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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

#121

Post by pugworthy »

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 work for a large company (2 letter name) that has none of those perks, and never really did (at least at most sites). I just perceive the company as being cheap rather than forward looking.

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

#122

Post by brundolf »

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.

Huh. I'm a native English speaker and I've never seen that word in my life. I thought it was a typo for a moment

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

#123

Post by gfosco »

"Too many employees, but very few of them supported or utilized correctly." is how I'd put it. I worked at Facebook for over 7 years, and I would've worked myself to death for the company. I was making a small fortune, and living a nice life, and I greatly appreciated it. (in hindsight, lol, so glad I left.)

The real problems, imo, were the organizational rules, the expectation that basically everyone in a role is the same... the red tape, the ridiculously gamed review cycles, the little empires that reject change... the fear & the blame. This all on top of bad managers, of which I had a fair mixture, those who were helpful and those who actively worked to hurt me.

Regardless, the downsizing is coming, and it's all leaderships fault.

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

#125

Post by Ensorceled »

aeternum wrote: post #63
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…

Yes, it's pretty clear that humans were overfitting to their interview objective function: comp-sci algo problems. For companies with such strong ML backgrounds, in addition to the sheer amount of content dedicated to discussing and solving tech interview questions hosted on their own platform, one would think they would have noticed earlier.

> Yes, it's pretty clear that humans were overfitting to their interview objective function: comp-sci algo problems.

Worse, it's often over-fitted to memorized specific solutions to esoteric comp-sci algo problems.

So you end up with a bunch of, admittedly smart, developers who all have the spare time to memorize an entire suite of algo problems and solutions.

Some of those developers are going to have copious amounts of spare time while working at your organization as well.

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

#126

Post by tiahura »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #119
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.

Sure. I could do that too as a software engineer. How much you bill and how much you work aren't necessarily the same. Why would you think they are?

They’re not the same. In addition to the 40-60 hours a week of billable work, they do 10-20 hours of nonbillable work as well.

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

#127

Post by golly_ned »

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,…

When I left Amazon, I never thought I'd miss it, but I'm finding this true for me as well:

"My job is so boring now. I miss Amazon. But It's not stressful (because there is no pressure on me), and I get paid more money"

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

#128

Post by weeblewobble »

Easy to blame lazy overpaid ICs, but really this is an organizational problem. When I was at a big tech company I was on not one but two different teams that were created to build a poorly-thought-out product with no plan and no serious executive backing. Both teams accomplished ~nothing and were re-orged into non-existence within a year or so. We did work hard though, at least until it was obvious that we were going nowhere.

I never quite could figure out why they did this. Are these moonshots where they "fund" a bunch of "startups" and hope someone knocks it out of the park and produces enough revenue to justify all the failures? Or is this make-work for some executive to justify their headcount? Or maybe the company was so profitable that they were willing to fund non-profitable enterprises for PR or customer goodwill reasons?

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

#130

Post by anonporridge »

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,…

Makes me wonder if junior developers are getting bait and switched.

They get pulled away by the lure of money into an environment that causes them to stagnate in their skill and career development, then companies pull the rug after only a few years of this high pay with layoffs. Now you've got hoards of developers with junior/mid skills who expect senior salaries and can't find jobs. Amazon doesn't want them anymore, because the new grad pipeline has plenty of people nearly as technically capable and much hungrier.

Only those who manage to recognize this short term period of plenty and rapidly stack investments toward financial independence will be alright in the end. Those who thought the raining cash would never end are in for a world of hurt.

On the bright side for Amazon, they get to trim off the employees who a) aren't paranoid enough about the viciousness of the business world, and b) are looking for a way to cruise and do minimal work.

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