Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I worked at Google for -10 days

andgein.ru

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

431–440 of 462 posts

Re: I worked at Google for -10 days

#431

Post by ido »

Jare wrote: post #370
mousetree wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it goes without saying that the EU is different. Here in Germany, in fact things are problematic in the other direction. For the last 2 hires I made, their previous company forced them to work through their 3 month notice period.

That's becoming more and more widespread. It's idiotic and counterproductive but apparently companies love some fake sense of security.

I think this is more for "traditional" companies, I've never seen a startup here (Berlin) do that in the 10 years I've been living here.

Re: I worked at Google for -10 days

#432

Post by Malamute »

ido wrote: post #431
Jare wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's becoming more and more widespread. It's idiotic and counterproductive but apparently companies love some fake sense of security.

I think this is more for "traditional" companies, I've never seen a startup here (Berlin) do that in the 10 years I've been living here.

I have 3 months notice. It is unreasonable.

Re: I worked at Google for -10 days

#433

Post by dragonwriter »

abdabab wrote: post #427
bagacrap wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

eh... Google, more than your average publicly traded company, does rely on external investment by way of the stock in order to conduct its operations. In particular, a very large percent of compensation, especially for the most valued employees, is equity-based. Google's revenues were flat last year but costs were up. Hence, profits were down. The C-suite's insight into the future seems to be that future revenues are…

> Google's revenues were flat last year but costs were up. Wrong. Google made 181.69 billion in 2020, 256.74B in 2021 [1] and 283B in 2022 [2]. A 10% YoY increase [2] is better than most of the years they have been public. They possibly made more money in last 2.5 years than all the years they have been public combined. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/266206/googles-annual-gl... [2] https://www.sec.gov/Archiv…

> Are you saying most employees would prefer losing their job or living without job security over a pay cut with job security?

Pay cuts don’t come with job security. You can get laid off after a pay cut as easily as without one.

Employees prefer not having their pay cut. The ones that are dismissed aren’t employees any more, so from the narrow perspective of the organization dismissing them, their morale doesn’t matter. Pay cuts impact the morale of the people still working more than lay offs do.

Now, where pay cuts – especially explicitly and enforceably temporary ones – come with some real measure of job security as a way of avoiding layoffs, that can be different, but that usually only happens where there is a specific contractual arrangement, usually via a preexisting union and labor-management negotiation (and even there its tricky, especially in the private sector, because firm guarantees are hard.)

Re: I worked at Google for -10 days

#434

Post by stdbrouw »

cowl wrote: post #89
stdbrouw wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Let’s say we pass a law that prevents offers from being revoked. This will make hiring much harder and increase 5 rounds to like 10 and involve many more committees and even then most candidates other than sureshots getting rejected. I don't see what one has to do with the other. You only extend an offer after you've vetted the candidate, and afterwards there is no more screening, so sudden revocation doesn't have…

The Effect of that kind of policy was already tried in Italy to a certain extent. The result was that For every new "Temporary Investment" (meaning a project that needed 1-3 years of pushing) Noone was hiring and everyone, no exceptions was "renting" bodies from "consultancy firms". The result was distatrous for the companies that needed to pay Consultancy prices because they could not afford to hire without being ab…

That's a completely different topic. We're talking about revoking someone's contract before they even started, not 1-3 years after they came on board.

Re: I worked at Google for -10 days

#435

Post by dns_snek »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #277
mcast wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think OP meant they’ll be moonlighting 2 jobs for 2 weeks.

Ah. I still don't understand how this isn't considered fraud, or people aren't worried about being prosecuted or sued over it. Getting paid to do two "full-time" jobs simultaneously, without them knowing about it. Maybe just confident they won't get caught.

This is a core difference between salaried/exempt and hourly workers. You're paid a fixed salary to perform work for your employer, whether there's 80 hours or 2h of work in any given week, you get paid the same.

So if you're a salaried worker delivering results, meeting your obligations and overall expectations of your employer, then how could you possibly construe it as fraud?

Taking away the upsides, but not the downsides of salaried work sounds, for the lack of a better word, rigged.

Re: I worked at Google for -10 days

#436

Post by ido »

Malamute wrote: post #432
ido wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is more for "traditional" companies, I've never seen a startup here (Berlin) do that in the 10 years I've been living here.

I have 3 months notice. It is unreasonable.

It's unreasonable for the company to want you to stick around for 3 months before you switch jobs, but it's not unreasonable to ask a company to let an employee who has been with them for years 3 months' (notice or severance) before they fire them (as the power balance is not equal - the employee is supposedly dependent on that salary for their livelihood and not everyone can instantly land a new job after being laid off).

Overall even as a business owner myself I prefer the pro-employee German system over the free-for-all American one.

Re: I worked at Google for -10 days

#437

Post by mschild »

BowBun wrote: post #351
mschild wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On a general level sure maybe, but for this particular case, there was little economical need for Google to have any layoffs. They're swimming in money and are highly profitable. Pulling the rug out underneath a new employee who is days away from starting and moving his whole life to a new country is simply shitty behaviour.

