'Too many employees, but few work': Pichai, Zuckerberg sound the alarm • Hacker News Board

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

#381

Post by rajeshp1986 » Wed, Aug 10, 2022, 7:46 PM UTC

fefe23 wrote: post #245

As a consultant, I come around a bit. I have seen many companies with very poor productivity, and in zero of those cases was it laziness of the employees. In fact they usually would have loved to be more productive. Nobody wants to spend their life being dead weight. But as companies grow they install more and more rules and regulations that end up making sure nothing ever gets done. It is not unusual to meet "develo…

What I noticed is it is not employee laziness but the FAANG companies have ton of dead weight in terms of future projects or project features which never get released. One of my co-workers was working on a feature which was shelved after working 2+ years on it. He lost motivation after that and coasted the rest of the time doing minimum work. I think FAANG companies have lot of PMs and top management who are as clueless and lazy as engineers.

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

#382

Post by giraffe_lady » Wed, Aug 10, 2022, 7:46 PM UTC

afro88 wrote: post #278

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I remember the engineers on my team from HQ explaining to me that my proposed stand-up meeting schedule wouldn't work beacuse their intramural basketball league scheduled their games for that time. Meanwhile, in our low-perqs atmosphere in NY, distractions were limited and productivity was high. We also all made money. Your standup meeting could've been an email. Their immovable basketball game (quality of life) is…

This seems crazy to me, but I don't work in FAANG. A basketball game (I'm assuming recurring) during work hours? Quality of life from inside work? Are you all at campus for most of your day (ie, longer than 8h?) To me, quality of life is working hard and smart during the 8h, and keeping the rest of the day for you and your family. Quality of life comes from outside work, and the company respects and encourages that b…

The freedom to schedule things during the day is very powerful and a huge factor in my wellbeing. Being able to for example spontaneously drop work for a few hours to enjoy the first beautiful weather of the year is worth more a lot to me psychologically.

Being able to schedule out of work things during "work" hours is amazing too! I've been able to have a level of involvement in volunteer and community projects that is not really possible on a nights & weekends basis. Maintain relationships with my friends and family who don't work 9-5s, watch their kids regularly. Go to those odd-hours sparsely attended religious services and grow different connections in that community too.

To me this is all much more sustainable than having a relationship to work where I grind away at it waiting for it to be over so I can live my life. There are risks here too, specifically boundaries as you mentioned. But when managed well it feels like work is just one of my obligations among several, rather than the time I suffer through so I can do worthwhile things instead.

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

#383

Post by jononomo » Wed, Aug 10, 2022, 7:47 PM UTC

matsemann wrote: post #318

abledon wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nobody wants to spend their life being dead weight. Have you worked in Government? edit: see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26727803 for an example

I hate this take of "gobernment bad, capitalism good". As a consultant having worked for both large government agencies and large corporations, they are all the same.

I completely agree -- but it is remarkable how many Americans have bought into this idea that "government is bad".

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

#384

Post by asdjjsvnn » Wed, Aug 10, 2022, 7:47 PM UTC

fefe23 wrote: post #245

As a consultant, I come around a bit. I have seen many companies with very poor productivity, and in zero of those cases was it laziness of the employees. In fact they usually would have loved to be more productive. Nobody wants to spend their life being dead weight. But as companies grow they install more and more rules and regulations that end up making sure nothing ever gets done. It is not unusual to meet "develo…

Part of the problem is also the incentives and performance axes that are defined to evaluate work/productivity.

At a higher experience level, you are expected not just to churn out code but also to demonstrate performance on axes such as influence, scope, leadership etc. In fact, if you just churn out code and not perform on other axes, you are under performing under other axes. So, I could solve a particular problem for my team quickly with no dependencies with other teams/people, but I am now forced to go to other teams and look if they have similar problems to solve and then work on getting alignment on a common solution which would work as a common framework for both team's use cases. While this in theory is good to have one generic solution for a set of similar problems, once a huge company has incentivized this, lot of people are trying to build the next standard/framework and as you'd expect adoption becomes a problem because everyone is trying to evangelize their own framework. The end result, you suddenly have to work with x number of people and let everyone align with what you are doing, that takes time, then you implement something and now have to convince others to use your framework, which again takes time. Add these dependencies and you have what you currently have, a mechanism that moves slowly with most people involved feel helpless and think if it was just up to them they would have it all done in a few days.

