from Hacker News

Google offering 'voluntary exit' for employees working on Pixel, Android

by anp on 1/30/25, 6:21 PM with 80 comments

• by segasaturn on 1/30/25, 6:46 PM

  Paired with the Pixel 4a "update of death" it feels like Google is throwing in the towel on smartphones. I don't care about Pixel but I do worry about Android - as flawed as it is, it's still the only viable option for an "open" smartphone. I've been playing around with a Pinephone lately and it's lots of fun but obviously not ready for use as a daily driver.

• by cadamsdotcom on 1/30/25, 9:44 PM

  Why this is exciting:

  If Google takes the foot off the pedal on mobile, it will leave a gap in the smartphone market wide enough to drive a truck through.

  A group of smart folks who worked on Pixel & Android can take voluntary redundancy together and start a company with the tech and their experience.

  What a wonderful world that’d be - to be able to buy SOTA devices made by a company that doesn’t also make tracking software that tracks you all over the Internet, and that doesn’t want to show you ads. A company that just wants to sell you a product that you buy with your money.

  This is what anti-monopoly regulation is for - we all just forgot during the recent period of lax enforcement.

• by pavel_lishin on 1/30/25, 8:12 PM

  Fun. Definitely looking forward to competing with a bunch of newly-former-Googlers on the job market now. :/

• by sireat on 1/31/25, 12:17 PM

  This likely means the teaching materials for Android Development will remain at 2020 version (before Compose).

  Somebody was paid good Google Salary to make decent Presentation style materials: https://developer.android.com/teach#teach-a-class only never to be updated... Those were good in 2020 but now not so much.

  Sure, active learning is usually better such as Codelabs, but there should be decent presentation style teaching that is updated once a year.

• by oldnetguy on 1/30/25, 6:43 PM

  Doesn't make me want to buy the next Pixel.

• by vineyardmike on 1/30/25, 6:32 PM

  > Not offering people the option to leave in advance was a complaint about how Google handled past layoffs.

  Guess we know what’s coming.

  Very interesting that this only applies to US based employees. I wonder how long before Google completely moves overseas and drops most of their domestic employees.

  Voluntary exits are generally more humane, and have been used across Silicon Valley for decades before layoffs became common, so hopefully it minimizes suffering of layoffs.

  Also, I’m surprised the title just calls out Pixel and Android, because this also affects most of their hardware efforts (Fitbit, Nest, Chrome, VR, etc)

  Edit: I’ve heard from people there that the buyout is worse than previous rounds of severance from layoffs - namely, no stock vesting

• by dismalaf on 1/30/25, 8:43 PM

  Ugh Google's so frustrating. They make great software and products but throw in the towel on anything that's not immediately profitable since ads have too high a margin and their investors get restless...

• by itg on 1/30/25, 6:31 PM

  Sounds to me like it's going to be either take the "voluntary exit" with the severance, or if you don't then eventually get let go without one.

• by aoeusnth1 on 2/1/25, 5:17 PM

  I think Rick is probably moving all those jobs to Poland and India.

• by cft on 1/30/25, 6:35 PM

  Does it mean anything for the Pixel program? Is it going to be continued?

• by Empathy3 on 1/31/25, 10:17 PM

  None of the Android offerings sound good other than Sammy. When I say that I mean that Sammy is the only one with enough clout to withstand the mobile wars. The only one with a large enough mobile fan base to compete against Apple. There is no other Manufacturer allowed in NA that can compete with Sammy; not 1+, Moto, Blu, Nokia, HMD, or LG. Allow foreign diversity in the mobile market an US citizens will have to pay out the nose for the tariffs applied. I think we know that Chinese imports stopped with the 3XL?

• by riku_iki on 1/30/25, 7:24 PM

  I suspect there are plenty of unmotivated people who got rich from rsus already, and this is early retirement offer for mutual benefit.

• by snailmailstare on 1/30/25, 8:03 PM

  Maybe uncertainty will mean reintroducing at least one other vendor for future grapheneOS releases?

• by tombert on 1/30/25, 6:27 PM

  I had never heard of the term "voluntary exit" until I heard that the Trump administration is going to do that for federal workers. Is this going to be the new normal?

  > “to be deeply committed to our mission and focused on building great products, with speed and efficiency"

  I hate this language. It sounds culty. Why can't a job just be a job? Why does everything have to have a god damn "mission"?

• by itronitron on 1/31/25, 9:03 PM

  >> Employees have until Feb. 20 to enroll in the exit program. Those who volunteer will find out whether they’ve been accepted on March 25, a memo states.

  What a fucked up company to work for.