'Too many employees, but few work': Pichai, Zuckerberg sound the alarm • Hacker News Board

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

#181

Post by afiori » Wed, Aug 10, 2022, 6:05 PM UTC

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #174

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. " It's widely known among the sort of person who tends to believe in conspiracy theories, I suppose. The oppressive bureaucracy and misaligned incentives that allow senior leaders to des…

Your theory and the theory you are replying to are indistinguishable for an outside observer: big player with hiring power and hubris compete for employees; in one case it is companies and in the other it is managers.

Even if I admit yours sounds more likely (companies choosing to spend more of their own money vs managers choosing to waste the company's money)

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

#182

Post by 015a » Wed, Aug 10, 2022, 6:06 PM UTC

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…

You know; there are two sides to view this coin from: either "those tech people are insane with all their beautiful buildings, great perks, and fantastic work-life balance" or "those tech people are forward-looking with how we could just make work less shitty for everyone, if only other industries would catch on".

I'm sad that even many on here seem to be opting for the "insane" line of thinking, and not recognizing that Work Should Be This Way For Everyone. Its not insane to want to work 20 hour weeks. Its not insane to think working in a concrete windowless office building is uninspiring (our species built twenty story cathedrals to celebrate God; architecture matters; outdoor space matters). Its not insane to want some snacks & drinks throughout the 8+ hour work day (at least until we solve, you know, that pesky human drive called Hunger).

Some of y'all would rather wrestle with pigs in the mud than recognize that, maybe, there shouldn't be any mud at all. But, after all, capitalism is brain worms which convince you the system is optimal when everything sucks for the very people who keep it going. Rest assured, the CEO has a secretary who will go buy fresh blueberries on the company card the moment he desires them.

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

#183

Post by prionassembly » Wed, Aug 10, 2022, 6:06 PM UTC

mattbrewsbytes wrote: post #110

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. Pr…

We're thriving, just in a different work/life balance proposition. Of course, sterilizing entry-level engineers would lead to much higher overall productivity + zuckerbucks for shareholders. Maybe we need to have that conversation.

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

#184

Post by crote » Wed, Aug 10, 2022, 6:08 PM UTC

mc32 wrote: post #135

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 ~…

Google et al. cargo culted SGI culture -maybe it works for a class of geeks. Anyway they often coddled employees and treated them "like family" as they like to say and tell them they are special and the lucky few. You can bring your pet to work (if no one has allergies to it), you can waltz in late, go get a snack, log in, chat with your friends, play with new gizmos, then go to a meeting, get lunch, then work out, t…

Easy: it goes both ways. Keeping employees happy means they are willing to voluntarily spend more time at work. "Chatting with friends" is more often than not informally discussing work projects. Going home before traffic gets bad and working a few hours from home is the sane thing to do.

My current employer is very lenient, and as a result I am very happy working here and put in more than I am required to. If they were very strict, I would work _exactly_ 9 to 5 and not a second longer - if I even wanted to work there at all.

Fact is, you simply can't be 100% effective 100% of the time. So you either end up with people _pretending_ to be busy, or people who are free to openly de-stress and are way happier employees.

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

#185

Post by trebbble » Wed, Aug 10, 2022, 6:08 PM UTC

rootusrootus wrote: post #109

racl101 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Garner's Modern English Usage covers "perquisite" in order to call out confusion between that word and "prerequisite", but notes in passing that perquisite is "often shortened to perk". No mention of "perq" which, as with other posters, I've personally never seen.

In general, if you chose a usage that generates discussion about your language choices, and there was another option that would convey the exact same thing and not generate discussion, it's best to regard that as a mistake.

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

#186

Post by ipsum2 » Wed, Aug 10, 2022, 6:09 PM UTC

dekhn wrote: post #165

By the end of my employment at Google I was not working very hard. Probably a few hours a day, mostly doing whatever I felt like doing. My managers consistently gave me "meets expectations" regardless of how much I achieved or how hard I worked. However, any time there was an emergency related to my function, I had everything required to jump in, fix serious problems, and then get out of the way during the cleanup th…

Were you an SRE? What you described sounds very similar to what I experienced.

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

#187

Post by birdyrooster » Wed, Aug 10, 2022, 6:11 PM UTC

galdosdi wrote: post #25

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…

> Look, if I can ‘crack the coding interview’, then I can certainly crack ‘how to do as little work as possible and stack paper to the ceiling while my stock vests’. What's worse, many of the jaded people going through the motions probably started out gung-ho but then got frustrated to see how little impact they were really able to have and eventually became checked out. These kinds of things are self fulfilling prop…

They see blood in the water for startups and know they don’t have to subsidize employment to keep them from being able to hire.

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

#188

Post by metadat » Wed, Aug 10, 2022, 6:13 PM UTC

subsubzero wrote: post #175

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…

Where are you getting the 10M number? Just curious not a criticism. I was thinking it would be around half of that(5M), with a tenth decent enough to work at most tech companies 500k, I think the bay area has 1M tech workers so half of them are engineers and thats one of the largest cluster of engineering on the planet.

A few years ago I was super curious how we stack up numbers-wise compared to doctors and attorneys (quantities artificially limited in the USA because of licenses). I did the research to calculate based on the number of CS graduates being produced by universities, combining it with average number of years worked before retiring. Unfortunately I don't have the references handy at this point.

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

#189

Post by _jal » Wed, Aug 10, 2022, 6:14 PM UTC

z9znz wrote: post #170

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…

> when the last time was that Mark or Sundar actually wrote any code they pushed to prod That would be a surpreme waste of company money, and probably they have engineers working for them who are far better developers than they are.

The goal of that would not be to get functional code and a decent price, of course. The goal would be to ensure leadership has an accurate view of what that process is today.

Now, that may or many not achieve what the GP thinks it will. But, if you believe the leadership of your org is out-of-touch, it is a natural thing to suggest.

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

#190

Post by bobobob420 » Wed, Aug 10, 2022, 6:14 PM UTC

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #172

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…

> I remember the engineers on my team from HQ explaining to me that my proposed stand-up meeting schedule wouldn't work beacuse their intramural basketball league scheduled their games for that time. Meanwhile, in our low-perqs atmosphere in NY, distractions were limited and productivity was high. We also all made money. Your standup meeting could've been an email. Their immovable basketball game (quality of life) is…

This is exactly the mindset of failure. The team standup has 10x more priority than some dumb basketball league