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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?

#481

Post by rco8786 »

advael wrote: post #475

As others have commented, this seems like a smokescreen rather than a real freeze. But as someone who wants to see every monopolistic company broken up or fail spectacularly, I think a hiring freeze at FAANGs is a great opportunity for talented people to consider growing a spine and working somewhere less big and lucrative. To people facing that choice, I would say this: The world is in a weird place right now, and y…

For someone who seems to agree that this is a smokescreen it’s odd to continue on to admonish FAANG engineers for sticking with something that’s only illusory stable?

If it’s a smokescreen that would imply that no stability has been lost for existing employees there.

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

#482

Post by edmundsauto »

est31 wrote: post #419
Firmwarrior wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, on the other hand, I'm pretty sure that I or most silicon valley coders making 250k+ can singlehandedly outperform a dozen "decent developers" by pretty much any metric you can pick. I'm not saying we're smarter or innately better, but coding is a tradeskill and the masters of the trade are almost all here. I'm interested to see how much this changes over the next decade, though, since a lot of people have scat…

I seriously doubt that. Developing things is the same thing all around the globe. Just because you have worked five years building react apps in silicon valley (and from what I can tell, 250k total comp is reachable at that experience level) does not make you more skilled at building react apps than someone who also built react apps, say, in Barcelona. But you probably make 5 times as much, if not more. That's not be…

I don’t think it’s as much about the challenging technical problems as it is the ability to get shit done. Wherever I’ve worked, most developers are unable to own e2e work. At big tech, you are expected to be decent in a lot of related areas (communication, project planning, etc).

Software is a people problem and what big tech looks for is top notch technical skills and the mindset/ability to solve them in a chaotic environment.

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

#483

Post by dixie_land »

happyopossum wrote: post #429
dixie_land wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

nope, just cash + RSU / yr.

e.g. Amazon was giving out SDE II (google L4 equivlant) @ 400k (first year no RSU but cash bonus paid out monthly) about 2 months ago.

re L3 level, if you have a master's or 1+ yr exp, while you're still at the entry level, you are considered "industrial hire" and 300 is very attainable

in my current company for new hires (again justed to google's leveling) we have L5 550+ and L6 650+ (200~300 cash + RSU , not pre-IPO bs)

In my earlier years I used to doubt those "ridiculous" numbers until I simply asked for more. There are plenty of companies out there, many medium-big sized non-FAANG companies pay just as well.

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

#484

Post by Firmwarrior »

rnk wrote: post #379
Applejinx wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. I've come to believe that this is the nature of money i.e. an abstraction for power. Power is meaningless unless you're hurting somebody: otherwise, what even is the point? Money is abstracted power. For this reason, ANYWHERE you are seeing accumulations of vast amounts of money, somebody or something is being hurt. In this case it appears to be that the whole 'make 500k as a dev' thing, which has always…

I don't think it's that simple. Google needs devs, it's a competitive market. Controlling or limiting the dev supply is definitely a benefit for big tech, but it's a separate benefit. I think competitive pressure on salaries is the top forcing function.

Google & friends have a business where they can turn a $500k engineer into $2M+ in revenue

I think that's really the bottom line here. They aren't overpaying to starve out the industry, although I'm sure they're perfectly happy to benefit from that indirectly

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

#486

Post by lamontcg »

rnk wrote: post #380
robertlagrant wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I thought the original comment was referring to all tech workers, ie not independently wealthy as the lower classes. But it's also true that below principal level at companies there is different treatment. Just like a cto gets treated better than the senior principal.

The billionaire class is currently worried about the whole of the working class, it goes well beyond SWEs at Facebook and Google.

But Amazon being worried about organizing in their warehouses and Google and Facebook freezing hiring of SWEs and Musk's comments about how workers have become soft and overpaid (or whatever it was, I can't find the quote right now) are all different body parts of the same elephant.

And SWEs actually are "lower classes" (plural) compared to billionaires.

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

#487

Post by slt2021 »

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,…

if you know the history of Google's product launches (virtually all of them have failed/were killed, only successful products are search/ads and acquired products like youtube, maps, etc) - you will understand why they hire 9 mo for simple PM role

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

#488

Post by knicholes »

culi wrote: post #456
knicholes wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I told Google and Facebook to please stop contacting me, as after three attempts, either you know I suck or you'd accept me. It takes way too much effort to brush up on my algorithms/data structures each time I interview.

Does it feel worth it to go through it at least once though? I'm a junior engineer and I remember studying really hard for this one "hiring platform" (once you're in they find you contracts, sorta. One of the few non-scammy ones out there). The interview was pretty intense but I got a TON of good study material and really in-depth feedback I guess a key difference though is that it's not very "data structures and alg…

I can remember some pretty intense plane trips home trying to figure out why my answers were insufficient or why they failed to understand that my answers did actually work. The problems made me think a lot more about architecture than I would have otherwise, but really the main experience is that I'm really not good at programming on a whiteboard and changing pace quickly.

Yeah, I'd say definitely try it at LEAST once just to see what's out there. You might just get an offer of life-changing money.

One time all of my interviews involved reinforcement learning. I didn't know much about it, so I tried to answer all of the questions the best I could using CS concepts and programming. Years later, when learning about Reinforcement Learning, I face-palmed pretty hard when it became extremely obvious that they were testing my knowledge of policies.

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

#489

Post by lamontcg »

leereeves wrote: post #454
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…

> We're not in a recession. Yet. Based on what? Perhaps we can discard the classic "two quarters of negative GDP growth". But if we do, then from whose perspective does a 3% drop in real wages in six months [1] (and a 4.4% YoY drop in real weekly earnings [2]) not count as a recession? 1: https://www.statista.com/statistics/216259/monthly-real-aver... 2: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/realer.htm

You don't have recessions without job losses and unemployment claims:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/193280/seasonally-adjust...

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

#490

Post by nostromo »

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…

> We're not in a recession. Yet.

We are by the most common definition: two quarters of negative GDP growth.

Some folks in the US are weirdly insistent that recessions are defined by the NBER -- a self-appointed group of wonks at a private and secretive non-profit. But they're just one measure, and an arbitrary one at that.

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