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What’s going on with Google and Facebook hiring freezes?

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Re: What’s going on with Google and Facebook hiring freezes?

#431

Post by alasdair_ »

michaelt wrote: post #405
alasdair_ wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Re: startups and compensation one major thing that has changed since 20 years ago is that it is simply not possible to become wealthy (like "I can afford going to retire wealthy" or "I can now afford to seed my own startup wealthy") out of the equity package that a startup will offer unless you're the cofounders or a founding employee. I guess it depends how you define a "founding employee". I know several engineers…

'Back in the day' the graffiti artist who painted the first Facebook office got shares that ended up worth $200 million [1] because in those days, investors hadn't figured out they could get away with offering a lot less. More recently, last time I was on the job market and interviewed with startups, their offers were more along the lines of "If the company value rises to $1 billion, your stock options will be worth…

The average price of a decent 3 bedroom home within 30 minutes of Palo Alto probably IS enough to retire on (modestly) as an individual if you move to a cheaper state. Few Americans have several million dollars in retirement savings.

Even for most engineers, somewhere between five and ten million is enough to retire on (3.5% safe withdrawal rate) at a nice standard of living, again assuming you don't want to live in the bay area, NYC, Seattle or LA.

Re: What’s going on with Google and Facebook hiring freezes?

#432

Post by idontpost »

saagarjha wrote: post #396
ironman1478 wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple has a ton of engineers and they are able to pump out high quality products with really cool features. Its possible, but it requires focus (look at how limited Apple's product line is compared to Google) and it does require people in leadership positions with very clear visions, which Apple definitely has.

Apple has like an order of magnitude fewer engineers.

And yet, is a more valuable company.

Re: What’s going on with Google and Facebook hiring freezes?

#433

Post by marshray »

sbierwagen wrote: post #418
saagarjha wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As a TL, I don't want to waste my precious approved headcount on people who just want to rest and vest, or people who believe in the crazy talk of only needing to work 30 minutes each day. And yet these people exist and get hired, even at Google. Perhaps not on your team, but they’re definitely there.

21% of Alphabet was hired this quarter. >Alphabet, Google’s parent company, said its head count rose 21% in the second quarter of 2022 to 174,014 full-time employees from 144,056 the year prior. https://www.hcamag.com/us/specialization/corporate-wellness/... SV talks the big talk about hiring the best of the best of the best, then hires 30 thousand people in three months. There probably aren't that many 10x programme…

Quibble:

A 21% rise results in 17% of the new group having come from the increase.

Re: What’s going on with Google and Facebook hiring freezes?

#434

Post by askafriend »

est31 wrote: post #419
Firmwarrior wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, on the other hand, I'm pretty sure that I or most silicon valley coders making 250k+ can singlehandedly outperform a dozen "decent developers" by pretty much any metric you can pick. I'm not saying we're smarter or innately better, but coding is a tradeskill and the masters of the trade are almost all here. I'm interested to see how much this changes over the next decade, though, since a lot of people have scat…

I seriously doubt that. Developing things is the same thing all around the globe. Just because you have worked five years building react apps in silicon valley (and from what I can tell, 250k total comp is reachable at that experience level) does not make you more skilled at building react apps than someone who also built react apps, say, in Barcelona. But you probably make 5 times as much, if not more. That's not be…

There is a difference between building a react app for your local bakery and building Facebook.com to scale.

The experience in scaling products that big and that fast is concentrated and not evenly distributed.

Re: What’s going on with Google and Facebook hiring freezes?

#435

Post by spookie »

ekidd wrote: post #322
yuan43 wrote: post #139

> As several of these statements blatantly contradict one another, I went back to the data and ran the same sanity check that I did with Facebook above. In other words, what if Google is using the hiring freeze as a smoke screen and only continuing with the strongest candidates, while keeping the rest on the bench? An actual hiring freeze sends a very strong negative signal to employees and investors. To employees it…

> The thing is, those with fewer than 10 years experience have never seen the ferocity of the other side of the business cycle. When it turns, that mofo turns. I was working as a programmer during both the dotcom crash and the 2007-2008 real estate crash. I would describe these downturns as "bumpy". But neither was catastrophic for most of the programmers I knew. Some of us moved, others found new jobs. Some of the l…

I don't know about the big boys. But at least in Europe, in 2008, the crash wasn't "bumpy". It was survival of the fittest, and most up and coming companies straight up died. It's a matter of perspective, for sure. But I would be careful myself. FAANGs won't vanish, and it won't be catastrophic for the privileged few. But, for the rest of the world, which follows the status quo? This spells doom in various levels.

