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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?

#241

Post by rubiquity »

bsaul wrote: post #95
Olreich wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Estimates put the workforce for AWS at ~100k-200k right now. AWS income is ~80b right now according to their Q2 earnings release. Based on these numbers, a person working for AWS is making Amazon ~$400k in revenue. The profit for AWS at the moment is 30% according to the Q2 filings and nets out to ~$24b. So, assuming 200k employees for AWS which is very software-developer heavy says they are making at least $120k per…

those numbers are scary for anyone ever thinking about competing with amazon... I'm really stupefied by the way this company is operating..

Those precious margins will be their competitor's opportunity. Right now the cloud cartel is happy to all grow quickly and pretend compete with each other, but once that stops the margins will thin out.

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

#242

Post by whimsicalism »

anonymoushn wrote: post #114
kleinsch wrote: post #75

Google 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.

> got blacklisted for a year or more when I didn't sign it

Never heard of anything like this in the non-startup industry

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

#243

Post by balfirevic »

badpun wrote: post #165
namdnay wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

How is it solved in France then? I dont' think it's possible to have an trans-national employment contract (which labor laws would the contract observe? The French ones or the US ones?). So, how do French people work remotely for US companies? I don't think most countries' laws are set up for a situation where a company employs a worker that does not live in the same country.

I wouldn't take namday's comment at face value without some kind of citation.

It could be that it works similarly to Croatia - it's not illegal, but if you are found to be "a hidden employee" you simply owe taxes and retirement/healthcare contributions as if entire income of your single-employee company was your salary.

It could be that it's actually illegal in France. But many people are confused about how it works here in Croatia, so it wouldn't surprise me if it were the case in France too.

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

#244

Post by Balgair »

crazygringo wrote: post #219
Balgair wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, someone must have spiked my coffee this morning. Am I reading this right? Your friend spent 9 months interviewing for a single job? And then he decided that the company that had been trying to hire him for a pregnancy's worth of time was somewhere that he wanted to work after already having a job that hired him in a month? Is this 'normal' for the Goog? If so, why am I not shorting this company? No really,…

Yes that's not abnormal for a Google PM. Basically it takes ~2 weeks of initial phone screening and scheduling, then another ~4 weeks that will involve setting up the full day of interviews and collecting feedback and making a decision on whether or not to hire. So basically after ~6 weeks from first being contacted by a recruiter, you know whether or not Google wants you. This is not unreasonable for a large company…

I want to make sure I'm on the right page here:

PM = Project Manager.

Projects can range from something like all of Project Loon down to some one small little thing.

Project managers can manage many people (and other managers) down to only one other person.

Project managers are given access to budgets, including hiring and project budgeting.

The role is somewhat ambiguous, but you are definitely in the 'Management' side of the business now, not the 'Labor' side.

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

#245

Post by namdnay »

badpun wrote: post #165
namdnay wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

How is it solved in France then? I dont' think it's possible to have an trans-national employment contract (which labor laws would the contract observe? The French ones or the US ones?). So, how do French people work remotely for US companies? I don't think most countries' laws are set up for a situation where a company employs a worker that does not live in the same country.

There are two legal ways to do this:

1) The company opens a branch in France, with as director and sole employee the person in question. Employment contributions are collected on the money that the French branch pays to its (sole) employee. Very simple to set up, does require a bit of work from an accountant for the yearly accounts (I'd say to budget about 1kE/year)

2) The employee joins an IT contracting company that already has a commercial presence in both countries, they will take 10% of the take (known as "portage salarial")

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

#246

Post by namdnay »

mejutoco wrote: post #169
namdnay wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

As a datapoint, in Germany it is not considered "hidden employment contract" unless it is more than 80% of your income. I could imagine some similar rules in France, but I do not know. An alternative way that probably works in France too is to have a limited company and invoice from that.

ah yes of course, if it really "one of many" jobs it's fine in France too. What I understood from the conversation was people trying to do this for a "100% job"

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

#247

Post by balfirevic »

xyzzyz wrote: post #168
namdnay wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Not sure about France, but in Poland, if you’re sending invoices to an entity that has no presence in Poland, is not incorporated there, has no offices etc, it can hardly be legally seen to be a legal “employment” relationship. But, assuming the situation above, even if it is illegal (which I strongly doubt), so what? What can the system do here to you? Will it jail you or fine you, or otherwise stop you, the worker,…

> What can the system do here to you? Will it jail you or fine you, or otherwise stop you, the worker, for “illegally” working on a wrong type of contract?

