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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?

#251

Post by dodobirdlord »

harambae wrote: post #223
parkingrift wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point it's just an argument of what constitutes a recession. The NBER definition requires a "significant decline in economic activity that is spread across the economy and lasts more than a few months." There is lots of leeway in there for defining a recession to be whatever you want to be. However, I think a GDP contraction of 1% (and decreasing) combined with robust job growth and increased spending would n…

If we hit a 3rd quarter in a row of contracting GDP, would you call it a recession?

Maybe not even then? GDP dropping while employment, spending, and demand increase indicates an economic expansion coinciding with a decrease in labor productivity, which is extremely weird and not at all like a conventional recession where the economy contracts. Different terminology might be required.

Additionally, with inflation at such a high level (9% or so), the last two quarter's real GDP growth estimates (-1.6% and -0.9%) are small percentages compared to the size of the error bars on the required inflation adjustment to compute the real GDP. Computing inflation is tricky and requires a lot of hand waving and boiling down different price changes across different sectors of the economy to get a single number, and if the calculation is off by even 1% (i.e. inflation is actually 8%), then the real GDP growth for last quarter would be positive at 0.1%.

This is also happening at the same time that the US dollar is getting increasingly valuable vs most foreign currencies, so measured in terms of foreign currency value the US real GDP is still increasing, which just compounds the weirdness.

Putting all of this together, I don't think the term "recession" is a good fit.

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

#252

Post by ajross »

WillPostForFood wrote: post #195
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…

If you zoom in on the FRED graph, you can see the recent rebound participation rate peaked in March, and has started a (slight) decline in the last quarter.

Don't do that. You're literally interpreting noise as signal. Look at the random wiggles elsewhere in the graph, they're the same size as the thing you're trying to interpret meaning from. Economics data just doesn't work on the timescale you want it to.

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

#253

Post by shreyshnaccount »

PheonixPharts wrote: post #189
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #104

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.

> And it's on the whole asphyxiating the industry. My understanding was that asphyxiating the industry was always the plan. For those who worked in industry pre-2008, one of the major drivers that allowed new startups to be so disruptive was that startups could very often compete with the then major tech companies on compensation. If there was a difference in pay, it was usually minor and could easily be made up for…

but this ends the dominance cycle, making it possible for startups to hire talented devs again, even if for lesser comp. doesn't it?

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

#254

Post by jahnu »

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.

It doesn’t have to cost that. You probably can hire people remotely. E.g. Almost nobody in the EU will cost you that much. Most good devs are less than €100k total cost.

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

#255

Post by whimsicalism »

firstSpeaker wrote: post #10

My process with Google just stopped. No further update form the recruiter. It just went on silence. Sometimes it feels like I made the right choice not changing to Klarna early this year and staying at my current work.

This happened to me. In general, G has a terrible process - but I ended up getting a higher offer elsewhere.

Turns out my recruiter had been fired.

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

#256

Post by parkingrift »

harambae wrote: post #223
parkingrift wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point it's just an argument of what constitutes a recession. The NBER definition requires a "significant decline in economic activity that is spread across the economy and lasts more than a few months." There is lots of leeway in there for defining a recession to be whatever you want to be. However, I think a GDP contraction of 1% (and decreasing) combined with robust job growth and increased spending would n…

If we hit a 3rd quarter in a row of contracting GDP, would you call it a recession?

I don't know. Are we still adding 370,000 jobs per month? What kind of GDP contraction are we talking about? 1%, 3%, 5%? Is the GDP contraction increasing or slowing from the prior quarters? If we went from -1.8% to -1.5% to -0.9% and we still had robust job growth I would probably say it's not a recession.

But again, what does it even matter? Seems like people are only arguing about this to score political points. If you think we're in a recession, you might be right. If you think this is transitory, you might be right. If it weren't an election year we might not be having this conversation at all.

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

#257

Post by whimsicalism »

kweinber wrote: post #214

Apple. Do not track. Ad impressions plummet. Revenue drops. Hiring stops. That’s why Facebook is trying to get you to stop looking at your phone and strap on an oculus….. there are no privacy guards there.

Don't think the Apple thing was as impactful to Google as it is to other players. I think the primary problem is that attribution becomes difficult, not that impressions plummet.

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

#258

Post by whimsicalism »

ep103 wrote: post #167
davidw wrote: post #146

I suppose this is "old man yells at clouds" material, but I feel like engineers should be practicing for their future jobs , not for interviews.

In our industry, the interview process is completely divorced from the skillset required for the actual job. Fittingly, this is because Google developed an interviewing process that was scalable, required minimal training, human-interactive or soft skills, and was objectively measurable (leetcode), while non-obviously biasing the interview process towards cheaper, younger interviewees. It is also an interview process…

> biasing the interview process towards cheaper, younger interviewees

Maybe young people entering tech are just smarter?

There's a lot more people entering in the funnel, so if we keep the size of those coming out the same I would expect them to be more talented.

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

#259

Post by kahnclusions »

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 could happen to the company: is that the Polish government or courts could deem the foreign company to be illegally operating in Poland (by virtue of employing you through a hidden contract), and require the company to set up a local legal entity, make corporate filings, pay taxes, etc. Or else pay fines. Or else get banned from operating in your country. You may also be entitled to rights under local employment laws regardless of what it says in your contract, which could also lead to the company being fined or banned.

What could happen to you: you get billed for the unpaid taxes and payroll contributions you should have been making. And possibly charged penalties or even fined for tax evasion.

Depends on the country’s specific laws and their government’s willingness to pursue things like this.

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

#260

Post by namdnay »

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,…

In France (and Germany too apparently), if you are found out - usually by a random tax audit - they will ask you to back-pay employee and employer contributions on the money that you received (so about 60% total)

the issue isn't really the company, as you pointed out, they are not in France, they're not subject to French law. The issue is that as a French tax resident, if you are meeting the criteria for employment (single company representing more than 80% of your revenue, everyday work relationship that is based on subordination etc etc), then you have to pay employment contributions

Why? For the same reason as every other mandatory insurance. If everyone who has a stable, well-paying job is skipping out of employment contributions, it makes the contributions for the others even higher, pushing more people out of the system etc until you have no-one left with employee protections

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