Re: What’s going on with Google and Facebook hiring freezes?

#436

Post by mikeyouse »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #268
mikeyouse wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Government spending is a base component of GDP..

Let me have a $10 Trillion deficit and I will show you tons of "growth" in GDP.

Why is it any different if the government takes out a loan to pay for work instead of someone like GE doing the same? If someone takes out a loan, and then spends the money building a plant or hiring employees, the economic activity is real..

Re: What’s going on with Google and Facebook hiring freezes?

#437

Post by haliskerbas »

happyopossum wrote: post #429
dixie_land wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google level (L3/4/5 etc) * 100k is a very realistic expectation for TC. At L7 or above double that number too. Source: recent offers and friends who recently got offers

Yeah, not really - L3 and L4 are entry level roles, for folks just out of college. No FAANG is paying a newb college grad $400k/yr. Either your friends didn’t understand the comp plan and how equity is paid out, or they were BSing you.

In a bull market it’s pretty easy to clear the 3xx/4xx in a single year in those levels at competitive companies. I know many folks who have done so.

Re: What’s going on with Google and Facebook hiring freezes?

#439

Post by BurningFrog »

jshen wrote: post #356
itstomkent wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's kind of insane that on the one hand we have folks playing lip service to "anyone can learn to code" and on the other, decent developers being so rare that to hire one you need to offer compensation equal to winning a minor lottery for just 2-4 years worth of work. I wonder how much more software would get written if it didn't cost $250-500K/yr for a single developer.

The thing people miss, demand for software is infinite, so demand for software developers will increase to match any increase in supply.

Demand for pretty much anything is infinite, if you assume a price of 0.

So in reality we almost always end up with a non zero price where supply equals demand.

Re: What’s going on with Google and Facebook hiring freezes?

#440

Post by cmrdporcupine »

908B64B197 wrote: post #414
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hire Canadians. Currency conversion advantage. Same time zones. Same language. Mostly same culture. Very well educated. Cheaper health care benefits. And $150k USD is a generous compensation level, and $250USD is about what a Canadian Googler @ L4 gets paid. $100-$125k USD gets you reasonable non-senior talent.

It's what we ended up doing (indirectly through an acquisition). But it didn't end-up costing less in the long run. I'd say about a third of employees ended up coming to the Bay anyways during the first year. Something you have to keep in mind is that there are two parallel markets over there: SV caliber developers and the rest. The former won't have any issue getting a job in the US (takes maybe a week for a talente…

I'd say there's three segments TBH.

The "SV caliber" developers you identify [honestly, that's kind of offensive, but whatever] who can and do actively consider relocation to the US.

The same caliber of developers, but have no interest in ever living in the US, for personal or obligation reasons.

The permanent resident non-Canadian citizen category you allude to.

Google Waterloo for example is mostly full of the second category. Plenty of high caliber talent who are there and not in Mountain View because that's where they chose to be. Because any of them could relocate / transfer to MTV any time they liked, but prefer not to. In my last few years there, there were dozens of people who I met who had transferred (back) into Canada from SV/Bay Area because they simply couldn't stand living there anymore because of cost of living, politics, family, home sickness, etc.

There are other companies that set up shop in Canada merely to siphon the first. They offer an "ok" experience for people who choose to stay, but push hard to get talent to relocate. I get the impression there's lots of this happening in Vancouver in particular.

The prominence of the last (recent immigrant / PR) category is really something that has held back the Canadian tech scene in general TBH. It's a product of international recruitment by the Canadian immigration system. There are shops full of people essentially fresh off the boat from the PRC or Eastern Europe. Many of these are highly qualified -- but in the context of our industry as a whole -- underpaid/mistreated. Others are not as competent. And it's all mixed up, and it has messed up the local tech market, compensation ranges, and quality of work produced.

Of course all of this is in flux and changing because of the rise of remote work.

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