[HN Gopher] What's going on with Google and Facebook hiring free...
___________________________________________________________________
What's going on with Google and Facebook hiring freezes?
Author : leeny
Score : 377 points
Date : 2022-08-01 21:32 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.interviewing.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.interviewing.io)
| metadat wrote:
| And Oracle, and pretty much all the FANG MAAMAs except Amazon.
| georgeburdell wrote:
| I haven't heard of Apple freezing hiring
| firstSpeaker wrote:
| I wonder what is going on with Amazon. They seem to be going
| strong with hiring.
| Olreich wrote:
| 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.
| bsaul wrote:
| those numbers are scary for anyone ever thinking about
| competing with amazon... I'm really stupefied by the way
| this company is operating..
| rubiquity wrote:
| Those precious margins will be their competitor's
| opportunity. Right now the cloud cartel is happy to all
| grow quickly and pretend compete with each other, but
| once that stops the margins will thin out.
| nojito wrote:
| They cut about 100k jobs.
|
| https://www.mercurynews.com/2022/07/29/amazon-shrinks-
| staff-...
| saalweachter wrote:
| My money is on Amazon being more fine with "aggressively
| pruning their workforce" on a regular basis. The point of a
| hiring freeze is so that you can move employees around
| internally to prune unprofitable parts of the business
| without pruning workers.
| etempleton wrote:
| Both companies derive nearly 100% of their revenue from digital
| advertising. Digital advertising can be lucrative. It can also go
| away in a second. If there is a recession the first thing every
| company cuts is their ad budget. Facebook and Google are
| preparing for a recession. They probably have indications that
| one is coming. They can't wait for it because it is going to hit
| them first.
| ur-whale wrote:
| What's going on is there is a giant recession half-cycle heading
| our way and Google (don't know about FB) have teams of folks
| whose sole job is to forecast these cycles.
|
| My bet is they are seeing which way the wind is turning and
| battening down the hatches.
| mkl95 wrote:
| How can large companies with high turnover like Google and
| Facebook afford to stop hiring engineers? Do they downsize teams,
| shut down projects, or something else?
| aliyeysides wrote:
| My recruiter told me Google's attrition rate this year has been
| one of the lowest in recent memory. Fears of recession could
| have to do with that. People don't want to take the risk of
| leaving a "stable" job.
| discordance wrote:
| You don't need thousands of devs and PMs to make good things.
| Think about WhatsApp, which was built by a handful of
| engineers.
|
| I work at a large tech company and a lot of the hiring sprees
| seem more like VP measuring contests.
| SQueeeeeL wrote:
| The Google internal propaganda game must be crazy strong if the
| actual employees are believing random management explanations
| designed to keep people from panicking. The US just formally
| entered a recession, in within a week of the economic turmoil
| multiple companies freeze hiring...
| tenpies wrote:
| I don't think it's propaganda.
|
| Put yourself in place of a 30 year old who has only known a
| world where you're a highly in-demand whatever "in tech".
| You've never seen a day since you graduated where you're not
| flooded by recruiter emails. You've never worked a job that
| isn't 30 minutes of work and then the rest of the day is
| posting "day in the life of a FAANG employee" Tiktoks or being
| a paid activist.
|
| What's coming is nearly unimaginable. At some level you know
| it's theoretically possible, but before your eyes even accept
| that reality you're going to go through some painful stages,
| beginning with denial.
|
| I don't fault anyone, especially anyone who graduated in '10 or
| later for this. I just hope they are preparing for this.
| munificent wrote:
| Anyone from the US who graduated in '10 had 9/11 as the
| formative event of their childhood, followed by the Great
| Recession just as they reached workforce age. For almost
| their entire lives, the US was at war, and for every day of
| their lives, they watched the climate get worse. They know
| _in their bones_ that they 're growing up in a world worse
| than the one their parents grew up in, and that it's largely
| the fault of institutions that were morally reponsible for
| protecting them and failed to do so.
|
| They've been preparing for doom since they were weaned.
| guiomie wrote:
| Spot on. There is a huge sense of entitlement from SWEs in
| FAANGs right now, and from the various folks I know at
| FAANGs, Google is worst since mediocrity and unproductiveness
| are not confronted because folks are scared of being
| 'ungoogley'. Every company has its dead weight that others
| have to carry, I think Google has much more and has been
| getting away with it because of all its profits coming in.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > I think Google has much more and has been getting away
| with it because of all its profits coming in.
|
| My sense would be that Google has such high $ earned /
| employee compared to other major tech employers it perhaps
| has less dead-weight.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Google's definition of productivity is different than
| yours.
|
| In general: Code reviews are strict and long. Style and
| structure matters more than anywhere else I ever worked.
| Everything requires extensive testing. You better have a
| design doc / PRD, some tickets, good commenting, and unit
| tests.
|
| People will happily point out and roast you for any
| potential bugs, race conditions, deadlocks, bad style, and
| sloppy work.
|
| Mediocrity in this regard is not generally tolerated. The
| standard of development is much higher.
|
| But yes, it's slow. If that's your measure of productivity,
| they'll fail.
|
| Except it doesn't matter because the goal of a SWE at
| Google is mostly to keep the ship sailing.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| This comment is setting off all of my "culture war" alarm
| bells that typically I do not find on HN. References to
| TikTok and "paid activists", "never working a job that isn't
| 30 minutes of work."
|
| I'm not sure if I am supposed to take these claims seriously
| or whether they are exaggerations to paint a picture.
| Obviously this caricature doesn't describe the vast majority
| of engineers at Google or other "FAANG" companies.
|
| > I don't fault anyone, especially anyone who graduated in
| '10 or later for this. I just hope they are preparing for
| this.
|
| The '20 post-covid labor market was weaker for graduates than
| in '08 [0] and hiring in tech is more challenging.
|
| [0]: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/17/why-the-pandemic-might-
| be-wo...
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Aside from the debate about 'formally*' entering a recession -
| if you do abide by the strict two quarters of real GDP decline
| rule, the economy still added ~2 million jobs during those same
| two quarters and the economy grew at a nominal ~6%. I don't
| think we're quite to the "economic turmoil" phase of things.
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _Aside from the debate about 'formerly' entering a
| recession_
|
| "Formally"?
|
| * https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/formal
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Ha - yep. Just making my way through my coffee...
| definitely meant formally.
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| Now subtract the deficit spending including the stimulus
| package from that nominal 6% growth.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Why? Government spending is a base component of GDP..
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| Let me have a $10 Trillion deficit and I will show you
| tons of "growth" in GDP.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Why is it any different if the government takes out a
| loan to pay for work instead of someone like GE doing the
| same? If someone takes out a loan, and then spends the
| money building a plant or hiring employees, the economic
| activity is real..
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Decision makers are now starting to openly push for moves to
| increase unemployment to get wage "inflation" down.
|
| I feel we're about to enter into a situation very similar to
| the early 90s, and we'll see a wave of pro-austerity politics
| and a lot of talk about "tightening our belts" -- slashing
| employee rights and social programs and cutting all kinds of
| social spending -- which is really about re-instilling labour
| discipline.
|
| I suspect here in Canada the temporary foreign worker program
| is about to have the floodgates opened. Employers, especially
| small businesses, are really not happy about having to pay
| more than minimum wage, and they're very unhappy about having
| their authority in the workplace undermined by workers with
| seemingly excessive bargaining power.
|
| The situation in the US is obviously more complicated by
| their messed up immigration system.
| davidw wrote:
| I have no idea what will happen myself, but it all feels a
| bit different. I think a lot of what's going on are still
| shocks from the pandemic, supply chains, and geopolitical
| stuff.
| randomdata wrote:
| Not to mention the middle boomers are entering retirement
| age right now. This exact scenario of boomers leaving
| their jobs and creating an employment vacuum in their
| wake is something I've been hearing about for 30 years.
| phailhaus wrote:
| We entered a technical recession by the "two quarters of
| contracting GDP" rule of thumb, but labor numbers are still
| strong and that second quarter contracted _less_ than the first
| [1], which is not what we 've usually seen when entering a
| recession. [2]
|
| [1] https://www.bea.gov/news/2022/gross-domestic-product-
| second-...
|
| [2] https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-
| states/gdp-...
| neuronexmachina wrote:
| > two quarters of contracting GDP
|
| Another unusual thing is that even though real GDP is down,
| nominal GDP is still going up:
| https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GDP
|
| I suspect that if gas prices had started coming down earlier
| it would've brought inflation down enough that real GDP for
| Q2 would've been slightly positive.
| mc32 wrote:
| If the labor market is so strong why is there still an
| eviction moratorium in place in places?
|
| When was the last time the rule of thumb was overlooked?
| jfoster wrote:
| If companies are doing hiring freezes and layoffs, will the
| labor numbers remain strong?
| evan_ wrote:
| Yeah probably, the tech layoffs amount to a couple thousand
| people in a labor force of hundreds of millions.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Sure, but if you consider what is causing these layoffs:
| anticipated weaker aggregate demand -> less demand for
| ads but also less demand for workers -> weakening labor
| market.
|
| I mean, the Fed's goal right now is basically to slow
| wage growth so that average people are no longer bidding
| up the price of our limited supply.
| _gabe_ wrote:
| I've never understood how strong labor numbers negate a
| recession. Like sure your money is worth less because of all
| the inflation, and your COL keeps increasing but your wages
| remain the same, but hey we have lots of people working.
|
| Maybe somebody smarter than me can explain how these two
| correlate lol.
| parkingrift wrote:
| At this point it's just an argument of what constitutes a
| recession. The NBER definition requires a "significant
| decline in economic activity that is spread across the
| economy and lasts more than a few months."
|
| There is lots of leeway in there for defining a recession
| to be whatever you want to be. However, I think a GDP
| contraction of 1% (and decreasing) combined with robust job
| growth and increased spending would not classically qualify
| as a recession.
|
| It's clear that the Fed is attempting to slow down the
| labor market and kill demand. Combine that with ongoing
| supply chain issues and it's not clear to me whether we are
| entering a recession or that there is transitory pain from
| war in Europe and sudden bumps in borrowing rates.
| harambae wrote:
| If we hit a 3rd quarter in a row of contracting GDP,
| would you call it a recession?
| shard wrote:
| Looking at it another way: Q1 GDP contracted by 1.6%, Q2
| by 0.9%. If Q3 contracts by 0.2%, should we call it a
| recession?
| dodobirdlord wrote:
| Maybe not even then? GDP dropping while employment,
| spending, and demand increase indicates an economic
| expansion coinciding with a decrease in labor
| productivity, which is extremely weird and not at all
| like a conventional recession where the economy
| contracts. Different terminology might be required.
|
| Additionally, with inflation at such a high level (9% or
| so), the last two quarter's real GDP growth estimates
| (-1.6% and -0.9%) are small percentages compared to the
| size of the error bars on the required inflation
| adjustment to compute the real GDP. Computing inflation
| is tricky and requires a lot of hand waving and boiling
| down different price changes across different sectors of
| the economy to get a single number, and if the
| calculation is off by even 1% (i.e. inflation is actually
| 8%), then the real GDP growth for last quarter would be
| positive at 0.1%.
|
| This is also happening at the same time that the US
| dollar is getting increasingly valuable vs most foreign
| currencies, so measured in terms of foreign currency
| value the US real GDP is still increasing, which just
| compounds the weirdness.
|
| Putting all of this together, I don't think the term
| "recession" is a good fit.
| parkingrift wrote:
| I don't know. Are we still adding 370,000 jobs per month?
| What kind of GDP contraction are we talking about? 1%,
| 3%, 5%? Is the GDP contraction increasing or slowing from
| the prior quarters? If we went from -1.8% to -1.5% to
| -0.9% and we still had robust job growth I would probably
| say it's not a recession.
|
| But again, what does it even matter? Seems like people
| are only arguing about this to score political points. If
| you think we're in a recession, you might be right. If
| you think this is transitory, you might be right. If it
| weren't an election year we might not be having this
| conversation at all.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Strong labor numbers means wages would be increasing.
| Perhaps not for all income deciles, but at least the bottom
| ones (which is a good thing in my opinion since it helps
| close the income/wealth gap).
|
| What would be an issue is the labor participation rate
| decreasing, which it is, but it may be unavoidable due to
| things like aging demographics. That means fewer workers
| supporting non workers, and hence less supply of labor to
| be distributed amongst everyone (assuming it is not offset
| by gains in automation).
|
| I think this will be the government's real problem, as
| there is no quick fix other than opening the immigration
| doors.
| ajross wrote:
| > Strong labor numbers means wages would be increasing.
|
| Wages _are_ increasing, that 's one of the inflation
| drivers people are complaining about.
|
| > What would be an issue is the labor participation rate
| decreasing, which it is
|
| Not per FRED: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART
| It's quite clearly still rebounding from the covid shock.
| I think you're trying to say that the _long term_ trend
| is clearly downward. But the subject at hand is the
| immediate economic environment ( "strong labor numbers",
| "hiring freeze", etc...).
|
| And clearly there's nothing wrong instantaneously with
| either participation rate nor wages. Those numbers are in
| fact _good_ , not bad.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| If you zoom in on the FRED graph, you can see the recent
| rebound participation rate peaked in March, and has
| started a (slight) decline in the last quarter.
| ajross wrote:
| Don't do that. You're literally interpreting noise as
| signal. Look at the random wiggles elsewhere in the
| graph, they're the same size as the thing you're trying
| to interpret meaning from. Economics data just doesn't
| work on the timescale you want it to.
| smaryjerry wrote:
| Real wages are not increasing. The 'Real' part of real
| wages means after adjustment for inflation. See link,
| we've been going straight down in real wages. We are
| already back below pre-COVID wages. That means we are
| back to wage levels around 3 years ago. In any job if you
| got no raise in 3 years then you should not look at that
| as a good thing - and that's what has happened to
| everyone, on average after accounting for inflation.
| https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q
| ajross wrote:
| That's arguing about leading/lagging indicators, though.
| Wages go up with inflation, more or less by definition.
| Wage increases _due_ to inflation can 't be measured
| until after the fact, though.
|
| Short version: "inflation" is not remotely the same thing
| as "recession", which seems to be the point you're trying
| to make. If your only evidence for an economic slowdown
| is prices and not production or consumption, you're
| likely confusing factors.
|
| Clearly the truth is that the labor market remains
| strong. Most people are working. Most people have
| multiple choices in jobs. Most people are making more
| money (yes, in nominal dollars) than they were last year.
| Those are all signs of a healthy economy. They are not
| the _only_ signs of a healthy economy, and there can be
| other aspects (like inflation) which are less
| desirable[1]
|
| [1] Though probably 80% of the people who like to yell
| about it don't really understand it well. Inflation, by
| reducing the size of existing investments and debts (i.e.
| "stuff wealthier people have") relative to the economy as
| a whole (i.e. "wage levels for everyone"), acts naturally
| to _reduce_ income and asset inequality. It 's not
| entirely a bad thing.
| smaryjerry wrote:
| You are intentionally conflating nominal and real wages,
| most people are not making more money. In real wages they
| are declining as per the link in my previous comment. If
| you make $100K per year and your expenses are $100K you
| make zero. If you make $150K but your expenses are now
| $150K then you have not made any increase in wages in
| real dollars. Wages are not flat or going up with
| inflation as per my link, they are actually declining
| significantly since COVID.
| ajross wrote:
| And my point, which you missed, is that this is a
| confounded argument. "Real wages" are an after-the-fact
| metric, you can't measure it in immediate data because
| wage growth and inflation are highly correlated.
|
| And the other point, which you skipped, was that this was
| a digression anyway from the upthread discussion about
| whether or not the labor market indicators are "strong"
| or not. And they are: wages are tracking labor demand and
| growing at the same time participation is growing. That
| means the market is operating well (and, FWIW, that
| typical models would expect wage growth to continue to
| match inflation, as it generally does in functioning
| markets).
| smaryjerry wrote:
| Both inflation and wages are lagging indicators and thus
| can be used together to get real wages historically.
