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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?

#631

Post by biinui »

cowmoo728 wrote: post #415
nwsm wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Similar story here. My wife and I were living in NYC together and she was searching for PhD fellowships and I was searching for my next job. Our intersections were NYC, London, and Amsterdam, but between her fellowships and my offers we didn't find any great match. The google recruiter kept stringing me along and warning about a lack of space and offers with NYC based roles but I had tons of match offers in MTV. It w…

sorry, where's MTV?

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

#632

Post by ajkjk »

biinui wrote: post #631
cowmoo728 wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similar story here. My wife and I were living in NYC together and she was searching for PhD fellowships and I was searching for my next job. Our intersections were NYC, London, and Amsterdam, but between her fellowships and my offers we didn't find any great match. The google recruiter kept stringing me along and warning about a lack of space and offers with NYC based roles but I had tons of match offers in MTV. It w…

sorry, where's MTV?

Mountain View (Bay Area, but the lame part)

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

#633

Post by Macha »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #362
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.

They need to start at the top. The current phase of complacency, organizational lethargy, repeated pr disasters, people wondering wtf people are doing at Google, and general tone deafness started with the current CEO. Time for him to go. His vision is speaking in corporate cliches almost exclusively and just looking after things. If there is a grander plan other than "get people clicking ads", I have yet to learn of…

I mean, Google+, the end of their do no evil reputation, the start of the killed by Google era, all date back to the previous CEO. Not saying Sundar shouldn't be considered responsible for not fixing it by now given how long he's been in the job, but the people who decide if he stays or goes seem happy with "share price go up" as a result

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

#634

Post by advael »

hnfong wrote: post #628
advael wrote: post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dope, you want strategies for dealing with uncertainty? That's what we like to hear. There's a wealth of standard advice out there, but I can tell you the biggest three disparities between what I have gleaned from personal experience and what I see many others do: 1. Accept that nothing you care about in the future is truly certain. This may seem obvious, and it's good to plan ahead, but it seems like a lot of people…

I'm a pretty avid believer of Murphy's principles. Your points above are definitely true, and I've been thinking hard about this myself for the past couple years. My conclusion? I'm probably gonna keep my $300k+ FAANG job until the recession is over. That gives me more savings to fall back on in case something bad happens. It's ridiculous to suggest that it's a good idea to quit your job (or reject a high paying job)…

As I have already explicitly clarified once in this reply chain, I am not talking about people who already have a job at one of these companies, or even people who already have gone through the interviewing process and have an offer in hand. I don't think it would even make sense for me to be talking about those situations in a thread that's talking about a possible hiring freeze, IE a decision within these companies to stop making new hires. I think it would be pretty foolish for an individual who already has a way to shore up their savings to give it up, and while sometimes making a foolish decision to take a principled stand on something can be admirable, I am not in the habit of demanding this of people

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

#635

Post by nowherebeen »

hnfong wrote: post #629
nowherebeen wrote: post #570

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The questions I see don’t use any tricky DS/algo that needs memorising. That's kind of anecdotal. If it was that easy, everyone would pass. My experience has been entirely on the interviewer. The younger the interviewer, the more they have to prove by giving dynamic programming or direct acyclic graph questions. I am not denying your experience, but it just isn't universally true.

> If it was that easy, everyone would pass. The implication is not that the questions are easy for the average person, but the questions are relatively easy to programmers talented in solving these kinds of questions (even if they don't actively grind problems on leetcode). I personally think it's true that there might not be a high correlation between being good at solving leetcode style problems and being good at s…

At the end of the day, it's a job. If the employer wants you to grind LeetCode to get the job, then yes, you are going to have to do it. It still doesn't make it right though. I have no problem having to jump through hoops, but it does grind my gear when programmers use LeetCode as a badge of honour to show they are superior than others. Elitism within the LeetCode community is very strong.

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

#636

Post by nowherebeen »

hnfong wrote: post #630
nowherebeen wrote: post #572

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why they ask questions to assess your ability on the actual job You already said LC isn't an ideal proxy to the job. So I am not sure what point you are making. If I work at Stripe for 5 years as a software engineer, are you saying I am lying about my experience? How about Google? How about Coinbase? How did these people survive for so long? It seems like you default to the candidate being liers. Maybe you are youn…

Unless the previous employer is known to fire underperforming employees quickly, and willing to explicitly say so during reference checks, how does a prospective employer know whether a candidate's $n years in $company is a productive one or not? So you haven't seen underperforming people survive at large famous companies for multiple years? Are you sure you have that much experience in $bigco? How old are you really…

> I wouldn't be so patronizing to others if I were you.

Perhaps you are seeing it through the wrong lens. I am simply stating that coding is much more just DSA.

> How old are you really

If you don't know how rude you are, then I don't think we should continue this conversation. It seems like you do not know how to respond to someone you disagree with using manners. You are entitled to your own opinion as I am. Being confrontational and asking someone's age outright doesn't make your case and tells me you lack basic social skills.

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

#637

Post by aix1 »

cma wrote: post #591
aix1 wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are definitely issues with Google's comp system, but the fact that pay depends on location is IMO not unreasonable. Especially so given that there's often a lot of flexibility with regards to location. For example, I chose to relocate from London to Zürich (without changing teams/project). I did it for quality-of-life reasons but the comp also increased quite significantly, even adjusted for cost of living. And…

Pre-Brexit?

Post-Brexit. Why?
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