Google to Slow Hiring for Rest of 2020 • Hacker News Board

Re: Google to Slow Hiring for Rest of 2020

#231

Post by 9nGQluzmnq3M » Thu, Apr 16, 2020, 1:03 PM UTC

jyrkesh wrote: post #84

paxys wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was one of the "special" ones who didn't make it past Google's final hiring committee review (although I now suspect this is a lot more common than they let on). And that happened after the recruiter had already called to check my references, matched me with a team, given me a verbal offer and told me it was "basically" final. The entire process took over 3 months. It has been years but I'm still annoyed by how the…

Yeah, I was brought back after the final interview to do another round and was verbally told by the recruiter that everything looked great and that she would be extremely surprised if I didn't get an offer. Guess who got to tell me I didn't get it (again)? Note to recruiters: don't say that stuff. Fortunately, I'm still happy in my current job.

Being brought back to do another interview is not a good sign at Google. Best case is your interviewers totally forgot to cover something important, but more commonly it means somebody has serious doubts about something and they need to check it again.

Re: Google to Slow Hiring for Rest of 2020

#232

Post by VHRanger » Thu, Apr 16, 2020, 1:05 PM UTC

JSavageOne wrote: post #229

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…

On the topic of not having enough work to do, here's a couple questions to any Google employees: 1. As someone generally frustrated with the quality of the search results I get on Google, is improving search quality seen as any kind of priority within the company? To be fair I can't think of any other search engine that returns better results. But I feel like Google's gotten very complacent with their search, which i…

I imagine the finishing in quality is due partly to choosing a more aggressive trade-off on monetization, and partly on typical "large scale enterprise" inefficiencies

Re: Google to Slow Hiring for Rest of 2020

#233

Post by 9nGQluzmnq3M » Thu, Apr 16, 2020, 1:06 PM UTC

Analemma_ wrote: post #26

a1pulley wrote: post #21

I’ve been stuck in the final SVP approval part of their hiring process for a week. At this point I think I’m just going to keep my current job. Too bad — seemed like a good time to get equity at a good “strike” price

I think everybody who interviews at Google gets “stuck in the final process for a week”. That’s kinda how they do things. I interviewed there and they rejected me at the final stage after many days of no-communication; but they told me I almost made it, which made me feel good until I talked to other people and found out they say that to everyone. Still: best of luck to you :)

If you made it to the full slate of interviews, you're already in the 1% of top applicants. If you made it through to hiring committee submission as well, you were very close to getting hired (they don't even try otherwise) and they're serious if they suggest you try again later.

Re: Google to Slow Hiring for Rest of 2020

#234

Post by nikofeyn » Thu, Apr 16, 2020, 1:12 PM UTC

JSavageOne wrote: post #229

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…

On the topic of not having enough work to do, here's a couple questions to any Google employees: 1. As someone generally frustrated with the quality of the search results I get on Google, is improving search quality seen as any kind of priority within the company? To be fair I can't think of any other search engine that returns better results. But I feel like Google's gotten very complacent with their search, which i…

gmail was just recently rewritten. it was the rewrite that made it so slow. and i say rewrite from the perspective of the user. i have no idea what they did. it was just that there was a version that, while quite old in design and lack of features, wasn't disfunctional. then it changed and is now so slow to be disfunctional.

Re: Google to Slow Hiring for Rest of 2020

#235

Post by varjag » Thu, Apr 16, 2020, 1:18 PM UTC

DeathArrow wrote: post #184

gunnihinn wrote: post #173

Maybe the travel, restaurant etc industries have stopped paying for clicks so Google gets less cash? My work cut down on PPC by a lot and we spent a lot of money on it.

So what? They have enough money to last trough years of economic depression. Long term plans might be as important as short term plans, or more important. They don't send a good signal to investors. Micromanaging makes sense when you are in deep trouble - see LA Times. Is Google in trouble? I believe not. Yet they send the message they are in trouble.

As this crisis has illustrated, early inaction can get you into later trouble.

Re: Google to Slow Hiring for Rest of 2020

#236

Post by ipqk » Thu, Apr 16, 2020, 1:27 PM UTC

One thing is that people just aren't leaving their jobs in general. Most hiring rates take into account natural attrition, but if your attrition is close to zero, then you just have to scale back your hiring to even hit the rates had planned before the crises.

Re: Google to Slow Hiring for Rest of 2020

#237

Post by edanm » Thu, Apr 16, 2020, 1:32 PM UTC

mike_d wrote: post #149

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.

> Sandberg announced last week or so that they are going to do accelerated hiring spree That was a message to the stock market. In reality I haven't heard from a Facebook recruiter in a month now.

Not sure why RivieraKid was getting downvoted - there's no "just a message to the stock market". Lying in this context would be illegal, and would open FB up to shareholders suing the company IMO.

Re: Google to Slow Hiring for Rest of 2020

#238

Post by dooglius » Thu, Apr 16, 2020, 1:35 PM UTC

JSavageOne wrote: post #229

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…

On the topic of not having enough work to do, here's a couple questions to any Google employees: 1. As someone generally frustrated with the quality of the search results I get on Google, is improving search quality seen as any kind of priority within the company? To be fair I can't think of any other search engine that returns better results. But I feel like Google's gotten very complacent with their search, which i…

You can use the "basic HTML" version that's much better

Re: Google to Slow Hiring for Rest of 2020

#239

Post by credit_guy » Thu, Apr 16, 2020, 1:35 PM UTC

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…

> Eric said when asked about it that it was a mistake.

He had the benefit of hindsight. In 2008 noone could predict if the GFC would last for one year or three years and how deep it would be.

Re: Google to Slow Hiring for Rest of 2020

#240

Post by eitally » Thu, Apr 16, 2020, 1:36 PM UTC

netjiro wrote: post #204

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…

> The ideal is ... Nope. That was perhaps the case in the 50-80s, but today we can do much better, and it's dependent on the people, the culture, and the market/product structure and strategy.

I don't know why you were downvoted -- you're exactly right. It's also the reason why there are plenty of directors at google with no team, and plenty of lower level managers with 20, 50 or more directs (often lots of TVCs).

An observation from my work experience is that, while things run efficiently with smaller teams overall, small teams also tend to make it easier for any given leader to have a reasonably good idea what's going on across their org (it's easier to grok a 50 person team's work when it's split into 10 mgr teams than if it were completely flat), but that also puts the lower level managers' jobs at risk because their director is more likely not to consider them essential -- ironically, because things are running smoothly.