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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

#291

Post by DharmaPolice »

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…

>Clearly, these CEOs aren't just making decisions on a whim and they have real data on productivity rather than some 3rd party studies.

Asking people to 100% return to the office is unpopular (or at least controversial) to some, right? If there was "real data", why wouldn't they mention that in their communications to staff? Instead, it's full of wooly statements like "there's something missing" and vague stuff about collaboration.

This seems to be a more generalised fallacy - "The don't do things on a whim, therefore they must have additional (secret) information on . Based on this, they're obviously correct - after all, they've got that secret info!".

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

#293

Post by jimbob45 »

bobobob420 wrote: post #190
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

I guess you and I are in the minority now because I absolutely agree. To me, the hypothetical was akin to skipping school to go hang out with your friends.

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

#294

Post by kongolongo »

jcdavis wrote: post #157
tiahura wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 associat…

This analogy is interesting do you think there are some lawyers that consider themselves 10xlawyers haha. It make sense that a lot of it would be similar to documentation and meetings and various agile ceremonies and not just 2200 hours of straight legal argumentation and writing.

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

#295

Post by PKop »

fefe23 wrote: post #245

As a consultant, I come around a bit. I have seen many companies with very poor productivity, and in zero of those cases was it laziness of the employees. In fact they usually would have loved to be more productive. Nobody wants to spend their life being dead weight. But as companies grow they install more and more rules and regulations that end up making sure nothing ever gets done. It is not unusual to meet "develo…

>Nobody wants to spend their life being dead weight.

Of course this isn't true.

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

#296

Post by jrockway »

afro88 wrote: post #278
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 seems crazy to me, but I don't work in FAANG. A basketball game (I'm assuming recurring) during work hours? Quality of life from inside work? Are you all at campus for most of your day (ie, longer than 8h?) To me, quality of life is working hard and smart during the 8h, and keeping the rest of the day for you and your family. Quality of life comes from outside work, and the company respects and encourages that b…

What studies show that 5 days x 8 hours is the optimal point for productivity?

We picked those numbers based on tradition (and complaints from unions about the 7x12 schedule) well before software engineering was a career. Companies that do 5x6 or 4x8 seem to be doing fine.

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

#297

Post by hluska »

aliasxneo wrote: post #256
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…

I have a feeling this extends to several areas in Google. I come from the GDC side of things and have the exact same experience. To keep my job requires very minimal effort on my part. In fact, nowadays I'm punishing myself by trying to do anything "above and beyond." This is mostly due to the rapid growth of committees and the struggle for power that has come out of it (i.e., I'm more likely to be denied by a change…

I hope you’re okay pal. But good on you for recognizing a problem and working hard for a solution!

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

#298

Post by strongpigeon »

potatolicious wrote: post #111

It's frustrating that this thread seems to be focused so heavily on people sitting around resting and vesting. Having been inside Google (and multiple other FAANGs) this is generally untrue, and focusing on this element of the problem misses a much larger productivity problem: Most engineers at Google aren't "sitting around doing nothing", they are very busy shipping projects that do not matter. Their days are filled…

This resonates strongly with my experience at Google as well. Specifically in ads, you got the feelings that none of the product leadership used the product or tried to drive a direction for where the product should be going. The end-result was full-on Conway’s law (every team having their own separate pages), weird overlaps between a bunch of things (P-Max, Smart and App campaigns) and no real goals except maximizing metrics such as $$$ and # of campaigns using automation.

Of course, when Google Ads is the only way to buy ads on Google Search, revenue will go up regardless of whether Google Ads is a good product. Advertiser will go through any hoops if those ads make them money.

But then revenue goes up, the leadership pats themselves on the back for a job well done, plays musical chair a bit and let the product turn into an even bigger pile of mush.

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

#299

Post by titzer »

Quoth Zuck:

> “And part of my hope by raising expectations and having more aggressive goals, and just kind of turning up the heat a little bit, is that I think some of you might just say that this place isn’t for you. And that self-selection is okay with me.”

Wow. Just. Wow.

Why not inject some more dysfunction into an already strained relationship with employees and callously but passively aggressively deal with a seriously broken hiring pipeline in the laziest way possible? If a company can't be bothered to set performance expectations that are measurable and actionable, but just expects to push people out by "turning up the heat", that's an abject failure of a workplace. There used to be things like quarterly/yearly performance reviews, ratings, even "performance improvement plans" for under-performing employees--you know, clear expectations, clear communications, criteria and steps and timelines put forward when someone is not meeting expectations.

You know, sometimes life happens to people and they slow down a quarter or two, maybe because of a family crisis, divorce, child, death in the family, traumatic event. Global pandemic? 2 years of isolation WFH? Yeah, there might be reasons...

But, from the top, the message "these people will find their way to the door if we make work suck enough"--I couldn't imagine anything more demoralizing.

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

#300

Post by hgomersall »

alexk307 wrote: post #231

This is such an embarrassment for these two... Aren't YOU the CEO of your company? Didn't YOU approve hiring plans and corporate goals? If there's not enough work, why don't you find something for them to work on, or replace your managers with folks that will. Instead, it's the employee's fault for being so unproductive.

I'm convinced that much of this hand wringing is about self justification. I think the role of the CEO is essentially to pretend to be in charge so everyone actually doing the work doesn't lose faith.
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