Can Sundar Pichai please take the offer?
And Prabhakar Raghavan aka worsener of search
I hope they join Mozilla 😏
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=2069436850145993
50 States, 50 Protests, 1day
Feb 5 @ your downtown.
Hilarious, I just got a reach out for working on the Pixel camera
Are you sure that wasn’t a reach around, instead of reach out?
plz
Have they done layoffs yet?
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.
It’s still just an excuse to pad profits.
The whole market’s about to roll into recession. All the companies are trying to get ahead of their firing before the market goes tits up.
Probably.
Have you considered voluntary redundancy?
No.
Have you considered involuntary redundancy?
Verizon let me root my 2018 phone and stop installing candycrush on it you fucking pieces of shit!!!
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.
No, they will give me root access to the devices that I own. Or they will cease operations on this planet.
Luigi, is that you?
Are you able to buy unlocked directly from Google? I typically avoid the carrier when I can.
Buy an unlocked one from box box stores. Bought mine from best buy. Immediately threw GrapheneOS on it. Coming from a locked down Samsung s9 that I couldn’t root to an degoogled android experience I didn’t even have to root is fucking awesome!
Verizon will let you transfer the phone to a different carrier after like 3 months of owning the phone.
Carrier unlock and bootloader unlock are very different things. All my 60x motorola Z phones can use any carrier Well, they could if I hadn’t replaced the antenna with a dummy resistor but that’s beside the point. The point is I cannot have administrative access to my phone and that means I cannot change something I really really need to change on them to make them useful for my purpose.
Essentially, I cannot “sudo” on these phones and that’s making them very difficult to use.
When you change carriers, they unlock it.
When I moved from Verizon to ATT on my phone, all the Verizon crap disappeared as soon as Verizon released the device. ATT then pushed an OTA that put all their bullshit a day or so later of course, but there was a window they’re when I probably could’ve gotten more access.
Did they title the offer “Fork in the Road,” too?
Imagine all of this talent going to work for grapheneOS and/or hardware company willing to make a phone with grapheneOS as its OS.
Yeah but AOSP practically does most of the heavy work for graphene.
Does grapheneOS have paid devs or is it all volunteer work? And if they do pay devs, how do they get the money to pay them?
Lead dev accepts donations for the project (username “thestinger” on github)
Not only that, but they apparently also get large amounts of donations in crypto currencies. They also allow donating via PayPal or bank transfer. They set up a whole Canadian non-profit foundation in 2023. GrapheneOS isn’t a small niche project anymore, it’s actually a sizable organization with paid staff (see https://grapheneos.org/hiring). @Buddahriffic@lemmy.world
I’d rather see phones with Ubuntu Touch, PostMarketOS, and Mobian OS’s.
Why would you rather see that over graphene? Don’t know enough about either
Overlap with desktop Linux means support for that is support for these mobile Linux distros, and desktop Linux gets support from a range of people and companies, not just Google.
Because graphene is just android without makeup
i will second this too!
Imagine using Ubuntu Touch with Waydroid for Android Compatibility. Would be sick.
It works actually. I use this option daily.
Whoa that’s cool!
What device are you on?
Pixel 3a xl with unlocked bootloader.
Oh nice that it’s still holding up. May I ask if that’s your primary daily driver?
It does what i need it to do, make/receive calls, surf the web and play videos when i’m out and about. For gaming i prefer Steam deck or PC. Other than that i’m not a lover of smart phones, in general i think they suck. If i could make/receive calls from a steam deck, i would trash my phone in a second.
Same. They just don’t do what I need on my phone. Hopefully that changes, but PinePhone HW kinda sucks (poor battery life and audio quality), and most of the other phones w/ Linux support have some pretty serious caveats.
I’m using a pixel 3a xl with ubuntu touch. Works great!
I just looked and that seems surprisingly usable. I might just pick one up and mess with it.
Same, I’m really tired of the annoying Android logic. I wish we could have a logical OS where we could manage our files properly instead of the filesystem mess we currently have with stuff all over the place.
It didn’t matter when the phones just had a few megs of storage, but you can carry some serious data on those things nowadays.
