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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?

#581

Post by BlargMcLarg »

lysergia wrote: post #502
BlargMcLarg wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're projecting a very specific SV bubble. More than enough decent developers exist outside of it, willing to work for a fraction. It's the fat profits and the big boys' eagerness to poach talent that got us this far, which subsequently inflated the QoL in these tech hubs, in turn creating the current standard.

Small startups need to be poaching ‘Big Boys’ employees, not the other way round. I see many boutique shops offering (nearly) the same pay, and poaching from FAANG+M (The M is Micro$oft)

They have to because that's the status quo now. Go back a few decades and ask yourself who started this trend.

If paying 250k+ for a developer is insane, then so is a company able to pay 250k+ without running huge losses. Those developers still make peanuts compared to what the stakeholders and executives do, despite these salaries. It's ignoring the elephant in the room which is fat profits being with a few companies, subsequently making it tougher to compete for anyone not born in wealth or able to get VC money to play with.

SV could both bankrupt dozens of companies outside SV, slash that 250k locally and up to ante globally if it had a mentality shift, in less than a few years. That's how insane the profits are.

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

#582

Post by BlargMcLarg »

edmundsauto wrote: post #482
est31 wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don’t think it’s as much about the challenging technical problems as it is the ability to get shit done. Wherever I’ve worked, most developers are unable to own e2e work. At big tech, you are expected to be decent in a lot of related areas (communication, project planning, etc). Software is a people problem and what big tech looks for is top notch technical skills and the mindset/ability to solve them in a chaotic…

Doesn't jive with me. Many companies paying at best domestic market rate are asking for top notch communication skills and people persons over tech skills. Meanwhile, most FAANG have far higher tech requirements, but would hire individuals who can barely speak proper English and even put them in the spot of hiring managers. If you value communication, you need a really good argument to look past hiring practices preferring to hire someone who'd be hard for strangers to understand in a presentation setting.

I'm fairly certain you're confusing anecdotes and culture with "big tech vs. your local shop". Software being a people problem meaning big tech is more people focused is a false dichotomy.

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

#583

Post by wickedsickeune »

itstomkent wrote: post #240
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I mean, I came to Google through an acquisition (of an adtech company) and it was pretty clear to me that the goal of the whole process was a) make your company go away and stop your customers from using you instead of us and b) get as much of your talent out of the job market as possible. They totally didn't care about our product or the productivity of the employees they brought in. They let us sit and twiddle…

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.

I do believe that everyone should learn to code, but not be a professional software dev. They are vastly different things. Coding can be just automating a task to reduce the human factor or making it more frictionless, with throwaway code of 100 lines.

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

#584

Post by Grimburger »

pestaa wrote: post #190
Grimburger wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> negate a recession What do you think GDP actually measures? A hurricane that kills 1000 people increases GDP for instance.

Gross Domestic Product is not divided by population. GDP per capita is what you're referring to?

No, I'm referring to the money spent on cleanup and rebuilding, not X lives lost reducing the denominator in GDP per capita.

Disasters are great for GDP as a metric on a medium term scale. Not so much for people or wellbeing. This is basic econ stuff.

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

#585

Post by vidarh »

alasdair_ wrote: post #421
vidarh wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Turned down Google receuiters way too early to know if that's typical, but Facebook recruiters told me from the outset the process was 6 months and that they'd provide me with a reading list, and was then surprised when I told then I'd let them know if I was willing to consider that if they provided me with a compensation range. Days after, once they'd figured out the comp range, I told them I wasn't interested. This…

> Facebook recruiters told me from the outset the process was 6 months That's crazy. When I joined FB a few years ago the total time was under a month. The reading list thing makes sense for some people who have never done a FAANG-like interview before. I remember moving from London to the USA early in my career and I had no idea how the process worked and so I got my first phone screeen with Amazon, thinking I'd exp…

The thing is, at my level of experience (27 years) I can get jobs plenty of other places without having to prove entry level skills, so being given a reading list is a hard no unless they offer a very substantial increase. And at least Facebook couldn't.

For some I guess it'll be worth it, but this insistence on that approach then means they're causing the candidates with enough experience to get competitive offers elsewhere to self-select away.

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

#586

Post by vidarh »

Balgair wrote: post #404
vidarh wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Turned down Google receuiters way too early to know if that's typical, but Facebook recruiters told me from the outset the process was 6 months and that they'd provide me with a reading list, and was then surprised when I told then I'd let them know if I was willing to consider that if they provided me with a compensation range. Days after, once they'd figured out the comp range, I told them I wasn't interested. This…

What would such a list even include?

