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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

#951

Post by strikelaserclaw »

jeffbee wrote: post #802
fathrowaway12 wrote: post #751

I have been working for about 4.5 years now across 3 big tech companies (Google included). I would consider myself a hardworking and ambitious person who loves computer science. I graduated top of my class at a state school. I've gotten promoted, consistently "exceed expectations", lots of positive feedback, etc. But I have not actually accomplished a damn thing or written a single interesting or useful component in…

Just wanted to say that you've hit on a real problem: the rich-get-richer feedback cycle in which all the good projects are taken by high ranking engineers. On my teams, including at Google, we intentional counteracted that by giving the interesting work to the person just barely qualified to do it, and biasing the crud toward the senior team members.

This is why it is much better for younger engineers to work at smaller companies working on interesting ideas but if you wanna get google pay, then you gotta make those sacrifices.

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

#952

Post by strikelaserclaw »

fathrowaway12 wrote: post #751

I have been working for about 4.5 years now across 3 big tech companies (Google included). I would consider myself a hardworking and ambitious person who loves computer science. I graduated top of my class at a state school. I've gotten promoted, consistently "exceed expectations", lots of positive feedback, etc. But I have not actually accomplished a damn thing or written a single interesting or useful component in…

This is why you shouldn't be a heads down "efficient" worker doing any and all tasks you are given, if you are in this position always do enough of the boring work to be employed but use the rest of the time to research interesting projects that are being worked on in the company, then when you have a decent understanding of where you wanna go, go there.

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

#953

Post by strikelaserclaw »

cletus wrote: post #560

Once again, companies blaming strategic problems on ICs rather than real culprit: leadership. Or, rather, the lack thereof. Having worked at both Google and Facebook I can tell you it's contradictory because in some cases you have an embarrassment of riches, hundreds or even thousands of heads, virtually unlimited resources (CPU, storage, networking), etc. Some make sense like Google+. I mean it was a failure and pro…

to be honest, you can never be an extremely efficient org with a huge head count like google and to be honest i don't even see what their problem is, record profits year over year, how long exactly is that trend supposed to continue? in perpetuity?

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

#954

Post by cannabis_sam »

These CEOs are by definition not deserving of their exorbitant compensation.

In an actually functioning market they would have been kicked to the curb, long long before making these kinds of embarrassing excuses for their incompetence.

If the boards of such companies weren’t stuffed full of the same kind of absurdly entitled, overpaid and under-qualified executives, our capitalist system would be a lot less dysfunctional.

Instead we get this wildy embarrassing neo-aristocracy..

Adam Smith warned us about this:

“People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.”

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

#955

Post by deeptote »

fathrowaway12 wrote: post #771
deeptote wrote: post #532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah true, but this coming from the likes of Facebook and Google, two companies well known for warehousing talent... it mostly just comes across as tone deaf and naive. For years they've literally hired very smart and capable people, and then shoehorned them into working on some ad-tech engine that an intern could do, just so they didn't work for a competitor. And now they're angry that their employees "don't work ha…

In addition to a surplus of great people, they have lots of mediocre people too, just like everywhere else. There may have been a time where this wasn't true, but now anyone who passes a day of tricky tech interviews is in, and that doesn't always correlate with good performance. At least that's my take having worked at Google.

It's nice to hear someone admit that Google hires a lot of mediocre people. I'm also not shocked, their interview process invites people to gamify.

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

#956

Post by Zanneth »

There is a huge problem with productivity at my company. Unfortunately too many people just took advantage of the flexible work arrangements offered by the response to the pandemic. What is even more frustrating is that people refuse to own up to it. Most of them pretend to be busy and overworked while conspicuously putting in the bare minimum every day.

Remote work obviously has its advantages but I’m starting to believe that it is a privilege that should not be granted by default to the entire workforce. Perhaps it makes more sense to only grant it to exceptional employees who have already demonstrated significant value to the company.

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

#957

Post by phendrenad2 »

cm277 wrote: post #910
bagacrap wrote: post #839

I work at one of the two mentioned companies. 20% of the employees do 80% of the work, and another 60% do maybe 50%. the last 20% account for -30%. It's demoralizing how incapable management seems to be at jettisoning the chaf, however it was explained to me once thusly: good engineers are hard to find and also very valuable. An unmotivated/lazy engineer is one step away from being a valuable engineer. It's worthwhil…

This is more or less exactly why Google/Meta need to be regulated and cut down to size. The fact that super-expensive engineers do not have to create value for these companies, but they are still 'affordable' while every other tech company is struggling to hire, means that they are capturing way too much value, i.e. rent.

Can't say I agree. When I go to my local mom & pop grocery store, there are 3 employees and only one of them works, the other two seem to just be on their phones. We should either find a way to cut that business down to size also, or abandon the entire idea.

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

#958

Post by gofreddygo »

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…

“ do absolutely bare minimum to not get fired “

agree with this. have been trying to get to this point for a few months. I usually am a friendly person but I’ve learned to limit to personal relations and not let it flow into my work ethic. I have some other issues to be ironed out though like overzealous colleagues, and some flexibility needs

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

#959

Post by fiveyearsinarow »

wizofaus wrote: post #883
fiveyearsinarow wrote: post #881

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a current FANNG employee, I have seen so many dead weights here, especially the new-hires after COVID. They took advantage of the lenient WFH policy. Some travels around the world for a year; some becomes a social media influencer; some comes up with all sorts of excuse like wife/kids/parents being sick to take unlimited sick day. It pains me to see how a great company gets abused like this. The cycle to put peopl…

What level are they hired at though, and are you talking developers?

Mostly level 4 SWEs, a few L5s.

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

#960

Post by yibg »

matsemann wrote: post #334
yibg wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea, as an engineer I would not be happy with my CEO swooping in to commit some code then bugger off.

The point isn't that they commit some useful code. It could be something as simple as just fixing a typo. But force them to go through the motions, so they can see the inefficiency in the processes.

And then what? Are they supposed to design a better development process and build tools to improve efficiency? Again seems like both a supreme waste of time and also as an engineer something I really would not want. Or are they supposed to tell the dev experience team to do something. If so why not just have the dev experience team or leader go through the motions instead?
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