I know but in general when you admit something like that, people also do expect like some preventive actions for the future.

All I can say is that companies for so long despised people changing jobs frequently as a lack of loyalty, etc. These major layoffs don't do anything else than confirm one thing: companies don't give a damn s** about you, if you happen to be in the wrong team or role or location.

Look at that: https://careers.google.com/

They still mention 100+ jobs for many locations. Couldn't they ask these laid off people to find anything in there? These are people you spent so much time hiring, on boarding, ... and they even became "trustworthy" in a sense, they built relationships within a company. Now you'll hire new people, etc. And the history repeats itself.

Honestly, sometimes it's much better to work for smaller companies, at least you can have an argument with your boss, be pissed at someone. Here, you're just a number, bam, fired. But don't worry, we give you a severance package (for God's sake, at least that). This way of doing business should be outdated. I know in other fields it's much worse, but hell, these are companies setting the high bar in terms of "culture" etc, if they behave like that, what can you expect?

It's much harder to retain people, it can take months. But then don't come with "we're a people company BS".

Fair question. I know in my company they didn't and from what i have seen in other comapnies they didn't do it either (Ok I don't work at a FAANG.)

The corpo I work for did something like that - you have some time to find a new team, but I didnt have an opportunity to check that (yet? :))

He did not say, "It is my fault." He said, "I take full responsibility." The question stands: what does that mean?

Nothing. It means nothing. It is in the current CEO firing template, that is why it's there.

He said "I take full responsibility for the decisions that led us here"

You can argue about the semantics of "responsibility" means, but i think in context he's basically saying "my bad". Nothing more nothing less.

If you look at the dictionary definition https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/responsible this way of using it is consistent. "being the cause or explanation" is one of the definitions. Sure there are other meanings to the word, but this is the one that makes the most sense in context even if you wish he meant the other one.

It means he will pay severance, benefits for months even after the people are gone.

It’s just that people are so used to this entitlement that they overlook it by default.

> It means he will pay severance

Personally?

The company made the hires to the presumed benefit for the company. The company will pay.

"He" won't. It's not like he'll bring money from home.

Wasn’t there a whole scene in Silicon Valley with Gavin Belson that basically mocks this kind of language?

Yeah, it was a great bit.

I interpret it as “a decision was made, it was wrong and I take responsibility for that decision”.

The other option is he blames some external force or some other leader in the company.

Taking full responsibility here should have involved firing himself along the 12K. This is the norm in many cultures, resigning (or even killing yourself, sadly) when being responsible for a major failure.

The same, that it was a miatake on his part, even though he was getting signals from different people that Google is overhiring.

It means "I take the blame and some consequences thrown at me" .. that means yes I will do nothing just absorb the hit which is probably nothing.