The Google layoffs are about personal ambition and poor leadership
I&#x27;ll say something I wish someone told me in my 20&#x27;s: most leadership&#x2F;upper management is poor. I&#x27;ve worked at FAANGs, a unicorn, and currently @ a company that recently IPO&#x27;d. Most people in product leadership neither really understand how to make original ideas that effect the product at a high level or the technical details of the product, their responsibility is to be good stewards of a certain revenue stream and not mess it up and maybe grow it by x%. Most engineering leadership above the staff level is usually better at &quot;aligning&quot; with upper management and that&#x27;s why they&#x27;re kept around.<p>The main exception to this are some startups with strong&#x2F;technical founders (however I&#x27;ve recently had conversations with recent yc &amp; techstars founders where this isn&#x27;t to be assumed) and biotech startups where a PhD&#x2F;MD is needed to develop the initial idea.