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What’s going on with Google and Facebook hiring freezes?

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Re: What’s going on with Google and Facebook hiring freezes?

#121
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

By then accepting their contract, yes?

Re: What’s going on with Google and Facebook hiring freezes?

#122

The 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...

Aside from the debate about 'formally*' entering a recession - if you do abide by the strict two quarters of real GDP decline rule, the economy still added ~2 million jobs during those same two quarters and the economy grew at a nominal ~6%. I don't think we're quite to the "economic turmoil" phase of things.

Re: What’s going on with Google and Facebook hiring freezes?

#123

The 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...

We entered a technical recession by the "two quarters of contracting GDP" rule of thumb, but labor numbers are still strong and that second quarter contracted less than the first [1], which is not what we've usually seen when entering a recession. [2]

[1] https://www.bea.gov/news/2022/gross-domestic-product-second-...

[2] https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/gdp-...

Re: What’s going on with Google and Facebook hiring freezes?

#124
post #87

Their data is based on a survey. According to LinkedIn, the following number of jobs per company have been created in the past week: Google 7k+ Apple 2k+ Amazon 39k+ Meta 2k+ If anyone has that premium feature (I don't have it anymore), you can check how the numbers changed over time.

Do not confusing job posting with openings. Companies have often posted advertisements for jobs they had no intent of hiring anyone for. The purpose is investors see those ads and think the company must be growing, even though management knows more people in that role would not translate it more profits in the future.

Re: What’s going on with Google and Facebook hiring freezes?

#125
I still have Meta and Google recruiters hitting me up even though there is a hiring freeze.

Niche enough jobs are still being hired for, and both recruiters repeated the line that there’s a hiring freeze except for “this” position.

I felt special for a second.

Re: What’s going on with Google and Facebook hiring freezes?

#126

The 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...

Aside from the debate about 'formally*' entering a recession - if you do abide by the strict two quarters of real GDP decline rule, the economy still added ~2 million jobs during those same two quarters and the economy grew at a nominal ~6%. I don't think we're quite to the "economic turmoil" phase of things.

Decision makers are now starting to openly push for moves to increase unemployment to get wage "inflation" down.

I feel we're about to enter into a situation very similar to the early 90s, and we'll see a wave of pro-austerity politics and a lot of talk about "tightening our belts" -- slashing employee rights and social programs and cutting all kinds of social spending -- which is really about re-instilling labour discipline.

I suspect here in Canada the temporary foreign worker program is about to have the floodgates opened. Employers, especially small businesses, are really not happy about having to pay more than minimum wage, and they're very unhappy about having their authority in the workplace undermined by workers with seemingly excessive bargaining power.

The situation in the US is obviously more complicated by their messed up immigration system.

Re: What’s going on with Google and Facebook hiring freezes?

#127
post #34
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Working 2 hours a day while getting paid 300K+ is unsustainable. That's just not true though. If you can generate $50m of revenue by working 2 hours a day then you're brilliant at your job, and demanding you work more hours is idiotic. Put simply, there is no function that converts "salary / hours" into any useful measure of a person's output.

The more likely scenario for most is that there are other people or mechanisms making the money, or that they're living off the success of previous efforts. It's not necessarily their fault at a company that large, sometimes people are just grossly under-utilized or misallocated. People can just vanish in a manner of speaking, by getting forgotten about or by having your responsibilities taken from you but not replac…

If you have some producers that aren't "pulling their weight" then that just means you have others that are pulling 2x+ and still only making a fraction of the actual value they provide.

I'll be the first to agree that FAANG and friends have ridiculous overhead and way more engineers than I think is necessary but these companies are making money hand over fist. If we are looking for fat to cut I'd start with management/execs in most cases.

Re: What’s going on with Google and Facebook hiring freezes?

#128
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I left G in Ireland about 4 months ago for a fully remote position at a startup. Up until then, G's Polish salaries were low even by Western European standards (which is ~ >= 1/2 of SV pay).

In my opinion this makes sense, what would be the incentive to hire there if wages were the same?

If you're struggling to find talent anywhere, why not hire in Poland?

As a Polish engineer, we all know that companies are struggling to hire anyone. If you think you can hire a local instead of me for the same money, good luck. From my perspective, if I'm delivering the same value as someone from another country I should not be paid less. My cost of living is my own business, whether it's the lease on a car, the number of kids I have or, in this case, the country I choose to live in.

Part of the hiring in cheaper countries is the possibility to exploit the wealth disparity and cut costs, sure. But in case of remote IT jobs, IME it's more of a fact that companies can't find anyone so they'll hire from anywhere, including cheaper countries. Doesn't mean that the employees should let themselves be played though, it's a seller's market after all (for now).

Re: What’s going on with Google and Facebook hiring freezes?

#129
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

if it's the best offer you can get, would you quit just because someone else on another continent is being paid more?

Re: What’s going on with Google and Facebook hiring freezes?

#130

The people I know who are still inside (Google) seem optimistic that maybe the company is taking a pause to deal with some of its bureaucracy and internal politics issues and with people's complaints about perf. I suppose that's good. From my perspective: They've got way too many people doing a lot of meh work and feeling really ... important about it. And it's on the whole asphyxiating the industry.

If someone thinks Google can even scratch any of those issues in two weeks then you've really been drinking some Google kool aid.

edit: Increased clarity.

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