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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?

#421

Post by alasdair_ »

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…

> Facebook recruiters told me from the outset the process was 6 months

That's crazy. When I joined FB a few years ago the total time was under a month.

The reading list thing makes sense for some people who have never done a FAANG-like interview before. I remember moving from London to the USA early in my career and I had no idea how the process worked and so I got my first phone screeen with Amazon, thinking I'd explain a bit about my background and we'd have a bit of a chat and instead I got "Okay. Give me code to perform an in-order traversal of a binary tree." which was NOT something I was remotely prepared to do at the time :)

If you know the format and basic types of questions (and have access to leetcode etc.) it's not too bad, but a lot of these resources weren't around 15 years ago, especially to people from another country with no context.

A second Amazon interview aside: in an in-person interview I did, things had been going very well and I was on my fifth interview of the day. Again, I was recently from London and hadn't fully understood that words mean different things in the USA than they do in the UK. I was asked to design a GPS system. This seems simple enough if you know that "GPS" in the USA is the same thing as a "SatNav" or "Satellite Navigation" system in the UK and that the goal would be to build a system that could compute an efficient route between two points.

The problem was that I assumed the person wanted, well, a GPS system. i.e. he wanted a design for a set of satellites in geosynchronous orbit that would, using very precise timing, allow a person almost anywhere on earth to get a latitude and longitude like "12.345, -2.345" and so we spent almost the whole of the conversation talking about two different things and even when I was given the hint that maybe I could use some kind of graph algorithm, I had no idea how to use Dijkstra's to solve clock drift on a satellite :)

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

#422

Post by tmpz22 »

onion2k wrote: post #26
ripper1138 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inevitable. Working 2 hours a day while getting paid 300K+ is unsustainable. Most of the Googlers I know have been spending 20% of their time on Google and 80% on side projects for the past year now.

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.

> If you can generate $50m of revenue by working 2 hours a day

This is irrational. You're only able to generate $50m in revenue because a giant multi-billion dollar apparatus exists and is maintained around you and that is not free. In almost all circumstances you were not the sole driver of that revenue.

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

#423

Post by Firmwarrior »

typon wrote: post #338
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I mean, this is my take, too. I have worked for places that offered equity a few times. It did turn into something once (Google bought my employer). But the actual equity conversion was minor in quantity compared to the rest of my Google TC. There's no way out of "serfdom" other than starting your own company. I don't think this is healthy. The incentives are not there for engineers in startups to really put th…

> There's no way out of "serfdom" other than starting your own company. Took me 10 years of grinding to finally realize this. Now at this stage the only question is how do I do it?

You can just save your way out too. I started on the path to FIRE (check out /r/financialindependence on Reddit) about 10 years into my career, and it was a huge quality of life improver

Now I'm always sitting on an enormous pile of savings and I have short- and long-term plans to move my career and life forward. It spares me a lot of stress.

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

#424

Post by uecc »

zerr wrote: post #390
Tade0 wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Not really no. But it certainly feels that way after tax + Dublin rent

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

#425

Post by badpun »

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…

> 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 difference in time zones.

Yep, that's my experience as well. I've quit the $170k US West Coast job (because of time zone differences, plus it sucked in other ways) in favor of slighly less paying German job (it used to pay the same, but EUR has shit the bed and now the money is way less when expressed in USD). I'm way happier now - they money in my accounts still keeps accumulating at a great rate, but now I'm not angry and tired every day.

I have 15+ years of experience, some in recognizable Tier 2 tech company, some in tech lead and architect position. I'm also working with a niche and hot tech stack that companies have troubles hiring for. This translates into good jobs, good money and good working conditions, even in a tech backwater such as Poland. Took a lot of time and effort to get here though.

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

#426

Post by ajross »

smaryjerry wrote: post #315
ajross wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's arguing about leading/lagging indicators, though. Wages go up with inflation, more or less by definition. Wage increases due to inflation can't be measured until after the fact, though. Short version: "inflation" is not remotely the same thing as "recession", which seems to be the point you're trying to make. If your only evidence for an economic slowdown is prices and not production or consumption, you're lik…

You are intentionally conflating nominal and real wages, most people are not making more money. In real wages they are declining as per the link in my previous comment. If you make $100K per year and your expenses are $100K you make zero. If you make $150K but your expenses are now $150K then you have not made any increase in wages in real dollars. Wages are not flat or going up with inflation as per my link, they ar…

And my point, which you missed, is that this is a confounded argument. "Real wages" are an after-the-fact metric, you can't measure it in immediate data because wage growth and inflation are highly correlated.

