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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

#991

Post by quickthrower2 »

ikrenji wrote: post #984
metabagel wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you have it backwards. Highly profitable companies with high growth can afford to be wasteful. Being wasteful isn't what made them successful.

idk that this conclusion can be made. maybe the wasteful work culture is what enables them to generate high profits...

Assuming that in a creative art like programming that efficiency (time spent at keyboard? and cost cutting? you can get 100 staff for the price of 98+ perks!) are the route to profitability is questionable. Add in supply/demand and competition for top talent and skimping on goodies is just bizarre.

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

#992

Post by salawat »

paulcole wrote: post #754
onion2k wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 take virtually any job that paid what I make now (nowhere close to $300k) and required 4 hours a week over the very best job that paid what I make now and required 40 hours a week. Don't even have to think about it. I can fill 36 hours a week of my time better than anyone else can. If the money's equal and the time difference is that steep, I'll take the shorter time commitment.

Now add in that contractually, you cannot controbute to any open source project, and any intellectual property you develop hoes to the company.

Still worth it?

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

#993

Post by gofreddygo »

twblalock wrote: post #473
titzer wrote: post #299

Quoth Zuck: > “And part of my hope by raising expectations and having more aggressive goals, and just kind of turning up the heat a little bit, is that I think some of you might just say that this place isn’t for you. And that self-selection is okay with me.” Wow. Just. Wow. Why not inject some more dysfunction into an already strained relationship with employees and callously but passively aggressively deal with a s…

I've been at places where I would love to hear the CEO say that. Being forced to work with poor performers, lazy people, and people who deliver poor quality results is frustrating and demoralizing. Those kinds of people can stick around for years, especially in good times when the company is making so much money that leadership doesn't need to care. Netflix is one of the few large companies that has a culture of cull…

I do not want to be in a place where this kinda signaling goes top down from the CEO and is not abhorred by the ones doing the work.

As a dev, being forced to first plan and then PROVE that I am NOT lazy, NOT a poor performer and my code is NOT the reason the product sucks is just breeding a CYA culture full of conflicts, closeness, suspicion and politics. The only one's who will survive this environment are not the ones whom you want to retain anyway.

The path to hell is paved with good intentions.

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

#994

Post by citizenpaul »

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…

>family member's terminal cancer

Yep, I lived this and it really woke me up. The day my dad died my boss called to ask "your going to be in tomorrow right, since you don't have to take care of him anymore"

Not to mention things like "are you sure its terminal" "Do you know what terminal means? just checking maybe you didn't understand the doctor"

To a company you are a number and nothing more,treat them the same. The people in charge got there by ruthlessly focusing on that fact. Trying to get sympathy from work is like trying to explain to a debt collector why you can't pay. They don't care at all and never will, everything you say will be used against you and they are hoping you will slip up.

Its as pointless as a mouse trying to debate a hungry cat as to why he should not eat him.

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

#995

Post by edmundsauto »

austinjp wrote: post #976
sershe wrote: post #949

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sub-standard is relative to a standard. If someone finds themselves to be sub-standard, maybe they should find a place with lower standards? That's exactly what Zuck is saying. On one hand, I've worked with a guy once who, as far as I could tell, did about an hour of work per day (if that) and played fantasy baseball in his office most of the time, waiting to be PIPed and managed out for a really long time... I inher…

> Sub-standard is relative to a standard. If someone finds themselves to be sub-standard, maybe they should find a place with lower standards? That's exactly what Zuck is saying. Sure, and maybe Zuck should just keep shifting the goal-posts, without limit? Where's the harm?

From talking with friends at Meta, this is re-raising the bar. Meta was apparently pretty understanding how Covid affected people psychologically, even if they didn't get sick. My contacts say this is a return to the pre-covid standard.

Additionally, the economy is struggling and Meta hasn't had great earnings reports vs expectations. Wouldn't you want a CEO to communicate that the company needs to buckle down before things get dire?

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

#996

Post by twblalock »

titzer wrote: post #833
twblalock wrote: post #709

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook has regular, systematic performance reviews and a PIP process like most large companies. Nobody is talking about firing people for temporary performance lapses.

Zuckerberg could have said some stuff like "I have confidence our existing performance evaluation processes will be able to handle productivity issues, with some adjustments", or some other bland but reassuring words, but he chose what he said.

Yeah and he didn't say anything about firing people. He said people should choose to leave if they don't fit.

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

#997

Post by chii »

codefreeordie wrote: post #728
danaris wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that are happy with their comp, aren't trying to advance Why does this > and have adopted the "do the minimum to not get fired" approach to their work necessarily have to go with this? What's wrong with deciding "I don't need to advance further; I like the work I do, I make enough money; I don't need to be hustling anymore"? It seems to me the concept of "enough" is hard to grasp for a lot of people, especially tho…

It doesn't. There are lots of people who are comfortable where they are and continue to do solid work. I'd say that's probably almost half of folks at the mid-career levels in the big tech companies. This is actually why rest-and-vesters are so damaging. If you get a couple of these people on your team, they tend to bring down the morale of the much larger group who are earning their keep. It's easy to be happy getti…

> But if you're not learning something and growing in some way, you're probably regressing.

but this has nothing to do with your work - you grow and learn as part of your personal desire or interest. If it happens that your personal interest intersects with your job, then that's a great coincidence.

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

#998

Post by Handytinge »

i_have_an_idea wrote: post #352
afro88 wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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 Mate, I browsed your profile and you live in Australia. Why would you want to spend the better, sunnier part of the day inside of an office? How is that "quality of life" better than spending an hour or so to play some basketball with some friends? > Of course we still do team building activities,…

Speak for yourself, cobber.

I've been at many workplaces where I've enjoyed hanging out with coworkers for fun at the pub. Granted, usually complaining about the company and boss.

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

#999

Post by mberning »

schlauerfox wrote: post #967
mberning wrote: post #76

This is not surprising to anybody that ever worked at a sufficiently large organization. Once you get a large number of employees, then layer in HR, legal, compliance, etc. considerations it creates quite a lot of opportunities for low performers to get in the door and never leave.

Convenient that they only worry about this during recessions, what purpose would management have to ignore these problems until now? It's a sleight-of-hand to shift blame come earnings time and give management something to do to 'fix the problem' (that their mismanagement created) they can point to, nothing more.

Yes. I think that has to do with the culture of budgetary cycles and planning. It makes it very unlikely that a leader would want to jettison dead weight during “the good times” since they might lose the budget if the role is not backfilled quickly.

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

#1000

Post by lujim »

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…

I disagree with this. An entire business day is a long time to do nothing. I've always loved jobs where there was enough strategic direction to know what to focus on but enough latitude where you could actually do it. I can't think of anyone (not suffering from pure burnout) that didn't devour meaningful work that had well written requirements.
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