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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

#261

Post by ashtonkem »

netjiro wrote: post #259
ashtonkem wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve seen tiny organizations with massive management overhead. Friend of mine got a vacation denied by a 5 person all remote company because they didn’t file the correct paperwork asking for a day off!

Management overhead is a self inflicted wound. But very common. I often come in and ask people to stop doing meaningless tasks, just to be told that the previous, much more expensive, consultant had told them it's the bees knees. There is also a common misunderstanding that if a bigger or cooler company is doing something it must be the right thing. Cargo cult.

Management is also just a lot of hard work. A lot of people seemed to convinced that good management is all about issuing orders, which leads to disaster.

Re: Google to Slow Hiring for Rest of 2020

#262

Post by formercoder »

illumin8 wrote: post #65
formercoder wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was rejected by an SVP at Google. Recruiter was surprised but said it happens. Said I did a good job and could pick a different role (wasn’t for SWE), got the offer the second time around but had to start all over and got passed to a new recruiter.

How does that happen? The way interviewing should work is that every person that interviewed you should vote, and if its unanimous that you should be hired, then some SVP a few levels up decided to veto it, I'd be livid if I was a hiring manager.

My theory was that it was a comp/background mismatch. I was interviewing for a role that someone with more of a sysadmin background could do but I had a SWE background and was trying to command that comp level.

Re: Google to Slow Hiring for Rest of 2020

#263

Post by UncleMeat »

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…

There can be no absolute correct number of layers. That is obviously too many layers for a 20 person company. And what if Google grew to one million employees. Would that still be the right number of layers?

Re: Google to Slow Hiring for Rest of 2020

#264

Post by TheCoelacanth »

UncleMeat wrote: post #263
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…

There can be no absolute correct number of layers. That is obviously too many layers for a 20 person company. And what if Google grew to one million employees. Would that still be the right number of layers?

I think it's possible that there is no correct number of layers for a 1 million person company, i.e. such a company should not exist and should split up into smaller, more focused companies.

Re: Google to Slow Hiring for Rest of 2020

#266

Post by apotheon »

ashtonkem wrote: post #249
netjiro wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Management overhead = Mean org depth / log(# of employees) Your model is in the right direction but misses more important aspects. When consulting I measure overhead of the orgs I'm working for in great detail. Cultural aspects like fear, autonomy, transparency, etc have a much higher impact on management overhead than the org chart structure itself.

I’ve seen tiny organizations with massive management overhead. Friend of mine got a vacation denied by a 5 person all remote company because they didn’t file the correct paperwork asking for a day off!

I once worked at a nine person company where a three-minute fix to a piece of internal software ended up taking about two months of screwing around with revising a project proposal and, in the end, it was decided to drop the fix because what amounted to the #2 person in the company decided the tool would "eventually" be thrown away anyway.

Re: Google to Slow Hiring for Rest of 2020

#267

Post by mywittyname »

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…

2. They released Inbox, which was amazing and had a cult following.

Then they killed Inbox. Presumably because they could not figure out how to capitalize on an extraordinarily useful, fast paradigm-shifting email client.

Re: Google to Slow Hiring for Rest of 2020

#268

Post by mywittyname »

llarsson wrote: post #201
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.

One of the best offensive strategies you can have is to make sure all talented people work for you, rather than the competition. If smaller companies and startups fade away due to coronavirus-induced instability, making sure that their talent winds up with you is a smart move. If you are big enough to afford it, that is, which both of these companies arguably are -- regardless of whether their Q1 and Q2(?) results ar…

Plus, I bet they are getting these engineers much cheaper right now and presumably, that cost savings will continue indefinitely.

Re: Google to Slow Hiring for Rest of 2020

#269

Post by netjiro »

apotheon wrote: post #266
ashtonkem wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve seen tiny organizations with massive management overhead. Friend of mine got a vacation denied by a 5 person all remote company because they didn’t file the correct paperwork asking for a day off!

I once worked at a nine person company where a three-minute fix to a piece of internal software ended up taking about two months of screwing around with revising a project proposal and, in the end, it was decided to drop the fix because what amounted to the #2 person in the company decided the tool would "eventually" be thrown away anyway.

Sad stories.

Just get it done. Don't ask.

A potential customer had been debating a problem for a couple of months with feasibility studies, lots of meetings, etc.

They asked me about it as an aside over a coffee. I implemented a quick prototype while they were describing their intended project structure to me. I gave it to them for free.

I did not continue with this customer. But I heard later on that a VP refused to accept the solution because he insisted it must be wrong since it was completely inconceivable that it could be solved that quickly.

Re: Google to Slow Hiring for Rest of 2020

#270

Post by mywittyname »

9nGQluzmnq3M wrote: post #230
Abishek_Muthian wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Besides New Hiring, I would be impressed if large companies honour their existing job offers; Which IT services firms which does bulk recruiting in India seem to be doing. IT firms such as TCS (30,000 recruits this financial year), Wipro (12,000), Cognizant (20,000) and Capgemini (10,000 over January-June) say they are sticking by their offer letters[1]. I've personally witnessed jobs from these companies lift severa…

For bean counters looking to cut costs, outsourcing to India is going to look pretty attractive. Especially since the actual costs of doing this will only become apparent later...

I'm not sure if this will happen again so soon. Mostly because it seems like wages in technology flattened or even declined on the low-end due to the glut of college graduates capable of filling these roles. I see lots of applicants with non-CS/CE degrees applying for programming and analytics positions.
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