| Correlation to inflation does not mean anything other
| than inflation and wages both increased, you can be
| highly correlated but not exactly correlated. Real wages
| demonstrate both wages and inflation in a single metric
| and they are not increasing at the same rate, real wages
| have been declining continuously since 2020. The strength
| of a labor market (low unemployment) just means people
| that are looking for jobs can find them but doesn't
| measure the wages or inflation, that is determined by
| real wages. You can pay anyone more but if it doesn't buy
| more it is still a pay decline.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Also the US's demographics problem is peanuts compared to
| Europe and Asia.
| Enginerrrd wrote:
| For now yes... But as millenials age, things will get
| really top-heavy.
| _gabe_ wrote:
| > Strong labor numbers means wages would be increasing
|
| How can you equate these two? Couldn't strong labor
| numbers also be indicative of an economy in turmoil,
| forcing many people who no longer had to work back into a
| job to get by? I guess what I'm trying to say is,
| shouldn't we be taking a look at the data holistically
| instead of nabbing one good data point and using that to
| promote a narrative? Inflation, COL, real wages,
| unemployment, and many other factors all contribute to
| the overall picture. Why aren't we using all this data
| instead of focusing on unemployment only?
| PeterHolzwarth wrote:
| It is an economic principle that very low unemployment
| leads to competition for wworkers via increased wages,
| which help drive inflation up (as the increased labor
| costs lead to a more expensive output). The inverse is
| also true. So, central banks prefer inflation to not be
| zero, but not be high either (often, central banks have
| inflation as one of their target numbers that drives
| their policy).
| smaryjerry wrote:
| That's exactly right. Real wages are not keeping up with
| inflation. Inflation is confusing everyone who isn't used
| to seeing it. It's ludicrous to think we are not in a
| recession just because more people retired in the last
| few years due to COVID and exited the workforce to
| artificially keep the unemployment rate low.
| Participation in the workforce declined something like
| 10% - I don't have the time find the exact number. But we
| still have a lower overall workforce than pre-COVID. The
| 100K per year jobs are declining in availability but
| there's millions of jobs at fast food and retail
| available. It's obvious that it is purely political as to
| what makes a "recession." Meanwhile lots of tech
| companies have lost 70-80% of their value. But the
| largest companies, apple, google, and Microsoft are
| holding up, we all know the small businesses go first.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > Real wages are not keeping up with inflation.
|
| Nope? For most people Year/Year and also over the last
| quarter, real wages have gone up. It is only for the most
| highly compensated workers (top 10% or so) that wages
| have not kept up with pricing. [0]
|
| [0]: https://realtimeinequality.org/
| smaryjerry wrote:
| Real wages have gone significantly since 2020 when COVID
| hit per the below link. This inequality index website
| includes both labor and capital - meaning not just wages
| but income from stocks. Yes the stock market has gone
| down, the rich own more stocks, and so rich made less
| money. Wages, the payment for only labor has been
| declining in real terms due to inflation outpacing wage
| growth. See this link and the sharp
| decline.https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > the stock market has gone down, the rich own more
| stocks, and so rich made less money
|
| My link shows that real factor income for all but the top
| 10% of earners is up which includes wages and capital
| income.
|
| Your FRED link will have to contend with the fact that
| those most likely to be unemployed at the start of the
| pandemic are lower earners which is going to shift up the
| wages for 2020.
| smaryjerry wrote:
| The website you linked as I said includes capital and
| pretax income which is an absurd way to measure "income."
| That includes stocks, 401K, houses, etc. if someone owned
| a house, the value went up, but if someone didn't own a
| house their actual wages are still worth only about the
| same as 3 years ago.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > How can you equate these two? Couldn't strong labor
| numbers also be indicative of an economy in turmoil,
| forcing many people who no longer had to work back into a
| job to get by?
|
| Because the other side of that is that there exists
| sufficient and growing demand for labor to accept the
| people wanting to sell their labor.
| bombcar wrote:
| Strong labor numbers are _often correlated_ with
| increasing wages (if labor is in short support, wages
| usually go up) but there 's no direct connection; labor
| numbers could be increasing because people are being
| "forced" (or deciding to go back) into the labor force
| because the covid subsidies have dried up; those who took
| time during covid to homeschool, etc.
|
| All of this _all of it_ is just an attempt to measure if
| people "feel good" about how things are going, or feel
| bad; and the general consensus seems to be "things aren't
| great but they're not horrible ... yet".
|
| The other thing to remember is that lots of economic
| reporting is 'standard spherical cow' type - inflation
| may be skyrocketing in the exact things that do _not_
| affect you - if you work from home in a house you own on
| a fixed mortgage, then perhaps the gas prices aren 't
| directly affecting you.
|
| If you're a independent trucker renting, then they hit
| much harder.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| What about real wages, are they also increasing, or only
| nominal ones do?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _What about real wages_
|
| "Real average hourly earnings decreased 3.6 percent,
| seasonally adjusted, from June 2021 to June 2022. The
| change in real average hourly earnings combined with a
| decrease of 0.9 percent in the average workweek resulted
| in a 4.4-percent decrease in real average weekly earnings
| over this period" [1].
|
| [1] https://www.bls.gov/news.release/realer.nr0.htm
| whimsicalism wrote:
| I don't think looking at mean wages is the best to get an
| answer. Real median income is up Y/Y and the past
| quarter, driven by the still largely tight labor market.
| [0]
|
| [0]: https://realtimeinequality.org/
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Strong labor numbers would necessitate real wage
| increases, otherwise I do not see how it could be
| classified as strong labor numbers.
|
| But it can be negative for higher income groups and
| positive for low income groups simultaneously.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| In fact, you are incorrect. Real wages have decreased
| YoY. Anything can be classified by "strong labor numbers"
| by people who are trying to deceive you. Remember this
| next time you turn the TV on or open a newspaper.
| [deleted]
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I am getting my information from experience from people
| who are hiring in the bottom 3 income deciles or so.
|
| Certainly not academic, but I also do not think national
| statistics captures the entire picture. The nominal wage
| is also not the entire wage, as quality of life at work
| can be going up which is also a type of wage.
|
| People can be earning $40k per year, but having to do
| less work in prior years, for example. Or no longer
| having to work weekends or evenings or nights.
|
| Either way, the desirable changes for labor sellers would
| be a reflection of the change in labor supply v labor
| demand.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Aggregate sums on real wages are going to be weighted
| heavily towards the most highly compensated workers.
| xhrpost wrote:
| Hopefully I'm not being snarky here, but if you looked at
| another country with a smaller economy, and then saw that
| they employee fewer people, would you be equally confused?
| _gabe_ wrote:
| Only if you then proceeded to tell me that because less
| people are employed the country has a lower standard of
| living and is more economically unstable. As a direct
| example of this, Sweden's unemployment rate is 7.6% right
| now[0], and it's historically been quite a bit higher
| than the US's. But people say that it ranks #1 in terms
| of quality of life[1]. Additionally, their unemployment
| rate is not negatively effecting their growth[2].
|
| So in answer to your question, yes it continues to
| confuse me when people try to equate employment numbers
| with the overall economic status of a country. You don't
| take any number in isolation, you look at the data
| holistically, and sometimes you have numbers that seem to
| be at odds with one another. When that happens, it
| requires a deeper investigation to see what's truly
| happening instead of taking the number you like better
| and using that to promote your narrative.
|
| [0]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/527418/sweden-
| monthly-un...
|
| [1]: https://www.globalcitizensolutions.com/sweden-best-
| country-f...
|
| [2]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-28/s
| wedish-e...
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| Unemployment can be measured in different ways so it's
| hard to compare across countries.
| niall00c wrote:
| "When your neighbor is out of work its a recession. When
| you are out of work its a depression" - said someone
| forgingahead wrote:
| When asset prices increase quickly, everything is fine,
| as the wealthy are benefitting. When wages increase
| though, that's inflation and we must tamp down hard on
| it!
| willcipriano wrote:
| This is the federal reserves stated position.
|
| https://mronline.org/2022/05/26/u-s-federal-reserve-says-
| its...
| cycomanic wrote:
| This is absolutely ridiculous, maybe they should start by
| reducing his salary.
| uoaei wrote:
| Given the obviousness of the consequences, it's hard to
| imagine the Greatest Minds In Monetary Policy haven't
| foreseen the fact that labor is hurt and corporations are
| effectively subsidized when enacting such policies. So it
| must be intentional.
| [deleted]
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| Wages are not comparable to asset prices since one is an
| over time payment and the other is a quantity at one
| time.
|
| In any cases total wages (well, income) are equal to GDP
| so I don't think anyone is against an overall rise (in
| real terms).
| FartyMcFarter wrote:
| > Wages are not comparable to asset prices
|
| They get directly compared when getting a mortgage though
| - typically there's affordability criteria including the
| ratio of income to mortgage amount.
| zajio1am wrote:
| Demand-driven recession means there is insufficient demand
| which leads to decreased production and a level of slack in
| economy (real GDP lower than potential GDP), while
| unemployment is a manifestation of such slack.
|
| If you have decline in GDP, but no unemployment, it may be
| due to supply issues, increase in friction and other
| factors (i.e. decline also of potential GDP).
| Grimburger wrote:
| > negate a recession
|
| What do you think GDP actually measures?
|
| A hurricane that kills 1000 people increases GDP for
| instance.
| pestaa wrote:
| Gross Domestic Product is not divided by population.
|
| GDP per capita is what you're referring to?
| Phrenzy wrote:
| The aftermath of a large storm requires a lot of clean
| up. The clean up costs would be added the the GDP.
| thehappypm wrote:
| Not even a little, storms destroy tons of productive
| businesses.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| Inflation has nothing to do with recessions either.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Economists have always kind of applied an "I know it when I
| see it, typically after the fact" sort of test for
| recessions (the two-quarter thing is a rule of thumb, but
| isn't taken that seriously). But just "there's highish
| inflation" wouldn't normally be considered a recession, and
| it is unusual to have a recession with very high
| employment; historically nearly all periods that ultimately
| get called major recessions have significant joblessness as
| a feature.
| lupire wrote:
| ffggvv wrote:
| they didnt until 2 weeks ago. turns out dems really dont
| want to say the R word before the november election
| phpisthebest wrote:
| Labor numbers are NOT strong, we still have not gotten back
| to Pre-Covid Levels
|
| And U6 unemployment is raising, suer U3 is not, but U3 is a
| terrible statistic in the first place.
|
| Anyone saying the job market is "robust" is cherry-picking
| data
| whimsicalism wrote:
| I think a lot of people took covid as an opportunity to
| retire and will not come back which is reflected by low
| labor participation numbers. Unemployment is basically the
| same as it was pre-pandemic.
|
| We are in a strong labor market in the sense that demand
| continues to outstrip supply (although this is weakening
| for higher paid workers in the top ~10-20%) but there has
| been a negative shock to supply from covid.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Google sells ads. Its relevant broad metric is consumer
| confidence [1]. That's down.
|
| [1] https://www.conference-board.org/topics/consumer-
| confidence
| dang wrote:
| We detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32318067.
| MichaelMoser123 wrote:
| what happened to the 'great resignation/dropout wave'? And what
| will happen to those who participated in the movement?
| itslennysfault wrote:
| How does this jive with their very recent purchase of the Thomson
| Center in Chicago?? They also announced they'd be hiring over
| 4000 people to fill it (making it the second largest google hub
| in the world)
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| It's kind of odd that people are this shocked about this. Google
| and FB have frozen various roles for various periods of time over
| the last 2-3 years. I'm guessing they have on and off for most of
| their existence. I just want clued into their hiring process
| then.
|
| The freezes almost always are for lower level roles only (l3 or
| l4) and dont REALLY impact anything since these companies are
| pretty slow to begin with. The people impacted by this are early
| career folks who are likely interviewing for general swe roles at
| these companies and a slew of others.
|
| FB and Alphabet will almost always still be moving folks with
| specialized skills sets through their pipeline and even if "no
| offers are going out" a L7 machine learning engineer or security
| engineer or android engineer who is already matched with a team
| is still getting an offer.
| baby wrote:
| This ^ I remember hiring being frozen for some time at the
| beginning of covid for FB
| Tade0 wrote:
| Freeze? Both me and my friend from a previous project were
| recently approached by G's recruiters in Poland.
|
| I wasn't pursuing new roles at the time, but my friend figured
| he'd try and found that the recruiter's calendar was filled up to
| the brim.
|
| He asked what's going on and she replied that she has KPI to
| fulfill and this is the result. He followed up with a question
| about compensation and got a number which was... very close to
| the current market rate.
|
| This is a major shift in policy comparing to just three years ago
| and with Poland being a popular outsourcing destination I suspect
| that this is what's happening, especially that due to the Russian
| invasion there's additional talent from Ukraine in Warsaw.
| __exit__ wrote:
| When you say the compensation was very close to the current
| market rate, I assume you mean the market rate in Poland,
| correct? No fancy Silicon Valley salaries for devs in Poland,
| that is.
| Tade0 wrote:
| Yes, the local market rate.
|
| Your bog-standard senior role clocks in at $65k, but that's
| something you can get around here without going through many
| hoops. From a company with such an infamously convoluted
| hiring process I would expect no less than $90k - apparently
| that's not the case here.
|
| Fancy Silicon Valley salaries are naturally out of the
| question. Highest number to date in my social circle was
| $150k/yr - a brief, beautiful moment for one senior front-end
| developer working remotely as a contractor.
| badpun wrote:
| I'm contracting remotely out of Poland and $150k-$170k is
| definitely doable, especially if you're willing to work for
| an US company (and adjust to their timezone a bit).
| Tade0 wrote:
| Yeah, I have a few friends who reached this level of
| compensation working remotely. It's a nice life - I can't
| say I'm not envious. I had to travel to Switzerland and
| deal with the costs of living there to have such a rate
| and the project was timeboxed.
|
| Interestingly nowadays you don't need to work for a US
| client. Switzerland, Norway and Ireland(out of all
| places) offer similar salaries without the zombifying
| difference in time zones.
| zerr wrote:
| Isn't Ireland stuck in 5-figure?
| uecc wrote:
| Not really no. But it certainly feels that way after tax
| + Dublin rent
| badpun wrote:
| > Interestingly nowadays you don't need to work for a US
| client. Switzerland, Norway and Ireland(out of all
| places) offer similar salaries without the zombifying
| difference in time zones.
|
| Yep, that's my experience as well. I've quit the $170k US
| West Coast job (because of time zone differences, plus it
| sucked in other ways) in favor of slighly less paying
| German job (it used to pay the same, but EUR has shit the
| bed and now the money is way less when expressed in USD).
| I'm way happier now - they money in my accounts still
| keeps accumulating at a great rate, but now I'm not angry
| and tired every day.
|
| I have 15+ years of experience, some in recognizable Tier
| 2 tech company, some in tech lead and architect position.
| I'm also working with a niche and hot tech stack that
| companies have troubles hiring for. This translates into
| good jobs, good money and good working conditions, even
| in a tech backwater such as Poland. Took a lot of time
| and effort to get here though.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| I'm curious - are you an American yourself?
| badpun wrote:
| Nope, native Polish. Never really lived outside of
| Poland.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| If you don't mind me asking, what's your legal setup and
| way of landing US contracts? Most I've seen require a US-
| based legal entity (which is the tricky bit I can't
| figure out, as to the best of my knowledge there's no way
| to set one up without having existing ties/citizenship in
| the US).
| wrzuteczka wrote:
| The "employee" creates a single-person company in Poland
| (or any other EU country, I guess) and sends invoices
| monthly. Honestly, it's trivial to set up. I'd say it's
| even easier than the standard employment process in the
| EU.
| namdnay wrote:
| it depends on the EU country. this would be illegal in
| france for example, considered a "hidden employment
| contract" (which it is)
| badpun wrote:
| How is it solved in France then? I dont' think it's
| possible to have an trans-national employment contract
| (which labor laws would the contract observe? The French
| ones or the US ones?). So, how do French people work
| remotely for US companies? I don't think most countries'
| laws are set up for a situation where a company employs a
| worker that does not live in the same country.
| balfirevic wrote:
| I wouldn't take namday's comment at face value without
| some kind of citation.
