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

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

#651

Post by kortilla »

jjslocum3 wrote: post #91

Glad these guys seem to finally be noticing. I was a software engineering manager at a lean, high-margin, profitable start-up based in the NYC area starting in the late 2000s. We were acquired in 2014 by a very typical (for the time) SV-based competitor that had raised hundreds of millions in an IPO a few years earlier. Our acquirers had yet to see a single quarter of profit, of course. I and my team had so many good…

That is a big pile of specious reasoning. All of the things you listed could have had effectively no meaningful impact on the bottom line.

There are tech companies that absolutely print money and have those perks. There are also companies that grind and don’t turn out shit.

If fresh blueberries for software engineers are gonna wreck you, you aren’t in a business worth doing.

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

#652

Post by holoduke »

nkrisc wrote: post #521
depereo wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I turned into dead weight once during a hostile takeover of the company I was working for. It was pretty shit, and I'm glad I moved on after a few months of being unproductive. Management removed our ability to move forward on any existing work, and allocated no new work, and rejected any proposals from anyone from the 'old' company. Wound up spending most of my (remote) work day occasionally checking my work laptop…

I had a coworker who ended up in a similar situation. At one point they were almost literally being paid to do nothing . They eventually stopped even going in to the office all while collecting a pay check. As nice as that sounds, it was still not a great situation because they didn't know how long it would last and figured eventually, without warning, they'd be dropped. They ended up leaving on their own to actually…

Ended up in a similar situation. Gave me time to start up my own company. Was 10 years ago. Company still running. Lucky I was.

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

#653

Post by sokoloff »

rr888 wrote: post #623
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…

> Nobody wants to spend their life being dead weight I read loads of blogs and posts where people are loving WFH, doing very little and openly recommending tech career to others because its so great. They might not think they're a dead weight, they just think thats what modern working is like.

There were coffee-mug-carriers and hall-wanderers back in the office as well. I don’t think it’s new in WFH, but at least now they bother fewer people with their “checking in”.

I swear one guy must have gotten 15K steps/day in just wandering around the building.

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

#654

Post by primeblue »

Spivak wrote: post #543
Silverback_VII wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have seen it in many places. It's like you can watch the emergence of Orwell's Animal Farm in every human setting. A small fraction doing more and more, which in turn let the others do less and less.

> which in turn let the others do less and less. Force the others to do less and less. I’ve seen this a million times, you have one dev going absolutely buck wild building a cathedral of abstractions that only they can understand. The rest of the devs struggle to implement basic features because, and I can’t overstate this enough because it’s true every time the code is a horribly written tightly coupled shoddily arc…

No post body was provided.

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

#655

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#656

Post by Beldin »

onion2k wrote: post #403
colechristensen wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If somebody wants to pay me $300k to work 4 hours a week, I'll happily take the deal. As long as that's the actual acknowledged situation and not "most of your job is pretending to work and making people think you're important". I wonder how successful a lot of companies would be if they openly cut required hours in half.

If somebody wants to pay me $300k to work 4 hours a week, I'll happily take the deal. Would you take that over $300k to work 40 hours doing something you actually care about? I don't think I would.

Unlike sibling comments, I completely agree.

$300k is (around here) over 7x the mode of income [1]. That's a significant amount (basically the yearly income of 7 "regular joes") and raises (to me) the ethical question of whether I'd deserve it. For a full 40-hour workload, perhaps a case could be made.

But for a 4-hour workload? The only way I'm getting that sort of compensation for so little work is if I'm a parasite on society. And that's not something I would want.

Note: this, by itself, does not imply no one would deserve that sort of compensation. It simply raises the bar - perhaps to a level that is beyond human reach, perhaps not.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mode_(statistics)

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

#657

Post by jsemrau »

dekhn wrote: post #165

By the end of my employment at Google I was not working very hard. Probably a few hours a day, mostly doing whatever I felt like doing. My managers consistently gave me "meets expectations" regardless of how much I achieved or how hard I worked. However, any time there was an emergency related to my function, I had everything required to jump in, fix serious problems, and then get out of the way during the cleanup th…

I have never worked for Google and likely never will. Stories like these make me wonder why we put X-Googlers on such a high pedestal. I don't mean that personally in an offence to anyone. It's just a general observation.

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

#658

Post by wonderwonder »

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…

I spent about a year and a half being dead weight. I was so completely burned after working months of 70 to 90 hour weeks I just couldn't do anything. Things that used to take me an hour to code now took me days. Complete mental block. Luckily I had built up such a good reputation prior I was able to coast and it was a weird project. In a new job / role now and it's better. Only work 40 hours max. Still not back to normal but 75% of the way there.

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

#659

Post by datalopers »

darth_avocado wrote: post #567
fefe23 wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I am not a dead weight and I’ll never be, but I also do absolutely bare minimum to not get fired. And by bare minimum, I mean, I will always finish my work in the time it is expected to be finished. And if the expectations are higher, I’ll move on to another job. I do this as a way to get back at corporate America. Too many companies get away with sucking out their employees dry and firing them once they can’t meet t…

You get back at corporate america by being a mindless corporate drone?

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

#660

Post by csa »

BlargMcLarg wrote: post #66
MAGZine wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we've built companies and cultures that are incompatible with long-term employment and happiness. Anyone who joins a company can crank full 8+ hours a day for a while to establish themselves (and a reputation). The "problem" is, as people establish themselves, the problem domain becomes less exciting. There's less urgency to crank indefinitely. They settle into a pattern that involves fewer hours, though thos…

Here's the real challenge: stop thinking in hours, limit upper bounds so employees don't inevitably fall into a race to the bottom (like what is happening now). If your 3-hour-could-be-8 made adequate contribution, whatever that is, that's enough. If it takes them 8 to get to where the other is, incentives will push them to do so.

> If your 3-hour-could-be-8 made adequate contribution, whatever that is, that's enough. If it takes them 8 to get to where the other is, incentives will push them to do so.

This works great until you PIP an underperforming female, minority, or person over 40.

The discrimination lawsuits will make the company regret their progressive stances.

You wouldn’t believe how many times I have seen this happen.

The median outcome is a settlement with no admission of guilt (usually because it’s cheaper than the alternatives), and the person now has a job for life or is given severance until they get a comparable position elsewhere (and they won’t be rushing).

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