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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?

#401

Post by chrisseaton »

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…

If that’s the case why have they always had such astronomically high hiring bars? I’d they wanted to deny anyone else talented engineers why would they reject so many?

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

#402

Post by kragen »

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…

You also wrote major parts of Linux, so it's possible your contact with Googlers might be biased towards the more functional parts of the organization. Your bar for "talented engineer" may be higher than average parts of Google.

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

#403

Post by Apocryphon »

tjpnz wrote: post #42
solardev wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any evidence these are connected?

Things got bad enough to warrant guidelines around the discussion of politics and non-work related matters on internal lists.

Then how do you explain the business troubles of companies that ban political discussion, whether Coinbase or Basecamp?

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

#404

Post by Balgair »

vidarh wrote: post #384
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,…

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…

What would such a list even include?

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

#405

Post by michaelt »

alasdair_ wrote: post #385
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…

>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…

'Back in the day' the graffiti artist who painted the first Facebook office got shares that ended up worth $200 million [1] because in those days, investors hadn't figured out they could get away with offering a lot less.

More recently, last time I was on the job market and interviewed with startups, their offers were more along the lines of "If the company value rises to $1 billion, your stock options will be worth enough to buy a 3 bedroom family home within 30 minutes of the office" - a decent chunk of change, no doubt, but not enough to retire on, and far from guaranteed.

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/graffiti-artist-painted-face...

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

#406

Post by cmrdporcupine »

seabrookmx wrote: post #349
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.

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. I…

Yep I had a job offer fall through after several months of verbal offering & negotiation because the company was acquired and the new parent company had logistical problems hiring Canadians. Though mostly due to their own incompetence, it sounds like (their employer of record situation was charging insane overhead for Canadians).

So I'm also working as a contractor for a US (well, international remote but US incorporation I guess) company right now. And, yeah, no benefits isn't great. But I have also found that paying out of pocket for dental, etc. is better than buying a plan for myself.

Also a bit of a bummer that CRA has tightened up incorporation stuff a bit since the last time I did this. Given I have a single client only right now, I'll just be doing sole proprietorship.

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

#407

Post by aliyeysides »

mkl95 wrote: post #48

How can large companies with high turnover like Google and Facebook afford to stop hiring engineers? Do they downsize teams, shut down projects, or something else?

My recruiter told me Google's attrition rate this year has been one of the lowest in recent memory. Fears of recession could have to do with that. People don't want to take the risk of leaving a "stable" job.

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

#408

Post by rileyphone »

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.

Learning programming is throwing yourself at a wall until you figure it out, a natural gatekeeping force that is exacerbated by the unfriendliness and complexity of development environments. An intentionally designed tool and system could enable far more developers at reasonable yet respectable salaries.

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

#409

Post by ironman1478 »

saagarjha wrote: post #396
ironman1478 wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple has a ton of engineers and they are able to pump out high quality products with really cool features. Its possible, but it requires focus (look at how limited Apple's product line is compared to Google) and it does require people in leadership positions with very clear visions, which Apple definitely has.

Apple has like an order of magnitude fewer engineers.

Oh man you're right. I did not realize that
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