|
| It could be that it works similarly to Croatia - it's not
| illegal, but if you are found to be "a hidden employee"
| you simply owe taxes and retirement/healthcare
| contributions as if entire income of your single-employee
| company was your salary.
|
| It could be that it's actually illegal in France. But
| many people are confused about how it works here in
| Croatia, so it wouldn't surprise me if it were the case
| in France too.
| namdnay wrote:
| I completely agree with what you say, it depends on the
| specific setup (specifically, whether a judge will
| consider that it was an employment relationship). My
| statement was in response to someone who was clearly
| describing an employment relationship:
|
| > The "employee" creates a single-person company in
| Poland
| balfirevic wrote:
| Yes, I was also referring to a scenario where you create
| a single-person company and have a single source of
| revenue from a de-facto employer.
|
| Is it really illegal in France or do you just owe more
| taxes/contributions than if you had multiple clients
| (which would allow you to take part of the revenue as
| company profits, instead of having to channel it all as a
| salary)?
|
| Looking at your comment [0] it sounds like it might not
| be illegal (provided you pay the required
| taxes/contributions)?
|
| [0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32320422
| namdnay wrote:
| It would be illegal in France to do it without declaring
| yourself as an employee, and therefore paying
| contributions . "Illegal" as in if you get caught you'll
| get a fin and back-taxes, not jail or anything
| wrzuteczka wrote:
| OK, so it sounds like it's possible in France too, you
| just need to employ yourself (and then pay employment-
| related contributions). In Poland, this is a little
| simplified, as there's a company structure called
| "single-person company" (I'm sorry, this is my own
| translation of the term, it's probably not the best)
| which combines these two things (i.e. after creating this
| type of company you pay social security for yourself,
| without any extra employment contract).
| namdnay wrote:
| There are two legal ways to do this:
|
| 1) The company opens a branch in France, with as director
| and sole employee the person in question. Employment
| contributions are collected on the money that the French
| branch pays to its (sole) employee. Very simple to set
| up, does require a bit of work from an accountant for the
| yearly accounts (I'd say to budget about 1kE/year)
|
| 2) The employee joins an IT contracting company that
| already has a commercial presence in both countries, they
| will take 10% of the take (known as "portage salarial")
| izacus wrote:
| > I dont' think it's possible to have an trans-national
| employment contract (which labor laws would the contract
| observe? The French ones or the US ones?)
|
| Those contracts are of course possible and exist -
| although rare due to paperwork hell you need to go
| through. The labor law of the employee's country is
| observed and they usually need to handle pension/health
| contributions on their side. In most of EU at least.
|
| It is true though that most EU countries also demand that
| you open a local subsidiary once you have a certain
| amount of employees there (~5-10).
| xyzzyz wrote:
| Not sure about France, but in Poland, if you're sending
| invoices to an entity that has no presence in Poland, is
| not incorporated there, has no offices etc, it can hardly
| be legally seen to be a legal "employment" relationship.
|
| But, assuming the situation above, even if it is illegal
| (which I strongly doubt), so what? What can the system do
| here to you? Will it jail you or fine you, or otherwise
| stop you, the worker, for "illegally" working on a wrong
| type of contract? After all, it cannot do anything to the
| company, as it has no jurisdiction over it.
| balfirevic wrote:
| > What can the system do here to you? Will it jail you or
| fine you, or otherwise stop you, the worker, for
| "illegally" working on a wrong type of contract?
|
| It can charge additional taxes and pension/healthcare
| contributions (which is how it works in Croatia).
| kahnclusions wrote:
| What could happen to the company: is that the Polish
| government or courts could deem the foreign company to be
| illegally operating in Poland (by virtue of employing you
| through a hidden contract), and require the company to
| set up a local legal entity, make corporate filings, pay
| taxes, etc. Or else pay fines. Or else get banned from
| operating in your country. You may also be entitled to
| rights under local employment laws regardless of what it
| says in your contract, which could also lead to the
| company being fined or banned.
|
| What could happen to you: you get billed for the unpaid
| taxes and payroll contributions you should have been
| making. And possibly charged penalties or even fined for
| tax evasion.
|
| Depends on the country's specific laws and their
| government's willingness to pursue things like this.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| > require the company to set up a local legal entity,
| make corporate filings, pay taxes. Or else pay fines.
|
| They can require it all they want, but if the company has
| no presence in Poland, they cannot actually make them do
| so.
|
| > Or else get banned from operating in your country
|
| Which is fine with many companies.
|
| > You may also be entitled to rights under local
| employment laws regardless of what it says in your
| contract, which could also lead to the company being
| fined or banned.
|
| Sure, but entitlement under local employment law is
| worthless against company in a different jurisdiction.
| kahnclusions wrote:
| Sorry, I'm not really sure what you're trying to add
| here?
|
| Yes, the foreign company can obviously decide to ignore
| the Polish government. As a consequence they will have to
| stop employing all their "contractor" employees in
| Poland. If they're happy with that situation then...
| congrats to them?
| xyzzyz wrote:
| They will not have to do anything of the sort. The can
| continue to buy services of the Polish resident, and pay
| their invoices. The Polish government cannot and will not
| do anything to the company.
|
| What it can do, however, is that it can go after the
| worker. Is the government of Poland so vindictive to
| actually go after individuals who commit a crime of
| working for a foreign company?
|
| Based on many of my friends having this exact arrangement
| for years, I think the answer is, in fact, no: they
| happily send invoices every month, get paid, and (less
| happily) pay taxes and ZUS contributions. It all works
| out just fine.
| namdnay wrote:
| In France (and Germany too apparently), if you are found
| out - usually by a random tax audit - they will ask you
| to back-pay employee and employer contributions on the
| money that you received (so about 60% total)
|
| the issue isn't really the company, as you pointed out,
| they are not in France, they're not subject to French
| law. The issue is that as a French tax resident, if you
| are meeting the criteria for employment (single company
| representing more than 80% of your revenue, everyday work
| relationship that is based on subordination etc etc),
| then you have to pay employment contributions
|
| Why? For the same reason as every other mandatory
| insurance. If everyone who has a stable, well-paying job
| is skipping out of employment contributions, it makes the
| contributions for the others even higher, pushing more
| people out of the system etc until you have no-one left
| with employee protections
| toast0 wrote:
| It sounds like if the single member company invoices the
| foreign company and then pays you as an employee, with
| all the payroll deductions, that's fine?
|
| That seems reasonable, the only thing is that you have to
| compare the foreign company invoice rate as a gross
| payment to salaries offered by domestic companies which
| are generally quoted as net payments? As I understand it,
| European salaries are usually quoted fully net --- you
| get exactly that amount, in contrast to US salaries which
| are mostly gross, there are a lot of deductions that
| start from the quoted amount, but some that are employer
| side and not usually quoted.
| mejutoco wrote:
| As a datapoint, in Germany it is not considered "hidden
| employment contract" unless it is more than 80% of your
| income. I could imagine some similar rules in France, but
| I do not know.
|
| An alternative way that probably works in France too is
| to have a limited company and invoice from that.
| namdnay wrote:
| ah yes of course, if it really "one of many" jobs it's
| fine in France too. What I understood from the
| conversation was people trying to do this for a "100%
| job"
| badpun wrote:
| I just have a company in Poland, sign a contract with US
| company and send them invoices every month (which, to my
| knowledge, they don't really always even need?). I don't
| know how it's set up on their end. No one yet has asked
| for a US-based entity.
|
| As to finding them, I've found some here on HN in Who's
| Hiring thread. One of them (I'm a notorious job hopper,
| so there were many) found me on LinkedIn.
| gommm wrote:
| I've contracted remotely for 10 years with US companies
| while living in different countries. I've never had a US
| based legal entity and it hasn't been a problem. It does
| make things slightly more complicated for them though and
| I'm sure that I lost some potential contracts due to
| this. In some cases (HK company while living in Asia),
| not having a US legal entity is a huge plus tax-wise.
| gwnywg wrote:
| To my knowledge you pay for invoices, you are not
| actually hiring. It's quite similar to buying other goods
| from abroad (like cheese, or printer ink). There are
| plenty US companies 'hiring' in Poland, where in reality
| they don't really hire- they come to agreement to buy
| your time with no tights.
| yardstick wrote:
| Polish salaries are maybe not SV high but they are climbing.
| $100k USD/year plus for a contract engineer. Not cheap.
| cromka wrote:
| Did you calculate in the weak Zloty into that sum?
| HighlandSpring wrote:
| If PLN depreciates against USD (as it has this year) and
| the contract is USD denominated (which is simpler for
| Google so likely the case) then you'll have actually
| received a gradual payrise!
| baq wrote:
| remote contractor == likely paid in USD
| yardstick wrote:
| Exactly.
| Tade0 wrote:
| The number my friend got was considerably _less_ than that.
| Very concerning.
|
| Of course this is all hearsay. I don't know how real that
| figure is, but it's not particularly inspiring so I don't
| see why would anyone lie about it.
| oblio wrote:
| The comment above mentions a contract engineer, so a
| consultant, presumably. Maybe the salaries are lower for
| regular employees.
| yardstick wrote:
| Yeah can't comment for local employees of local
| companies. Just have knowledge of UK & US companies
| hiring/outsourcing to Poland. It was cheap, not so much
| anymore.
| woadwarrior01 wrote:
| I left G in Ireland about 4 months ago for a fully remote
| position at a startup. Up until then, G's Polish salaries
| were low even by Western European standards (which is ~ >=
| 1/2 of SV pay).
| gwnywg wrote:
| In my opinion this makes sense, what would be the incentive
| to hire there if wages were the same?
| tadzik_ wrote:
| If you're struggling to find talent anywhere, why not
| hire in Poland?
|
| As a Polish engineer, we all know that companies are
| struggling to hire _anyone_. If you think you can hire a
| local instead of me for the same money, good luck. From
| my perspective, if I 'm delivering the same value as
| someone from another country I should not be paid less.
| My cost of living is my own business, whether it's the
| lease on a car, the number of kids I have or, in this
| case, the country I choose to live in.
|
| Part of the hiring in cheaper countries is the
| possibility to exploit the wealth disparity and cut
| costs, sure. But in case of remote IT jobs, IME it's more
| of a fact that companies can't find anyone so they'll
| hire from anywhere, including cheaper countries. Doesn't
| mean that the employees should let themselves be played
| though, it's a seller's market after all (for now).
| gwnywg wrote:
| I'm no expert and try to judge based on what I personally
| experienced, and I get your point. But I also know this
| is not how businesses operate. Having seen it from the
| inside, hearing those conversations, I know business
| decision makers would rather hire somebody locally than
| from abroad (from different jurisdiction) - if overal
| cost of hire was the same. But if you can get the same
| work done and pay less, then this is objectively worthy
| thing to be done. I have seen huge corporation pivoting
| towards outsourcing everything to India (software
| development, accounting, customer support, everything)
| because it was way cheaper than run those centers
| locally. This is becoming less and less fruitful since
| India had seen their wages going up in the past years, so
| at some point this trend may reverse.
|
| I bet there are others who have different and maybe more
| grounded opinions, I only share what I experienced
| myself.
| tadzik_ wrote:
| Oh, I absolutely agree - there is an overhead to hiring
| remotely (especially if you need to operate another
| business there, like Google does in Warsaw), so if you
| have to pay someone the same _and_ cover that overhead
| then it 's a bad business decision to do this at all.
| Timezone/cultural issues also come into this.
|
| So yeah, I'm not surprised that businesses (try to) do
| this - but in the current situation it's worthwhile (and
| possible) for the hires (especially contractors) to try
| to go against that and argue for higher pay. Even if the
| actual SV salary is not within reach, you can at least
| try to stay within the same order of magnitude - and more
| often than not, especially at the end of the interview
| process, it'd be cheaper for the company to hire you
| anyway than to start over with someone else.
|
| That's all in my narrow experience of working with
| smaller companies - in megacorps with strict
| levels/salary rules like Google it's probably another
| story. And that's also why Google is not (any longer?)
| the holy grail for Polish workers.
| smugma wrote:
| I've worked with a Polish dev team (in Wroclaw). They
| were really great. However, for the same price I'd much
| rather work with local people. The Polish people we
| worked with came to California for months at a time.
| Being in the same time zone and room was really helpful.
|
| Their English was generally good, and what they lacked in
| spoken English was usually made up for in good written
| documentation. But the time zone means remote work not as
| valuable (same goes for our English colleagues).
| nixass wrote:
| I was approached by both companies in Germany recently too,
| freeze doesn't mean full stop, just tightening it.
| Tade0 wrote:
| One detail I haven't mentioned is that remote roles were also
| on the table. I don't know how remote, but it's telling that
| Google is ready to make such concessions.
| mejutoco wrote:
| I do not know if they are still hiring or not, but to me a
| hiring freeze means exactly that: a full stop.
|
| P.S. If a police shouts "freeze" I will fully stop :)
| mathattack wrote:
| Interviews are very different than hiring. They still cost the
| company money but not as much as headcount. Some companies
| still interview when they figure out the long term strategy.
| This is consistent with the article describing Google's
| behavior.
|
| When companies lay off recruiters you know the cuts are longer
| term.
| vitus wrote:
| We are indeed still conducting interviews (I had one just on
| Friday). Whether that transfers to actual offers extended
| during this time, I have no idea.
|
| What I can say we are absolutely not doing at this time is
| rescinding offers, even for new grads.
|
| There certainly have been some shifts over the past year or two
| to prioritize growth in cheaper markets (for lack of a better
| term) -- one manager I talked to mentioned that the headcount
| tradeoff was basically "one engineer in Mountain View, or 3-4
| in Warsaw" (which is an accurate reflection of the salary
| disparity).
| anonymoushn wrote:
| Are Googlers in general okay with the idea that their
| contributions are worth 1/4 as much if they live in Warsaw?
| andsoitis wrote:
| > contributions are worth 1/4 as much if they live in
| Warsaw?
|
| Under the "free market", compensation isn't some objective
| number etched into a tablet somewhere in the universe.
| Instead, it is the result of market forces.
| aix1 wrote:
| There are definitely issues with Google's comp system, but
| the fact that pay depends on location is IMO not
| unreasonable.
|
| Especially so given that there's often a lot of flexibility
| with regards to location.
|
| For example, I chose to relocate from London to Zurich
| (without changing teams/project). I did it for quality-of-
| life reasons but the comp also increased quite
| significantly, even adjusted for cost of living.
|
| And I am not some special snowflake: everybody around me
| who wanted to be based somewhere else had their relocation
| requests approved.
| barry-cotter wrote:
| If they're not they can apply for a transfer after 2 years
| to Mountain View and they'll get it, unless US Immigration
| vetoes it. I hear the Zurich office pays pretty well too
| and if you're Polish I believe immigration is very easy as
| they're EU citizens.
| killingtime74 wrote:
| By then accepting their contract, yes?
| Anderkent wrote:
| if it's the best offer you can get, would you quit just
| because someone else on another continent is being paid
| more?
| H8crilA wrote:
| Yes, usually rationalizing it as "but it's cheaper to live
| in Warsaw", which is true. That being said it is a
| reflection of market reality, where some (many) people are
| definitely unwilling to move for 4x the salary. This
| doesn't of course mean that SV is "4x worse", but rather is
| a pricing of their other activities/personal relationships.
| [deleted]
| 3np wrote:
| "We" being...?
|
| (Without country the anecdote is not meaningful in this
| context)
| dessertfan wrote:
| Sounds like Google given the reference to Mountain View.
| _the_inflator wrote:
| Same here. Approached by FAANG.
|
| Judging from my perspective as a manager of a large department,
| I never ever experienced such a thing as an hiring stop. It
| always translates into tighter processes for approval, that's
| all.
|
| For example Finance laid off thousands of workers years ago -
| however they were hiring IT stuff.
|
| After all, great staff is still the most important factor aka
| resource.
| culi wrote:
| > FAANG
|
| It's MANGA now :P
| emanresu3 wrote:
| It's almost as if infinite growth can't continue on forever...
| vinnymac wrote:
| Both Google and Meta have reached out to me directly for an
| interview in the last week. When did this hiring freeze begin?
