Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Waymo’s Hiring Binge

theinformation.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 157 posts

Re: Waymo’s Hiring Binge

#121

Post by dlwdlw »

rainyMammoth wrote: post #83
steelframe wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very, very few Googlers are "not up to snuff." As controversial as their interview process is, it does tend to let only highly capable people through. If a Googler is not meeting expectations, the vast majority of the time it's effectively remedied with the proverbial "new manager and 6 more months" treatment.

Disagree. I have worked at Google, other startups and middle sized companies. By far the least productive place per employee was Google. Not that the average employee was stupid but the average output per engineer was comically low. A lot of Googlers take it very easy there and work 10 to 5. And to be more on point, I met definitely more than a couple subpar employee that would be fired after a couple months in a sta…

Agree with you here. Some of the worst engineers I’ve worked with have been at Google, especially the younger newer ones. There’s a combination of impostor syndrome driving people to dogma (thus lack of thinking) as well as annoying arrogance towards anything that not orthodox.

There are of course many great engineers as well (especially the more OG ones) but the ability spread was way larger than any other company I’ve been at. I think it’s something about its cultural image and incentive structure...

Re: Waymo’s Hiring Binge

#122

Post by pliny »

ttul wrote: post #33
aresant wrote: post #19

Instructive the degree to which good HR, recruiting, and operational onboarding can create giant moats for these larger tech cos. Hiring 700 "mostly engineer" employees in a year! I pride myself as an "operator" and have worked in businesses that have scaled quickly but it is unimaginable how one doubles the highly compensated / hard to find employee count in a year at that scale. In an economy where excess labor of…

This was my thinking as well. The power and wealth of the big-five tech companies is staggering, with their smaller siblings (Uber, Cloudflare, AirBnB, Dropbox, etc.) trailing not far behind. It is very tough for startups to compete with public companies who can offer liquid RSUs monthly along with whatever salary is necessary to close the deal.

Waymo offers Waymo RSUs which are not liquid.

Re: Waymo’s Hiring Binge

#123

Post by [deleted] »

rainyMammoth wrote: post #83
steelframe wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very, very few Googlers are "not up to snuff." As controversial as their interview process is, it does tend to let only highly capable people through. If a Googler is not meeting expectations, the vast majority of the time it's effectively remedied with the proverbial "new manager and 6 more months" treatment.

Disagree. I have worked at Google, other startups and middle sized companies. By far the least productive place per employee was Google. Not that the average employee was stupid but the average output per engineer was comically low. A lot of Googlers take it very easy there and work 10 to 5. And to be more on point, I met definitely more than a couple subpar employee that would be fired after a couple months in a sta…

[deleted]

Re: Waymo’s Hiring Binge

#124

Post by heavenlyblue »

mr_toad wrote: post #29
aresant wrote: post #19

Instructive the degree to which good HR, recruiting, and operational onboarding can create giant moats for these larger tech cos. Hiring 700 "mostly engineer" employees in a year! I pride myself as an "operator" and have worked in businesses that have scaled quickly but it is unimaginable how one doubles the highly compensated / hard to find employee count in a year at that scale. In an economy where excess labor of…

Turnover in professional jobs is quite high, sometimes around 20% per annum. There may not be many people out of work, but there are always people looking for the next job.

20% per annum is 1 transfer every 5 years.

I just had a job change after 6 years and was constantly asked why I stayed so long.

Re: Waymo’s Hiring Binge

#125

Post by oldgradstudent »

dpq wrote: post #77
nradov wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have a clever market strategy but those vehicles don't operate on public roads.

That's incorrect; Postmates, for one, uses Phantom Auto ( https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2019/09/23/postmate... ), and they definitely operate on public roads.

There's a bit of difference between a 100lb Postmates vehicle moving at 3mph and a 10-ton truck moving at 65mph.

The former could annoy you, the latter could kill your entire extended family.

Re: Waymo’s Hiring Binge

#126

Post by anonsivalley652 »

aresant wrote: post #19

Instructive the degree to which good HR, recruiting, and operational onboarding can create giant moats for these larger tech cos. Hiring 700 "mostly engineer" employees in a year! I pride myself as an "operator" and have worked in businesses that have scaled quickly but it is unimaginable how one doubles the highly compensated / hard to find employee count in a year at that scale. In an economy where excess labor of…

There are many problems of hiring randomly and hastily:

1. Employees are usually the biggest expense and engineers are some of the priciest, so there goes the run rate (unless Alphabet foots the bill).

2. Hiring too quickly ruins the dynamic of existing teams and throws them into chaos.

3. Hiring too quickly tends to not apply good due-diligence because the few staff who are demonstrably good at hiring will be spread too thin to have an impact. This leads to hiring second- and third-stringers who will slow everyone down more than better hires, add to office political BS with their non-value-add/sabotaging drama, zap morale, and drive away A-players to their next adventure.

4. It may or may not be the case, but without a per-department plan to scale their organizations' resources (systems, budgets and staff) according to anticipated added demand to support massive numbers of new hires, that scaling too much in one area tends to overwhelm other departments. I hope they practice safe and sane scaling before it's too late.

PS: Dern, I could probably get a job there and I've been out-of-work for 9 years. Of course, it doesn't sound like a sustainable or happy place to work, more like a pressure-cooker that's hurrying to spend that money before daddy Alpha warbucks cuts off their allowance.

Re: Waymo’s Hiring Binge

#127

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

zapita wrote: post #119
gryn wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes GP probably meant it's a great time to be an engineer in the US other countries not so sure.

There is a cascading effect on software engineer compensation worldwide.

True to a degree. Thanks to the huge influx of SV companies opening up shops in Eastern Europe, even if it's just outsourcing the "boring stuff", has led to an increase in local tech salaries that they're now rivaling Western Europe.

Re: Waymo’s Hiring Binge

#128

Post by PedroBatista »

winrid wrote: post #112
mdszy wrote: post #5

>Waymonauts Weird-ass names for employees of a company is one of the weirdest "WE HAVE TO TRY HARD TO MAKE PEOPLE FEEL LIKE A PART OF THE CULTURE" things ever, honestly.

At my current company, we are Hippos. :)

I’m not sure Janice is happy about that.

Re: Waymo’s Hiring Binge

#129

Post by alaskamiller »

aresant wrote: post #19

Instructive the degree to which good HR, recruiting, and operational onboarding can create giant moats for these larger tech cos. Hiring 700 "mostly engineer" employees in a year! I pride myself as an "operator" and have worked in businesses that have scaled quickly but it is unimaginable how one doubles the highly compensated / hard to find employee count in a year at that scale. In an economy where excess labor of…

Hi, how do we get in touch?

Re: Waymo’s Hiring Binge

#130

Post by fierarul »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #127
zapita wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a cascading effect on software engineer compensation worldwide.

True to a degree. Thanks to the huge influx of SV companies opening up shops in Eastern Europe, even if it's just outsourcing the "boring stuff", has led to an increase in local tech salaries that they're now rivaling Western Europe.

Not that Western Europe has big IT salaries compared to the US. It never seemed to me that IT is viewed in EU as this big growth engine compared to the USA and salaries and prestige seem to reflect it.
Post reply on HN