Thoughts On Google’s Latest Round Of Layoffs
Suddenly the world’s richest company cares about its expenses
Google and layoffs just don’t go together. If I told you there was a company that just reported the following financial stats last quarter, what would you think?
- Revenues: $76.7 billion (11% growth year over year)
- Net Income: $19.7 billion (profit margins of 25.7%)
- Operating Cashflow: $30.7 billion
- More than $150 billion of cash and liquid investments on the balance sheet.
That’s not the financial picture of a troubled company. That’s a company that continues to make ungodly amounts of cash every quarter!
I remember back in the mid 2010s when there was a talent war going on between Google, Facebook, and the hot (over-funded) startups of the day like Uber and Stripe. Back then, part of Google and Facebook’s competitive (and hiring) strategy was to pay engineers and researchers so much money that they would never want to leave. Given where startup valuations eventually headed during those frothy years (thanks to low rates and a massive flood of money into venture capital), that meant throwing out increasingly massive equity packages. In a sense, Google was saying, I would rather pay you millions to stay here and…