| harambae wrote:
| Meta reached out to me yesterday afternoon about a position, it
| doesn't looking they're freezing for technical positions in
| AR/VR.
| 121789 wrote:
| They aren't. There is plenty of hiring if you are in one the
| priority areas (AR/VR, AI/ML, short form video, ads, privacy)
| or if you have specific skillsets (ML mostly). Other teams
| will have trouble getting headcount
| WWLink wrote:
| SMH it feels like a lot of people here _want_ another dot com
| crash. Why? Like, you really want to make less money?
| s1k3s wrote:
| 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.
| dthul wrote:
| I tried getting an interview for one of those LinkedIn posts
| and even though I had a really good starting point (successful
| internship within the last few months plus an internal referral
| from someone working in the group I applied for plus being a
| good fit based on my skills and education) I wasn't even
| invited for a first interview, only got a generic rejection by
| email. So I don't think these postings are all real.
| bluGill wrote:
| Do not confusing job posting with openings. Companies have
| often posted advertisements for jobs they had no intent of
| hiring anyone for. The purpose is investors see those ads and
| think the company must be growing, even though management knows
| more people in that role would not translate it more profits in
| the future.
| TecoAndJix wrote:
| Here are screenshots of the LinkedIn Premium insights:
|
| Google - https://pasteboard.co/X7VROVRXt9rE.png Apple -
| https://pasteboard.co/ILHP3rzuCmCZ.png Amazon -
| https://pasteboard.co/fKxc5gF1YIi5.png Meta -
| https://pasteboard.co/OSHCnfUE4V1B.png
| kyrra wrote:
| Googler opinions are my own.
|
| I don't understand how they could have Google's true job
| posting numbers. Many of our postings are for general SWE
| roles, and that posting could hide any number of actual
| openings.
| [deleted]
| kache_ wrote:
| >freeze
|
| Yeah, unless you're a staff engineer :P
|
| The fight over STSMs is only getting more brutal. More like a
| freeze on training engineers up to become staff members
| lamontcg wrote:
| We're not in a recession. Yet. Google and Facebook are ahead of
| the curve and mostly using the headlines to shake things up
| internally right now.
|
| It does show that the billionaires are kind of enthusiastic
| though about the coming recession and economic pain being
| inflicted on the lower classes, and getting those uppity workers
| a bit more under control. They're not so worried about asset
| prices / stock prices / sales / etc and probably correctly assume
| that everything will rebound just fine for them.
| fenek wrote:
| Very often advertising is the fist thing companies cut when
| they run into problems. Google and Facebook are both
| advertising companies and they control very large section of
| that market. It's possible the data they are seeing is showing
| them problems ahead for the whole economy.
| baby wrote:
| I mean FB's stock got halved in the last few months
| rapsey wrote:
| That is because investors don't see a good future for that
| company. It is basically failing on all fronts.
| baby wrote:
| this is response to this comment:
|
| > We're not in a recession. Yet. Google and Facebook are
| ahead of the curve and mostly using the headlines to shake
| things up internally right now.
|
| which has nothing to do with investors
| hervature wrote:
| In case you're not aware, your response is heavily
| implying that FB's stock falling is proof of a recession.
| That's why they responded by clarifying that the drop is
| due to future outlook of investors and not the economy at
| large.
| baby wrote:
| It's not, the OP said that they were ahead of the curve,
| and I pointed out that their stock halved.
|
| I do believe we're in a recession though, but Meta's
| stock is not going to show you that.
| lamontcg wrote:
| Stock markets are investor sentiment, they aren't the real
| economy. They're connected, but they're not the same. Black
| Monday 1987 didn't correspond to any recession.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| What shows that? Are you calling the < L7 engineering
| candidates at Facebook and Google the "lower classes"?
| rnk wrote:
| I thought the original comment was referring to all tech
| workers, ie not independently wealthy as the lower classes.
| But it's also true that below principal level at companies
| there is different treatment. Just like a cto gets treated
| better than the senior principal.
| lamontcg wrote:
| The billionaire class is currently worried about the whole
| of the working class, it goes well beyond SWEs at Facebook
| and Google.
|
| But Amazon being worried about organizing in their
| warehouses and Google and Facebook freezing hiring of SWEs
| and Musk's comments about how workers have become soft and
| overpaid (or whatever it was, I can't find the quote right
| now) are all different body parts of the same elephant.
|
| And SWEs actually are "lower classes" (plural) compared to
| billionaires.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| There might be a hierarchy of value, but that to me doesn't
| imply lower classes in the normal sense. We're talking
| about people being paid some of the best salaries in the
| history of the world, and with very little personal risk.
| lamontcg wrote:
| Everyone is lower class than the billionaires. A millionaire
| footballer can be screwed over by the billionaire owner of
| the club. I really think it helps to see that the power
| dynamics exist even at that kind of level.
| nostromo wrote:
| > We're not in a recession. Yet.
|
| We are by the most common definition: two quarters of negative
| GDP growth.
|
| Some folks in the US are weirdly insistent that recessions are
| defined by the NBER -- a self-appointed group of wonks at a
| private and secretive non-profit. But they're just one measure,
| and an arbitrary one at that.
| lamontcg wrote:
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/193280/seasonally-
| adjust...
|
| That isn't the unemployment graph of any recession I'm
| familiar with.
| nostromo wrote:
| Recessions are by definition a decline in GDP, not a rise
| in unemployment.
| lamontcg wrote:
| You've comfortably defined away any means of debate so
| you have to be right.
|
| Lemme know what you think after the actual recession hits
| in 6-24 months and if it feels or looks any worse.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| The NBER isn't self appointed. The governments formal
| definition is that the NBER decides.
| leereeves wrote:
| > We're not in a recession. Yet.
|
| Based on what?
|
| Perhaps we can discard the classic "two quarters of negative
| GDP growth". But if we do, then from whose perspective does a
| 3% drop in real wages in six months [1] (and a 4.4% YoY drop in
| real weekly earnings [2]) not count as a recession?
|
| 1: https://www.statista.com/statistics/216259/monthly-real-
| aver...
|
| 2: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/realer.htm
| lamontcg wrote:
| You don't have recessions without job losses and unemployment
| claims:
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/193280/seasonally-
| adjust...
| leereeves wrote:
| First, is there any precedent for that restriction?
|
| And second, why not? If everyone still has a job but their
| wages have decreased, that's still an economic contraction,
| at least from the worker's perspective.
| yuan43 wrote:
| > As several of these statements blatantly contradict one
| another, I went back to the data and ran the same sanity check
| that I did with Facebook above. In other words, what if Google is
| using the hiring freeze as a smoke screen and only continuing
| with the strongest candidates, while keeping the rest on the
| bench?
|
| An actual hiring freeze sends a very strong negative signal to
| employees and investors. To employees it says "the ship is
| sinking." Layoffs are right around the corner and that is
| absolute poison to morale. To investors it says "technical or
| not, we've hit a recession." Brace yourselves for impact. Google
| and Facebook are both advertising companies, so they are tightly
| coupled to the business cycle. When business spending starts to
| falter, they'll feel it first. And they have.
|
| So it's not surprising that the companies themselves are far from
| clear about this, sending mixed messages. I expect them to
| continue to do so for as long as they possibly can.
|
| The bubble has inflated so far for so long, I get the sense that
| even among cynical young employees and "investors" there's a
| sense of permanence in the positions of both companies. The thing
| is, those with fewer than 10 years experience have never seen the
| ferocity of the other side of the business cycle. When it turns,
| that mofo _turns_. Those in top management positions have seen
| it, and they 're going to do everything in their ability to deny
| and evade it.
| nomel wrote:
| > To employees it says "the ship is sinking." Layoffs are right
| around the corner and that is absolute poison to morale. To
| investors it says "technical or not, we've hit a recession."
| Brace yourselves for impact
|
| While it's possibly true in this case, that's definitely not
| always true. I've been in two companies that had to implement a
| hiring freeze because growth was too fast. Everyone understood,
| because nobody new each other, because half the company was
| just hired.
| unicornmama wrote:
| Layoffs can be positively received by the market if it cuts
| the fat to increase profit. No one expects Google or any
| other company to grow unboundedly.
| aksjdhmkjasdof wrote:
| >An actual hiring freeze sends a very strong negative signal to
| employees and investors. To employees it says "the ship is
| sinking." Layoffs are right around the corner and that is
| absolute poison to morale.
|
| I don't agree with this analysis. I'd be shocked if Google did
| any layoffs (though it's always possible) instead of just
| freezing hiring and letting natural attrition happen for a
| while. As for the signal to employees, there are so many
| employees already that I imagine many would be agree that the
| company is too big. It doesn't mean that the ship is sinking,
| just that they don't need an infinite number of employees. And
| Google's products are so dominant that you can't really believe
| the business is failing.
|
| Now, FB on the other hand... I'd feel a lot more antsy, yeah.
| Their business doesn't feel nearly so stable.
| baby wrote:
| FB is still printing money so I'm not sure how it's not a
| stable business
| pharmakom wrote:
| zuck will burn cash to the end for the meta verse it seems.
| baby wrote:
| It definitely is a long term bet that could end up
| costing a lot to Meta, but on the other hand if that bet
| materializes... At the very least we're getting really
| cool VR development!
| Applejinx wrote:
| That's one of the things, though. If you are in a dire
| situation, like companies nationalized during wartime,
| you can't work or function. Certain things like
| advertising your services are clearly out the window.
|
| In WWII, some companies who were turned to serving the
| war machine continued to advertise the things they
| couldn't make or sell, anyway. When things came back
| those folks were on top of the world. If the big FAANG
| companies can ride out business cycles without acting
| like they've become vulnerable, they're likely to further
| cement their positions.
| efsavage wrote:
| Two things that I can say with certainty I've heard literally
| every single one of the ~25 years I've been in this game:
|
| 1. "We're in a bubble!, it's only a matter of time before it
| all comes down" 2. "The market is hot for developers right
| now!"
|
| I've been through hiring sprees and layoffs, I've had startups
| succeed and fail, and I don't think my experiences are
| exceptional in any way. Things wax and wane, trends come and
| go. Keep a bit of savings, live within your means, and do good
| work and things will most likely work out well for you in the
| long run.
| time_to_smile wrote:
| > the business cycle
|
| Just an aside, that this rebranding of Marx's theory of crisis
| never fails to get a chuckle out of me.
|
| In mainstream economics is presented as some magical property
| of the way economies work, where Marx specifically predicts
| cyclically economic crisis created by contradictions inherent
| in the structure of capitalism, the periodically build to a
| tipping point leading to crisis and ultimately the resolution
| of these contradictions.
|
| For Marx, these crises ultimately culminate in the unavoidable
| collapse of capitalism. Which is where the fundamental drive to
| find alternatives to capitalism comes from for Marx, not
| because it is an ethically questionable system, but because it
| is one fundamentally headed towards its own destruction.
|
| But "business cycle" sounds much better, and leaves off all
| that spooky "systemic problem" stuff.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > But "business cycle" sounds much better, and leaves off all
| that spooky "systemic problem" stuff.
|
| It all sounds better than his "mass murder/starvation death"
| systemic problems.
| alecbz wrote:
| > For Marx, these crises ultimately culminate in the
| unavoidable collapse of capitalism.
|
| But I mean that's exactly the whole difference, right? Both
| Marx and others identified this pattern, Marx believes this
| ultimately will explode, others don't, so it makes sense that
| others would want to label it in a way that indicates their
| view that the pattern is "normal" and sustainable.
|
| I'm not even saying Marx is wrong, but just because Marx
| thought something about something he noticed doesn't mean
| he's right. Others that came after him are allowed to come to
| different conclusions about the things he noticed.
| tcmart14 wrote:
| This is where I think people try to pull 'gotchas' on Marx
| because Capitalism hasn't reached the point of bursting
| yet. I don't necessarily think he was wrong, nor right. The
| reality, the persistence of capitalism will happen so long
| as people/systems are willing to be flexible enough to
| "resolve the current set of contradictions." Now, those
| resolution's sometimes don't remain resolved because many
| of us have the memory of a goldfish when it comes to
| economics. But as long as people who have the powers to
| make the calls are willing to bend over backwards enough
| (even temporarily), capitalism won't cease.
| vidarh wrote:
| One thing worth remembering, and that even a lot of
| socialists forget, is that Marx predicted this not out of
| some deep hate for capitalism.
|
| The first half of the first chapter of the Communist
| Manifesto is Marx being a total fanboy for capitalism and
| it's capacity for transforming the world.
|
| Marx predicted that capitalist competition, which he
| expressed admiration for, would be _too successful_ , and
| that people would just fail to reign it in and deal with
| the result.
|
| There's a conceptually very simple fix to the crises Marx
| predicted if he's otherwise right:
|
| Share more of the value, and spread labour around if
| automation comes to reduce the need for labour to the
| extent he predicted, where, to paraphrase, both
| overproduction and lack of work becomes common.
|
| It doesn't take equality to prevent it, just enough
| adjustment to smooth out the crises enough to prevent
| escalation.
|
| Marx took capitalists own predictions about the efficiency
| of capitalist competition at face value, and simply asked
| what will happen if capitalism eventually runs out of new
| markets to expand into (temporarily or permanently) and
| responds by driving down margins, and his prediction of
| eventual revolution is predicated on the assumption that
| society will fail to apply those very simple fixes.
|
| Ironically, then, if capitalism survives, it might be
| because the competitive pressures are not as strong as Marx
| believed.
| cloverich wrote:
| FWIW i first learned of it from a libertarian angle, which
| equated business cycle with economy wide (mal) investment
| which was, in practice, usually driven by the fed or some
| comparable government program. Whether consistent or not it
| holds at least some truth and was an interesting angle to
| start learning about economics.
| smokeypanda wrote:
| Libertarianism and Austrian economics has a perception of
| outright rejecting empiricism and other rational thought,
| so I'd like to add a clarification. Libertarian theory
| doesn't deny naturally occurring downturns in economies,
| but that the severity and length of them are lessened
| without state mismanagement. Potentially, to the point that
| nation-spanning busts would be a thing of the past.
| ekidd wrote:
| > _The thing is, those with fewer than 10 years experience have
| never seen the ferocity of the other side of the business
| cycle. When it turns, that mofo turns._
|
| I was working as a programmer during both the dotcom crash and
| the 2007-2008 real estate crash. I would describe these
| downturns as "bumpy".
|
| But neither was catastrophic for most of the programmers I
| knew. Some of us moved, others found new jobs. Some of the
| least-skilled, including the "webmasters" who didn't know
| JavaScript or CSS, did wind up leaving the industry in 2001.
|
| If you had a 1-year emergency fund, you would probably have
| been fine in either crash. The people who were the hardest hit
| were actually the people living in major tech cities, because
| they had the biggest concentrations of layoffs. The longest I
| was on the job market was about 3 months in fall 2001, but I
| had to move out of Boston. I got a slightly underpaid but
| really awesome job.
|
| Right now, there are tens of thousands of organizations that
| would be revolutionized by some simple custom software. These
| organizations can't compete with FAANG salaries. But they'll be
| happy to absorb quite a few programmers. Some of the jobs will
| be valuable and interesting work.
|
| So like I said, a hard crash can be bumpy. But for most
| professional programmers, it probably won't be catastrophic.
| spookie wrote:
| I don't know about the big boys. But at least in Europe, in
| 2008, the crash wasn't "bumpy". It was survival of the
| fittest, and most up and coming companies straight up died.
| It's a matter of perspective, for sure. But I would be
| careful myself. FAANGs won't vanish, and it won't be
| catastrophic for the privileged few. But, for the rest of the
| world, which follows the status quo? This spells doom in
| various levels.
| Mandatum wrote:
| I think they're trying to push down salaries, there's still
| plenty of hiring for technical roles. Recruiters, marketers,
| sales reps on the other hand..
