Remember how everybody became overnight chef in lockdown 2020?
Remember the home made Jalebi and Gulab Jamun being forwarded in whatsapp groups ?
Remember the amount of food people were ordering online?
During Covid lockdown, the whole world was online. They started using online Google products like Gmail, google meet, Video conference and YouTube to cook and broadcast themselves.
Almost all businesses of the world were also using the Collaboration and Video Conference tools. And they were using various other websites to order products online. This meant hundreds of businesses and websites were demanding more memory and computing power (hosting their servers on the cloud)
And it’s no co-incidence that Google happened to dominate the online collaboration tools, web business search and ranking, online advertizing and Cloud Server businesses. So, it had all its fingers in the apple pie well positioned to make massive profits out of this black swan event.
Same is the story for Microsoft and Amazon.
They witnessed massive surge in their subscriber base (both individual and corporate). Of course, Google had to hire a large workforce to cater to this sudden surge and demand. And this created a talent crunch, and the wide hole created a “ripple effect” in the form of Great Resignation wave.
But now when people are back in the saddle, out for work and shopping. The online products are no more needed. So now Google realizes that it hired some donkeys along with the horses, who are bringing a bad name to the company by their shallow workmanship and third-rate service.
For instance, I personally feel Google products are hurriedly made with bad UI and glitches.
For example, their Ad auction is a maze, same for the ad words. It is beyond the realm of a normal business owner to understand how to set up ads and track it via tag management, tracking conversions, understanding its impact on ranking, search positions, SEO, page speed and how to link it all together. They have to hire an SEO consultant even then they can’t wrap their heads around it. And when you set up a call with Google support, the choicest so called experts come on the video call and they keep wasting time call after call passing the buck to each other, but they are unable to resolve core issues. That’s how bad it is, but since google has a monopoly in ad business.. people have to tolerate it. Happy to see that they are being sued left right and center.
So obviously tech giants are laying off.
In plain words, it is American Capitalism. The booms and bust cycles. It is not the first time. It happened in Dot Com boom in 2000 and then in 2008 sub-prime crisis. This is how economics of demand and supply works.
But in all this lay off saga some good talent was also crucified. Here is Justin Moore and he was let go after 16 years of service in Google. He summed it appropriately.
“Your life, and employers — especially big, faceless ones like Google — see you as 100% disposable. Live life, not work,”
