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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

#151

Post by acdha »

lanstin wrote: post #28
acdha wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. You can’t make this claim without saying that your managers are incompetent all the way up to the C level because it means nobody was measuring performance even though that’s a core job requirement.

It is extremely rare for management, especially higher levels, to have any method of distinguishing smart and hard working people from duffers or from “managing upwards” big talkers. Git logs sort of help much interpretation is so context sensitive that the signal is blurry. So while measuring performance might seems like a core job function, de facto it is not. Also people that find this thread interesting should jo…

Would you say that software engineering and architecture aren’t core job functions because they require skills and experience to do? It’s not effortless but these people are being paid top salaries so it doesn’t seem unreasonable to expect them to have at least a rough idea of what the people who report to them are doing.

This goes double for the other concerns you mentioned: if you’ve created an incentive system where people commonly BS their way into promotions, that’s a major management failure.

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

#152

Post by Brystephor »

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,…

People are typically ranked by influence at companies as well. If you want to increase your influence, hire more people beneath you. Amazon managers specifically will be looked at for how good they are at hiring and how many people are beneath them to see if they're ready for the next level. At least this is what an Amazon EM told me.

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

#153

Post by ravenstine »

sushid wrote: post #50
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…

Arguably that's Google and Meta's strategy (maybe even Apple) but that's certainly not Amazon's. They just mass hire anyone without a care in the world. Not sure if Oracle even belongs in this group.

I believe it. Every single day I get emails from various Amazon recruiters. Often it's for positions I'm barely qualified for. As much as I think AWS is a great service, I'd be terrified to learn what lies beneath given how low their recruitment standards are.

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

#154

Post by cheriot »

> Zuckerberg noticed that it was getting harder to get all the employees to attend a meeting as they were sometimes taking time out in a day for personal work. So the Meta boss said that, in an effort to be “cost-conscious,” he was freezing or reducing staffing for low-priority projects and slashing engineer-hiring plans for the year by 30 per cent, reports added.

As we all know, the most productive hackers prioritize all-hands meetings. I hope this is misattribution from the author.

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

#155

Post by powerhour »

BobbyJo wrote: post #58
codefreeordie wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Rest and vest" is a phrase that gets bandied about often -- including by people who are trying to do it. I couldn't tell you what fraction of employees, but there are folks hiding in all of the big tech companies that are happy with their comp, aren't trying to advance, and have adopted the "do the minimum to not get fired" approach to their work. If too many of these get together in one org or on one team, the whol…

My experience at Google (which matched other large companies I've been at) was more that the "smartest" (I.E. earliest) members of a team laid down so many road blocks for later members, in the form of tech-debt and undocumented knowledge, that the output difference between coasting and working yourself to death was pretty small. It's an easy environment to get discouraged in.

My fear is that is what I'm doing right now. I've been writing code alone for a while, it's very possible it will be hard for new hires to understand or update. I know there is tech debt but I don't have time to fix it (because I'm alone, natch).

Oh well. Maybe they can spend their time replacing my work.

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

#156

Post by [deleted] »

sylens wrote: post #139

Why don't the boards of these companies hold the CEOs and management teams responsible for overhiring and not having the right ways to track productivity and route resources accordingly? This is essentially Pichai and Zuckerberg admitting that they made colossal mistakes

[deleted]

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

#157

Post by jcdavis »

tiahura wrote: post #78
akmarinov wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s no way you can sustain 8 hours/day of productive work 5 days a week as a developer. It’s not working a field or packing boxes, there’s a mental component that gets exhausted over time.

Biglaw attorneys routinely bill 2200 hours a year in 6 minute increments. Add in nonbillable work and self-written off time, and many of these attorneys work 60+ hour weeks. Plus, they do this into their 50’s.

IANAL, but have family & friends in biglaw

> Biglaw attorneys routinely bill 2200 hours a year in 6 minute increments.

A surprising portion of that work is random menial stuff, they don't actually end up doing 40hr/week of mentally demanding work.

> Plus, they do this into their 50’s.

The ones that survive to make partner do. But its well-known that BigLaw absolutely burns through associates. Very few BigLaw associates make it past 35, most eventually leave for saner pastures of corporate counsel/government/etc jobs.

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

#158

Post by [deleted] »

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 ~…

[deleted]

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

#159

Post by smueller1234 »

api wrote: post #44
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 ~…

> 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. Wow, I've suspected this for many years and people told me it was nutty.

That's because it is. It makes no sense whatsoever to think that could be a deliberate strategy.

Managers are happy when they get their hands on a new role to hire into because they all have more projects than they (think that they) can deliver at good quality with the people they have.

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

#160

Post by dividefuel »

SavageBeast wrote: post #5

I see this as more or less a ruse to justify ridding the companies of all the now remote people who moved away to live in Cheap Town during the pandemic. This is a pretext for the typical Corporate House Cleaning/Reduction In Force scenario. Some people do well working remote (Im one of them in fact) but I suspect and from what I've seen the majority of people simply cant handle the responsibility/self management of…

For companies that adjust salary for remote workers, those employees who moved to Cheap Town are now cheaper for the company to pay than those who work in Silicon Valley.
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