on both sides of the “average software engineer compensation” and “BigTech compensation” divide, and has had 6 jobs since 2012 (the other two I kept for 3 and 9 years respectively before 2012), I can’t really muster any outrage at a CEO. I don’t expect any better.

It’s more like the tale of the snake and the old lady.

Thanks for responding constructively. Apologies for being a bit jumpy. If I misconstrued your replies then double apologies.

> I’m also jaded. But to the point where any job is merely transactional and I don’t take it personally when the transaction of “trading labor for money” is not seen as mutually beneficial to both parties.

Yeah same. It's a transaction and I've made the mistake to look favorably -- almost friend-like -- at people who hired me, and got burned every time, long ago. Never again. Story for another time, likely never, but suffice to say that I was fairly innocent and believed in long-term partnerships based on me being useful alone (i.e. the only metric; turns out there are a lot more, yeah I was stupid).

Getting fired because the CEO had lunch with a Microsoft representative and he figured we will no longer work with the tech I was hired for and will look for new devs, or getting fired because you carried a single project that made $300_000 in a weekend on launch and they didn't want me to start asking for % of profit -- and a few other such cases -- opened my eyes.

> Who was “inconvenienced” by making $250K+ for a few years and getting laid off with a severance?

F.ex. having a tenure of only 5-6 months in a FAANG, sometimes 18 even, doesn't always look good on a resume. Or simply being fired at this exact time, people can do the math and they rush into judgement and figure you were the bottom 10% cruft that needed to be pruned. And you can't ever change their minds and give them the facts, they already made up their mind and view you negatively. It's maddening but with time I started making my peace with these brain bugs that many people have.

But yeah, I'll agree it is very far from critical.

> If you are contractor making “half as much as I am” - which by the way I’m on the lowish end of BigTech compensation - would you not take a contract for two years that paid you a total of $100K+ more than your average compensation?

I am not opposing you deliberately but nowadays? It's 50/50. Not all money is worth the stress. I get what you're saying though, if I was convinced that I can protect my mental health then yes, I absolutely would take that deal.

> I can’t really muster any outrage at a CEO. I don’t expect any better.

We 99% agree here. I can't muster any outrage about almost anything these days. Personally, I realized that I've lived in a fantasy most of my life (how that is possible when most of my life has been hardship, don't even ask because I can't answer that to this day) and got dead-focused on adapting and being a realist.

With me being a fairly paranoid and thorough programmer, you can probably guess that I turned into a bitter cynic in a matter of weeks. :D When you remove what's blinding you from reality but you're already smart and perceptive (I hope), it takes very little time to start seeing the world exactly like it is.

So yes, I can predict most corpo bullcrap and am usually seeing it a mile away.

My bitterness and occasional caring and ranting (like in this very thread) stems from the fact that it's extremely toxic and discouraging to be able to see how are things happening, what's their motivation and even their very likely conclusion... and not be able to do anything about it... yeah, it can ruin my mood and throw me into a grim broody state of mind for half a day.

I don't view it as a negative thing necessarily. I like it. Means I can still feel and not be completely detached like a robot making scientific observations with zero engagement.

But yes, it's a fine line to walk. Lean a little bit on the one side you start getting these pesky unhealthy things called expectations and thus get disappointed, lean a little on the other side and find out you wouldn't care about anything unless a nuke turns your life upside down.

It ain't easy to be both (a) smart and perceptive and a realist, and (b) excited for life. I am trying every day.