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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?

#341

Post by coding123 »

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…

That's the plan for all industries and competition. It's a little weird to see it for employment pricing, but that makes sense too.

Years ago my town had a bunch of lumber yards where you can get market rate lumber. Home Depot moved in and provided way lower than market rate lumber until all of the independent lumber yards went out of business in the area.

Then they raised the price above market rate and that's that. Everyone hates them for that but we all shop there.

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

#342

Post by robertlagrant »

lamontcg wrote: post #336

We're not in a recession. Yet. Google and Facebook are ahead of the curve and mostly using the headlines to shake things up internally right now. It does show that the billionaires are kind of enthusiastic though about the coming recession and economic pain being inflicted on the lower classes, and getting those uppity workers a bit more under control. They're not so worried about asset prices / stock prices / sales…

What shows that? Are you calling the < L7 engineering candidates at Facebook and Google the "lower classes"?

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

#343

Post by baby »

aksjdhmkjasdof wrote: post #285
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…

>An actual hiring freeze sends a very strong negative signal to employees and investors. To employees it says "the ship is sinking." Layoffs are right around the corner and that is absolute poison to morale. I don't agree with this analysis. I'd be shocked if Google did any layoffs (though it's always possible) instead of just freezing hiring and letting natural attrition happen for a while. As for the signal to empl…

FB is still printing money so I'm not sure how it's not a stable business

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

#344

Post by alecbz »

time_to_smile wrote: post #277
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…

> the business cycle Just an aside, that this rebranding of Marx's theory of crisis never fails to get a chuckle out of me. In mainstream economics is presented as some magical property of the way economies work, where Marx specifically predicts cyclically economic crisis created by contradictions inherent in the structure of capitalism, the periodically build to a tipping point leading to crisis and ultimately the r…

> For Marx, these crises ultimately culminate in the unavoidable collapse of capitalism.

But I mean that's exactly the whole difference, right? Both Marx and others identified this pattern, Marx believes this ultimately will explode, others don't, so it makes sense that others would want to label it in a way that indicates their view that the pattern is "normal" and sustainable.

I'm not even saying Marx is wrong, but just because Marx thought something about something he noticed doesn't mean he's right. Others that came after him are allowed to come to different conclusions about the things he noticed.

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

#345

Post by askafriend »

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.

LOL no one uses Indeed for compensation - the information is all wrong. At minimum you should be looking at levels.fyi.

In my last job search which wasn't too long ago, I got several offers and not a single one was below $400k.

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

#346

Post by rapsey »

baby wrote: post #340
lamontcg wrote: post #336

We're not in a recession. Yet. Google and Facebook are ahead of the curve and mostly using the headlines to shake things up internally right now. It does show that the billionaires are kind of enthusiastic though about the coming recession and economic pain being inflicted on the lower classes, and getting those uppity workers a bit more under control. They're not so worried about asset prices / stock prices / sales…

I mean FB's stock got halved in the last few months

That is because investors don't see a good future for that company. It is basically failing on all fronts.

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

#347

Post by baby »

AlwaysRock wrote: post #302

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…

This ^ I remember hiring being frozen for some time at the beginning of covid for FB

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

#348

Post by baby »

rapsey wrote: post #346
baby wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean FB's stock got halved in the last few months

That is because investors don't see a good future for that company. It is basically failing on all fronts.

this is response to this comment:

> We're not in a recession. Yet. Google and Facebook are ahead of the curve and mostly using the headlines to shake things up internally right now.

which has nothing to do with investors

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

#349

Post by seabrookmx »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #274
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.

Hire Canadians. Currency conversion advantage. Same time zones. Same language. Mostly same culture. Very well educated. Cheaper health care benefits. And $150k USD is a generous compensation level, and $250USD is about what a Canadian Googler @ L4 gets paid. $100-$125k USD gets you reasonable non-senior talent.

Canadian here, and this checks out.

I think the reason this isn't more popular is that our talent pool is small enough that unless you already have a Canadian presence it's not really worth opening up a business unit/office/whatever here. Obviously some big players have done it (MS, Amazon, EA) but if you're a medium sized company it may not be worth it.

I work for a US company but I'm a contractor for this reason. It works for me but if you don't have extended health through your partner or don't want to deal with the tax implications of being "self employed", it can be less attractive.

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

#350

Post by justinlloyd »

guiriduro wrote: post #297
washbrain wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100k - accounting for pay, benefits, office space, training, hiring, computing equipment, support services (hr, etc)? In the States, those things can exceed the salary cost of the engineer.

> Managers don’t want to have to get up at 6am just to meet their reports. Should be outsourcing at the programme or project level, not hiring employees to add to US teams, then.

Well then we should just keep moving Eastwards from California until we find the cheapest teams we can and outsource to those, right? Let me know how that works out.
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