Hey folks! Kevin, product manager on Flutter and Dart here.
The layoffs were decided AT LEAST a couple of layers above our team and affected a LOT of teams. (I think I can say that). Lots of good folks got bad news and lots of great projects lost people. Flutter and Dart were not affected any more or less that others. It was a tough day...tough week.
It was crazy to be seeing demos and new things working and discussions about new customers the same day we lost colleagues and friends.
We're sad, but still cranking hard on I/O and beyond.
We know ya'll care SO MUCH about the project and the team and the awesome ecosystem we've built together.
Reddit post from Project Manager is pretty pointless. If Google decides to get rid of Flutter, they are not going to tell Kevin before hand, they are likely not even going to tell Kevin boss before hand. Stadia employees were swearing up and down that Stadia was full steam ahead despite layoffs until it wasn't. When it happened, it was clear from all Twitter posting that no one except really high up Google Executives knew Stadia shutdown was coming and they didn't tell anyone.
It does help. Words mean less than action. If random people are killed from a division due to decisions "many layers above" it means that division is really not valued. Google will kill off flutter in the future. One should not be building long term apps on it. React native and react luckily have been taken over by the open source community and will live long. Shame though, I really liked flutter. Fuck Google.
Not always, if Google Cloud CEO came out and said "We are invested in Flutter", I'd give it more weight since he has real power at Google.
I'm just saying Kevin statement is meaningless. If you look at Google actions before, they do not slowly remove support from things and announce it. They silently layoff, go quiet then BAM, X is gone without warning and little time to deal.
Doom and gloom comes from everyone who has followed Google history. Google does not do what I call "Enterprise orderly shutdown of services" which is decrease releases/features, announce depreciation, give shutdown date and shutdown. They just do layoffs, radio silence and BAM, SHUTDOWN!
Building anything on top of Google tech that isn't Android or GMail is a huge risk, and the fact that the higher-ups will just randomly decide to fire large parts of teams confirms that caution is the right approach.
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Hey folks! Kevin, product manager on Flutter and Dart here.
The layoffs were decided AT LEAST a couple of layers above our team and affected a LOT of teams. (I think I can say that). Lots of good folks got bad news and lots of great projects lost people. Flutter and Dart were not affected any more or less that others. It was a tough day...tough week.
It was crazy to be seeing demos and new things working and discussions about new customers the same day we lost colleagues and friends.
We're sad, but still cranking hard on I/O and beyond.
We know ya'll care SO MUCH about the project and the team and the awesome ecosystem we've built together.
You're nervous. I get it. We get it.
You're betting on Flutter and Dart.
So am I. So is Google.