DeepMind may reduce the number of interns in the future? Recruitment was completely frozen, and candidates were informed of the cancellation only 1 hour before the interview.

Among the wave of layoffs at major Silicon Valley companies, Google seems to be the slowest to respond. While Meta, Amazon, Twitter, etc. have already begun wielding machetes, Google’s layoff plan seems to have just begun.

According to reports, Google recently began to introduce more stringent employee performance appraisal standards, and it is widely speculated that it may be preparing for future layoffs.

Where is the right place to start? Amazon has already made a plan, first cutting those departments that cost a lot of money, make little money, or even make a loss.

Looking around, Google seems to be spending the most money on DeepMind, so let’s start with the interns who are the easiest to operate.

DeepMind said on Friday, local time, that it will no longer recruit new interns for the time being because it is reconsidering how its "long-term priorities" and "strategic priorities" match its intern recruitment plan. .

However, this wave of operations seems to be a little rushed. Many interns only know at the last moment before the interview that the position they applied for is no longer available.

Zhao Linfeng, who is studying for a PhD at Northeastern University in the United States, tweeted that his intern interview with DeepMind was canceled one hour before the scheduled time, and shared Screenshot of the email he received.

"Seeing that DeepMind "paused" intern recruitment and canceled all scheduled interviews, just an hour before my interview, I felt Very disappointed and shocked."

DeepMind: At this moment we have decided to stop recruiting new interns, and the interview you had scheduled has been cancelled. .

It is conceivable that more than one applicant encountered this. In the screenshots of emails posted by other applicants, DeepMind stated that the scope of canceling interviews was not limited to the current position. , if you apply for other internship positions, the interview will also be cancelled.

He couldn't help but wonder, why did such a big company suddenly freeze all intern recruitment? Does this apply to other parts of Google?

Another "quasi-intern" who is studying for a PhD at Oxford University said on Twitter that she was sad to hear the news , because she has reached the final round of interviews.

"The technical hiring freeze hit us hard," she said.

#This young lady’s resume is very eye-catching. She received her undergraduate degree from Trinity College, Cambridge. She also studied in China and studied at Peking University in Yanjing. Xuetang, currently studying for a PhD at the Internet Institute of Oxford University, and is also a researcher at the Alan Turing Institute.

Another applicant to its intern program said on Twitter that working for the DeepMind program would have been a "dream come true," but he was unable to complete the process due to a hiring freeze .

In response to this "sudden attack" news, some applicants said on Twitter that if you want to cancel the recruitment plan, can you cancel it earlier? notify? He applied for the position in September, but by November there was no news and no rejection letter was received.

It wasn’t until a few days ago that I learned that all intern recruitment had been frozen.

In response, a DeepMind spokesperson confirmed the news of the intern recruitment freeze.

We have currently paused hiring new interns as we review how our intern recruitment plans align with our long-term and strategic priorities Stay consistent. We are communicating with all candidates and thank them for the time they have invested in the process thus far."​

#It has to be said that in the economic downturn Amid the looming crisis, several large tech companies have paused hiring new employees or reduced their workforces this year.

Earlier this month, an Amazon recruiting executive announced that the company was “pausing new hiring.” Amazon just laid off 10,000 people this month. Many employees were deeply shocked by this, and some even learned about the company's layoffs from news reports.

Previously, technology giants such as Meta and Twitter had successively carried out large-scale layoffs to save costs.

Meta laid off about 11,000 employees, accounting for 13% of its total workforce. Musk laid off nearly half of his staff almost immediately after taking over Twitter earlier this month.

On Blind, an anonymous workplace social platform where laid-off employees gather to keep warm, a PhD candidate who also suffered a "sudden attack" also posted that DeepMind has never done anything in the past ten years. Have done this before.

There is a reply below that may tell the reason why Google does this: DeepMind is too expensive.

"Google's DeepMind is Amazon's Alexa. It burns too much money and the goals it proposes are unrealistic dreams. DeepMind wants to do AGI, and Alexa wants to do it. NLP that can communicate with humans. Neither of these two goals can be achieved this century." ​

A few days ago, with Amazon Thousands of people have been laid off, and the Alexa voice assistant business that has been the "big baby" for ten years has been cut.

However, it seems that Nvidia and Microsoft are still recruiting interns normally. The current recruitment information was posted about a month ago. As for the future, no one can say for sure. .

In this current situation, who knows which day they will become the "new talents" that big companies provide to society.

Why is this happening?

In this regard, Dan Wang, associate professor at Columbia University Business School, said that when large manufacturers start to "cut costs," the first things they will consider are labor and advertising and marketing.

Menlo Ventures partner Matt Murphy said that in fact, at the beginning of this year, some start-up companies and large manufacturers had already begun to lay off employees, but the intensity was still too small.

Murphy said the company will initially hope to gradually return to normal by slowing down hiring. But who would have thought that the situation in the third quarter would be much more difficult than in the second quarter, and only then did the company realize that layoffs were inevitable.

Of course, there are still some who just follow the trend.

When I observe that other companies in the technology industry, not necessarily competitors, are laying off employees, I will have a "lightbulb": Now, the time has come!

In addition, J.P. Gownder, vice president and chief analyst of market research company Forrester, also said that the plan for the next fiscal year will also affect the company's decision-making.

For example, the fiscal years of Amazon, Meta and Google will end at the end of 2022 or early 2023. Therefore, they are likely to want to take the costs off their balance sheets now, before the end of the financial year.

For example, if you fire an employee now and give him six weeks of compensation, you can reduce costs in the first quarter. Even if you increase the expense to three months, these employees' wages will be off the books before the end of the first quarter.

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