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'Too many employees, but few work': Pichai, Zuckerberg sound the alarm

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Re: 'Too many employees, but few work': Pichai, Zuckerberg sound the alarm

#101

Post by racl101 »

jjslocum3 wrote: post #91

Glad these guys seem to finally be noticing. I was a software engineering manager at a lean, high-margin, profitable start-up based in the NYC area starting in the late 2000s. We were acquired in 2014 by a very typical (for the time) SV-based competitor that had raised hundreds of millions in an IPO a few years earlier. Our acquirers had yet to see a single quarter of profit, of course. I and my team had so many good…

> Meanwhile, in our low-perqs atmosphere in NY, distractions were limited and productivity was high. We also all made money.

Yes, that's how it usually works out.

By the way, 'perqs' is a peculiar word. English is my second language but I'm used to seeing the word 'perks'.

Re: 'Too many employees, but few work': Pichai, Zuckerberg sound the alarm

#102

Post by 202206241203 »

bell-cot wrote: post #10
arkitaip wrote: post #3

Either these CEOs are insanely incompetent leaders who have gone on obviously unnecessary hiring sprees as late as a few months ago, or something else is up. Either way, it takes a particularly dishonest leaders to suggest that the main problem is low employee productivity.

Doubtless those honest, selfless CEO's were completely duped by evil conspiracies of rotten & incompetent middle managers, who've spent the last decade or two building ever-larger pyramids of bloat to set their golden thrones on top of...

I have heard that "young people are just smarter", will we see a new CEO of Meta any day now?

Re: 'Too many employees, but few work': Pichai, Zuckerberg sound the alarm

#103

Post by DmitryOlshansky »

mikhael28 wrote: post #21

Maybe it’s not the employees fault, but the management who hired them… or maybe it’s the fact that it takes forever to get anything done at FAANG nowadays. Or maybe, just maybe, interviewing based on esoteric computer science problems isn’t the best way to identify high performing builders.. but a great way of identifying people who can hack a process to secure maximal reward. Look, if I can ‘crack the coding intervi…

I got hired by Google in 2016 and I could tell you the interview was a series of interesting tasks all having to do with what I was hired for - working on compilers and related tools.

Though after that I was asked for additional interviews on basic algorithmic stuff cause Google thought original interviews to be too narrow in the scope, anyway hardly any esoteric stuff.

Re: 'Too many employees, but few work': Pichai, Zuckerberg sound the alarm

#104

Post by naveen99 »

metadat wrote: post #46
itsdrewmiller wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I thought it was a widely-known-secret that at least part of the insane hiring of engineers without clear teams, projects, etc for them to work on initially was to prevent individuals working for current-or-potential competitors. I've heard this claimed but not sourced, and it doesn't really make sense - there are millions of software engineers out there and Google or Meta only employ a tiny fraction of them.

You are mistaken. 100,000 of the best out of a pool of approximately 10 million professional software engineers worldwide is a sizeable portion. Additionally, not all 10 million are even close to being up to BigCorps peculiar standards (perhaps the standard is "someone competent enough that they could potentially build a competing product line"). Goog, Meta, Amazon, Apple, Oracle.. all have huge rosters and it adds u…

Maybe one day there will be futures for software engineer contracts. the contracts are almost standardized on levels.fyi

Re: 'Too many employees, but few work': Pichai, Zuckerberg sound the alarm

#105

Post by thenightcrawler »

amzn-throw wrote: post #74
nrmitchi wrote: post #30

I thought it was a widely-known-secret that at least part of the insane hiring of engineers without clear teams, projects, etc for them to work on initially was to prevent individuals working for current-or-potential competitors. Purposely over-hiring to prevent work being done elsewhere, and then claiming there is not enough work to be done, feels like it shouldn't be surprising to anyone. Hell, Google has created ~…

That's not a conspiracy theory, I work for Amazon - for a decade. I love it - best job I've ever had. And historically, while it's been a tough place to work, we've always been able to attract top talent. Partially - impactful work. Partially - stock doubles every year. Well guess what happened in 2020/2021? Despite incredible perseverance through the Pandemic, the stock stopped doubling. Meanwhile, Microsoft, Meta,…

I think Amazon would have a better rep if they didn't have a stack ranking system.

