I thought the same thing at 5 years, and everyone I heard from said it was a mistake to lay me off. Last I heard, my responsibilities were being split up between 3 people. On top of that I found out I was getting underpaid, so I was a good deal on top of that :p

Anyway despite all that, I still wasn't part of whatever vision upper management had going forward, so they gave me a sweet severance and sent me on my way. I'm not mad, but it's definitely made me careful not to expect my job to be safe.

I've watched entire teams of people with 15+ years at a company get decimated. All firedwith made-up BS. From director level down.

All because a bean counter told senior management they weren't firing enough people (their firing stats were below some metric).

Maybe that's because, somehow, you did a good job hiring and on boarding people?

Not for nothing, it doesn’t sound so successful.

Working with people is a very core skill. You suggest that this came out of the blue - but I would bet that there were a lot of missed signals on the way. Escalating straight to verbal warnings and demotion in role or responsibility means you’re missing something very fundamental in what wasn’t working or was missed.

Oh yeah, I even forgot Google Video used to be a thing.

And they acquired it in the first place.

To their credit (or at least the Android team), they quickly moved it from Linux-on-a-handheld to a real thing.

Android still isn't as polished as iOS, but it's a far more capable system.

And that's good. iOS has it's place, as does Android.

When I ask it to set a timer, it tells me that it doesn't understand me. If I ask it to stop playing, it tells me that it doesn't understand me. I have to just say "stop". It also used to transfer whatever you were listening to between speakers, but cannot understand me anymore if I ask for that.

Having a dedicated technical architect who hovers above the dev team handing architectural decisions down is also not always seen as an ideal construct in software development.

They probably do, but with how expansive they are, the massive variety of acquisitions, and not being clairvoyant, it's gotta be like herding cats.

I've worked in tech companies (systems management, telecom, etc) and in conventional businesses (manufacturing, distributing, production, reselling, banking, etc).

The arch teams in conventional business are more structured, formalized, as their remit is to ensure infrastructure is stable, predictable, and to practically eliminate risk.

The tech companies have arch teams whose focus is interoperability between business units, high communication, maximize utilization, etc. Risk is still a concern, but it's not primary (unless you fuck up). Tech orgs are about flexibility.