And the other point, which you skipped, was that this was a digression anyway from the upthread discussion about whether or not the labor market indicators are "strong" or not. And they are: wages are tracking labor demand and growing at the same time participation is growing. That means the market is operating well (and, FWIW, that typical models would expect wage growth to continue to match inflation, as it generally does in functioning markets).

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

#427

Post by alasdair_ »

chem83 wrote: post #110
bena wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It kind of makes sense to keep people in the pipeline as it were. If you shut down the whole apparatus, you have to spin it back up when hiring is unfrozen. But if you keep the machine running, you're ready to hire the instant you can. For them that is. Sucks for you and me.

At Google, upon entering the process, recruiters explain that an offer within engineering (including PM, T/PgM etc.) is valid for 12 months from the date of approval from the hiring committee. So while it can take a long time for someone to find a team match, that flexibility is also available for the candidate, so they get to keep declining teams that are not interesting until a real match for both sides is availabl…

>At Facebook, it's possible to match before starting, but candidates usually try to do the matching in the 2 weeks (or so) of training they do in Menlo Park. It's up to them to cold call and find time with hiring managers to sell themselves (and vice-versa). But time-wise, the process is much more constrained than Google's.

This may differ on which office you are at. In Seattle, we started working with teams during the tail end of bootcamp, with some people finding a team in 1-2 weeks and others in 6-8 weeks.

One thing I liked was that if a team had an open position and you said "I want that position", the hiring manager basically had to take you, whereas at Google, each hiring manager could reject you for their team, so you can spend a long time trying and failing to match.

The other thing I liked about FB's process was that you actually got to work directly with the team and do real work, rather than having the position filtered through a hiring manager. Spending a week actually writing code helped a lot with understanding which team would be the best fit and isn't something you can really do with a non-employee.

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

#428

Post by xyzzyz »

kahnclusions wrote: post #400
xyzzyz wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> require the company to set up a local legal entity, make corporate filings, pay taxes. Or else pay fines. They can require it all they want, but if the company has no presence in Poland, they cannot actually make them do so. > Or else get banned from operating in your country Which is fine with many companies. > You may also be entitled to rights under local employment laws regardless of what it says in your contra…

Sorry, I’m not really sure what you’re trying to add here? Yes, the foreign company can obviously decide to ignore the Polish government. As a consequence they will have to stop employing all their “contractor” employees in Poland. If they’re happy with that situation then… congrats to them?

They will not have to do anything of the sort. The can continue to buy services of the Polish resident, and pay their invoices. The Polish government cannot and will not do anything to the company.

What it can do, however, is that it can go after the worker. Is the government of Poland so vindictive to actually go after individuals who commit a crime of working for a foreign company?

Based on many of my friends having this exact arrangement for years, I think the answer is, in fact, no: they happily send invoices every month, get paid, and (less happily) pay taxes and ZUS contributions. It all works out just fine.

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

#429

Post by happyopossum »

dixie_land wrote: post #283
ransom1538 wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Google level (L3/4/5 etc) * 100k is a very realistic expectation for TC. At L7 or above double that number too. Source: recent offers and friends who recently got offers

Yeah, not really - L3 and L4 are entry level roles, for folks just out of college. No FAANG is paying a newb college grad $400k/yr. Either your friends didn’t understand the comp plan and how equity is paid out, or they were BSing you.

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

#430

Post by smaryjerry »

whimsicalism wrote: post #335
smaryjerry wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Real wages have gone significantly since 2020 when COVID hit per the below link. This inequality index website includes both labor and capital - meaning not just wages but income from stocks. Yes the stock market has gone down, the rich own more stocks, and so rich made less money. Wages, the payment for only labor has been declining in real terms due to inflation outpacing wage growth. See this link and the sharp de…

> the stock market has gone down, the rich own more stocks, and so rich made less money My link shows that real factor income for all but the top 10% of earners is up which includes wages and capital income. Your FRED link will have to contend with the fact that those most likely to be unemployed at the start of the pandemic are lower earners which is going to shift up the wages for 2020.

The website you linked as I said includes capital and pretax income which is an absurd way to measure “income.” That includes stocks, 401K, houses, etc. if someone owned a house, the value went up, but if someone didn’t own a house their actual wages are still worth only about the same as 3 years ago.
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