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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?

#531

Post by cmrdporcupine »

TimPC wrote: post #529
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…

Start-ups don’t have to pay Google or FB size comp to attract people who like to work in start-ups but my feeling is that if they want to compete for the senior end of the talent pool they are going to have a hard time. Most start-ups are offering what I call below-mortgage compensation. Simply put to not be house poor your mortgage is supposed to be 30% of your pre-tax income. You can calculate what a typical mortga…

I can't help but feel that this is by design by VCs. Rip through younger talent and see what shakes out. You can polish the turd later. You're not looking for beautiful gemstones in most startups. You're just mostly throwing things against the wall to see what sticks, and it's later generations of devs who come in and deal with the tech debt.

Jokes on them, though, my mortgage is almost paid off, so I can work for less than I was. I'm the old guy working with all the young people at the startup. I can almost feel their eyes rolling into the back of their heads when I start going on about "back in the 90s"...

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

#532

Post by mattmanser »

advael wrote: post #507
rco8786 wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I am not claiming the hiring freeze makes the stability illusory, I am claiming that the entire concept of stability is fictional EDIT: Actually, you've also missed my point in another respect: Even if there's a real hiring freeze the immediate impact would be on people seeking FAANG jobs, not those who already have them. Honestly I don't even know what you think you're responding to. Maybe you're at a FAANG and thin…

You don't really have a point, or if you do you're referencing it so obliquely and mysteriously it's almost completely impossible to tell what it is.

As far as I can tell you hate big tech. You think the programming job market will collapse. And it'll be good for us, as we'll learn to deal with uncertainty!

Woo hoo.

But you have no actual advice on how.

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

#533

Post by cmrdporcupine »

ska wrote: post #525
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 incorpor…

> 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. The idea is you scale your rate to include enough for a benefits package. Or they use a POE/EOR service, that's possible in Canada I think. Either way, incorporation still has some advantages, one being that you time shift your pay as needed. It can make it easier to subcontr…

CRA will screw you if you incorporate and only have one client.

My employer is using Deel, paying me as sole proprietor, and that's fine. Deel can also act as an EOR and I could be "full time", and that could offer benefits. But it feels like a bit of a veneer overtop over what feels like contracting anyways, and it would mean less $$ in my pocket. It doesn't make a lot of sense.

Especially now that pharmaceuticals in Ontario are free for kids whose parents don't have a plan.

Also, it seems that telling my dentist and physiotherapist that I don't have a plan seems to make them behave more responsibly, on the whole.

If I end up at some point landing more clients and I end up being more consultant than single-client contractor, then I will incorporate.

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

#534

Post by Mountain_Skies »

Someone needs to tell Meta's recruiters that there's a hiring freeze because they keep contacting me about open positions. While they're specialist positions, they're not extremely niche so it seems if there's a freeze, it's not a very cold one.

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

#535

Post by anonymoushn »

compiler-guy wrote: post #210
anonymoushn wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Had a multi-month team matching phase followed by a 4-day exploding offer for ~50% below market and got blacklisted for a year or more when I didn't sign it. Great.

Not saying an exploding offer didn’t happen, but it is very uncommon. The blacklisted for a year thing sounds like the normal Google, “Try again in a year” messaging that happens whenever someone doesn’t get an offer for failing interviews. Again, don’t know if that is what happened, but it hardly constitutes anything nefarious.

> The blacklisted for a year thing sounds like the normal Google, “Try again in a year” messaging that happens whenever someone doesn’t get an offer for failing interviews. Again, don’t know if that is what happened, but it hardly constitutes anything nefarious.

To be clear, this is the "You are not permitted to apply for any positions at this company" messaging for people who pass interviews and fail to sign offers within 4 days.

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

#536

Post by natch »

thehappypm wrote: post #443
natch wrote: post #412

A legit Google recruiter emailed me about multiple roles this week. But then, that’s just the kind of quality (none) and attention to detail (nil) I already have learned to expect from Google. Comment from kleinsch in this thread is spot on.

Google knows you wont get an offer for months, and the hiring freeze will be long over by then.

That’s actually a fair theory but I doubt they really know when the hiring freeze will be over. On the other hand, when can any business really predict the future flawlessly? Never. But they could include a line addressing the risk.

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

#537

Post by Balgair »

slt2021 wrote: post #487
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,…

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

To me, that history seems to indicate that the 9 month process is effective at making unwanted products. What am I missing?

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

#538

Post by eclipxe »

winternett wrote: post #331
joshuamorton wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you have some misunderstanding, because it takes approximately one month to start vesting at Google (and Facebook) and at Google your equity is frontloaded. I'll happily tell you what the approximate compensation is by Google in Atlanta or NYC, because there's really no reason not to discuss those things.

Again... No the main point of my original post.

Your main point was pretty off base.

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

#539

Post by nostromo »

colinmhayes wrote: post #528
nostromo wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

The NBER isn’t self appointed. The governments formal definition is that the NBER decides.

That's simply not true. Policymakers may speak about NBER's findings, but there is no formal recognition of them in U.S. law.

They are private organization, they do not release their decision criteria publicly, and they were formed by random collection of academics that decided to start a club. They are entirely self-appointed.

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

#540

Post by Mountain_Skies »

RestlessMind wrote: post #395
BlargMcLarg wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're projecting a very specific SV bubble. More than enough decent developers exist outside of it, willing to work for a fraction. It's the fat profits and the big boys' eagerness to poach talent that got us this far, which subsequently inflated the QoL in these tech hubs, in turn creating the current standard.

If you know "more than enough" decent developers, you can make a great business connecting them to prospective employers.

Who will then fuck up the interview process and then return to complaining that there are no decent developers. There isn't a lack of them, there's a lack of being able to identify them.
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