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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?

#381

Post by philipov »

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.

Anyone can learn to code, just like anyone can learn to write a decent essay. Not everyone can become a professional author.

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

#382

Post by dthul »

s1k3s wrote: post #87

Their data is based on a survey. According to LinkedIn, the following number of jobs per company have been created in the past week: Google 7k+ Apple 2k+ Amazon 39k+ Meta 2k+ If anyone has that premium feature (I don't have it anymore), you can check how the numbers changed over time.

I tried getting an interview for one of those LinkedIn posts and even though I had a really good starting point (successful internship within the last few months plus an internal referral from someone working in the group I applied for plus being a good fit based on my skills and education) I wasn't even invited for a first interview, only got a generic rejection by email. So I don't think these postings are all real.

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

#383

Post by vidarh »

alecbz wrote: post #344
time_to_smile wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

One thing worth remembering, and that even a lot of socialists forget, is that Marx predicted this not out of some deep hate for capitalism.

The first half of the first chapter of the Communist Manifesto is Marx being a total fanboy for capitalism and it's capacity for transforming the world.

Marx predicted that capitalist competition, which he expressed admiration for, would be too successful, and that people would just fail to reign it in and deal with the result.

There's a conceptually very simple fix to the crises Marx predicted if he's otherwise right:

Share more of the value, and spread labour around if automation comes to reduce the need for labour to the extent he predicted, where, to paraphrase, both overproduction and lack of work becomes common.

It doesn't take equality to prevent it, just enough adjustment to smooth out the crises enough to prevent escalation.

Marx took capitalists own predictions about the efficiency of capitalist competition at face value, and simply asked what will happen if capitalism eventually runs out of new markets to expand into (temporarily or permanently) and responds by driving down margins, and his prediction of eventual revolution is predicated on the assumption that society will fail to apply those very simple fixes.

Ironically, then, if capitalism survives, it might be because the competitive pressures are not as strong as Marx believed.

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

#384

Post by vidarh »

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,…

Turned down Google receuiters way too early to know if that's typical, but Facebook recruiters told me from the outset the process was 6 months and that they'd provide me with a reading list, and was then surprised when I told then I'd let them know if I was willing to consider that if they provided me with a compensation range. Days after, once they'd figured out the comp range, I told them I wasn't interested. This is London, and while their total comp was good, it was not SV good and not a big enough step up to be worth 6 months of interviews and a reading list.

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

#385

Post by alasdair_ »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #199
PheonixPharts wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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…

>Re: startups and compensation one major thing that has changed since 20 years ago is that it is simply not possible to become wealthy (like "I can afford going to retire wealthy" or "I can now afford to seed my own startup wealthy") out of the equity package that a startup will offer unless you're the cofounders or a founding employee.

I guess it depends how you define a "founding employee". I know several engineers who made enough to retire who joined unicorns around the pre-series A time or at the time of the raise itself but were not founding engineers.

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

#386

Post by TulliusCicero »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #238
ghaff wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just startups. If someone wants to and can get an offer from one of the richer big tech companies (FAANG isn't really the right acronym as Microsoft at least is also in the mix) and is just going to go with the best offer, just about no one is going to be able to compete--at least in the US. I've heard plenty of stories of companies not even trying to match offers.

Yes in my job hunt over the last 6 months basically the first thing I have had to say to potential employers is: "No, I'm not expecting to match what I was getting at Google." Pretty sure that a lot of places I simply didn't hear back from was because they didn't expect to be able to even come close on comp. And I've had other Xoogler friends who applied for places, got promising initial results, and then insanely lo…

> But part of it is that FAANG compensation is just far more than anybody else could ever afford.

I don't think this is true. I've had friends getting comparable comp offers at HBO and NatGeo, for example. And of course it's been known for some time that successful startups like Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, Dropbox, etc. were doing comparable offers.

Once a company decides to really compete digitally, and that they can leverage economies of scale properly there, it suddenly makes sense to compete for the same class of engineer that can work at Google, Meta, etc.

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

#387

Post by alasdair_ »

golergka wrote: post #361
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why not hire completely international then?

Timezones and IP and labor laws mostly.

Having a team completely unavailable during the USA working day is a real pain for collaboration and it's hard to sue people in other countries that "borrow" your source code to make their own version. Also, knowing exactly how to pay (say) a German developer and how taxes work and what the labor laws are is always an issue.

Aside: The very best contractors I ever hired were Ukranian. So many absolutely fantastic talents at around $30 an hour. Then Russia invaded (the first time) and annexed Sevastopol and the USA made it illegal to pay them any more.

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

#388

Post by saagarjha »

tytso wrote: post #334
PheonixPharts wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I work at Google so my perspective is to be biased, but that's not what I see. I work on infrastructure, and so a few years back, when I proposed a major project, I had to demonstrate how it would save *many* times the fully loaded cost of the engineers on the team, by reducing the Storage TCO for all of Google (for example). It was not enough for the project to "break even" --- the benefits had to do more than just…

> As a TL, I don't want to waste my precious approved headcount on people who just want to rest and vest, or people who believe in the crazy talk of only needing to work 30 minutes each day.

And yet these people exist and get hired, even at Google. Perhaps not on your team, but they’re definitely there.

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

#389

Post by aix1 »

anonymoushn wrote: post #117
vitus wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are indeed still conducting interviews (I had one just on Friday). Whether that transfers to actual offers extended during this time, I have no idea. What I can say we are absolutely not doing at this time is rescinding offers, even for new grads. There certainly have been some shifts over the past year or two to prioritize growth in cheaper markets (for lack of a better term) -- one manager I talked to mentioned…

Are Googlers in general okay with the idea that their contributions are worth 1/4 as much if they live in Warsaw?

There are definitely issues with Google's comp system, but the fact that pay depends on location is IMO not unreasonable.

Especially so given that there's often a lot of flexibility with regards to location.

For example, I chose to relocate from London to Zürich (without changing teams/project). I did it for quality-of-life reasons but the comp also increased quite significantly, even adjusted for cost of living.

And I am not some special snowflake: everybody around me who wanted to be based somewhere else had their relocation requests approved.

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

#390

Post by zerr »

Tade0 wrote: post #207
badpun wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm contracting remotely out of Poland and $150k-$170k is definitely doable, especially if you're willing to work for an US company (and adjust to their timezone a bit).

Yeah, I have a few friends who reached this level of compensation working remotely. It's a nice life - I can't say I'm not envious. I had to travel to Switzerland and deal with the costs of living there to have such a rate and the project was timeboxed. Interestingly nowadays you don't need to work for a US client. Switzerland, Norway and Ireland(out of all places) offer similar salaries without the zombifying differ…

Isn't Ireland stuck in 5-figure?
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