this post was submitted on 30 Jan 2025
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[–] [email protected] 114 points 5 days ago (2 children)

This is the best way to do headcount reductions imo. In large organisations there's always someone who's been there for a long time and gotten tired of the work, and that would gladly take this type of offer if it's lucrative enough.

To demonstrate - imagine that you've been considering quitting your job for a while. Then someone comes along and says that if you do that, you also get some additional cash for free. You'd probably take it, right?

And if you necessarily need to reduce headcount, then there's also the argument that if someone leaves voluntarily, then someone who wants to stay doesn't have to get pushed out.

So yeah, I'm not against this

[–] [email protected] 45 points 5 days ago (3 children)

In my experience with this format, only the good ones are leaving and you're stuck with the rest.

[–] Buckshot 35 points 5 days ago

My last job did this. They offered more for those who had worked there longer. People with over 15 years got about a years pay and they all took it. People who had been there under a year got nothing so they all stayed.

I was going to take then they withdrew the offer for all devs. I think a lot tried to take it and they realised no one would be left. I would have got 3-4 months pay. Loads of institutional knowledge lost though, i left anyway a few months later.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 5 days ago

Absolutely. The ones who've resigned mentally are fine within their positions. The people with all the business connections and references will be the ones to grab the money and simply start something new. It happened at my company. I was only 3 years in, so it wasn't enough money for me to quit. But loads of good people left the company.

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[–] [email protected] 38 points 5 days ago (4 children)

Neither pixel nor android teams should need reductions, this is Google being cheap and fucking with employees' income for no reason other than blind greed.

[–] [email protected] 41 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I mean, you're probably right, but between this and regular layoffs? This every day of the week

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Well yeah, being given the option is better than the alternative. I just wish folks wouldn't accept the premise that Google has any legitimate reason to lay anyone off from Android or Pixel teams. Android, of all things, one of the most widely used operating systems on the planet.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 days ago (1 children)

It's not to say I accept it, but I also know that I don't exactly have a choice in the matter.

This has been the worst part about working in tech since the big layoff period from about the beginning of 2023 - unthinkable levels of uncertainty in your life.

Still definitely got a better deal than most in life, but damn if it hasn't been mentally taxing

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I feel it. My company thankfully hasn't done any layoffs, but I still don't feel very secure, and I no longer feel like I'll be able to easily find another job that pays enough if something does happen.

And that's without all the rest of the uncertainty going on right now..

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[–] [email protected] 128 points 5 days ago (6 children)

I really should switch to Graphene

[–] [email protected] 29 points 5 days ago (10 children)

Can I install my bank app on it yet? I remember having problems with attestation in the past.

What about full application backups? I've got a few offline apps, I'd like to transfer the data to/from. However, I thought grapheneOS needed the application developer to "approved" this backup/restore method - or you needed root (which invalidated attestation)... I don't recall which it was (but I really miss titanium backup).

[–] [email protected] 21 points 5 days ago

my bank app is specificially listed as working but i would def check

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 days ago (15 children)

Which banking app? I can try to install and launch it, tho I probably won't ask for your login to test that, haha

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[–] [email protected] 32 points 4 days ago (4 children)

Fuck is Pixel going to go away? Apparently the pixel 9 sold well

[–] [email protected] 12 points 4 days ago (4 children)

The Pixel 9 Pro is incredible. Writing this on it right now. I love it. Previously had the 6. I'll be sad if they go away, for real.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Maybe they just want to downsize cause there isn't as much to do nowadays when the OS is so mature?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 days ago (1 children)

This is not the way to do that. This is a way to get rid of your best people because, as the United States government is about to find out, when you offer a voluntary exit to people with a severance package the ones who know they have ability and are competent will take that package and leave and get better jobs. And the ones that know they suck or are too lazy are going to stay. There's actually a list somewhere of companies that have done this and have gone under because of it.

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[–] namingthingsiseasy 3 points 3 days ago

First, we'll take away the headphone jack.

