This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
YouTube music being built by Cognizant makes sense tbh.
Hmm I wonder if they're responsible for the Audible app, too?
... Realest comment so far
If you want to listen to music on YouTube but don't like this type of fuckwadary, try out the Clear Skies chrome extension to skip ads and let them keep their advertisements to themselves.
oooooor just install uBlock Origin
Cognizant, a professional services company that Alphabet contracted the YouTube Music team through, said in a statement that the workers were let go after their contract ended at its intended date, according to KXAN in Austin.
A spokesperson for Google told Business Insider that Cognizant is responsible for ending the workers' employment, not Google.
"Contracts with our suppliers across the company routinely end on their natural expiry date, which was agreed to with Cognizant," the company said in a statement.
Not sure how much of the fault is from Google's side here since the employees contracted from another company.
If the team is finding out that their job ends on the same day, it's totally Google's doing, and not the vendor company.
Google loves cheap, disposable workers, that why half of their workers are contractors.
I mean, if you're a contractor and they haven't discussed extending more than a month ahead of time, expect your contract to end on its end date. That's just common sense.
You assume the cognizant employees are privy to the contract terms.
That could be the case, in any case it wouldn't be Google fault, but Cognizant.
At least in the UK, if you work like an employee enough, the court can overrule the technicality of your employment status as a contractor and apply labor law protections.
You have any idea the wide spread feelings on this?
It sounds like that's what we should be doing in more countries,.US.
Oh the US has tried to fix this issue multiple times. The end result was many of us getting laid off after 18 months every time because they couldn't extend our contacts any further by law. There's no reason for a company to convert a contractor if they're not required to.
Yeah, it's frustrating when people in turn can't find good medical insurance.
The trade for sometimes higher pay or flexibility in assignments doesn't work when you can't afford insurance or other benefits.
Assuming you were even being paid about permanent positions.
Yeah it's really frustrating. I'm fortunately at a level where the contracting companies have to provide at least decent benefits to get employees. But contracting sucks. Often you're restricted in what you can do, causing unnecessary delays to getting software done at the rate the company wants.
I've been yelled at by upper management for not doing something I legally wasn't allowed to. No apology when an employee on the call pointed it out of course.
It's a shit show. But my market is fucked right now so I'm about to go get a job at a grocery store or something and figure it out I guess.
Good luck to you.
Contractors at Google and other tech companies are typically treated and managed as real employees except for minor legal-motivated things like travel which is treated differently.
Further, contracts are typically for a fixed period of time.
That these employees/contractors seemed genuinely surprised by the abrupt termination suggests this was not the natural end of their contract. Google, not Cognizant, decides when their contracts end. If their contracts were terminated with no warning or reason given, it was initiated by Google. And with that background it seems pretty likely it was in retaliation to the union activity.
"But they're not Google employees", right? But then, that's why Google and other tech companies use contractors - to avoid giving those employees actual employee protections.
Yeah I don't understand why Google is being blamed here. If the contact ended with Cognizant then it is upto Cognizant to find other projects for the people who were part of the contract. That's how it works with these companies. If CTS couldn't find work in other projects then it's on CTS and not on Google
I am not defending Google here, but Cognizant is trash. I run a firm of specialist and a bulk of our work is cleaning up after outfits like Cognizant , Infosys, etc.
All that said, firing a group of 43 workers that chose to unionize during an Austin City Council meeting as it was being live streamed is all sorts of spicy. Google and Cognizant fucked up.
It's no surprise, after all Cognizant is the first letter in CHWTIA. 🤭
How's that work, is there lots of hair pulling? Or are you able to charge an arm and a leg and set your timelines because the clients don't have much of a choice?
Having moved onto a team in my company with Cognizant contractors, I can kinda understand Google not renewing the contract. In my experience, half of the PRs needed to be redone because of poor quality.
Yep. Worked with them before. They coached their consultants to pass our tech interviews but had zero actual experience. One guy didn't know how to open a rails console... On a rails app job. Accenture is just as bad.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The entire YouTube Music team is out of a job as tensions rise at Google parent company, Alphabet.
"We just got laid off, our jobs are ending today, effective immediately," one worker tells the city council in video of the meeting.
In a statement on X, formerly known as Twitter, the union said the YouTube Music team was based out of Austin, and was receiving such low pay that some members were working multiple jobs to make ends meet.
The YouTube Music team previously went on strike in February 2023 over Google's crackdown on remote work.
Pichai and Google are feeling the growing pressure of competition from new innovations in artificial intelligence, heightened by the company's recent failures with AI, BI previously reported.
Google recently put a hold on its AI image generator, Gemini, after it created historically inaccurate photos.
The original article contains 417 words, the summary contains 140 words. Saved 66%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
