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Google to Slow Hiring for Rest of 2020

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Re: Google to Slow Hiring for Rest of 2020

#171

Post by chrisseaton »

sytelus wrote: post #87
o10449366 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google has a notoriously slow hiring process. For new grads and internships, the time between initial coding assessment to final hiring confirmation is often several months.

One has to think why the concept of employment is still considered like marriage that require such an extensive ultra-deep multi-level deliberations. Let's say you were local, why it shouldn't be possible to give someone on-the spot offer after half-day of interviews as well as let them go with, say 2 weeks of standard severance if things don't work out?

It costs millions of dollars to hire someone at a place like Google. If you get it wrong you’re making an extremely expensive mistake.

Re: Google to Slow Hiring for Rest of 2020

#172

Post by jjulius »

m0zg wrote: post #166
zelly wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most Americans (richest country in the world btw) don't know how they will pay their rent next month or buy food. No one's signing up for a new subscription now lmao.

Those Americans have just received $2900 for the family of 3.

If they're unemployed now, but made above a certain amount of money in 2019, they may have actually received nothing.

Also, if they're unemployed because of this and just received $2900, the wise move would be to save that money for essentials, not new subscriptions.

Re: Google to Slow Hiring for Rest of 2020

#174

Post by smueller1234 »

fergie wrote: post #159
mkoryak wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counter point: The time between my on site interview and hire date was 1 month and 1 day. I skipped the phone interview so the time from initial referral to offer was under a month. Having an internal reference may have helped, as did the fact that I told them I was actively interviewing and had offers.

Does anybody get hired for SWE positions at Google _without_ an internal referral? When I was interviewing there 6 or so years ago I was under the impression that you, in practice, had to have an insider vouch for you.

The only internal reference I had was a distant acquaintance who - as they said themselves - just submitted one that basically read "don't know them much but they don't seem to be a jerk".

So you can absolutely get hired in engineering without internal references. (I'm also on a hiring committee myself.)

Re: Google to Slow Hiring for Rest of 2020

#176

Post by cletus »

So years ago this came up with Eric Schmidt, who was CEO of Google through the GFC. After 2007, Google had selective layoffs (probably not in engineering) and slowed hiring. They also paused construction projects in Mountain View and probably elsewhere.

Eric said when asked about it that it was a mistake. He said that if Google was healthy there was no need to have a kneejerk reaction to the slowdown. And this caused significant growing pains later.

Is the situation the same now? I'm not so sure. I think this economic shock is potentially far more serious and could last much longer. But also, I don't think Google really knows what Google is anymore. We're long passed the mission statement of making the world's information accessible and useful. And certainly my impression from working there (now >3 years ago) was that even then there were a ton of teams and orgs that didn't really have a reason to exist.

Have people sitting around and they will find things that "need" doing. I saw many a project that was simply rewriting something where I at least had questions as to the real need for that. The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy as they say.

And there was (and I imagine still is) too many layers of middle management. The ideal is (IMHO) CEO -> SVP (PA level) -> VP -> Eng Director -> Manager (of managers) -> Manager (of ICs) -> IC. That's 7 levels. I don't know what Google's mean org depth is in engineering but my guess is it's closer to 11, maybe even 12.

In fact this would be a good metric:

Management overhead = Mean org depth / log(# of employees)

where

Mean org depth = Mean of how many layers each IC has above them

Re: Google to Slow Hiring for Rest of 2020

#178

Post by ardit33 »

godzillabrennus wrote: post #147
sytelus wrote: post #108

Before everyone starts painting bleak picture, reminder: Facebook's Sandberg announced last week or so that they are going to do accelerated hiring spree this year, opening massive 10,000 more positions! Google as well as Facebook both depend on ads so I'm wondering why one is tightening the belt and other is moving full speed on expansion.

I don’t understand it either. Facebook may well be the worlds most powerful sentiment capture and analysis engine ever built but Google tracks conversions and has pretty stellar sentiment capture/analysis capabilities. Google appears to also have twice as much cash on hand as Facebook. Wonder what they’ll use it for if not to hire competent people to prevent them from starting the next big thing...

tik tok.... they have a real competitive threat, and probably want to make sure when the recession is over, they are still the #1 in social space

Also, back in 2008, Google didn't hire/freezed its hiring, but Facebook and Amazon were still hiring like mad, and it worked well for them. They are used to ride out recessions.

Re: Google to Slow Hiring for Rest of 2020

#179

Post by DeathArrow »

cletus wrote: post #176

So years ago this came up with Eric Schmidt, who was CEO of Google through the GFC. After 2007, Google had selective layoffs (probably not in engineering) and slowed hiring. They also paused construction projects in Mountain View and probably elsewhere. Eric said when asked about it that it was a mistake. He said that if Google was healthy there was no need to have a kneejerk reaction to the slowdown. And this caused…

In times of economic depression is best to build and acquire, if you have the money to do it.

Acquire skilled people (it would be much harder to do it after crisis), buy land, buy companies, build buildings, build tech.

Re: Google to Slow Hiring for Rest of 2020

#180

Post by izacus »

cletus wrote: post #176

So years ago this came up with Eric Schmidt, who was CEO of Google through the GFC. After 2007, Google had selective layoffs (probably not in engineering) and slowed hiring. They also paused construction projects in Mountain View and probably elsewhere. Eric said when asked about it that it was a mistake. He said that if Google was healthy there was no need to have a kneejerk reaction to the slowdown. And this caused…

I think it's also important to look at scale - in 2007/2008, Google had ~25.000 employees. Now it has over 100.000. If I'm looking at the graph correctly, Google hired 20.000+ of those in last year or two. The size of whole company in 2007!

That's a whole different ballpark than what hiring was in 2008. A slowdown in this scale can easily mean "just" hiring more people than anyone else.

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