Then, we'll remove everything else!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I can't imagine so, they're only just now prepping the first pixel phone on their own in-house CPU (pixel 10) and development is underway for the following generation (pixel 11). To axe the line now would be crazy.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 days ago

To be fair, to axe that would be a very Google thing to do.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Can Sundar Pichai please take the offer?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 days ago (1 children)

And Prabhakar Raghavan aka worsener of search

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Hilarious, I just got a reach out for working on the Pixel camera

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Are you sure that wasn't a reach around, instead of reach out?

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[–] [email protected] 35 points 5 days ago (7 children)

Verizon let me root my 2018 phone and stop installing candycrush on it you fucking pieces of shit!!!!

[–] [email protected] 25 points 5 days ago (1 children)

If you have any intent to play with Android OS variants or the stock OS, don't buy Verizon devices. Ever. They will not give you the decryption key or unlock key.

Apple, Google, Samsung and Motorola all sell devices on their websites as full price or up to 36 month financing. You can get them carrier unlocked. Motorola and Google offer bootloader unlocking should you want to.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 days ago (1 children)

No, they will give me root access to the devices that I own. Or they will cease operations on this planet.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 4 days ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)
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[–] [email protected] 68 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Last year, the teams responsible for Pixel hardware and Android software were merged into one division, and Google today announced a “voluntary exit program” for employees working in the Platforms & Devices group.

At least there's some plausible reasoning for this, instead of blanket headcount reduction to pad profits. Reasoning doesn't change much of course.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 5 days ago (2 children)

It's still just an excuse to pad profits.

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[–] [email protected] 36 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Have you considered voluntary redundancy?

No.

Have you considered involuntary redundancy?

[–] [email protected] 17 points 4 days ago (3 children)

So you're being "voluntary" fired? You can't quit when you want?

[–] [email protected] 14 points 4 days ago

You don’t get severance when you quit.

Severance is usually worse if you wait to get fired rather than taking a voluntary exit.

If you aren’t happy at a job, taking an offered exit is often a good decision.

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[–] [email protected] 39 points 5 days ago (6 children)

I don't work for Google. I'm but a voluntary ~~product~~ customer. But if they could offer me a way to get away from them, I'd gladly take it.

Right now I'm moving my personal domain over to cloudflare and email to mxroute. Considering setting up some calendar and similar groupware stuff on kubernetes on Oracles free tier as well.

That's the other rub...if I want to cloud host anything, I get to choose between Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Oracle, and Alibaba. Wonderful selection we have there.

(I recognize there are smaller players out there like linode and ovh and a trillion VPS providers...only reason I'm considering Oracle is because they give so much free "forever". And kubernetes is fun for me in like a jigsaw kind of way. Not like the puzzle but the guy from Saw)

[–] [email protected] 30 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Sorry for being harsh, but if you use the "free "forever"" offering of any company as alternative to what google offers you learnt nothing from using google.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (2 children)

I think free cloud compute offerings are a bit different. Different motivations. They aren't trying to harvest your data, they are trying to advertise their product.

They want sysadmins to play around and convince their bosses to buy in on Oracle. They want web devs to build demos and get their clients to host there. They want companies to get their feet wet risk free, before spending tens of thousands of dollars migrating existing workloads to them.

Harvesting data from those customers would be a scandal, and have massive negative repercussions.

And honestly, even with the announcement of Stargate and Oracle being a partner, I'd probably rather give them a couple dollars a month to run a couple small buckets than to give it to Amazon.

I can't self host at home because no incoming IP. Unless I want to switch to my only other option, Xfinity. Which I don't.

And...let's face it...if the government wants to find me, they are going to find me. It doesn't matter if my Bluesky PDS or my kids Minecraft server is hosted at home or up there. It's tied to me either way.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I replaced most cloud services with my own Nextcloud instance. I like Nextcloud.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 5 days ago

Forever is only forever until profit margins get tight or they have a bad enough fiscal quarter...

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 days ago

I hope they join Mozilla 😏

[–] [email protected] 37 points 5 days ago

Did they title the offer "Fork in the Road," too?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 days ago

Ah yes, we need more laid off tech workers in the sector. We nearly don't have enough!

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