I get that the HN crowd is sensitive to FAANG layoffs. That being said, it's hard to take seriously an anonymous comment claiming they know better than Google's executive board about whether or not they needed layoffs. Unless you were in those discussions, your ideas probably come from the same blog posts posted to HN in the last 6 months. I don't stand to gain anything from defending them, but can we drop the hubris…

I have no input on HN in general, but personally I don't work for FAANG nor do I want/intend to. I don't take issue with layoffs in general. I take issue with HOW they're done.

It's clear from all the news and HN coverage that whoever is responsible for the layoffs put in absolutely zero thought about compassion and empathy. For some well-paid engineers those layoffs probably didn't have a large effect on their financial situation. For a lot of other people, they probably did.

Take Google for example. Instead of notifying people about their layoff, a lot had to find out that they don't have a job anymore by trying to swipe their badge at the office entrance. They couldn't even bother to send an email.

That said, you're right. I don't know what's going on inside Google. But I don't need to know all the internal details to see that hiring thousands of people and then letting them go just 2-3 years later is simply stupid planning. From OPs story it also looks pretty apparent that there is not enough internal communication. They've had a hiring freeze for months, then apparently lifted it, then let people go. What exactly is the logical reason behind that? What business reason could there possibly be to do that?

Re: I worked at Google for -10 days

#438

Post by throwaway2037 »

clutchdude wrote: post #297
tyingq wrote: post #17

I've heard several stories about companies rescinding offers in a timeframe where it's obvious the candidate would have already made irreversible decisions. Funny thing is that the same HR people will tell their own stories about candidates backing out with huge eyerolls, distain, etc. I suppose the more common it becomes, the less the "offer" process will mean in practice. Candidates will hedge their bets. Edit: If…

This has become common for us when hiring in India where the offer to start dates are measured in weeks to a month or two. The candidate will accept the offer, keep interviewing other places then, shortly before the start date(usually as we begin getting hardware shipped to an office for pickup, assign mentors), they pick the job that pays best/more prestige, etc. We had one case where the person worked with us for o…

My manager moans about this all the time. I also side with the candidate. If they get more money or prestige, good for them. What my manager refuses to do: Call them up and ask what it takes to stay? He knows what the answer will be most of the time: money or title. Then he moans about "over inflated expectations". Awful. I point out time and time again: If they are getting better from another place, then we need to pay better. If you think too high, then stop hiring in the location.

Re: I worked at Google for -10 days

#439

Post by randomswede »

tharkun__ wrote: post #425
efitz wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If an employee has been malicious during their tenure then other systems should have detected and caught that. That scenario can be decoupled from the termination scenario. Think about making a 2x2 matrix (nod to Pascal’s wager): Across the top: fire immediately, don’t fire immediately. Down the side: employee is benign, employee is malicious. There’s only one square where the company is at risk- bottom right. The al…

And for some reason there's a particular country in this world where this is interpreted in one way and one way only (well not 100% true either but the odds of being treated one way are waaaaay skewed towards what you're saying) while in other countries it's interpreted in other ways and they're all just fine. I've personally witnessed and been part of the other squares over my entire career. If entire countries can…

Some countries selectively put some people in the "you have a very long notice period" and "you will not be working for us, but still be paid, during your notice period" (so-called gardening leave).

Not unusual in the finance industry, somewhat unusual (but I have heard of it) in "more pure tech". Probably also more common the further up you get in the corporate hierarchy.

Re: I worked at Google for -10 days

#440

Post by throwaway2037 »

mschild wrote: post #22
sashank_1509 wrote: post #7

There’s no great solution to this apart from the economy and company doing well so that this doesnt happen. I’ll lay out the reasons below: 1. Let’s say we pass a law that prevents offers from being revoked. This will make hiring much harder and increase 5 rounds to like 10 and involve many more committees and even then most candidates other than sureshots getting rejected. 2. Ban revoking offers only for overseas em…

On a general level sure maybe, but for this particular case, there was little economical need for Google to have any layoffs. They're swimming in money and are highly profitable. Pulling the rug out underneath a new employee who is days away from starting and moving his whole life to a new country is simply shitty behaviour.

I will only respond to the last paragraph: Google could have done themselves a huge (reputational) favour by offering 5-10K USD compensation to these people. It was already budgeted -- usually 5K+ for single person to move country. And, they should have gone on a PR blitz about "making things right". Whether or not you agree with these PR campaigns, they work for many people. It's hard to resist feel good propaganda spread by marketing pros.

Another trick they could have used to avoid this problem: Replace each signed new hire with another layoff. Sure, in the very short term, it is harmful to the org, but how many people are we talking about? Maybe 500 signed offer letters? Also: Try offering money first. If candidate refuses, layoff another person internally.

Post reply on HN