Re: 'Too many employees, but few work': Pichai, Zuckerberg sound the alarm

#106

Post by throwawaymaths »

robotnikman wrote: post #81
metadat wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are mistaken. 100,000 of the best out of a pool of approximately 10 million professional software engineers worldwide is a sizeable portion. Additionally, not all 10 million are even close to being up to BigCorps peculiar standards (perhaps the standard is "someone competent enough that they could potentially build a competing product line"). Goog, Meta, Amazon, Apple, Oracle.. all have huge rosters and it adds u…

Well, Google's and Facebooks definition of 'the best' engineers. I don't think grinding leetcode for an interview is the best indicator of a good engineer, and graduating from a prestigious university is not always an indicator either. imho it seems like the best engineers now are the ones doing their own thing outside of the large companies, or are at smaller startups.

No, but if all of FAANG are hiring by that criteria, it still works; startups can hire good talent because they break the pareto equilibrium, but that's ok for FAANG because they obtain that tech through acquisition after the idea and execution are derisked. The system works!

Re: 'Too many employees, but few work': Pichai, Zuckerberg sound the alarm

#107

Post by tomuli38 »

robotnikman wrote: post #81
metadat wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are mistaken. 100,000 of the best out of a pool of approximately 10 million professional software engineers worldwide is a sizeable portion. Additionally, not all 10 million are even close to being up to BigCorps peculiar standards (perhaps the standard is "someone competent enough that they could potentially build a competing product line"). Goog, Meta, Amazon, Apple, Oracle.. all have huge rosters and it adds u…

Well, Google's and Facebooks definition of 'the best' engineers. I don't think grinding leetcode for an interview is the best indicator of a good engineer, and graduating from a prestigious university is not always an indicator either. imho it seems like the best engineers now are the ones doing their own thing outside of the large companies, or are at smaller startups.

Aren't the best engineers generally at national labs and NIST and NASA? FAANG is known to be full of money/status chasers.

Re: 'Too many employees, but few work': Pichai, Zuckerberg sound the alarm

#108

Post by mikhael28 »

jjslocum3 wrote: post #91

Glad these guys seem to finally be noticing. I was a software engineering manager at a lean, high-margin, profitable start-up based in the NYC area starting in the late 2000s. We were acquired in 2014 by a very typical (for the time) SV-based competitor that had raised hundreds of millions in an IPO a few years earlier. Our acquirers had yet to see a single quarter of profit, of course. I and my team had so many good…

Ironically, they were smart to acquihire you.

It seems like management was aware their employees were bums, and needed your companies energy to infuse some productivity into their lifestyle.

Looks like it failed though.

Re: 'Too many employees, but few work': Pichai, Zuckerberg sound the alarm

#109

Post by rootusrootus »

racl101 wrote: post #101
jjslocum3 wrote: post #91

Glad these guys seem to finally be noticing. I was a software engineering manager at a lean, high-margin, profitable start-up based in the NYC area starting in the late 2000s. We were acquired in 2014 by a very typical (for the time) SV-based competitor that had raised hundreds of millions in an IPO a few years earlier. Our acquirers had yet to see a single quarter of profit, of course. I and my team had so many good…

> Meanwhile, in our low-perqs atmosphere in NY, distractions were limited and productivity was high. We also all made money. Yes, that's how it usually works out. By the way, 'perqs' is a peculiar word. English is my second language but I'm used to seeing the word 'perks'.

The full word is perquisite. Perk is slang.

Re: 'Too many employees, but few work': Pichai, Zuckerberg sound the alarm

#110

Post by mattbrewsbytes »

senttoschool wrote: post #11

This is inherently a problem with full-remote or hybrid work. People will point to "studies" showing how remote work improves productivity. Maybe it did initially but eventually, people will check out, feeling isolated, feeling less motivated. Some people who worked remotely before covid swears that it helped their productivity. But these people are biased because they were probably one of the few who were discipline…

I disagree personally but voted up because this is a valid opinion and I suspect this is the reason why it feels like we get less done. Personally I feel like I thrive remotely, probably work too much but I like it so there's that.

It comes down to some people thrive working remotely and some don't. At any level higher in mgmt than a single team there isn't really any way to determine who can thrive and who can't. Pretend its a 50/50 split across 100 people, the only way upper mgmt can see to get pre-covid productivity is to go back to the office.

I will say another unpopular related point on this: people with young children are more than likely to not thrive working remotely. Or at least they've probably never had the chance to see if working remotely is good for them because they may have had their kids home with them these past couple years. You know how we don't like distractions when trying to do focus work? I can't imagine trying to do focus work with a child or two under the age of 5 there with you all day.

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