| advael wrote:
| As others have commented, this seems like a smokescreen rather
| than a real freeze. But as someone who wants to see every
| monopolistic company broken up or fail spectacularly, I think a
| hiring freeze at FAANGs is a great opportunity for talented
| people to consider growing a spine and working somewhere less big
| and lucrative. To people facing that choice, I would say this:
| The world is in a weird place right now, and you have probably in
| some aspect of your life realized that the status quo you have
| come to expect is unsustainable at best (and a death cult
| careening off a cliff in many cases). Being able to adapt and
| handle crises is rapidly becoming the most important skillset to
| have. Finding opportunities to cultivate it while still making a
| decent living is a lot less instability than people who aren't
| still sought-after technical talent have to deal with, and will
| likely serve you better than grasping at an illusory sense of
| stability.
| [deleted]
| rco8786 wrote:
| For someone who seems to agree that this is a smokescreen it's
| odd to continue on to admonish FAANG engineers for sticking
| with something that's only illusory stable?
|
| If it's a smokescreen that would imply that no stability has
| been lost for existing employees there.
| advael wrote:
| I am not claiming the hiring freeze makes the stability
| illusory, I am claiming that the entire concept of stability
| is fictional
|
| EDIT: Actually, you've also missed my point in another
| respect: Even if there's a real hiring freeze the immediate
| impact would be on people _seeking_ FAANG jobs, not those who
| already have them. Honestly I don 't even know what you think
| you're responding to. Maybe you're at a FAANG and think I'm
| admonishing you? There's no need to be defensive. I am trying
| to offer advice, not to moralize at people
| mattmanser wrote:
| You don't really have a point, or if you do you're
| referencing it so obliquely and mysteriously it's almost
| completely impossible to tell what it is.
|
| As far as I can tell you hate big tech. You think the
| programming job market will collapse. And it'll be good for
| us, as we'll learn to deal with uncertainty!
|
| Woo hoo.
|
| But you have no actual advice on how.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| The people I know who are still inside (Google) seem optimistic
| that maybe the company is taking a pause to deal with some of its
| bureaucracy and internal politics issues and with people's
| complaints about perf. I suppose that's good.
|
| From my perspective: They've got way too many people doing a lot
| of meh work and feeling really ... important about it. And it's
| on the whole asphyxiating the industry.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| They need to start at the top. The current phase of
| complacency, organizational lethargy, repeated pr disasters,
| people wondering wtf people are doing at Google, and general
| tone deafness started with the current CEO. Time for him to go.
| His vision is speaking in corporate cliches almost exclusively
| and just looking after things. If there is a grander plan other
| than "get people clicking ads", I have yet to learn of it. The
| current CEO is just riding the success of his predecessors, who
| for all their failings actually built a great few products and
| company.
|
| The organization is a reflection of its leadership and their
| vision. Or lack there off. MS and Google are almost polar
| opposites. Google is MS under Balmer. Just failing, tone deaf,
| never quite doing anything right. Enter Satya Nadella and
| suddenly MS is re-engaging with developers, doing all the
| things that were simply unmentionable before, and generally
| delivering great share holder value. Google needs somebody like
| that. The current CEO is not it. He's a caretaker. Not a
| leader.
|
| I'm not a shareholder; so no stake in this game other than
| observing what is obvious to me.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| For sure, I agree.
|
| I was never essential or important there. So my opinion is
| just.. whatever.
|
| And I never really drank the kool-aid, either, really. But...
|
| The kool-aid _tasted way way way better_ when it was Larry,
| Sergey, Eric, Patrick, etc.
|
| I can see what Ruth Porat brought to the table. Sky high
| stock values is one. That was nice when I still had RSUs.
|
| But Sundar? I don't get it.
| PheonixPharts wrote:
| > And it's on the whole asphyxiating the industry.
|
| My understanding was that asphyxiating the industry was always
| the plan.
|
| For those who worked in industry pre-2008, one of the major
| drivers that allowed new startups to be so disruptive was that
| startups could very often compete with the then major tech
| companies on compensation. If there was a difference in pay, it
| was usually minor and could easily be made up for by better
| quality of life and a nice promotion in title.
|
| Once Google and Facebook started growing it's clear they
| realized that every talented engineer on the market is a
| potential threat. As time has moved on the gap in pay between
| startup and FAANG and now startup and any company offering RSUs
| is just too large for startups to compete for talent.
|
| I generally prefer startups to large companies, but can't find
| a single startup offering comp even remotely close to what I
| have in my current role. Unless I started to absolutely hate my
| current position, and found a startup that had essentially my
| dream role, there's no way I would seriously consider a switch.
|
| My suspicion is that as funding for startups starts to dry up
| as money becomes more expensive, we'll see large, high paying
| tech companies start to let go of more staff and start driving
| comp down. When the market cools Google and similar companies
| asphyxiation strategy will have been completed. Startups
| starved of talent and finally starved of dollars will be no
| threat, that means they can safely reduce labor costs while
| maintaining market dominance.
| tytso wrote:
| I work at Google so my perspective is to be biased, but
| that's not what I see.
|
| I work on infrastructure, and so a few years back, when I
| proposed a major project, I had to demonstrate how it would
| save *many* times the fully loaded cost of the engineers on
| the team, by reducing the Storage TCO for all of Google (for
| example). It was not enough for the project to "break even"
| --- the benefits had to do more than just exceed the
| "nominal" SWE cost. It had to be multiple times the cost of
| the SWE's, to account for the opportunity cost of those SWE's
| --- SWE's are a constrained resource, which is why a project
| needs to save $$$ (or increase profits) by many multiples the
| fully loaded SWE cost. (That project has since been
| completed, successfully, and I got a promotion to Sr Staff
| Engineer out of it.)
|
| The reason why SWE's are a constrained resource is becaused
| finding good SWE's is non-trivial. As a TL, I don't want to
| waste my precious approved headcount on people who just want
| to rest and vest, or people who believe in the crazy talk of
| only needing to work 30 minutes each day. I'm trying to find
| highly motivated, smart, and talented SWE's who can also be
| team players. And if they need to have domain expertise (say,
| be proficient kernel engineers), it's super-duper difficult.
|
| So I don't see any indication of people getting hired just to
| starve statups of talented engineers. We need every single
| talented engineer we can get for the projects that we want to
| accomplish. And in the time when we may need to slow down our
| growth, it may mean that we will need to slow, or shut down
| some projects. That may suck, especially if it's a project
| that we had invested a lot of passion into. But it's
| certainly no reason to panic. Slowing down growth is not the
| same as layoffs, and there is no shortage of work for us to
| do.
| kragen wrote:
| You also wrote major parts of Linux, so it's possible your
| contact with Googlers might be biased towards the more
| functional parts of the organization. Your bar for
| "talented engineer" may be higher than average parts of
| Google.
| saagarjha wrote:
| > As a TL, I don't want to waste my precious approved
| headcount on people who just want to rest and vest, or
| people who believe in the crazy talk of only needing to
| work 30 minutes each day.
|
| And yet these people exist and get hired, even at Google.
| Perhaps not on your team, but they're definitely there.
| sbierwagen wrote:
| 21% of Alphabet was hired _this quarter._
|
| >Alphabet, Google's parent company, said its head count
| rose 21% in the second quarter of 2022 to 174,014 full-
| time employees from 144,056 the year prior.
| https://www.hcamag.com/us/specialization/corporate-
| wellness/...
|
| SV talks the big talk about hiring the best of the best
| of the best, then hires 30 thousand people in three
| months. There probably aren't that many 10x programmers
| in the _world._
| marshray wrote:
| Quibble:
|
| A 21% rise results in 17% of the new group having come
| from the increase.
| skinnymuch wrote:
| That's over 12 months. It's year over year.
| ghaff wrote:
| Interview process gatekeeping notwithstanding, the idea
| that you can hire 30,000 people (admittedly a decent
| proportion is probably backfilling/growing
| administrative, etc. positions) who are all "the best and
| the brightest" doesn't pass the sniff test.
| [deleted]
| vl wrote:
| As so many people learned over the years in storage org,
| essential modus operandi was "just do your current shit,
| this new shit you are proposing is too hard and we don't
| want to do it". I lost count of improvement proposals that
| ultimately were not getting supported (there was a funny
| one with (first) hosted NFS prototype, when they tried to
| turn it off, turned out there were pissed-off customers
| running business workloads already). Instead we tried to
| fit square pegs into the round holes "by using existing
| technology".
| francisofascii wrote:
| > proficient kernel engineers
|
| How is the world does one become a proficient kernel
| engineer? Without already being at a FANNG.
| tytso wrote:
| Here are the latest development statistics from the just-
| released 5.19 kernel. (Please consider supporting Linux
| Weekly News by subscribing if you find content like this
| useful; one of the benefits is you can help share
| subscriber-only content to friends and colleagues via
| Subscriber Links):
|
| https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/902854/b788a6a3d77aba7a/
|
| If you scroll down to the Most active employers in 5.19,
| by commits you'll see:
|
| 1. Intel 10.9% 2. (Unknown) 7.5% 3. Linaro 5.7% 4. AMD
| 5.5% 5. Red Hat 5.2% 6. (None) 4.3% 7. Google 4.1% 8.
| Meta 3.5% 9. SUSE 3.1% 10. Huawei 2.9%
|
| The statistics are slightly different if you count by
| lines of codes changed, but either way, it's not all
| FANNG companies, not by a long shot. There are plenty of
| people who get started coding via kernelnewbies.org and
| other resources.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| If that's the case why have they always had such
| astronomically high hiring bars? I'd they wanted to deny
| anyone else talented engineers why would they reject so many?
| spamizbad wrote:
| If you're only talking about salaries, I feel like even
| pre-2008 most big software companies always paid better than
| startups. It was stuff like RSUs and cash bonuses; which came
| AFTER the IPOs, that REALLY tipped the scales and made it
| difficult for startups to compete. Startups themselves never
| responded with more generous stock options; in fact, compared
| to the 90s, some became stingier.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Yes, as I said elsewhere the equity portion in startups is
| decidedly non-competitive for anybody but founders.
|
| "tldr options" @ https://equity.ltse.com/calculators/tldr-
| stock-options is an eye-opener to see just how meh the
| packages offered are.
| ilikehurdles wrote:
| I think a lot of candidates (speaking for myself here)
| just don't care too much to negotiate equity at privately
| held companies. Given the highly unlikely probability
| that a company I work for will have a successful exit at
| all, let alone while I am either employed or hold
| exercised stock options, it's all Monopoly money to me.
| Benefits, salary, and bonuses is the only compensation I
| negotiate and judge a company on. All the other stuff is
| just lottery tickets.
|
| Meaning, startup or no, I'm expecting to be paid what I
| ask. levels.fyi shows that my pay+bonus at my startup for
| my role matches FAANG compensation so I'm happy with it.
| pm90 wrote:
| You do you, but even if you don't expect to make it big
| its not a good idea to leave money on the table.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Yeah, I mean, this is my take, too.
|
| I have worked for places that offered equity a few times.
| It did turn into something once (Google bought my
| employer). But the actual equity conversion was minor in
| quantity compared to the rest of my Google TC.
|
| There's no way out of "serfdom" other than starting your
| own company. I don't think this is healthy. The
| incentives are not there for engineers in startups to
| really put themselves out there.
| typon wrote:
| > There's no way out of "serfdom" other than starting
| your own company.
|
| Took me 10 years of grinding to finally realize this. Now
| at this stage the only question is how do I do it?
| Firmwarrior wrote:
| You can just save your way out too. I started on the path
| to FIRE (check out /r/financialindependence on Reddit)
| about 10 years into my career, and it was a huge quality
| of life improver
|
| Now I'm always sitting on an enormous pile of savings and
| I have short- and long-term plans to move my career and
| life forward. It spares me a lot of stress.
| bombcar wrote:
| This is likely a more "reasonable" path unless you "go
| into business for yourself" as a plumber or a consultant,
| neither of which actually makes a salable business.
|
| Especially since you only need to keep your expenses 10%
| lower (or so) than your after-tax income to hit a
| reasonable target.
| krschultz wrote:
| Are you counting the equity at a large public company to
| be lottery tickets? Because it's absolutely not. Every
| quarter a bunch of real money appears in an account with
| my name on it, that's not a lottery ticket.
| ubercow13 wrote:
| No they are talking about private companies.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Yes, I mean, I came to Google through an acquisition (of an
| adtech company) and it was pretty clear to me that the goal
| of the whole process was a) make your company go away and
| stop your customers from using you instead of us and b) get
| as much of your talent out of the job market as possible.
|
| They totally didn't care about our product or the
| productivity of the employees they brought in. They let us
| sit and twiddle our thumbs and "rest and vest" for at least a
| year, after making a big show for the DOJ about how this
| aquisition wasn't an anti-competitive move ([1])
|
| And I hung around there moving protobufs around and fixing
| the odd bug for 10 years but getting paid stupid money to not
| go and do anything for anybody else or keep on top of
| industry trends etc. (Not claiming I'm some shit hot
| engineer, just speaking for my personal situation)
|
| I don't think most people who are 'organically' hired into
| Google see it this way because for them it's a thing they
| seek out, a life goal they pursued. For me it was always in
| the back of my mind.
|
| Which is one of the reasons I eventually had to leave despite
| it putting my family in a more precarious financial
| situation. It wasn't a place I was ever going to find meaning
| in my work or feel like I fit in.
|
| Re: startups and compensation one major thing that has
| changed since 20 years ago is that it is simply not possible
| to become wealthy (like "I can afford going to retire
| wealthy" or "I can now afford to seed my own startup
| wealthy") out of the equity package that a startup will offer
| unless you're the cofounders or a founding employee. The
| packages they'll offer will be a fraction of a % of equity,
| which if you're _really really lucky_ will turn into a few
| hundred thousand in an exit after busting your ass for a few
| years. From a strictly financial POV there 's no reason to
| choose working at a startup over a FAANG. Most will simply
| not offer anything to make it worth the risk. You should only
| choose to do it for lifestyle or enjoyment reasons, really.
| (That said, I'm working for a startup again right now.)
|
| [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/source-
| justi...
| jjav wrote:
| > one major thing that has changed since 20 years ago is
| that it is simply not possible to become wealthy (like "I
| can afford going to retire wealthy" or "I can now afford to
| seed my own startup wealthy") out of the equity package
| that a startup will offer unless you're the cofounders or a
| founding employee
|
| Statistically that's likely, but it's not always the case.
|
| If you luck into one of the companies that IPOs and grows
| big (and doesn't need to be FB/GOOG-level big, just in the
| handful of billions in market cap), even the tiny sliver of
| options of a regular employee can become retirement-level
| money.
|
| There are many public companies in SV that have market cap
| in the dozens of billions who made their regular employees
| who joined pre-IPO very rich even though the companies
| aren't FAANG and don't have such brand recognition.
| itstomkent wrote:
| It's kind of insane that on the one hand we have folks
| playing lip service to "anyone can learn to code" and on
| the other, decent developers being so rare that to hire one
| you need to offer compensation equal to winning a minor
| lottery for just 2-4 years worth of work. I wonder how much
| more software would get written if it didn't cost
| $250-500K/yr for a single developer.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > It's kind of insane that on the one hand we have folks
| playing lip service to "anyone can learn to code" and on
| the other, decent developers being so rare that to hire
| one you need to offer compensation equal to winning a
| minor lottery for just 2-4 years worth of work. I wonder
| how much more software would get written if it didn't
| cost $250-500K/yr for a single developer.
|
| While I think the premise is wrong - not anyone can learn
| to code - there are also levels of "learn to code" so
| it's simpler to spin up a create-react-app and modify it
| a bit for a code school credit compared to advanced Scala
| - it's also true that learning to code is nowhere near
| the hardest part of software engineering productivity.
| randomdata wrote:
| Anyone can learn to code. However, few want to and even
| fewer want to pursue it as a career.
| philipov wrote:
| Anyone can learn to code, just like anyone can learn to
| write a decent essay. Not everyone can become a
| professional author.
| BlargMcLarg wrote:
| You're projecting a very specific SV bubble. More than
| enough decent developers exist outside of it, willing to
| work for a fraction. It's the fat profits and the big
| boys' eagerness to poach talent that got us this far,
| which subsequently inflated the QoL in these tech hubs,
| in turn creating the current standard.