That was one thing that was wild about the Palm WebOS devices. It was just plain old linux. Games? They were just Linux games using SDL. Porting WebOS applications to desktop linux would have been nearly trivial. It would have just been amazing if Palm had pulled it off (alas, they chased a single design, Blackberry-style with small form factor, which missed just so much of the market). The users were utterly oblivious to all this (which is good) and it was just the best combination of capable of great things easily with a power user and able to run whatever the casual user would have needed.
It was still before Android was pretty much a sealed deal in the market (2009 Android was still horribly rough) so it had a shot, but Palm just couldn’t pull it off.
Oh man… What a great phone. Awesome multi tasking. Wifi charging standard. A back button that actually worked. A slide out keyboard. They just could spool up an app ecosystem quickly enough to gain traction…
The apps may have been a bit anemic, but it was early enough that all the app stores were not great. They were certainly hurt by their initial “JavaScript only” stance.
Really painful was that they had exclusivity with Sprint of all carriers. That was a really limiting decision.
I think ultimately the singularly fatal issue was the HP debacle. The initial circumstances of the acquisition might not have been ok for the platform. Thanks to some leaked material HP under Hurd actually seemed to have some vision for reinvigorating their consumer brand including an emphasis on former products. But Hurd was ousted and that whole initiative was canned and the new leadership killed the product line that they had just bought. Which was the most baffling call, they didn’t make room for some other smartphone or tablet platform, they just shrugged and killed off a product that was their only shot at relevance for a clearly exploding new consumer market.
I’m ready for Linux-phone, but maybe GraphineOS is my gateway. I’m tired of my iPhone not doing the things it should.
Isn’t android technically linux?
it is also doing a lot of shit it shouldn’t ;)
I’ve been trying to take ownership of my data and simplify my digital life. The greatest barrier to this by far is Apple/iOS.
Sure am glad I picked that walled garden 15 years ago, when I was none the wiser.
I have to use an iPhone for work and I don’t understand a vast amount of the UI choices - and that’s before data fuckery.
Where’s the fucking back button? When I rarely use my wife’s phone I’m like how can you deal with this?
And why does where you swipe down on the notification bar change what’s shown?!
What do you want to know how to do?
So you’re being “voluntary” fired? You can’t quit when you want?
Get a payout for volunteering to quit. People are fired if not enough volunteer
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.
It’s probably implied that if not enough people take this offer - people will be fired.
I’ve been through tech layoffs. Random people are axed and people who thought about leaving anyways stay. This is a much better solution where those who considered leaving anyways can take them up on the offer.
Is that where they put a loaded gun on the table and then turn around?
Ah yes, we need more laid off tech workers in the sector. We nearly don’t have enough!
Fuck is Pixel going to go away? Apparently the pixel 9 sold well
First, we’ll take away the headphone jack.
Then, we’ll remove everything else!
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.
To be fair, to axe that would be a very Google thing to do.
Maybe they just want to downsize cause there isn’t as much to do nowadays when the OS is so mature?
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.
Probably the aim of the failed state to be fair. Privatise talent, leave behind people alienate and blame. Shithole country.
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.
it’s got 8 years of updates right? You think it’ll last until Google comes back into a pro hardware phase?
Who’s gonna update it?
GrapheneOS
I have pixel 9 which is my first pixel phone. I agree
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
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.
Neither pixel nor android teams should need reductions
Oh, you work there? Please regale us with your insider knowledge
If they did have insider knowledge why would they explicitly say so in a public forum that may not be anonymous?
My thoughts exactly.
I mean, you’re probably right, but between this and regular layoffs? This every day of the week
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.
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
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…
We power on, my friend. We’ll make it in the end
In my experience with this format, only the good ones are leaving and you’re stuck with the rest.
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.
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.
Depends on if the good people have better places to go, I guess. My guess is that you’re probably going to lose people who have some amount of tenure, especially if you’re the kind of company that gives equity that vests on a 4-year schedule. Even if you’re not, people with some amount of tenure will be the ones trending towards being checked out already.
Losing people with tenure means you lose organisational memory, which can definitely be negative.
This is all to say that as an organisation, you should think twice about doing any kind of layoff. They are all bad in their own way. This just happens to be the format that is least bad for most workers, which is why I prefer it.