Data structures and algorithms and other stuff intended to help you answer stuff you'd look up in a book if you can't remember in a real world situation. They're maybe useful if hiring for junior positions, but not much past that.

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

#587

Post by vidarh »

puffoflogic wrote: post #562
vidarh wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Turned down Google receuiters way too early to know if that's typical, but Facebook recruiters told me from the outset the process was 6 months and that they'd provide me with a reading list, and was then surprised when I told then I'd let them know if I was willing to consider that if they provided me with a compensation range. Days after, once they'd figured out the comp range, I told them I wasn't interested. This…

In my experience the reading list thing (seen at other companies) is either DEI lipservice or a trap for the tryhards, or possibly both depending on how cynical you're feeling. There's a ton of people on the internet who claim that they just haven't done enough leetcode to get into FAANG but they're sure it's The Way, and anyone who is in FAANG cannot possibly dissuade them from this belief. I imagine they're reading…

Maybe, but to me the whole reading list thing just added to a feeling that I didn't want to work at a company that approached hiring that way, whether or not it was actually necessary to read them.

I'm senior enough that I don't need to deal with that bullshit to get a well paying job, so in not trying to sell me on why I should want to work for them but instead giving me junior level "homework" they made me mentally raise the bar for how much money it'd take to make it worthwhile quite substantially.

Maybe they don't want people like me, and that's fine if that's an intentional choice on their behalf and not an effect of failing to realise that it's pushing away the most experienced candidates who have other options first.

Add to the fact that I was hesitant to even consider Facebook to start with and it was easy to pass on it.

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

#588

Post by uf00lme »

munk-a wrote: post #473
uf00lme wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I raise you an Australia. Smaller market and different time zone but cheaper and in my experience they make some exceptional workers/engineers.

I am quite uncertain about the cheaper portion - but the timezones hurt quite a bit and the costs for in-person visits are extremely high. Australia and New Zealand are awesome places (and I'm highly jealous of New Zealand in particular) but a 13+ hr flight to get to the west coast is extremely fatiguing so meetups are highly unlikely - compare that to flying someone down from YVR to SFO and it's a huge price and tim…

But who doesn't love a trip out to Oz to 'meet the team'! Same thing with lots of US companies in Ireland (whilst mostly for tax reasons initially, Ireland now is stacked with talent) - trip to Ireland to 'meet the team', pre-covid ain't no one going to say no to those off-sites.

It is going to be an interesting decade, the rise of working from home and ai creeping into every profession will make for some radical changes. Engineering managers can only hold their accountants overlords back for so long. I do hope SFO stops being the centre of the tech world as it is very inefficient, but that's probably 30-40 years away at the earliest unless all out war is triggered.

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

#589

Post by GFischer »

alasdair_ wrote: post #387
golergka wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not hire completely international then?

Timezones and IP and labor laws mostly. Having a team completely unavailable during the USA working day is a real pain for collaboration and it's hard to sue people in other countries that "borrow" your source code to make their own version. Also, knowing exactly how to pay (say) a German developer and how taxes work and what the labor laws are is always an issue. Aside: The very best contractors I ever hired were Uk…

I'm in Uruguay, South America, and we're on the East Coast timezone and IP laws are friendly, and if you hire as a contractor, there's no labor law issues.

Of course, people realized that and there's 0 unemployment in IT, however, there's still a long way to go before we get to the Bay Area salaries - 6 figure salaries are only for the top 1% devs and only working for the USA and usually short term contracts, but a decent developer makes north of 50.000 dollars a year which is a pretty good salary here.

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

#590

Post by pydry »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #362
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #104

The people I know who are still inside (Google) seem optimistic that maybe the company is taking a pause to deal with some of its bureaucracy and internal politics issues and with people's complaints about perf. I suppose that's good. From my perspective: They've got way too many people doing a lot of meh work and feeling really ... important about it. And it's on the whole asphyxiating the industry.

They need to start at the top. The current phase of complacency, organizational lethargy, repeated pr disasters, people wondering wtf people are doing at Google, and general tone deafness started with the current CEO. Time for him to go. His vision is speaking in corporate cliches almost exclusively and just looking after things. If there is a grander plan other than "get people clicking ads", I have yet to learn of…

I might be unusual but I actually wouldnt mind things to continue like this. I'd rather see FAANG crumble than have tech end up consolidating on three dominant, vertically integrated players like the auto market.

More corporate shooting-self-in-the-foot means more space for a vibrant built-in-a-garage startup ecosystem to compete - the kind the auto industry hasnt had since, like, 1955.

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