What’s going on with Google and Facebook hiring freezes? • Hacker News Board

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

#301

Post by luckydata » Tue, Aug 02, 2022, 4:45 PM UTC

Balgair wrote: post #203

ahmadss wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A friend of mine spent ended up spending 9 months in the Google pipeline for a PM role. During the early phases of the cycle (1 month in) he received and accepted an offer at Capital One and joined as a PM. Spent 7 months at Capital One while still interviewing for Google, and then managed to get an offer and team placement. Surprised it took that long, but he's happy he stuck w the Google process.

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,…

The process has two steps:

1. validate that you pass the minimum bar to work at Google as a PM. Whichever team ends up talking to you, they know you're at least minimally competent.

2. understand if you are a fit for the specific team and product. That might take a long time cause openings come and go, sometimes they get filled by internal candidates which are always a favorite cause learning how to function inside Google takes time.

It's annoying from the perspective of an external candidate but now that I work at Google I understand why it's done this way, especially considering that Google has a very weak internal training system and the chaos is so prevalent it takes at least 6 months to get the hang of things.

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

#302

Post by AlwaysRock » Tue, Aug 02, 2022, 4:46 PM UTC

It's kind of odd that people are this shocked about this. Google and FB have frozen various roles for various periods of time over the last 2-3 years. I'm guessing they have on and off for most of their existence. I just want clued into their hiring process then.

The freezes almost always are for lower level roles only (l3 or l4) and dont REALLY impact anything since these companies are pretty slow to begin with. The people impacted by this are early career folks who are likely interviewing for general swe roles at these companies and a slew of others.

FB and Alphabet will almost always still be moving folks with specialized skills sets through their pipeline and even if "no offers are going out" a L7 machine learning engineer or security engineer or android engineer who is already matched with a team is still getting an offer.

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

#303

Post by nwsm » Tue, Aug 02, 2022, 4:46 PM UTC

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…

After completing ~9 interviews (2 video interviews, 5 on-site interviews, and then was asked to complete 2 additional video interviews after mediocre on-site results), I passed Google's "hiring committee" and then was put in their team match process. Over the next 4 months I had ~4 calls with hiring managers, none of them fruitful (and not for lack of my own enthusiasm or willingness to leave my comfort zone). After this the recruiter basically said they'd be in touch if any other opportunities came up.

The process is absolutely insane and an obvious symptom of Google knowing people really, really want to work there. They do not respect the candidate at all, and then will cold email you again a year later as if you've forgotten how painful it was the first time. I'll probably end up interviewing again.

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

#304

Post by namdnay » Tue, Aug 02, 2022, 4:46 PM UTC

balfirevic wrote: post #281

namdnay wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree with what you say, it depends on the specific setup (specifically, whether a judge will consider that it was an employment relationship). My statement was in response to someone who was clearly describing an employment relationship: > The "employee" creates a single-person company in Poland

Yes, I was also referring to a scenario where you create a single-person company and have a single source of revenue from a de-facto employer. Is it really illegal in France or do you just owe more taxes/contributions than if you had multiple clients (which would allow you to take part of the revenue as company profits, instead of having to channel it all as a salary)? Looking at your comment [0] it sounds like it mi…

It would be illegal in France to do it without declaring yourself as an employee, and therefore paying contributions . “Illegal” as in if you get caught you’ll get a fin and back-taxes, not jail or anything

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

#305

Post by ryandrake » Tue, Aug 02, 2022, 4:46 PM UTC

ninkendo wrote: post #31

onion2k wrote: 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.

Or the far more likely scenario is that your job is only barely needed in the first place, and you were hired because some line manager knows that increasing their head count is the best way to get promoted. And since their manager is thinking the same (and probably one layer above too), and the company is still doing gangbusters on ad revenue, no one really questions it.

I just don’t get how this is possible. Every single company I’ve ever worked at (large and small) has had at least 10x more work in the backlog than could possibly be done with the staff they have. Everyone’s JIRA queue is stuffed full, and since there is so much work, things have to be brutally prioritized and even high-value stuff has to be cut, since there are just not enough people-hours to get it all done.

Where are these companies/teams who have nothing to do, or so little to do they have time for side projects??

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

#306

Post by joshuamorton » Tue, Aug 02, 2022, 4:46 PM UTC

winternett wrote: post #271

granshaw wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, small/mid contracting companies (aka agencies) paying more than Google? Are you based in the US? Care sharing the company name(s)?

You're focused on a different angle than on what I posted. There are so many factors that affect compensation for each individual employee, comparison of pay is useless. Geographical region also has big bearing on the discussion, and it really makes no sense to compare compensation online with a public audience in that manner. I won't discuss specific details and employers online for obvious reasons. I reside on the…

I think you have some misunderstanding, because it takes approximately one month to start vesting at Google (and Facebook) and at Google your equity is frontloaded.

I'll happily tell you what the approximate compensation is by Google in Atlanta or NYC, because there's really no reason not to discuss those things.

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

#307

Post by luckydata » Tue, Aug 02, 2022, 4:46 PM UTC

ayberk wrote: post #216

nosefrog wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's weird, most people I know with Google offers say they're good for a year or more.

Not quite. If you pass the hiring committee, you have one year to find a team. So it's more like your interview result is good for a year. After you match with a team you get the actual offer and it has the usual deadlines. Hiring processed has changed though, so I'm not sure if this is still true.

team matching has been removed. Now you get interviewed for a specific role, which streamlines the process quite a bit and saves time for everyone.

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

#308

Post by shard » Tue, Aug 02, 2022, 4:48 PM UTC

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?

Looking at it another way: Q1 GDP contracted by 1.6%, Q2 by 0.9%. If Q3 contracts by 0.2%, should we call it a recession?

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

#309

Post by eclipxe » Tue, Aug 02, 2022, 4:48 PM UTC

ransom1538 wrote: post #276

itstomkent wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 literally can go on indeed.com and check for "$250-500K/yr for a single developer". It. Does. Not. Exist. Yes there are a few at FAANG that do make this, but this isn't the current market.

indeed.com isn't what you should be looking at. levels.fyi

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

#310

Post by davidw » Tue, Aug 02, 2022, 4:48 PM UTC

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…

Our industry is big enough that there are plenty of people not aping Google, and conducting different kinds of interviews. As someone who has been doing this for a while, I'm pretty appreciative of people who 'think differently'.