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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?

#81
post #68
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Working 2 hours a day while getting paid 300K+ is unsustainable. That's just not true though. If you can generate $50m of revenue by working 2 hours a day then you're brilliant at your job, and demanding you work more hours is idiotic. Put simply, there is no function that converts "salary / hours" into any useful measure of a person's output.

> If you can generate $50m of revenue by working 2 hours a day then you're brilliant at your job Sure, but Google and other big tech have a completely different problem. Their one product makes so much money, that there is not a natural forcing function for other ventures to succeed or fail. This lets them take moonshots, but also makes it easy to slip into making bad investment decisions. For example, green-lighting…

> Their one product makes so much money, that there is not a natural forcing function for other ventures to succeed or fail.

This is what appalled me about Pichai’s productivity comment. Google may not have high productivity, but that’s not its problem. The company has just drifted since Schmidt stopped running it, reminiscent of Microsoft in the second half (and before?) of the Ballmer period. The ladder-climbing PMs are running the show and there is no overall strategy.

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

#82
post #2

And Oracle, and pretty much all the FANG MAAMAs except Amazon.

I wonder what is going on with Amazon. They seem to be going strong with hiring.

Estimates put the workforce for AWS at ~100k-200k right now. AWS income is ~80b right now according to their Q2 earnings release. Based on these numbers, a person working for AWS is making Amazon ~$400k in revenue. The profit for AWS at the moment is 30% according to the Q2 filings and nets out to ~$24b. So, assuming 200k employees for AWS which is very software-developer heavy says they are making at least $120k per developer in AWS. If they think they can continue that trend, they should be hiring every last engineer they can get for less than $280k a year. If they think they can grow their margin, they should be hiring up to an even higher number.

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

#83
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inevitable. Working 2 hours a day while getting paid 300K+ is unsustainable. Most of the Googlers I know have been spending 20% of their time on Google and 80% on side projects for the past year now.

Working 2 hours a day while getting paid 300K+ is unsustainable. That's just not true though. If you can generate $50m of revenue by working 2 hours a day then you're brilliant at your job, and demanding you work more hours is idiotic. Put simply, there is no function that converts "salary / hours" into any useful measure of a person's output.

Yeah but we all know that doesn't and won't ever scale up.

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

#84
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inevitable. Working 2 hours a day while getting paid 300K+ is unsustainable. Most of the Googlers I know have been spending 20% of their time on Google and 80% on side projects for the past year now.

Working 2 hours a day while getting paid 300K+ is unsustainable. That's just not true though. If you can generate $50m of revenue by working 2 hours a day then you're brilliant at your job, and demanding you work more hours is idiotic. Put simply, there is no function that converts "salary / hours" into any useful measure of a person's output.

>That's just not true though. If you can generate $50m of revenue by working 2 hours a day then you're brilliant at your job, and demanding you work more hours is idiotic.

That's not the argument for layoffs. The argument is that that role shouldn't exist at all and should be swallowed up by another FTE instead.

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

#85
post #19

maybe they realized hiring leetcode junkies is not a great strategy and they want to freeze that while they find a better interview system

It’s a way to filter out more experienced candidates because they want cheap and young. Even a Meta recruiter admits to me that Leetcode has nothing to do with the job, it’s just a company requirement that no one questions.

[deleted]

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

#86
post #2

And Oracle, and pretty much all the FANG MAAMAs except Amazon.

I wonder what is going on with Amazon. They seem to be going strong with hiring.

They cut about 100k jobs.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2022/07/29/amazon-shrinks-staff-...

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

#87
Their data is based on a survey. According to LinkedIn, the following number of jobs per company have been created in the past week:

Google 7k+

Apple 2k+

Amazon 39k+

Meta 2k+

If anyone has that premium feature (I don't have it anymore), you can check how the numbers changed over time.

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

#88

Google has always recruited and interviewed independently of whether they actually have roles open that make sense for you. Earlier this year, I passed the interview and spent six weeks in "team match" before I gave up and took a role with another company. Had a friend who did the same for months for a PM role. Just bc you're getting contacted by Google recruiters this week or interviewing doesn't mean you'll ever fi…

Were you paid during this time?

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

#89
post #81
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you can generate $50m of revenue by working 2 hours a day then you're brilliant at your job Sure, but Google and other big tech have a completely different problem. Their one product makes so much money, that there is not a natural forcing function for other ventures to succeed or fail. This lets them take moonshots, but also makes it easy to slip into making bad investment decisions. For example, green-lighting…

> Their one product makes so much money, that there is not a natural forcing function for other ventures to succeed or fail. This is what appalled me about Pichai’s productivity comment. Google may not have high productivity, but that’s not its problem. The company has just drifted since Schmidt stopped running it, reminiscent of Microsoft in the second half (and before?) of the Ballmer period. The ladder-climbing PM…

Not knowing anything about how Google works internally, this is very much how it looks from the outside.

They just don't seem to be able to make products that anyone wants. And the products they made before which people did want just drift in a generally worse direction as they fiddle with them randomly over time.

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

#90

Google has always recruited and interviewed independently of whether they actually have roles open that make sense for you. Earlier this year, I passed the interview and spent six weeks in "team match" before I gave up and took a role with another company. Had a friend who did the same for months for a PM role. Just bc you're getting contacted by Google recruiters this week or interviewing doesn't mean you'll ever fi…

Were you paid during this time?

You don't get paid because they don't formally extend an offer until you match with a team.
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