Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

661–670 of 1001 posts

Re: Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions

#661

Post by superconduct123 »

lokar wrote: post #574
ken47 wrote: post #347

Google is overrated. It's been obvious for over a decade after they built an interview process that is heavily biased towards those who recently took an algorithms class. You had talking heads yammering about how hard it was to get into Google, which to be honest, made the company even less appealing. Is this a software engineering company or some kind of hyped up nightclub? Yeah, maybe it's a hard interview if you'v…

I did over 400 interviews working there, and many hundreds more serving on hiring committees. I never gave a leetcode interview, and saw only a modest amount of them in committee. “It’s all leetcode BS” makes a great offhand d complaint but was not the actual truth.

Then why is there hundreds of Google tagged questions on LeetCode?

Re: Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions

#662

Post by pompino »

xpe wrote: post #530
speleding wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unions make sense if the employers have the ability to exploit the workers. By forming a collective bargaining position the workers can prevent that from happening. With the tight labor market there are very few places where employers are able to exploit anyone, people can just move to another job. And in many European countries there are already strong worker protections in place through legislation. (I would argue…

> Unions make sense if the employers have the ability to exploit the workers. This is an overly narrow definition, so I label it is largely incorrect. Think of it this way: society involves dynamically-shifting power balances. To the extent the goals of a society include: (a) standardizing certain rights and norms (b) providing checks and balances so the powerful have less temptation and ability to exploit the less W…

> But the solution is not to argue that the notion of a union is useless. The intellectually honest solution is to seek achievable solution in the mess that is the real world.

You can say that about any topic, but what specifically are you proposing? Or do you just want to talk about stuff?

Re: Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions

#663

Post by superconduct123 »

password54321 wrote: post #449
ken47 wrote: post #347

Google is overrated. It's been obvious for over a decade after they built an interview process that is heavily biased towards those who recently took an algorithms class. You had talking heads yammering about how hard it was to get into Google, which to be honest, made the company even less appealing. Is this a software engineering company or some kind of hyped up nightclub? Yeah, maybe it's a hard interview if you'v…

Most "leetcode" questions they ask are just easy level programming puzzles. The fact that many developers seem to hate it and even struggle with it says more about the developers applying than it does about Google.

They are literally not easy-level

Just take a look at the list https://leetcode.com/problem-list/top-google-questions/

Re: Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions

#664

Post by granshaw »

SirMaster wrote: post #608
nly wrote: post #35

My firm made billions last year too and just laid off hundreds of engineers (a decent %) Some of the best engineers, those that I respected the most, went. People who make no sense. After last year's layoffs they told us they were "done" and it was "all behind us". Last year then turned out to a better year financially than 2022 (we have access to the top line numbers) You can't trust anything anyone above you in the…

>Your job is NOT safe. Maybe your job(s). But there are certainly companies out there that actually care about the welfare of their employees. Usually family owned and such. That's where I choose to work and they have always taken care of my needs and listened to me. I never really understood why people have such a desire to work for these big companies that don't care about you. I guess it's just different strokes..…

Cause they pay 2-3x as much, that’s why.

Re: Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions

#665

Post by pompino »

SideQuark wrote: post #351
sinuhe69 wrote: post #127

Seriously, why people in tech are opposed to unions? In Europe, unions and Betriebsrat (works committee) are the norm. Why not in the US?

The US also pays significantly more. Unions change the risk calculation for employers, and the result will be changes in compensation, and often increased costs to consumers. Also unions in the US have quite often rewarded seniority over skill and effort, making them less attractive to high performers. Early on in tech I outperformed all those I started with, and was able to make significantly more as a result. My fr…

You do make some very good points, but I disagree on one.

>Now look at how few companies in the EU become worth 1B compared to the US. That low ratio also applies to smaller (and larger) companies.

Money is power/control, and not having a concentration of wealth is a good thing for society. Granted many of the ultra wealthy also support giving away their wealth - but (IMHO) the Benevolent dictator model for social change is indicative of a failure of government. I think there is wastage of allocated capital both when its done by elected officials and also with the ultra wealthy.

Re: Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions

#666

Post by gretch »

rixrax wrote: post #593
qaq wrote: post #107

Someone should start an massive incubator that takes in top laid off employees and gives them resources to build a competing product. They will be motivated as hell and have a ton of domain knowledge and generally have a good idea on how to do things in way more efficient way than what their former employer did. For kicks and to save money replace most of mngmnt roles with AI model.