| lysergia wrote:
| Small startups need to be poaching 'Big Boys' employees,
| not the other way round. I see many boutique shops
| offering (nearly) the same pay, and poaching from FAANG+M
| (The M is Micro$oft)
| jshen wrote:
| There are not more than enough decent developers.
| Firmwarrior wrote:
| Yeah, on the other hand, I'm pretty sure that I or most
| silicon valley coders making 250k+ can singlehandedly
| outperform a dozen "decent developers" by pretty much any
| metric you can pick.
|
| I'm not saying we're smarter or innately better, but
| coding is a tradeskill and the masters of the trade are
| almost all here.
|
| I'm interested to see how much this changes over the next
| decade, though, since a lot of people have scattered
| across the globe thanks to remote work finally catching
| on.
| est31 wrote:
| I seriously doubt that. Developing things is the same
| thing all around the globe. Just because you have worked
| five years building react apps in silicon valley (and
| from what I can tell, 250k total comp is reachable at
| that experience level) does not make you more skilled at
| building react apps than someone who also built react
| apps, say, in Barcelona. But you probably make 5 times as
| much, if not more. That's not because you are more
| skilled but because your company makes way more money, or
| is expected to make more money and thus gets funding from
| rich people. The company makes way more money because of
| a lot of reasons, e.g. like access to the enormous US
| single market which is way bigger and more homogenic than
| the EU single market, or any other market out there
| except for maybe the chinese one, as well as historic
| reasons that turned SV into the western world's digital
| innovation center, and thus turned a lot of funding
| attention into SV.
| edmundsauto wrote:
| I don't think it's as much about the challenging
| technical problems as it is the ability to get shit done.
| Wherever I've worked, most developers are unable to own
| e2e work. At big tech, you are expected to be decent in a
| lot of related areas (communication, project planning,
| etc).
|
| Software is a people problem and what big tech looks for
| is top notch technical skills and the mindset/ability to
| solve them in a chaotic environment.
| askafriend wrote:
| There is a difference between building a react app for
| your local bakery and building Facebook.com to scale.
|
| The experience in scaling products that big and that fast
| is concentrated and not evenly distributed.
| est31 wrote:
| You are right that in backend, at FAANG scale, you face
| some unique challenges that smaller shops don't face. And
| of course, unless you work at FAANG scale, you haven't
| faced these problems so you haven't learned know how to
| solve them, so you will lose if you compete with people
| who _know_ how to solve them.
|
| But that's far away from the claim from above, that any
| 250k+ total comp developer from SV can outprogram good
| people from outside the US who don't make 250k+ total
| comp in basically any benchmark.
|
| Most SV employees never have to solve these problems.
|
| I picked frontend intentionally because it's probably the
| area that's the furthest away from these problems, but
| still compensated at 250k+ levels, if you work in SV for
| the right employers.
|
| But even among backend engineers, most have never touched
| hard to parallelize problems. I'd argue that most
| (definitely not all) FAANG backend tasks are easily
| scalable. Implementing them still takes work, whch is
| done by most FAANG engineers. FAANG level tooling
| definitely helps, and while developing that tooling is
| hard, the people who have built such tooling are only a
| tiny subset of FAANG employees (regardless whether they
| are more skilled than the average FAANG employee or not).
| pedrosorio wrote:
| The average SV developer knows nothing about building
| Facebook.com to scale.
|
| More precisely, the number of people who were there when
| "scaling products that big and that fast" applied to
| Facebook (or other comparable companies) is a tiny
| fraction of all SV developers.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| The absolute hubris of SV people thinking that they can
| individually perform the jobs of 2-3 competent teams of
| people at literally any company outside of SV is why a
| lot of talented people want nothing to do with SV.
| bumblebritches5 wrote:
| RestlessMind wrote:
| If you know "more than enough" decent developers, you can
| make a great business connecting them to prospective
| employers.
| [deleted]
| rileyphone wrote:
| Learning programming is throwing yourself at a wall until
| you figure it out, a natural gatekeeping force that is
| exacerbated by the unfriendliness and complexity of
| development environments. An intentionally designed tool
| and system could enable far more developers at reasonable
| yet respectable salaries.
| jahnu wrote:
| It doesn't have to cost that. You probably can hire
| people remotely. E.g. Almost nobody in the EU will cost
| you that much. Most good devs are less than EUR100k total
| cost.
| washbrain wrote:
| 100k - accounting for pay, benefits, office space,
| training, hiring, computing equipment, support services
| (hr, etc)?
|
| In the States, those things can exceed the salary cost of
| the engineer.
| guiriduro wrote:
| > Managers don't want to have to get up at 6am just to
| meet their reports.
|
| Should be outsourcing at the programme or project level,
| not hiring employees to add to US teams, then.
| justinlloyd wrote:
| Well then we should just keep moving Eastwards from
| California until we find the cheapest teams we can and
| outsource to those, right? Let me know how that works
| out.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| Plus if you are US based communicating in real time with
| Europe is a pain. And many EU countries have strict labor
| laws that limit working hours. Managers don't want to
| have to get up at 6am just to meet their reports.
| [deleted]
| jshen wrote:
| The thing people miss, demand for software is infinite,
| so demand for software developers will increase to match
| any increase in supply.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Demand for pretty much anything is infinite, if you
| assume a price of 0.
|
| So in reality we almost always end up with a non zero
| price where supply equals demand.
| mym1990 wrote:
| This most certainly is not true. There are plenty of free
| things that don't result in 100% consumption. Demand is
| based on peoples needs and preferences, not on how much
| is out there already. Think about libraries as an
| example.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Agreed. That's why I wrote "pretty much".
|
| My go to example is oxygen. There is more than enough of
| it for everyone, so there is no possibility/need to
| charge money for it.
| jshen wrote:
| I hear you, I think software is different because it has
| very few physical constraints.
|
| My appetite for food is not infinite, I can only eat so
| much. Same, but less so, for cars, clothes, etc. in some
| abstract sense, maybe, there are people that want 100
| cars, but not really.
|
| Even with housing, demand is not really infinite. I don't
| want to redo my kitchen every year.
|
| But software, every company has a backlog far longer than
| they will ever be able to do, and the ROI is there for
| the most part.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Hire Canadians. Currency conversion advantage. Same time
| zones. Same language. Mostly same culture. Very well
| educated. Cheaper health care benefits. And $150k USD is
| a generous compensation level, and $250USD is about what
| a Canadian Googler @ L4 gets paid. $100-$125k USD gets
| you reasonable non-senior talent.
| golergka wrote:
| Why not hire completely international then?
| alasdair_ wrote:
| Timezones and IP and labor laws mostly.
|
| Having a team completely unavailable during the USA
| working day is a real pain for collaboration and it's
| hard to sue people in other countries that "borrow" your
| source code to make their own version. Also, knowing
| exactly how to pay (say) a German developer and how taxes
| work and what the labor laws are is always an issue.
|
| Aside: The very best contractors I ever hired were
| Ukranian. So many absolutely fantastic talents at around
| $30 an hour. Then Russia invaded (the first time) and
| annexed Sevastopol and the USA made it illegal to pay
| them any more.
| wrzuteczka wrote:
| Ukrainians were given full employment rights in Poland
| after the Russian invasion, so they can just move to
| Poland (at least the female ones, as males aren't allowed
| to leave Ukraine for now).
| matkoniecz wrote:
| > the USA made it illegal to pay them any more.
|
| only ones who stayed in Crimea
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| +1 I've only had incredible experiences with Ukrainian
| devs and designers- I hesitate to say best because I've
| worked with amazing people all over (I was at two gig
| economy companies that did custom software dev with
| freelancers) but Ukraine as a destination often stood out
| for high quality, low prices, and not needing a ton of
| supervision/detailed instruction.
|
| Shameless plug- a buddy runs a dev shop out there, they
| have great devs and exceptional designers (and also are
| doing a fund for Ukrainians impacted by the war). If
| you're looking for help in that region, they're great
| people to chat with: https://beetroot.co/
| RestlessMind wrote:
| 1. timezones are a PITA. Collabroation with Europe/East-
| Asia is barely manageable from the West Coast. India is
| the most painful.
|
| 2. english language barriers - half the people I have
| worked with in South America (Colombia, Brazil) and China
| were so bad with English that it seriously affected the
| team's productivity.
|
| Canadians fit the bill on both counts - same timezones
| and language.
| seabrookmx wrote:
| Canadian here, and this checks out.
|
| I think the reason this isn't more popular is that our
| talent pool is small enough that unless you already have
| a Canadian presence it's not really worth opening up a
| business unit/office/whatever here. Obviously some big
| players have done it (MS, Amazon, EA) but if you're a
| medium sized company it may not be worth it.
|
| I work for a US company but I'm a contractor for this
| reason. It works for me but if you don't have extended
| health through your partner or don't want to deal with
| the tax implications of being "self employed", it can be
| less attractive.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| As a Canadian PR I've always thought this would be a good
| option except that the Canadian government seems
| determined to make it difficult.
|
| When the most practical option is to form a corporate
| entity with a single employee, and BTW you may have to
| pay GST + PST on labor depending on if other Canadians
| use the service, it begins to look really unappetizing.
|
| I get that employees as contractor relationships are rife
| for abuse, but, like so is exempting tech employees from
| overtime protection (BC and Ontario).
|
| It really just shouldn't be this hard to do work for a
| company that isn't in Canada.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| CRA now frowns heavily on "personal service
| corporations." There is no tax advantage (in fact there's
| disadvantages) to incorporating unless you have more than
| one client.
|
| So it ends up being sole proprietorship only, which has
| far less tax advantages.
|
| I mean, as a tax payer and citizen who paid exorbitant
| personal income taxes for years as an employee of a
| FAANG, I think this is probably equitable. But as a
| contractor, now... damn I'd like to be able to take
| advantage of corporate tax rates like I could 13 years
| ago when I did this last.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Yep I had a job offer fall through after several months
| of verbal offering & negotiation because the company was
| acquired and the new parent company had logistical
| problems hiring Canadians. Though mostly due to their own
| incompetence, it sounds like (their employer of record
| situation was charging insane overhead for Canadians).
|
| So I'm also working as a contractor for a US (well,
| international remote but US incorporation I guess)
| company right now. And, yeah, no benefits isn't great.
| But I have also found that paying out of pocket for
| dental, etc. is better than buying a plan for myself.
|
| Also a bit of a bummer that CRA has tightened up
| incorporation stuff a bit since the last time I did this.
| Given I have a single client only right now, I'll just be
| doing sole proprietorship.
| ska wrote:
| > And, yeah, no benefits isn't great. But I have also
| found that paying out of pocket for dental, etc. is
| better than buying a plan for myself.
|
| The idea is you scale your rate to include enough for a
| benefits package.
|
| Or they use a POE/EOR service, that's possible in Canada
| I think.
|
| Either way, incorporation still has some advantages, one
| being that you time shift your pay as needed. It can make
| it easier to subcontract people too. And it's easy, and
| only costs a few hundred dollars.
| jeromegv wrote:
| > I work for a US company but I'm a contractor for this
| reason. It works for me but if you don't have extended
| health through your partner or don't want to deal with
| the tax implications of being "self employed", it can be
| less attractive.
|
| It's extremely easy to be self employed in Canada with a
| foreign corporation. You just start getting your money
| wired through Wise or whatever service and declare it on
| your income taxes. As you work for a foreign corporation,
| no need to charge sales tax. That's it, no separate
| entity or incorporation needed. You can still expense
| your tools expenses, part of your housing, etc.
|
| Sure if you want to incorporate, it becomes more
| complicated. But you wouldn't be incorporated either if
| you had a salaried job for a tech company locally.
| munk-a wrote:
| Canadian here. Canadians are clearly the best developers
| out there and yes, unfortunately, you can slide quite a
| bit down the payscale to afford us.
|
| I'm surprised cross boarder hiring hasn't become even
| more popular with the pandemic and forced work-from-
| homeness. Canadians mostly speak English (even most
| Quebecois do!) and are in a compatible timezone with the
| majority of the developers either in St. Lawrence valley
| or Vancouver and thus being either EST or PST.
|
| Also, while the holidays differ I think the total number
| of stats is pretty close to the same.
| uf00lme wrote:
| I raise you an Australia. Smaller market and different
| time zone but cheaper and in my experience they make some
| exceptional workers/engineers.
| munk-a wrote:
| I am quite uncertain about the cheaper portion - but the
| timezones hurt quite a bit and the costs for in-person
| visits are extremely high. Australia and New Zealand are
| awesome places (and I'm highly jealous of New Zealand in
| particular) but a 13+ hr flight to get to the west coast
| is extremely fatiguing so meetups are highly unlikely -
| compare that to flying someone down from YVR to SFO and
| it's a huge price and time difference and SEA and YVR are
| close enough that the train/bus is usually a very
| reasonable option.
| icelancer wrote:
| Not that simple for startups/small businesses. Dealing
| with labor law is no joke. I've been unable to hire FTE
| Canadians due to the legal burden that was going to come
| with setting up those operations. Larger corps can take
| advantage while small businesses sometimes can't deal
| with the paperwork overhead.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| It's what we ended up doing (indirectly through an
| acquisition). But it didn't end-up costing less in the
| long run. I'd say about a third of employees ended up
| coming to the Bay anyways during the first year.
|
| Something you have to keep in mind is that there are two
| parallel markets over there: SV caliber developers and
| the rest. The former won't have any issue getting a job
| in the US (takes maybe a week for a talented engineer to
| get one). Therefore, comp has to be priced appropriately.
| The later can't -and likely won't ever be able to- secure
| a US visa, mostly due to skills (there's a reason they
| immigrated to Canada, it's way easier and the quotas are
| close to 10x per capita compared to the US). Some
| companies leverage this and have floors of international
| devs they park in Canada for a fraction of their US
| counterpart through a subsidiary.
| analyst74 wrote:
| Engineers with good track record and interviewing skills
| will have no problem getting US salary in Canada.
|
| In fact Google pays Canadian similar to their non-premiun
| US locations like Raleigh.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| Implicit in your argument is that people would always
| value SV > the rest of the US > Canada > Poor countries.
|
| There are a lot of very talented people that have values
| that don't align that way for a variety of extremely
| valid reasons.
|
| As someone who has the right to work in both Canada and
| the US, and who has been attempted to recruit by SV
| companies, I prefer the benefits of living where I do in
| Canada over the lifestyle costs of living in SV with 3x
| the money.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| I'd say there's three segments TBH.
|
| The "SV caliber" developers you identify [honestly,
| that's kind of offensive, but whatever] who can and do
| actively consider relocation to the US.
|
| The same caliber of developers, but have no interest in
| ever living in the US, for personal or obligation
| reasons.
|
| The permanent resident non-Canadian citizen category you
| allude to.
|
| Google Waterloo for example is mostly full of the second
| category. Plenty of high caliber talent who are there and
| not in Mountain View because that's where they chose to
| be. Because any of them could relocate / transfer to MTV
| any time they liked, but prefer not to. In my last few
| years there, there were dozens of people who I met who
| had transferred (back) into Canada from SV/Bay Area
| because they simply couldn't stand living there anymore
| because of cost of living, politics, family, home
| sickness, etc.
|
| There are other companies that set up shop in Canada
| merely to siphon the first. They offer an "ok" experience
| for people who choose to stay, but push hard to get
| talent to relocate. I get the impression there's lots of
| this happening in Vancouver in particular.
|
| The prominence of the last (recent immigrant / PR)
| category is really something that has held back the
| Canadian tech scene in general TBH. It's a product of
| international recruitment by the Canadian immigration
| system. There are shops full of people essentially fresh
| off the boat from the PRC or Eastern Europe. Many of
| these are highly qualified -- but in the context of our
| industry as a whole -- underpaid/mistreated. Others are
| not as competent. And it's all mixed up, and it has
| messed up the local tech market, compensation ranges, and
| quality of work produced.
|
| Of course all of this is in flux and changing because of
| the rise of remote work.
| ransom1538 wrote:
| You literally can go on indeed.com and check for
| "$250-500K/yr for a single developer". It. Does. Not.
| Exist. Yes there are a few at FAANG that do make this,
| but this isn't the current market.
