'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

#561

Post by qazwse_ » Wed, Aug 10, 2022, 9:58 PM UTC

ceeplusplus wrote: post #508

015a wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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's how you lose to hungrier competitors. TikTok engineers don't work 4 hours a day. Back in the day when Google Plus was coming out, FB engineers didn't work 4 hours a day either [1]. That's how they killed it in the cradle. If you want a chill work life balance, 20 hour weeks, etc. then you can have that. But maybe you won't have the $400k salary that big tech pays anymore. [1] https://www.vanityfair.com/news/20…

Yeah, they're probably working some gruelling 996 schedule, I guess we'll all need to go back to accepting 12 hours a day, 6 days a week to compete.

https://www.ft.com/content/174ed2e2-f88e-4759-9a7f-133629aab...

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

#562

Post by tmaly » Wed, Aug 10, 2022, 9:58 PM UTC

nkrisc wrote: post #521

depereo wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I turned into dead weight once during a hostile takeover of the company I was working for. It was pretty shit, and I'm glad I moved on after a few months of being unproductive. Management removed our ability to move forward on any existing work, and allocated no new work, and rejected any proposals from anyone from the 'old' company. Wound up spending most of my (remote) work day occasionally checking my work laptop…

I had a coworker who ended up in a similar situation. At one point they were almost literally being paid to do nothing . They eventually stopped even going in to the office all while collecting a pay check. As nice as that sounds, it was still not a great situation because they didn't know how long it would last and figured eventually, without warning, they'd be dropped. They ended up leaving on their own to actually…

If you thing about what limited time we have on this earth, it seems like to better choice to find something you enjoy in the shortest amount of time.

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

#563

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Aug 10, 2022, 9:59 PM UTC

nr2x wrote: post #405

refulgentis wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At a FAANG and I can tell you it's not nearly so positive as this. It was shocking coming from startup world. It's not so much "gee I only have 4 hours of work to do this week" It's...well, it's impossible to say how long it takes to do anything in particular, so I shouldn't feel stressed trying to get it done... oh there's actually no real management style/pressure to get things done here? Promo is seniority-based?…

I don’t see how giving an up-leveled employee time to adjust to a new responsibility scope is a bad thing. Working under conditions of pressure and stress provides few long term benefits and is the refuge of those who don’t have the smarts to perform well and need to look like they do.

[deleted]

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

#564

Post by ummonk » Wed, Aug 10, 2022, 10:00 PM UTC

onion2k wrote: post #403

colechristensen wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If somebody wants to pay me $300k to work 4 hours a week, I'll happily take the deal. As long as that's the actual acknowledged situation and not "most of your job is pretending to work and making people think you're important". I wonder how successful a lot of companies would be if they openly cut required hours in half.

If somebody wants to pay me $300k to work 4 hours a week, I'll happily take the deal. Would you take that over $300k to work 40 hours doing something you actually care about? I don't think I would.

Are you incapable of doing something you actually care about with the freed up 36 hours?

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

#565

Post by yalogin » Wed, Aug 10, 2022, 10:02 PM UTC

The speed at which the tone of these is changing is amazing. Just a few weeks ago everyone said its getting impossible to hire and so they need to expand to other tech hubs, pay exorbitant salaries and offer lot of perks to attract candidates. All of a sudden now, just in the span of a few weeks, these executives started realizing their headcount is too high, productivity too low and that employees should self select out of the company. Doesn't this show incompetence on the executive part? They just didn't see this till the recession flags were raised, it's almost as if they need to cut costs to cover up falling revenue and so blaming the employees.

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

#566

Post by feet » Wed, Aug 10, 2022, 10:02 PM UTC

lhorie wrote: post #530

fefe23 wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have met a few of those people, but every single one of them needed a justification. Some told me they felt wronged by the company somehow. For example they had experienced bullying, or didn't get promoted when they felt they should have been, or they had contributed something and then it got cut from the product, something like that in most cases. Now didn't feel they owed the company anything. Yet others said the…

People will always make up reasons if the tone of the conversation feels adversarial, but just spend a week in r/cscareerquestions to see the unfiltered sentiment: lots of people literally bragging about working 30 or even 20 hours per week as a full time employee, or who explicitly call out "slacking off" as a reason for preferring WFH. "Rest and vest". Etc.

Or maybe those are just the people who spend time on reddit disproportionately, it could be sampling error

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

#567

Post by darth_avocado » Wed, Aug 10, 2022, 10:02 PM UTC

fefe23 wrote: post #317

codegeek wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Nobody wants to spend their life being dead weight." I disagree. There are plenty of people who would love to be dead weight just to float around in a company. The larger the team/company, the more chances of those people being around. They pretend to be always busy and doing something but don't actually get anything done. Seen it all for 18+ years. Having said that, there are plenty of people as well who would LOVE…

I have met a few of those people, but every single one of them needed a justification. Some told me they felt wronged by the company somehow. For example they had experienced bullying, or didn't get promoted when they felt they should have been, or they had contributed something and then it got cut from the product, something like that in most cases. Now didn't feel they owed the company anything. Yet others said the…

I am not a dead weight and I’ll never be, but I also do absolutely bare minimum to not get fired. And by bare minimum, I mean, I will always finish my work in the time it is expected to be finished. And if the expectations are higher, I’ll move on to another job.

I do this as a way to get back at corporate America. Too many companies get away with sucking out their employees dry and firing them once they can’t meet the unreasonable expectations that are set for them. You could be dying of cancer or have lost a child, and they will get rid of you the moment they can do so without breaking the law, and in some cases even break the law in the hopes that you’d not pursue any legal action. Nah don’t work hard, work smart, for yourself.

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

#568

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

badpun wrote: post #486

lumost wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was only 4-5 years ago that Google was considered the pinnacle of Engineering centric culture. It was still considered top up until last year. Something is going off the rails in the big tech firms if people now view big-tech work as menial. These were the same companies that pioneered CI/CD, Services, cloud, scalable web services, and myriad other technologies.

Many of the top engineering companies (Boeing etc.) are also objectively crappy places to work at. When you're doing things at the scale of Boeing or Google, you need a lot of process, and it's just no fun to do engineering this way.

Most of the time when I see a heavy process at work, it's a good question to ask who does it serve?

Most of the time, the answer is that it keeps someone important entrenched in work. It's very rare that I see altruistic processes that benefit the customer.

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

#569

Post by cm2187 » Wed, Aug 10, 2022, 10:05 PM UTC

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…

It's not just meetings. I spend 80% of my energy fighting internal resistance, in the form of moronic decision, moronic policies, short signtedness and incompetence. It's not even bad will or people deliberately sabotaging the business. Just frictions grinding the organisation to a quasi standstill, people taking principled approaches to cover their own ass irrespective of the consequences, or being so far remote from the ground that they have no idea of the consequences of their decisions. And in the middle of that you have some courgageous busy bees trying to make things happen despite this internal resistance. Many have given up. I am somewhere in the middle.

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

#570

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

onion2k wrote: post #403

colechristensen wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If somebody wants to pay me $300k to work 4 hours a week, I'll happily take the deal. As long as that's the actual acknowledged situation and not "most of your job is pretending to work and making people think you're important". I wonder how successful a lot of companies would be if they openly cut required hours in half.

If somebody wants to pay me $300k to work 4 hours a week, I'll happily take the deal. Would you take that over $300k to work 40 hours doing something you actually care about? I don't think I would.

Why can't it be a job you care about 4 days per week?