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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

#921

Post by withinboredom »

999900000999 wrote: post #879
darth_avocado wrote: post #567

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 could be dying of cancer or have lost a child, and they will get rid of you the moment they can do so without breaking the law, and in some cases even break the law in the hopes that you’d not pursue any legal action. Nah don’t work hard, work smart, for yourself. Amen, once upon a time I worked for a company and I didn't miss a single day for almost 3 years. Then at the moment I needed to work remote due to a f…

My wife had a Big Crunch at her job so I needed to leave early every day to pick up my son instead of my wife doing it. My job gave zero fucks and wanted my butt-in-seat until 5pm. I still left 30 minutes early every day and got fired for it, but not before lining up another job. Some work places seem great, until real life hits you in the face. I wish there was some way to detect empathy of a workplace before joining, without coming across as sketchy.

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

#922

Post by type0 »

codegeek wrote: post #287
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 disagree. There are plenty of people who would love to be dead weight just to float around in a company. The larger the team/company, the more chances of those people being around. They pretend to be always busy and doing something but don't actually get anything done. Seen it all for 18+ years. Having said that, there are plenty of people as well who would LOVE…

> people who would love to be dead weight just to float around in a company.

Jim Keller had an interesting perspective on how you should think if you are in managing position and need to fire people https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TmuJSbms9c he and Peterson discuss it somewhere in the middle

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

#923

Post by flippinburgers »

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.

I would be more than happy with that arrangement! Think of it, you could spend 36+ hours a week working on something you want to work on!

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

#924

Post by geoduck14 »

data-ottawa wrote: post #703
bogota wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just know of at least 20 people left my previous company because we had nothing to do. Every meeting was trying to figure out what the direction was. As an engineer when the company gets to the size of 1000+ you are largely not at all empowered to solve this problem but have to rely on your manager or in some cases your managers manager. But come time for performance review you get bad marks. If you think that many…

The biggest lie I ever got told at work was "all teams have equal opportunity for impact". They don't, and team+org is about 80% of your potential performance. At the time my org had a "mission & building" group and a "maintenance & operations" group. I was placed in the maintenance group. Every single project in the maintenance group went the same: good idea, planning & initial prototype, gets noticed by management,…

It sounds to me like you were in a bad fit for the role. Projects definitely have a life cycle. Prototype, build, maintain. And you typically have different types of people doing these different roles. You may not have enjoyed the role that you played - but some people really do enjoy each of those roles.

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

#925

Post by urthor »

bergenty wrote: post #681
PaulHoule wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... There was that time that top management thought reverse imperialism was a good idea so they dumped a perfectly good Google Wallet in the U.S. for something that was big in India... No thought of cultural sensitivity. A few years later they reversed the decision, with no consequence for the people who made it. If you are doing that for your products though you are never going to get long-term traction no matter ho…

I don’t know what you’re trying to say? Are you saying they discontinued a product that was big in India? How is this reverse imperialism? What is reverse imperialism?

Google Pay is a very important application tailor made to the unique Indian banking system.

Very different to Wallet.

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

#927

Post by xtat »

xtat wrote: post #926

The thought that meeting attendance is the measure of work is so beautifully corpo cringe tech. Honestly FAANG is looking more b-list every day.

Also how many employees does meta actually need? 1% of what they have currently? (70,000!)

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

#928

Post by hnfong »

unicornmama wrote: post #901
hot_gril wrote: post #779

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google has Android, which is a lot better than luck. Apple made iMessage popular just by putting it on every phone. Google did that too, but they did it wrong.

Android is a chat app? iMessage is nice but has far far fewer users than WhatsApp, WeChat, etc.

GP means Google had a platform so they had leverage to push a chat app. They had something that is better than just "luck".

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

#929

Post by horns4lyfe »

khazhoux wrote: post #803
austinjp wrote: post #636

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depresses me no end that someone can see poor performance, laziness etc only as a trait others possess, and not as a reaction to circumstance that they themselves might experience one day. I guarantee that anyone -- anyone -- can find themselves viewed as substandard. It's truly disturbing when Zuckerberg says something so dystopian, and people 'in the trenches' call for more.

> It's truly disturbing when Zuckerberg says something so dystopian, and people 'in the trenches' call for more. Or maybe people here on HN are sick of finding --in team after team-- those 1 or 2 people who take forever to finish their work and drag the whole team down.

Does it materially hurt you somehow if the team doesn’t finish all their print points? If you work at a company as big as Facebook, then certainly not.

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

#930

Post by horns4lyfe »

afro88 wrote: post #278
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I remember the engineers on my team from HQ explaining to me that my proposed stand-up meeting schedule wouldn't work beacuse their intramural basketball league scheduled their games for that time. Meanwhile, in our low-perqs atmosphere in NY, distractions were limited and productivity was high. We also all made money. Your standup meeting could've been an email. Their immovable basketball game (quality of life) is…

This seems crazy to me, but I don't work in FAANG. A basketball game (I'm assuming recurring) during work hours? Quality of life from inside work? Are you all at campus for most of your day (ie, longer than 8h?) To me, quality of life is working hard and smart during the 8h, and keeping the rest of the day for you and your family. Quality of life comes from outside work, and the company respects and encourages that b…

You know that 8 hrs is entirely arbitrary right? It’s not some directive from god. I really don’t see why you’re so jammed up by some people playing basketball during (gasp) work hours
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