Or having only ever worked at FAANG(s), many of them completely lack the skills that would make them effective as an entrepreneurs and it would be nigh useless to try to incubate new businesses out of them. Maybe. Not all. I am thinking of traits and skills such as actually talking to your users, selling product to customers, doing things small scale, being able to work without huge back office support, not having KP…

Completely agree with this take. I worked in FAANG and before that I worked in various startups.

Most of the people around me are very adapted to this very specific hyper-structured environment that we are in. This is not a criticism - they are thriving in this environment and everyone is happy.

But no way would I want to take these people with me on a new venture. (the inverse is also true; I would not take a shoot-from-the-hip go-getter and put them into a mature product environment that with intense legal scrutiny)

Re: Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions

#667

Post by xtracto »

mista2nith wrote: post #516
xtracto wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been interviewing people for Software Eng jobs for more than 10 years an I haven't used leetcode style problems for like 8 of those years. Leetcode interviewing is lazy interviewing. It's for when you don't want to put an effort in your interviewing process to check if the candidates have the skills you need for the position you are filling. For example. My interview process nowadays is one web API interaction c…

.... if I use this will you sue me? This should be the standard wtf

Lol not at all. I am actually part of a group of CTOs in my area and I know of a couple of people that have "copied" the method one way or another. For all I care I am happy for people to copy it. That's the type of process I would like to have. So who knows, maybe later I'll be applying for your company, and nothing better than following a process that I enjoy (or at least is not as asinine as the leetcode/whiteboard algorithm crap)

Re: Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions

#668

Post by ponector »

sjfjsjdjwvwvc wrote: post #296
ponector wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a business relationship, but they always trying to convince employees that it is not. That it is a family, a friendship relationship. You should be reliable, you should help everyone in your "family". If you leave your "family" abruptly it is a kind of betrayal. Also funny is brainwashing employees to think that HR is their fried, that HR can help with issues at work. It is a business. Do minimum amount of work…

Honestly a very depressing outlook. If I would really think this way I wouldn’t wanna work in this industry. The only times I was really happy and motivated at work was when I was working within a team where we were really friends - I’m still in contact with most of them years after the fact and some became really close friends - this was outside of IT though. Your line of thinking seems to be common in the IT indust…

It is depressing, with more years of experience I see that there are no friends at work, lots of lies and politics. Managers lie to their teams constantly. Team members lie about amount of work done, working hours worked, experience in cv, etc.

At first place of work I had really nice team of young engineers, we've been students without kids, with lots of energy. Job was quite boring, but days were full of jokes and friendship.

And yes, I would like to exit this industry but am not ready to switch to x0.2 salary. Golden handcuffs!

Re: Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions

#669

Post by dijit »

10xDev wrote: post #466

What is interesting is that now with all the layoffs we also have more CS graduates than ever [0] who were told that tech companies are struggling to find candidates to fill their vacancies. We are reaching a point, if not already at the point where we will have bunch of unemployed CS grads who will have to make a pivot into something entirely different. [0] https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d22/tables/dt22_322.10.…

I had a theory that FAANG (et al.) are implicitly trying to solve the problem of developer salaries.

If we take things back to basics: supply and demand.

If your biggest cost is developer salaries, then making a huge supply of developers is the best way to suppress those wages.

I have long felt that the push to get women and minorities into coding was driven by this: to get as many people coding as possible so that supply was not constrained and developers could no longer name their price.

I do not believe that Sundar carries Sergei's principles of making people want to work at google for a long time; I think of him more like a businessman (same as Tim Cook, actually). No strong principles, just pushing the company forward.

For them the "company" is the C-Level and the branding and the partners. Not the employed.

Re: Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions

#670

Post by TerrifiedMouse »

Frost1x wrote: post #331
twh270 wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Your job is not safe" does not mean you should do everything possible to keep your job -- allowing yourself to be unfairly exploited and abused. It means that you need to be responsible for yourself, and not allow thoughts like "I'm a valuable employee", or "I have too much seniority", or "my manager and I get along great" to convince you management won't lay you off or fire you or that they owe you anything. As oth…

>"Your job is not safe" does not mean you should do everything possible to keep your job -- allowing yourself to be unfairly exploited and abused. In my opinion it should mean that you not only consider the relationship transactional, you consider yourself as an independent business operating within a business transaction, an LLC or sole proprietorship if you will. Remove yourself from emotional attachment this way.…

> This line of thought leads people to naturally adopt the exact same sort optimization (exploitation) strategies businesses (your employer) does with the same justifications they use.

But that’s exactly the kind of relationship it is. Instead of maintaining some fantasy, you should call a duck, a duck.

Post reply on HN