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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?

#551

Post by ascar »

nowherebeen wrote: post #231
ascar wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your logic doesn't add up. Sure, these tests are not an ideal proxy for job performance and indeed they shifted more and more from general intelligence assessment to algorithm coding assessment. Solving the algorithm is only part of the equation though. Writing readable code, explaining your thought process and decisions and communicating well with the interviewer are also vital points of the assessment. Is it a perf…

> these tests are not an ideal proxy for job performance > Past experience is unfortunately also a weak indicator If past experience of doing the actual job is bad indicator and these test are not a good proxy, then according to your logic, experience is worthless and we should all optimize for these tests. And this is exactly what is happening in the industry. Younger professionals spent hours memorizing Leetcode be…

> If past experience of doing the actual job is bad indicator and these test are not a good proxy, then according to your logic, experience is worthless and we should all optimize for these tests.

How do you assess and verify past experience of doing the actual job? That's the tough nut to crack and that's why they ask questions to assess your ability on the actual job. There are a lot of decent engineers out there with tons of experience and there is an equal number of below average engineers with tons of experience out there. How do you hire just the top 10%? As most work is done in teams how do you verify the candidate isn't selling his teammates accomplishments for his own while he contributed little of value?

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

#552

Post by slt2021 »

Balgair wrote: post #537
slt2021 wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

You are not missing much, Broken Hiring process & broken incentives to launch whatever in order to get promoted == status quo at Google with its products

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

#553

Post by SauciestGNU »

ekidd wrote: post #322
yuan43 wrote: post #139

> As several of these statements blatantly contradict one another, I went back to the data and ran the same sanity check that I did with Facebook above. In other words, what if Google is using the hiring freeze as a smoke screen and only continuing with the strongest candidates, while keeping the rest on the bench? An actual hiring freeze sends a very strong negative signal to employees and investors. To employees it…

> The thing is, those with fewer than 10 years experience have never seen the ferocity of the other side of the business cycle. When it turns, that mofo turns. I was working as a programmer during both the dotcom crash and the 2007-2008 real estate crash. I would describe these downturns as "bumpy". But neither was catastrophic for most of the programmers I knew. Some of us moved, others found new jobs. Some of the l…

Oh man I worked briefly with someone who was one of those webmaster/VBS jockeys. It was 10-12 years after the dotcom bust and the guy was doing Tier 2 desktop support at a non-technical megacorp. The people who got hit in that bust really got hit, but you have to wonder how much of that was due to not continuously learning and evolving skills.

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

#554

Post by dekhn »

vl wrote: post #447
tytso wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 so many people learned over the years in storage org, essential modus operandi was “just do your current shit, this new shit you are proposing is too hard and we don’t want to do it”. I lost count of improvement proposals that ultimately were not getting supported (there was a funny one with (first) hosted NFS prototype, when they tried to turn it off, turned out there were pissed-off customers running business wo…

Don't get me started on how many times Google Cloud started and then killed cloud NFS (I see now they have an EFS-like product). Or how hard it was to buy a spindle.

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

#555

Post by ekidd »

spookie wrote: post #435
ekidd wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The thing is, those with fewer than 10 years experience have never seen the ferocity of the other side of the business cycle. When it turns, that mofo turns. I was working as a programmer during both the dotcom crash and the 2007-2008 real estate crash. I would describe these downturns as "bumpy". But neither was catastrophic for most of the programmers I knew. Some of us moved, others found new jobs. Some of the l…

I don't know about the big boys. But at least in Europe, in 2008, the crash wasn't "bumpy". It was survival of the fittest, and most up and coming companies straight up died. It's a matter of perspective, for sure. But I would be careful myself. FAANGs won't vanish, and it won't be catastrophic for the privileged few. But, for the rest of the world, which follows the status quo? This spells doom in various levels.

> It was survival of the fittest, and most up and coming companies straight up died.

Oh, during the dotcom crash, Internet companies failed by the thousands in the US. But many of them were absolute garbage companies, far worse than the average modern startup. Frankly, scam companies were coming out of the woodwork. It was even worse than the later mobile/social/local/GroupOn era.

But just because many companies folded, it didn't necessarily mean that competent programmers were out of work indefinitely. There was a period of about 6 months when getting hired was nearly impossible, but after that, things started to turn slowly upward.

Honestly, if you're a programmer, I really recommend an emergency fund. Especially if you're being paid ridiculously well, keep your living expenses lower, and put some money aside.

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

#556

Post by rexreed »

nwsm wrote: post #303
kleinsch wrote: post #75

Google has always recruited and interviewed independently of whether they actually have roles open that make sense for you. Earlier this year, I passed the interview and spent six weeks in "team match" before I gave up and took a role with another company. Had a friend who did the same for months for a PM role. Just bc you're getting contacted by Google recruiters this week or interviewing doesn't mean you'll ever fi…

After completing ~9 interviews (2 video interviews, 5 on-site interviews, and then was asked to complete 2 additional video interviews after mediocre on-site results), I passed Google's "hiring committee" and then was put in their team match process. Over the next 4 months I had ~4 calls with hiring managers, none of them fruitful (and not for lack of my own enthusiasm or willingness to leave my comfort zone). After…

Serious question: why do people "really, really want to work at Google"? Google seems to be cranking out increasingly mediocre products, canning existing products, making engineers chase their own tails, and just being a bad player. Is it really about having a name brand on a resume so you can work somewhere else? Is it the free food? I guess high salary? What is it?

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

#557

Post by rexreed »

nwsm wrote: post #376
ajkjk wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's insane. When I turned down a Google offer because they did such a bad job of the post-interview process, my recruiter was _surprised_. All I could say was: why? what did you think would happen if you didn't find a team I actually could get excited about? (It was worse than that: I told the recruiter I was interested in roles in any location except the South Bay and Seattle's Eastside, and they came back an…

I didn't want to go this far into detail because it's embarrassing how much I put up with, but I actually let Google alter the direction of my life. When I was interviewing, my significant other was looking to go to grad school in either NYC or Cambridge. NYC was her preference, so I told the recruiter I preferred NYC or Boston and I did my on-site in NYC. After all my interviews, the recruiter told me that the NYC o…

Can I ask what exactly were your Google dreams? What about Google made you scramble your life like this? I'm really curious why people go Gaga for Google

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

#558

Post by matrix_overload »

jjav wrote: post #369
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…

> 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 Statistically that's likely, but it's not always the case. If you luck into one of the companies that IPOs and…

Toss in dilution, liquidation preferences and other financial engineering put by the people who actually know the rules of the game, and your "tiny sliver of options" will still be worth less than 5 years of FAANG salary.

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

#559

Post by dghlsakjg »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #510
dghlsakjg wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Canadian PR I've always thought this would be a good option except that the Canadian government seems determined to make it difficult. When the most practical option is to form a corporate entity with a single employee, and BTW you may have to pay GST + PST on labor depending on if other Canadians use the service, it begins to look really unappetizing. I get that employees as contractor relationships are rife fo…

CRA now frowns heavily on "personal service corporations." There is no tax advantage (in fact there's disadvantages) to incorporating unless you have more than one client. So it ends up being sole proprietorship only, which has far less tax advantages. I mean, as a tax payer and citizen who paid exorbitant personal income taxes for years as an employee of a FAANG, I think this is probably equitable. But as a contract…

I’m not even talking about tax advantages, just the amount of regulatory overhead and paperwork and general BS just needed to sell your services

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

#560

Post by jorblumesea »

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.

Google's definition of "decent developer" is probably top 5-10% of the industry. At least historically, this has been the case.

No one actually believes "anyone can code" when you're at faang level of talent.

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