| wittycardio wrote:
| Yes it absolutely does lol
| dixie_land wrote:
| Google level (L3/4/5 etc) * 100k is a very realistic
| expectation for TC. At L7 or above double that number
| too.
|
| Source: recent offers and friends who recently got offers
| iamevn wrote:
| former L3, here. my total comp was around 160k USD with
| base salary at 113k USD (based in Seattle area).
| happyopossum wrote:
| Yeah, not really - L3 and L4 are entry level roles, for
| folks just out of college. No FAANG is paying a newb
| college grad $400k/yr. Either your friends didn't
| understand the comp plan and how equity is paid out, or
| they were BSing you.
| haliskerbas wrote:
| In a bull market it's pretty easy to clear the 3xx/4xx in
| a single year in those levels at competitive companies. I
| know many folks who have done so.
| EddySchauHai wrote:
| > pretty easy
|
| It's not "easy" to achieve this, but it might be
| possible. One doesn't just wake up and decide to go work
| at a FAANG and get a >90% percentile salary from them for
| the level.
| dixie_land wrote:
| nope, just cash + RSU / yr.
|
| e.g. Amazon was giving out SDE II (google L4 equivlant) @
| 400k (first year no RSU but cash bonus paid out monthly)
| about 2 months ago.
|
| re L3 level, if you have a master's or 1+ yr exp, while
| you're still at the entry level, you are considered
| "industrial hire" and 300 is very attainable
|
| in my current company for new hires (again justed to
| google's leveling) we have L5 550+ and L6 650+ (200~300
| cash + RSU , not pre-IPO bs)
|
| In my earlier years I used to doubt those "ridiculous"
| numbers until I simply asked for more. There are plenty
| of companies out there, many medium-big sized non-FAANG
| companies pay just as well.
| time_to_smile wrote:
| Non-FAANG, not even a company you've probably heard of,
| and all of my coworkers and I have TC is in that range.
|
| I started my career in small companies and startups and
| it took me a long time to understand how TC works. Both
| in tech and finance base salaries are typically around
| 200 or less, but total compensations factoring in both
| bonuses and RSUs brings the amount of money you bring in
| each year _much_ higher.
|
| It's gotten much better in recent years with levels.fyi
| and the like helping more people to see this, but I found
| that a few years back if you didn't go to an elite school
| you likely didn't have someone explain to you how comp
| works.
|
| If you want to make > 250k you absolutely can, and it
| doesn't mean selling your soul. Don't convince yourself
| that these TC levels are myths.
|
| Though I do suspect we'll see dotcom level changes in
| comp soon.
| eclipxe wrote:
| indeed.com isn't what you should be looking at.
| levels.fyi
| EddySchauHai wrote:
| Go on angel.co and filter for jobs in the Bay Area and
| you'll find roles around 250k base salary. 250k including
| bonuses and stock is far more common. This isn't just Bay
| Area btw, take a look at the contract market in London
| and there are multiple > 200k GBP roles (roughly 250k
| USD).
| tfehring wrote:
| There are well over 100k US-based software engineers at
| the five FAANG companies alone, plus a long tail of other
| companies that compete with them for talent and offer
| similar (and in some cases higher) compensation. All of
| those companies can go over $250k in total comp for the
| equivalent of Google L4, i.e., one promotion above entry-
| level.
| devin wrote:
| It absolutely does exist.
|
| Source: Nearly everyone I came up with as a programmer is
| in the 250+ range, and not just at FAANG. Check out
| https://levels.fyi
| Apocryphon wrote:
| I think the original post that gave that range was
| thinking of salary and not TC. Obviously, only a few
| companies can afford to give away crazy valuable equity.
| jshen wrote:
| That is the market rate. I'm at a large non FAANG
| company, non tech company, and that's what we pay when
| you factor in bonus and RSUs.
| askafriend wrote:
| LOL no one uses Indeed for compensation - the information
| is all wrong. At minimum you should be looking at
| levels.fyi.
|
| In my last job search which wasn't too long ago, I got
| several offers and not a single one was below $400k.
| deckard1 wrote:
| are these all onsite FAANG? Know of any good companies
| hiring remote (US) in that range? Here in LA we have most
| of the FAANGs, but I'd rather not drive three hours a
| day.
| jen20 wrote:
| No one is hiring developers via indeed.
| pharmakom wrote:
| I think software engineering is actually quite difficult.
| If it feels easy it's probably because you've been at it
| for a while. This severely constrains supply but demand
| is huge because even at high cost, software automation
| can deliver big returns for a company.
| kragen wrote:
| Anyone can learn to read and write, but Stephen King and
| J.K. Rowling still make bank.
| alasdair_ wrote:
| >Re: startups and compensation one major thing that has
| changed since 20 years ago is that it is simply not
| possible to become wealthy (like "I can afford going to
| retire wealthy" or "I can now afford to seed my own startup
| wealthy") out of the equity package that a startup will
| offer unless you're the cofounders or a founding employee.
|
| I guess it depends how you define a "founding employee". I
| know several engineers who made enough to retire who joined
| unicorns around the pre-series A time or at the time of the
| raise itself but were not founding engineers.
| michaelt wrote:
| 'Back in the day' the graffiti artist who painted the
| first Facebook office got shares that ended up worth $200
| million [1] because in those days, investors hadn't
| figured out they could get away with offering a lot less.
|
| More recently, last time I was on the job market and
| interviewed with startups, their offers were more along
| the lines of "If the company value rises to $1 billion,
| your stock options will be worth enough to buy a 3
| bedroom family home within 30 minutes of the office" - a
| decent chunk of change, no doubt, but not enough to
| retire on, and far from guaranteed.
|
| [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/graffiti-artist-
| painted-face...
| alasdair_ wrote:
| The average price of a decent 3 bedroom home within 30
| minutes of Palo Alto probably IS enough to retire on
| (modestly) as an individual if you move to a cheaper
| state. Few Americans have several million dollars in
| retirement savings.
|
| Even for most engineers, somewhere between five and ten
| million is enough to retire on (3.5% safe withdrawal
| rate) at a nice standard of living, again assuming you
| don't want to live in the bay area, NYC, Seattle or LA.
| ghaff wrote:
| >Even for most engineers, somewhere between five and ten
| million is enough to retire on (3.5% safe withdrawal
| rate) at a nice standard of living, again assuming you
| don't want to live in the bay area, NYC, Seattle or LA.
|
| Especially if you already own a place you're happy to
| live in long term, money in that range is enough to live
| _very_ comfortably anywhere in the US. No, you 're not
| flying private jets and maybe not employing multiple
| full-time domestic staff, but $200K-400K per year without
| even touching principal is absolutely enough to have a
| nice standard of living even in Manhattan.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Sure, but this is all quibbling.
|
| Join an early stage startup as a senior engineer and
| you'll probably be getting less than half or a third of a
| % of equity. If they even deign to tell you how many
| outstanding shares there are. Say that company gets super
| lucky and sells for a $1B? You might be lucky get $1M out
| of it. Assuming they didn't play funny business with the
| paperwork during acquisition, or dilute your shares a
| whole bunch.
|
| $1M is a lot of money, but it's not "goodbye workforce"
| or "I'm off to invest in seeding my own startup" money,
| not when you have a family, home, and are still youngish.
|
| Meanwhile the founders and other major stock owners will
| be doing quite well for themselves.
|
| It's not unjust necessarily. But it definitely should
| inform _just how much passion_ people put into the
| startups that hire them. Don 't be fooled. Treat it like
| a job.
| ideamotor wrote:
| That sounds correct since this is exactly their product
| business model.
| TimPC wrote:
| Start-ups don't have to pay Google or FB size comp to attract
| people who like to work in start-ups but my feeling is that
| if they want to compete for the senior end of the talent pool
| they are going to have a hard time. Most start-ups are
| offering what I call below-mortgage compensation. Simply put
| to not be house poor your mortgage is supposed to be 30% of
| your pre-tax income. You can calculate what a typical
| mortgage on a property looks like and extrapolate the payment
| but $90,000 USD is pretty reasonable in the Bay Area. That
| takes $300,000 USD/year to not be house poor. As long as
| start-ups continue to treat unsellable equity as sellable
| RSUs and offer similar base to google they get almost no one
| who needs to pay a mortgage. And I'm willing to bet a fair
| number of start-ups have failed from being too junior in
| engineering.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| I can't help but feel that this is by design by VCs. Rip
| through younger talent and see what shakes out. You can
| polish the turd later. You're not looking for beautiful
| gemstones in most startups. You're just mostly throwing
| things against the wall to see what sticks, and it's later
| generations of devs who come in and deal with the tech
| debt.
|
| Jokes on them, though, my mortgage is almost paid off, so I
| can work for less than I was. I'm the old guy working with
| all the young people at the startup. I can almost feel
| their eyes rolling into the back of their heads when I
| start going on about "back in the 90s"...
| ghaff wrote:
| It's not just startups. If someone wants to and can get an
| offer from one of the richer big tech companies (FAANG isn't
| really the right acronym as Microsoft at least is also in the
| mix) and is just going to go with the best offer, just about
| no one is going to be able to compete--at least in the US.
| I've heard plenty of stories of companies not even trying to
| match offers.
| sbierwagen wrote:
| >FAANG isn't really the right acronym as Microsoft at least
| is also in the mix
|
| Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon: MAGA
| maxfurman wrote:
| > Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon: MAGA
|
| Google, Apple, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon: GAMMA
| bob29 wrote:
| Facebook Apple Google Microsoft Amazon Netflix:
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Yes in my job hunt over the last 6 months basically the
| first thing I have had to say to potential employers is: _"
| No, I'm not expecting to match what I was getting at
| Google."_
|
| Pretty sure that a lot of places I simply didn't hear back
| from was because they didn't expect to be able to even come
| close on comp. And I've had other Xoogler friends who
| applied for places, got promising initial results, and then
| insanely low offers (like 1/3rd or less of Google comp).
|
| I'll do 2/3rds or even 1/2 for the right job, but not 1/4
| or 1/3rd.
|
| Now, part of that is the domestic market (Ontario Canada)
| has been underpaying SWEs for years and getting away with
| it, since most of the good talent flees south after
| graduation anyways.
|
| But part of it is that FAANG compensation is just far more
| than anybody else could ever afford.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| > But part of it is that FAANG compensation is just far
| more than anybody else could ever afford.
|
| I don't think this is true. I've had friends getting
| comparable comp offers at HBO and NatGeo, for example.
| And of course it's been known for some time that
| successful startups like Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, Dropbox,
| etc. were doing comparable offers.
|
| Once a company decides to _really_ compete digitally, and
| that they can leverage economies of scale properly there,
| it suddenly makes sense to compete for the same class of
| engineer that can work at Google, Meta, etc.
| shreyshnaccount wrote:
| but this ends the dominance cycle, making it possible for
| startups to hire talented devs again, even if for lesser
| comp. doesn't it?
| rnk wrote:
| Until/unless faang salaries & hiring come back. This
| doesn't mean all fangs aren't paying. We just don't know.
| ljw1001 wrote:
| > Once Google and Facebook started growing it's clear they
| realized that every talented engineer on the market is a
| potential threat.
|
| You could count on one hand the number of startups that are
| serious threats to either. And when one arises, they can
| pretty much just buy the company, as Facebook has done
| repeatedly. They hardly need to be concerned with individual
| engineers, and even if they were, the idea that they could
| hire them all is pretty far-fetched
| WWLink wrote:
| So the argument I see proposed again, again, and again here
| on HN, is that companies are paying programmers too much
| money and they should all agree to offer <$100k or something.
|
| Are you guys all bitter business owners?
| dls2016 wrote:
| > Once Google and Facebook started growing it's clear they
| realized that every talented engineer on the market is a
| potential threat.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-
| Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...
|
| Remember that Google and Apple were caught trying to control
| the employment marketplace. Keep 'em happy, but not _too_
| happy!
| nobleach wrote:
| I _might_ be able to find comparable salary, but I sure won't
| find the other benefits of working for my employer. The 401k
| match, the on site clinic with a doctor that I really like,
| etc... those things do add up.
| coding123 wrote:
| That's the plan for all industries and competition. It's a
| little weird to see it for employment pricing, but that makes
| sense too.
|
| Years ago my town had a bunch of lumber yards where you can
| get market rate lumber. Home Depot moved in and provided way
| lower than market rate lumber until all of the independent
| lumber yards went out of business in the area.
|
| Then they raised the price above market rate and that's that.
| Everyone hates them for that but we all shop there.
| Applejinx wrote:
| Absolutely. I've come to believe that this is the nature of
| money i.e. an abstraction for power.
|
| Power is meaningless unless you're hurting somebody:
| otherwise, what even is the point? Money is abstracted
| power. For this reason, ANYWHERE you are seeing
| accumulations of vast amounts of money, somebody or
| something is being hurt.
|
| In this case it appears to be that the whole 'make 500k as
| a dev' thing, which has always seemed weird to me, turns
| out to be 'FAANG is trying to control all access to devs
| worth having, after which they can starve the market and do
| whatever they want'. It comes down to power, always.
|
| You'll note that the open source devs upon which their
| internet relies, upon which so much rests, are NOT making
| 500k as devs. If you're doing something worth doing and
| it's not harming but helping, you are not getting paid. If
| you're getting paid in a big way, you're doing something
| that enables harming somebody, whether it's people or a
| more abstracted thing like a market. The wealthy FAANG
| folks are part of a situation where an employment market is
| being harmed, and that's why the money is there for them.
|
| It's a weapon. Otherwise it would not be there.
| rnk wrote:
| I don't think it's that simple. Google needs devs, it's a
| competitive market. Controlling or limiting the dev
| supply is definitely a benefit for big tech, but it's a
| separate benefit. I think competitive pressure on
| salaries is the top forcing function.
| Firmwarrior wrote:
| Google & friends have a business where they can turn a
| $500k engineer into $2M+ in revenue
|
| I think that's really the bottom line here. They aren't
| overpaying to starve out the industry, although I'm sure
| they're perfectly happy to benefit from that indirectly
| subsubzero wrote:
| This is a very prescient idea, if so it would be a way to
| control the job market in a way that was not blatantly
| illegal - ala Steve Jobs and Google and a few others refusing
| to hire from each other to keep wages down. One issue I have
| with this is that google in particular pays alot less than it
| used to compared to industry(fangish companies), a friend of
| mine left to go there and his pay has somewhat stagnated
| where mine has gone up, up, up.
|
| An alternate explanation is that managers in tech crave
| headcount, they want to feel important and to have their
| projects and teams very well staffed. During the past year
| they may have gotten excessive with hiring and now you see
| the end results which are hiring freezes, rescinded offers
| and small layoffs across the industry.
| ROTMetro wrote:
| Way back in the day my Borland friends told me about
| Microsoft doing this to Borland. Supposedly parked a limo
| across the street from the building at lunch and hired people
| whether Microsoft had work for them or not.
| whydid wrote:
| A friend did some high-end contract work for Google, and was
| hired many months before the project started. This person was
| paid a very high contractor rate to "review documents and
| onboarding" and was told by a director this is a common tactic
| that Google uses to ensure availability of high end engineers,
| and to prevent their competitors from hiring.
| lupire wrote:
| marcinzm wrote:
| If someone thinks Google can even scratch any of those issues
| in two weeks then you've really been drinking some Google kool
| aid.
|
| edit: Increased clarity.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Yeah, nah, obv _I_ don 't think that. I quit.
|
| But maybe you mean a hypothetical "you" of other people still
| working there. Obviously it's a mix, but I suspect on the
| whole most people are smart enough to see that these kinds of
| things are unlikely to accomplish much.
|
| But they're also likely happy that upper management is
| finally acknowledging these dysfunctions.
| acomjean wrote:
| When I was just a coder at a fortune 500 company, I was
| voluntold to be on a "Morale Committee". Not much came of
| it (one meeting with about 20 of us, they had an ice cream
| social, because people like ice cream and the work
| environment was very siloed people weren't interacting). It
| didn't do much, but employees took notice that management
| realized morale was low. The round of layoffs that came
| soon after overshadowed that however.
| smugma wrote:
| This has been true for at least 20 years.
