This may also be a big mistake by Google. I fully expect other companies such as Apple will take advantage of this mistake to hire even more in specific areas.
What’s going on with Google and Facebook hiring freezes?
111–120 of 637 posts
Re: What’s going on with Google and Facebook hiring freezes?
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
Inevitable. Working 2 hours a day while getting paid 300K+ is unsustainable. Most of the Googlers I know have been spending 20% of their time on Google and 80% on side projects for the past year now.
>Inevitable. Working 2 hours a day while getting paid 300K+ is unsustainable Right? And some people are holding multiple full-time jobs doing that sort of "work" glares at /r/overemployed
> And some people are holding multiple full-time jobs doing that sort of "work" glares at /r/overemployed
I would be highly surprised if there are any meaningful number of people who each hold multiple $300k jobs simultaneously. I just don't see how that would pass the hiring process.
Re: What’s going on with Google and Facebook hiring freezes?
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
> My hunch is that these companies are cargo-culting their strategies Yes most of these tech companies are the same. Their strategy is based off what other successful companies are doing. Also they want shareholders / investors to be on board. @paulg himself started this run with an email telling investors and companies to turtle up and stop hiring. The whole thing has become a self perpetuating loop. Companies also…
> blaming their poor performance on this downturn Do you think their poor performance is primarily due to something other than this downturn?
Over a decade of ignoring their customers and riding on their laurels probably doesn’t help. But don’t worry, everything is COVID’s fault.
Re: What’s going on with Google and Facebook hiring freezes?
#114Google has always recruited and interviewed independently of whether they actually have roles open that make sense for you. Earlier this year, I passed the interview and spent six weeks in "team match" before I gave up and took a role with another company. Had a friend who did the same for months for a PM role. Just bc you're getting contacted by Google recruiters this week or interviewing doesn't mean you'll ever fi…
Had a multi-month team matching phase followed by a 4-day exploding offer for ~50% below market and got blacklisted for a year or more when I didn't sign it. Great.
Re: What’s going on with Google and Facebook hiring freezes?
#115My hunch is that these companies are cargo-culting their strategies. The hiring freeze is as essentially a gut reaction. If one starts with layoffs, others will follow. The real problem is that companies of the Google scale will always need new engineers for particular projects and have a surplus for others. A global freeze or even layoffs simply don't fit.
> My hunch is that these companies are cargo-culting their strategies Yes most of these tech companies are the same. Their strategy is based off what other successful companies are doing. Also they want shareholders / investors to be on board. @paulg himself started this run with an email telling investors and companies to turtle up and stop hiring. The whole thing has become a self perpetuating loop. Companies also…
> @paulg himself started this run
No the fed started it by raising rates with the explicit goal of triggering a hiring freeze to chill the economy and reduce inflation: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/why-the-fed-wants-corporate-a...
Everything else is just a consequence of the fed deploying its one big lever.
Re: What’s going on with Google and Facebook hiring freezes?
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
It kind of makes sense to keep people in the pipeline as it were. If you shut down the whole apparatus, you have to spin it back up when hiring is unfrozen. But if you keep the machine running, you're ready to hire the instant you can. For them that is. Sucks for you and me.
At Google, upon entering the process, recruiters explain that an offer within engineering (including PM, T/PgM etc.) is valid for 12 months from the date of approval from the hiring committee. So while it can take a long time for someone to find a team match, that flexibility is also available for the candidate, so they get to keep declining teams that are not interesting until a real match for both sides is availabl…
> At Google, upon entering the process, recruiters explain that an offer within engineering (including PM, T/PgM etc.) is valid for 12 months from the date of approval from the hiring committee. So while it can take a long time for someone to find a team match, that flexibility is also available for the candidate, so they get to keep declining teams that are not interesting until a real match for both sides is available.
This is inaccurate. In 2019 a Google recruiter decided on my behalf which team I would match, extended a 4-day exploding offer, and blacklisted me when I said that other processes would take more than 4 days. This was within a couple months of passing hc.
Re: What’s going on with Google and Facebook hiring freezes?
#117Freeze? Both me and my friend from a previous project were recently approached by G's recruiters in Poland. I wasn't pursuing new roles at the time, but my friend figured he'd try and found that the recruiter's calendar was filled up to the brim. He asked what's going on and she replied that she has KPI to fulfill and this is the result. He followed up with a question about compensation and got a number which was...…
We are indeed still conducting interviews (I had one just on Friday). Whether that transfers to actual offers extended during this time, I have no idea. What I can say we are absolutely not doing at this time is rescinding offers, even for new grads. There certainly have been some shifts over the past year or two to prioritize growth in cheaper markets (for lack of a better term) -- one manager I talked to mentioned…
Are Googlers in general okay with the idea that their contributions are worth 1/4 as much if they live in Warsaw?
Re: What’s going on with Google and Facebook hiring freezes?
#118Google has always recruited and interviewed independently of whether they actually have roles open that make sense for you. Earlier this year, I passed the interview and spent six weeks in "team match" before I gave up and took a role with another company. Had a friend who did the same for months for a PM role. Just bc you're getting contacted by Google recruiters this week or interviewing doesn't mean you'll ever fi…
I stole this advice from a Blind post -- If one has trouble matching, one possibility is that they didn't impress the matching interviewers enough (no offense) for them to want the candidate to join. It can be helpful to treat those matching calls as interviews. Of course, it's also possible you don't see a team you like, but you gotta keep looking.
Re: What’s going on with Google and Facebook hiring freezes?
#119The Google internal propaganda game must be crazy strong if the actual employees are believing random management explanations designed to keep people from panicking. The US just formally entered a recession, in within a week of the economic turmoil multiple companies freeze hiring...
Re: What’s going on with Google and Facebook hiring freezes?
#120My hunch is that these companies are cargo-culting their strategies. The hiring freeze is as essentially a gut reaction. If one starts with layoffs, others will follow. The real problem is that companies of the Google scale will always need new engineers for particular projects and have a surplus for others. A global freeze or even layoffs simply don't fit.
The best businesses I've seen work counter-cyclically. When there are hiring freezes and layoffs, it's easy to find good cheap engineers and you hire. When job markets are hot, you put a pause on hiring. The same goes for many other things. A recession is an ideal time for deep R&D. There's little competition, and it's possible to do long-term thinking. When the recession ends, and the bubble begins, you hit jackpot.…
The problem is when things are going well you have the sales and thus money to hire and pay more staff, when things are bad you don't have the sales and thus don't have the income.
You are absolutely correct. This is one of the best measures of how good/bad management is: how many people they keep around in bad times, and ideally hire. Any idiot can manage a company when there is a ton of money coming in, it takes real talent to manage well in hard times.