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

#385

Post by whateveracct » Wed, Aug 10, 2022, 7:48 PM UTC

jonny_eh wrote: post #223

whateveracct wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And more than that - it's abstract problem solving. Sometimes the problem is never gonna have an answer until I am washing my dishes after breakfast tomorrow. My subconscious & creativity can't be sped up. It's this idiocy that you can convert time into software at a fixed rate that got us into this mess.

aka "The Mythical Man Month" [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month

I recently read through that book and it's nuts both how prescient it is and how different some of the suggestions are than what anyone now would consider.

For instance, there was talk of a team structure with one programmer and everyone else in specialized, supporting roles. That wouldn't fly today because everyone is obsessed with employee fungibility and bus factor.

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

#386

Post by 8note » Wed, Aug 10, 2022, 7:49 PM UTC

bobobob420 wrote: post #190

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I remember the engineers on my team from HQ explaining to me that my proposed stand-up meeting schedule wouldn't work beacuse their intramural basketball league scheduled their games for that time. Meanwhile, in our low-perqs atmosphere in NY, distractions were limited and productivity was high. We also all made money. Your standup meeting could've been an email. Their immovable basketball game (quality of life) is…

This is exactly the mindset of failure. The team standup has 10x more priority than some dumb basketball league

High intensity physical activity keeps you in shape both physically and mentally.

Standup everyday with people burnt out and depressed due to a lack of excercise and poor nutrition is a recipe for failure too.

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

#387

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Aug 10, 2022, 7:49 PM UTC

naravara wrote: post #233

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been in MANY different standups. The vast majority of them are not well run. Standups are also (rarely) recorded, and therefore unsearchable. Have you ever thought - maybe an email process can also be done well? Maybe the majority of your email threads are terrible. That doesn't mean they have to be. Maybe you think all of your meetings are well run - it doesn't mean everyone else thinks they are...

I've been in many different companies and the majority of all processes are not well run. That just means things are being badly run, not that you shouldn't do the right things and run them well. And no, email processes cannot be well done. You may think your's are, but that doesn't mean everyone else does. If I had my druthers I would ban email for all in-house communication and do everything verbally, via chat apps…

[deleted]

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

#388

Post by commandlinefan » Wed, Aug 10, 2022, 7:49 PM UTC

g051051 wrote: post #349

fefe23 wrote: post #245

As a consultant, I come around a bit. I have seen many companies with very poor productivity, and in zero of those cases was it laziness of the employees. In fact they usually would have loved to be more productive. Nobody wants to spend their life being dead weight. But as companies grow they install more and more rules and regulations that end up making sure nothing ever gets done. It is not unusual to meet "develo…

> The other half is that agile makes you iterate through pseudo productivity before you actually understood the problem, accumulating cruft that you need to maintain and extend as you go on. Well said!

As Dilbert says: "our boss can't judge the quality of our work, but he knows when it's late".

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

#389

Post by my_usernam3 » Wed, Aug 10, 2022, 7:49 PM UTC

fefe23 wrote: post #317

codegeek wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Nobody wants to spend their life being dead weight." I disagree. There are plenty of people who would love to be dead weight just to float around in a company. The larger the team/company, the more chances of those people being around. They pretend to be always busy and doing something but don't actually get anything done. Seen it all for 18+ years. Having said that, there are plenty of people as well who would LOVE…

I have met a few of those people, but every single one of them needed a justification. Some told me they felt wronged by the company somehow. For example they had experienced bullying, or didn't get promoted when they felt they should have been, or they had contributed something and then it got cut from the product, something like that in most cases. Now didn't feel they owed the company anything. Yet others said the…

My millage is that it's not absolute "dead weight". It's more wanting limited responsibility and tasks that require limited scope/time spent, but does actually contribute, just a much smaller scale than others.

> The fact that they needed these excuses tells me they felt what they did to be morally wrong and didn't really want to be dead weight.

My guess from your comment is that you judge them for being slackers, and the feel obligated to explain to YOU that its not morally correct. Personally, I have no qualm with those that want to drift around megacorps while collecting a nice paycheck.

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

#390

Post by 3pt14159 » Wed, Aug 10, 2022, 7:50 PM UTC

qqtt wrote: post #263

yibg wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to defend either of them as CEOs but isn't that what they're doing? Part of addressing a problem is surfacing it in the first place.

They are surfacing it in a weaselly way which absolves them of personal responsibility. In reality, they approved the strategic direction of the company and signed off on the outrageous hiring plans. They were responsible for fostering a culture of execution and measuring the results of their teams. They were responsible for ensuring their investments were paying off. Instead of messaging that "As CEO, we did not inv…

I heard from former, recently departed Facebookers that their standards for hiring dropped quite a bit during the pandemic.

If I had to guess why Zuck isn't happy, it's that the new hires plus the increased organisational bloat of such a massive amount of new hires didn't materalize into spreadsheet numbers that looked good.