Most companies conveniently avoid doing a RCA (Root cause analysis) on why these folks were hired in the first place, who hired them, and who was responsible for created overlapping organizations.
Firing that person would really help Google, alas in most cases that is some VP making the firing decisions and is obviously not going to fire himself/herself.
In their defense they probably didn't know a recession of this magnitude was on the horizon. If they were hesitant to grow in the early days they may have missed a number of key hires or growth areas.
Perhaps because they realize that the company's long-term future depends on products people want, as opposed to products people are being convinced they want?
As someone who's been on the sales and marketing side (and is now on the Angel side), I agree. When I look at potential investments, if it's an internet company run by MBAs or sales and marketing folks, I immediately pass.
Invest in and keep the people who build stuff. They're the talent. The rest (with exceptions, of course) can always be brought back in, outsourced, etc.
So much negativity in these threads. They are just stereotypes.
There are (some) bad MBAs, sales and marketing folks out there saying "I'll pass on the techies - it's just grunt work, I can get it done for nothing in (insert country here)". Stereotypes again.
Google has simply decided that their marketing department is too big. It happens. Particularly when you acquire a lot of companies as Google does (other shared functions such as HR, Finance are in a similar boat).
From the vibe of this thread you'd think they're getting rid of their marketing function entirely.
He's saying that sales and marketing is less valuable than engineering, not that it's not valuable, which is (usually) true. If you had to lay off a bunch of your staff, wouldn't you lay off the least valuable ones? It's not a personal decision, it's a business decision.
They're saying engineers are the "talent" and the others are something you outsource. Or that engineers do the "real work". Or that "At least they are firing sales and marketing people and not engineers.".
In an internet company, the people responsible for the product (engineers) are the talent.
In my experience, marketing people at big companies only know how to spend money. Many sales people just have expensive dinners and long-winded biz dev meetings.
Give me the sales guy who sold insurance door to door and is passionate about the product. Or someone who can excite Eskimos about snow to be marketing. The rest don't belong in startups (or any company trying to maintain a startup ethic)
To be honest, when I read something like that, what I hear is "techies are rude, antisocial, lazy and obstructive". Then you get images of guys with bad beards and no girlfriend. Because that's the inverse stereotype.
Brand is really important for an Internet startup. Perhaps more important than many traditional business -- because you're handing money over to someone you can't see, for product that you can't touch.
I'd say their brand is one of the Google's most pivotal assets. A bit hit to Google's brand would absolutely impede their ability to do business, and to subsequently make cool technology (coincidentally, there are threads about this on HN right now).
Either way, the thread's about 200 people getting fired from Google marketing. I hardly think I should get emotive on the issue, but certainly not something I'd ever feel like crowing about -- and not something I think is an "us and them", which is what this thread is really implying.
People initially flocked to Google because their search returned the best results, now here come the marketers calling it a "brand".
You know what a brand is?
A brand is just the business counterpart of a person's name. My name is a proxy in other people's minds for my professional reputation, but this doesn't give me loony ideas about "investing" in my name, making it more "catchy" or somesuch crap.
Sorry for being confrontational: I'd like to hear a marketer's honest response to unfiltered thoughts of this kind.
googles sales are pretty low touch - I guess that is out of need to massively scale (just ask anyone who has tried to contact a human there !), so having a large sales force doesn't really make sense for them.
I guess this is using the "cover" of a great recession to do this, although the fact that they talked about it on a blog kind of means its not really a case of timing. It does sound like the don't just want to turf these people out but are going to try to find them something else to do, where possible.
googles sales are pretty low touch
For the most part-
Except for enterprise sales that includes their search appliances, apps and gMaps API's. The sales folks were pretty top notch and always got me the info I requested in a timely manner. Plus you get a phone number that will get you to a real, live, breathing human. Really! :)
Though, IMO, laying off 200 folks globally is not that huge considering their total head count. (I say this loosely as those affected certainly are not happy about losing their jobs)
Off topic but then I would presume that you do not know what marketing is. Marketing is not just about selling and shouldn't be. It is also about figuring what products people want and communicating it clearly to the people who build products.
I'm quite surprised that this was modded up. Market research is indeed a component of marketing.
I would suggest that those who modded it up sign up for some business courses / read a book on general business management or marketing. Just as you respect business guys who take the trouble to understand technical details / are ex hackers, so too an understanding of business lingo will gain you respect in their eyes. And allows you to have more meaningful discussions.
Shrug, all I know is the market researcher I dated was quite clear that marketing and market research are very different things and are not subsets of each other.
Then again, the wikipedia article you linked to says "The marketing literature is also infamous for re-inventing itself and its vocabulary according to the times and the culture". So who knows?
Ahhh, but we do know. The Wikipedia article also says:
"..at the Harvard Business School in the early 1960s, suggested that the Marketing Mix contained 4 elements: product, price, place and promotion."
And then:
"Product: The product aspects of marketing deal with the specifications of the actual goods or services, and how it relates to the end-user's needs and wants."
Market research has been a subset of marketing for over over four decades now - modern textbooks will give you the exact same information I quoted above. While I'm sure the market researcher was a lovely girl, she's no substitute for reading up on the matter.
And who decides what the product is? What about how much it costs? And who decides how to get the product from production to consumers?
Without the right marketing, you'll be building the wrong product, selling it at the wrong price, and with the wrong distribution. Yes, marketing is easier with your brand new shiny web apps, but it's still just as important.
What makes you think they will need to? It's possible that this was an independent decision and not entirely based on economic pressure. Google might not need to move down the pecking order.
A little bit sad about the tone. It's certainly a reasonable thing to do, reading this,
"We did look at a number of different options but ultimately concluded that we had to restructure our organizations in order to improve our effectiveness and efficiency as a business."
An ever-so-slight amount of corporate sheen on the writing, a little bit less emotion. A dangerous step away from being a personable company people trust.
On the plus side, they are being pretty generous with time for those let go, outplacement support, and possible severance packages. Just hope they can retain a personable face.
That's a nice way to put it. However, the reality is they went on an insane hiring spree over the past 3 years and hired a lot of useless people. I'm surprised they are only cutting 200.
Google is still actively hiring engineers. While they're letting go some sales & marketing people, recruiters, head-hunters, interns, and engineers are still green-lighted.
I'm really confused as to why, aside from cash problems, any company would do otherwise...
Companies thrive on hiring more people, motivating them to create x amount of wealth (on average), and giving them salaries, benefits, and resources worth 0.9x (on average). More smart engineers means more x, means more 0.1x, and more profit. A recession is a time that there are more smart engineers in the market, not fewer.
Firing that person would really help Google, alas in most cases that is some VP making the firing decisions and is obviously not going to fire himself/herself.