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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?

#141

Post by gwnywg »

tadzik_ wrote: post #128
gwnywg wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 nu…

I'm no expert and try to judge based on what I personally experienced, and I get your point. But I also know this is not how businesses operate. Having seen it from the inside, hearing those conversations, I know business decision makers would rather hire somebody locally than from abroad (from different jurisdiction) - if overal cost of hire was the same. But if you can get the same work done and pay less, then this is objectively worthy thing to be done. I have seen huge corporation pivoting towards outsourcing everything to India (software development, accounting, customer support, everything) because it was way cheaper than run those centers locally. This is becoming less and less fruitful since India had seen their wages going up in the past years, so at some point this trend may reverse.

I bet there are others who have different and maybe more grounded opinions, I only share what I experienced myself.

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

#142

Post by xhrpost »

_gabe_ wrote: post #136
phailhaus wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-...

I've never understood how strong labor numbers negate a recession. Like sure your money is worth less because of all the inflation, and your COL keeps increasing but your wages remain the same, but hey we have lots of people working. Maybe somebody smarter than me can explain how these two correlate lol.

Hopefully I'm not being snarky here, but if you looked at another country with a smaller economy, and then saw that they employee fewer people, would you be equally confused?

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

#143

Post by throw0101a »

mikeyouse wrote: post #122
SQueeeeeL wrote: post #119

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.

> Aside from the debate about 'formerly' entering a recession

"Formally"?

* https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/formal

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

#144

Post by namdnay »

wrzuteczka wrote: post #133
Nextgrid wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't mind me asking, what's your legal setup and way of landing US contracts? Most I've seen require a US-based legal entity (which is the tricky bit I can't figure out, as to the best of my knowledge there's no way to set one up without having existing ties/citizenship in the US).

The "employee" creates a single-person company in Poland (or any other EU country, I guess) and sends invoices monthly. Honestly, it's trivial to set up. I'd say it's even easier than the standard employment process in the EU.

it depends on the EU country. this would be illegal in france for example, considered a "hidden employment contract" (which it is)

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

#145

Post by Grimburger »

_gabe_ wrote: post #136
phailhaus wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-...

I've never understood how strong labor numbers negate a recession. Like sure your money is worth less because of all the inflation, and your COL keeps increasing but your wages remain the same, but hey we have lots of people working. Maybe somebody smarter than me can explain how these two correlate lol.

> negate a recession

What do you think GDP actually measures?

A hurricane that kills 1000 people increases GDP for instance.

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

#147

Post by mikeyouse »

throw0101a wrote: post #143
mikeyouse wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Aside from the debate about 'formerly' entering a recession "Formally"? * https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/formal

Ha - yep. Just making my way through my coffee... definitely meant formally.

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

#148

Post by tadzik_ »

gwnywg wrote: post #141
tadzik_ wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 nu…

I'm no expert and try to judge based on what I personally experienced, and I get your point. But I also know this is not how businesses operate. Having seen it from the inside, hearing those conversations, I know business decision makers would rather hire somebody locally than from abroad (from different jurisdiction) - if overal cost of hire was the same. But if you can get the same work done and pay less, then this…

Oh, I absolutely agree – there is an overhead to hiring remotely (especially if you need to operate another business there, like Google does in Warsaw), so if you have to pay someone the same and cover that overhead then it's a bad business decision to do this at all. Timezone/cultural issues also come into this.

So yeah, I'm not surprised that businesses (try to) do this – but in the current situation it's worthwhile (and possible) for the hires (especially contractors) to try to go against that and argue for higher pay. Even if the actual SV salary is not within reach, you can at least try to stay within the same order of magnitude – and more often than not, especially at the end of the interview process, it'd be cheaper for the company to hire you anyway than to start over with someone else.

That's all in my narrow experience of working with smaller companies – in megacorps with strict levels/salary rules like Google it's probably another story. And that's also why Google is not (any longer?) the holy grail for Polish workers.

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

#149

Post by bioemerl »

onion2k wrote: post #26
ripper1138 wrote: post #9

Earlier 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.

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.

> you can generate $50m of revenue by working 2 hours a day then you're brilliant

Or you're working at a useless user hostile company that's coasting on tools and ideas from a decade ago while failing hard at everything it does today.

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

#150

Post by davidw »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #126
mikeyouse wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 di…

I have no idea what will happen myself, but it all feels a bit different. I think a lot of what's going on are still shocks from the pandemic, supply chains, and geopolitical stuff.
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