It can charge additional taxes and pension/healthcare contributions (which is how it works in Croatia).

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

#248

Post by ajross »

smaryjerry wrote: post #198
ajross wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Strong labor numbers means wages would be increasing. Wages are increasing, that's one of the inflation drivers people are complaining about. > What would be an issue is the labor participation rate decreasing, which it is Not per FRED: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART It's quite clearly still rebounding from the covid shock. I think you're trying to say that the long term trend is clearly downward. But t…

Real wages are not increasing. The ‘Real’ part of real wages means after adjustment for inflation. See link, we’ve been going straight down in real wages. We are already back below pre-COVID wages. That means we are back to wage levels around 3 years ago. In any job if you got no raise in 3 years then you should not look at that as a good thing - and that’s what has happened to everyone, on average after accounting f…

That's arguing about leading/lagging indicators, though. Wages go up with inflation, more or less by definition. Wage increases due to inflation can't be measured until after the fact, though.

Short version: "inflation" is not remotely the same thing as "recession", which seems to be the point you're trying to make. If your only evidence for an economic slowdown is prices and not production or consumption, you're likely confusing factors.

Clearly the truth is that the labor market remains strong. Most people are working. Most people have multiple choices in jobs. Most people are making more money (yes, in nominal dollars) than they were last year. Those are all signs of a healthy economy. They are not the only signs of a healthy economy, and there can be other aspects (like inflation) which are less desirable[1]

[1] Though probably 80% of the people who like to yell about it don't really understand it well. Inflation, by reducing the size of existing investments and debts (i.e. "stuff wealthier people have") relative to the economy as a whole (i.e. "wage levels for everyone"), acts naturally to reduce income and asset inequality. It's not entirely a bad thing.

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

#249

Post by nomel »

yuan43 wrote: post #139

> As several of these statements blatantly contradict one another, I went back to the data and ran the same sanity check that I did with Facebook above. In other words, what if Google is using the hiring freeze as a smoke screen and only continuing with the strongest candidates, while keeping the rest on the bench? An actual hiring freeze sends a very strong negative signal to employees and investors. To employees it…

> To employees it says "the ship is sinking." Layoffs are right around the corner and that is absolute poison to morale. To investors it says "technical or not, we've hit a recession." Brace yourselves for impact

While it’s possibly true in this case, that’s definitely not always true. I’ve been in two companies that had to implement a hiring freeze because growth was too fast. Everyone understood, because nobody new each other, because half the company was just hired.

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

#250

Post by BlargMcLarg »

itstomkent wrote: post #240
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I mean, I came to Google through an acquisition (of an adtech company) and it was pretty clear to me that the goal of the whole process was a) make your company go away and stop your customers from using you instead of us and b) get as much of your talent out of the job market as possible. They totally didn't care about our product or the productivity of the employees they brought in. They let us sit and twiddle…

It's kind of insane that on the one hand we have folks playing lip service to "anyone can learn to code" and on the other, decent developers being so rare that to hire one you need to offer compensation equal to winning a minor lottery for just 2-4 years worth of work. I wonder how much more software would get written if it didn't cost $250-500K/yr for a single developer.

You're projecting a very specific SV bubble. More than enough decent developers exist outside of it, willing to work for a fraction. It's the fat profits and the big boys' eagerness to poach talent that got us this far, which subsequently inflated the QoL in these tech hubs, in turn creating the current standard.
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