| io23joi23 wrote:
| personjerry wrote:
| But the people who are still inside represent a biased sample
| doesn't it?
| water8 wrote:
| solardev wrote:
| Is there any evidence these are connected?
| tjpnz wrote:
| Things got bad enough to warrant guidelines around the
| discussion of politics and non-work related matters on
| internal lists.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Then how do you explain the business troubles of companies
| that ban political discussion, whether Coinbase or
| Basecamp?
| macintux wrote:
| The U.S. has been suffering from incredibly divisive
| politics for the last several years. It's not exactly
| shocking that a company would lock down internal discussion
| forums.
| pavlov wrote:
| Both Google and Meta have millions of PCs in data centers and
| the number just keeps growing, so I guess you can call it a
| cancer.
| ur-whale wrote:
| Unless you're being facetious, I suspect that PC == political
| correctness in this context.
| pavlov wrote:
| I just wish PC would still mean "IBM / Wintel platform
| computer" on HN.
| jmacd wrote:
| If I was an exec at either company and hiring was all of a sudden
| a bit less competitive and/or I had better access to top tier
| employees at other companies who were now more amenable to being
| recruited... I would certainly hit the "freeze" button for a few
| hiring cycles to recalibrate around this new reality. I would not
| need to look at my business plan or P&L to do that.
| dejongh wrote:
| Interesting and well written article supported by factual data. I
| wonder if this is a temp thing, or if it is another early warning
| that regression is coming. Is a major regression coming?
| rootsudo wrote:
| I still have Meta and Google recruiters hitting me up even though
| there is a hiring freeze.
|
| Niche enough jobs are still being hired for, and both recruiters
| repeated the line that there's a hiring freeze except for "this"
| position.
|
| I felt special for a second.
| lumost wrote:
| Ads market may be peaking as would inevitably happen. I'm
| increasingly seeing google and Facebook make idiotic decisions
| that clearly improve ad revenue at the cost of user retention.
|
| I recently started searching cpp documentation and the only thing
| that comes up is copy pasta sites. I need a new search engine,
| and I just deleted instagram last week. YouTube now runs multiple
| back to back video ads.
|
| Maybe this is just a pause, or a momentary restructuring- but all
| markets peak eventually.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| Very simple, an economic downturn leads to any public company
| looking at their cost structure and polishing up the numbers. Big
| companies accumulate a lot of organizational debt where teams,
| departments, and individuals under perform for whatever reason
| and often not even because of their own fault. Corporate
| stupidity, and mismanagement, are also things that plague big
| corporations. Just look at Google lately.
|
| Regularly pruning the org tree is both something that needs some
| level of excuse as it would otherwise upset the rest of the org
| tree; and needs to happen once in a while. The people least
| likely to leave by themselves are usually the once targeted
| explicitly. So, any kind of economic down turn is usually a good
| moment for that. Doing it wrong means your best people leave
| first, which is usually counter productive. So, you have these
| trillion dollar companies shedding a few crocodile tears over
| having to say goodbye to a few not-so-valued employees and using
| all the usual euphemisms, cliches, and woke language for that.
|
| So, classic targets for layoffs are HR (ironically), supporting
| functions like IT, middle management, people promoted to their
| level of incompetence (Peter principle), etc.
| davidw wrote:
| I suppose this is "old man yells at clouds" material, but I feel
| like engineers should be practicing for _their future jobs_ , not
| for interviews.
| the_doctah wrote:
| Neither my current job nor my future job require me to invert a
| binary tree but here I am practicing it anyway.
| ep103 wrote:
| In our industry, the interview process is completely divorced
| from the skillset required for the actual job.
|
| Fittingly, this is because Google developed an interviewing
| process that was scalable, required minimal training, human-
| interactive or soft skills, and was objectively measurable
| (leetcode), while non-obviously biasing the interview process
| towards cheaper, younger interviewees. It is also an interview
| process that is utterly incapable of differentiating low skill
| from high skill engineers. For Google, which needed a way to
| choose between the very best resumes in its pile, this made
| sense. For the rest of the industry, it does not.
|
| But apparently our industry just does whatever the "big
| players" do, blindly, so here we are.
| papito wrote:
| Remember how Google was asking completely useless brain
| teasers and everyone just blindly started copycatting it?
|
| The "we want to be like Google" syndrome in tech is just
| devastating.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > The "we want to be like Google" syndrome in tech is just
| devastating.
|
| I think it is dead & dying though. Nobody would start
| asking brainteasers if Google went back to doing it.
| Espressosaurus wrote:
| Brainteasers are dead. The parent's point that the
| industry follows Google's lead is a cogent observation
| however.
| davidw wrote:
| Our industry is big enough that there are plenty of people
| not aping Google, and conducting different kinds of
| interviews. As someone who has been doing this for a while,
| I'm pretty appreciative of people who 'think differently'.
| [deleted]
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > biasing the interview process towards cheaper, younger
| interviewees
|
| Maybe young people entering tech are just smarter?
|
| There's a lot more people entering in the funnel, so if we
| keep the size of those coming out the same I would expect
| them to be more talented.
| tmpz22 wrote:
| If Google is being pragmatic and young people are smarter
| and deliver more value why are they also paid less?
| bonestamp2 wrote:
| I literally saw a new job posting from Google yesterday.
|
| Either way, hiring freezes usually happen before layoffs. The
| freeze allows the numbers to naturally reduce as people leave and
| they aren't replaced. Then they can move on to laying off the
| remaining number of people they need to reduce by.
| cbanek wrote:
| I'm not sure I buy that they're actually on a hiring freeze, but
| I may be wrong. The day before it was announced I got a text from
| a google recruiter literally saying feel free to contact me on
| 8/8 (after the freeze is supposedly finished). I feel like this
| was definitely a show for the shareholders, and a way to drop
| your dead weight. Everyone seems worried about employee
| productivity and profitably all of a sudden, or at least they're
| pretending to.
|
| My advice is only if you know what you're doing, there's always a
| job for you.
| yodsanklai wrote:
| > The day before it was announced
|
| These recruiters may have heard the news at the same time it
| was announced.
| eatonphil wrote:
| If you're a recruiter and your entire job is to find and
| interview candidates and there's a hiring freeze but you (the
| recruiter) haven't been laid off... what are you going to spend
| your time doing? Finding and interviewing candidates.
| meldyr wrote:
| Be careful with young and ambitious recruiters these days.
|
| When large companies can do hiring freezes they do not
| immediately fire a large proportion of their recruiters
| immediately.
|
| Recruiters will spent the same time interviewing for less
| vacancies to fill. Be careful not to waste your time on this.
| londons_explore wrote:
| +1 to this.
|
| In big companies, I've seen hundreds of applicants
| interviewed to start work on a project, when the project had
| already been cancelled months ago, and none of those
| interviewed were hired.
|
| They'd already made it into the interview pipeline, and
| management hadn't let recruitment know that this position was
| no longer needed, so all the interviews went ahead as
| scheduled.
|
| Hundreds of person-days wasted! The reputation of the firm
| damaged, good people missed (would you re-apply soon after
| being rejected?)... And I don't think this is a rare story.
| fareesh wrote:
| jstx1 wrote:
| Nobody has updated the definition of recession, in the US this
| has always been determined by a comission -
| https://www.npr.org/2022/06/24/1107581150/recession-referees
| codereviewed wrote:
| You are 100% correct.
|
| The confusion in the public stems from the fact that the news
| media selectively reports on recession in different ways
| depending on which party is in power. They ignore your fact
| when one party is in power and they highlight the "2 quarters
| of no growth" rule of thumb instead. Then when their guy is
| in power they go out of their way to say "Akshually a
| recession isn't defined by that it is defined by a
| committee."
|
| Just a few examples: https://imgur.com/a/xbBzLIU
| lesuorac wrote:
| > Just a few examples: https://imgur.com/a/xbBzLIU
|
| Well, its just 1 example because BBC and Reuters were only
| in your Imgur link with a timestamp saying in 2020 that it
| was a recession.
|
| And in your only example the person (Ben White -- CNBC)
| explicitly call out a double digit decrease in their claim
| of recession. The current situation is not a double digit
| decrease so it's not hypocritical. Certainly somebody is
| going to be hypocritical in when they call a recession but
| Ben White's two comments you've quoted aren't.
| codereviewed wrote:
| coliveira wrote:
| They don't really need to stop hiring, they just need to match
| the number of people leaving the company (which is always
| happening).
| TrackerFF wrote:
| Didn't Sundar just recently demand increased productivity? Sounds
| like he's setting the stage for layoffs.
| matwood wrote:
| Googlers responded to a questionnaire back in March and
| complained about bureaucracy. I'm not sure how you avoid moving
| slow in a company with 170k people though.
|
| Big tech went on a crazy hiring spree the last few years, and
| it's time to take breath and figure out how to best handle all
| the new people (the productivity demand). Typically this also
| means new hires need an increased level of justification, and
| they'll let natural attrition take down the headcount.
| ironman1478 wrote:
| Apple has a ton of engineers and they are able to pump out
| high quality products with really cool features. Its
| possible, but it requires focus (look at how limited Apple's
| product line is compared to Google) and it does require
| people in leadership positions with very clear visions, which
| Apple definitely has.
| saagarjha wrote:
| Apple has like an order of magnitude fewer engineers.
| idontpost wrote:
| And yet, is a more valuable company.
| ironman1478 wrote:
| Oh man you're right. I did not realize that
| noja wrote:
| Perhaps the productivity should come from fixing whatever level
| is deciding to make another chat product, again. Fix the
| bonuses and you'll get better productivity.
| ikiris wrote:
| Hangouts Chat has shamefully entered the conversation.
| ikiris wrote:
| Probably just going to adjust the stack ranking quotas in perf
| and "let the problem sort itself out" ala office space.
| papito wrote:
| Maybe give everyone leetcode problems - that's what they
| trained for.
| ripper1138 wrote:
| 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.
| onion2k wrote:
| _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.
| JasserInicide wrote:
| Yeah but we all know that doesn't and won't ever scale up.
| matwood wrote:
| > 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 a team to build
| another chat app.
| gumby wrote:
| > 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.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Before I left Google, and in the BeforeTimes(tm) Schmidt
| came to our Google office in Waterloo and did a little
| all-hands thing and spoke. Not in a capacity as Google
| mgmt or decision maker but as himself. It was
| interesting.
|
| One of the things he said that stuck out to me was
| basically "I am baffled how these really large teams you
| have can work I can't imagine software development
| working well beyond a handful of engineers before the
| telephone game problem kicks in" [paraphrased].
|
| Me too, Eric, me too.
| dekhn wrote:
| at the beginning of the 2007 real estate debacle, right
| after the markets had shut down, Eric got up in front of
| TGIF and told people it was going to be OK, that Google
| was in a better situation than most, and since things
| would eventually recover, it made sense for the company
| to continue being aggressive at a time when others were
| not. This helped position Google for tremendous growth in
| the years after. I think that's also the TGIF where he
| announced a company-wide 10% raise.
|
| I met Eric later and we chatted about my project and how
| Google should be more aggressive at getting into Cloud.
| He and I thought on pretty much the same wavelength and I
| realized- he was a far better leader of Google than
| either Page or Pichai.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| He's a smart guy but honestly, I think he also lost touch
| just like Page etc.
|
| When he came to Waterloo to visit it was because he
| happened to be in Toronto pitching the Sidewalk Labs
| "spy^H^H^Hsmart" city thing. Remember that? Look it up.
| Fiasco IMHO. To me, being deeply involved in that debacle
| is indicative of a kind of business and intellectual
| arrogance that seems out of touch with reality.
|
| He used to bring Henry Kissinger in for "fireside chats"
| at Google. He seemed/seems very fascinating by this kind
| of ... technocratic realpolitik. Google playing around in
| that area is a really not good look and did not in
| general get good reaction from the staff and looks really
| dubious in the current era.
|
| There's enough ungrounded conspiracy theories about
| Google, they don't need, y'know, actual conspiracies.
|
| But as a manager he definitely seemed to have a better
| sense of how the day to day operation of a large
| engineering firm can work.
| GlennS wrote:
| 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.
| whatarethembits wrote:
| They have no coherent vision. As a consumer I have no
| idea what I'm getting with a Google product, or what
| their ethos is. Their products and features are always
| randomly baked together, without any coherent story. Left
| hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. I can't
| rely on any of it. This is why I moved to Apple eco
| system last year. Google as a company seems analogous to
| the Linux eco system; TON of duplicated work across
| different teams, none providing an actual complete
| solution for day to day use. Such a waste of talent.
| nojito wrote:
| >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.
| ninkendo wrote:
| Or the far more likely scenario is that your job is only
| barely needed in the first place, and you were hired
| because some line manager knows that increasing their head
| count is the best way to get promoted. And since their
| manager is thinking the same (and probably one layer above
| too), and the company is still doing gangbusters on ad
| revenue, no one really questions it.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I just don't get how this is possible. Every single
| company I've ever worked at (large and small) has had at
| least 10x more work in the backlog than could possibly be
| done with the staff they have. Everyone's JIRA queue is
| stuffed full, and since there is so much work, things
| have to be brutally prioritized and even high-value stuff
| has to be cut, since there are just not enough people-
| hours to get it all done.
|
| Where are these companies/teams who have nothing to do,
| or so little to do they have time for side projects??
| pharmakom wrote:
| Tackle just enough of the tickets to not arouse
| suspicion. Managers won't be able to estimate how hard
| the tickets really were.
| ehnto wrote:
| The more likely scenario for most is that there are other
| people or mechanisms making the money, or that they're
| living off the success of previous efforts. It's not
| necessarily their fault at a company that large, sometimes
| people are just grossly under-utilized or misallocated.
| People can just vanish in a manner of speaking, by getting
| forgotten about or by having your responsibilities taken
| from you but not replaced.
| joshstrange wrote:
| If you have some producers that aren't "pulling their
| weight" then that just means you have others that are
| pulling 2x+ and still only making a fraction of the
| actual value they provide.
|
| I'll be the first to agree that FAANG and friends have
| ridiculous overhead and way more engineers than I think
| is necessary but these companies are making money hand
| over fist. If we are looking for fat to cut I'd start
| with management/execs in most cases.
| pharmakom wrote:
| Impossible to cut only the dead weight though.
| ehnto wrote:
| Respectfully I have two qualms with your thoughts here,
| first is that lack of effort from one person must mean
| extra effort from another to balance out in some way, you
| could easily have people not pulling their weight but
| still be producing based on some leverage or multiplying
| factor in your business. More effort doesn't always
| equate to more value. Some businesses are just spinning
| their wheels, keeping themselves busy, while the core
| value generator keeps ticking over. I worked at a 10 man
| company that was turning over millions a month from
| automated lead generation, we could have all walked away
| for 6 months and it would have kept making money.
|
| The other is just that it's not a realistic way to look
| at a workforce, especially in software, hours and effort
| don't equate to an "output" neatly. Most software
| companies are in the business of making value producing
| automations, not producing the raw value themselves. You
| can have one production engineer in a factory completely
| eliminate someone's job with a nifty insight that took
| him an hour to spot, now that person isn't pulling their
| weight (because their job doesn't exist anymore) but the
| business is more profitable, for one example.
| tmpz22 wrote:
| > If you can generate $50m of revenue by working 2 hours a
| day
|
| This is irrational. You're only able to generate $50m in
| revenue because a giant multi-billion dollar apparatus
| exists and is maintained around you and that is not free.
| In almost all circumstances you were not the sole driver of
| that revenue.
| onion2k wrote:
| That doesn't matter. If your two hours are a key
| component in the work needed to make that $50m then
| nothing changes - you're still brilliant and asking you
| to work longer is still silly.
| bioemerl wrote:
| > you can generate $50m of revenue by working 2 hours a day
| then you're brilliant
|
| Or you're working at a useless user hostile company that's
| coasting on tools and ideas from a decade ago while failing
| hard at everything it does today.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| oof, peak programmer arrogance.
| azangru wrote:
| Is an average Google engineer expected to generate $50m of
| revenue?
| rightbyte wrote:
| Once I worked as a dam operator a summer. I did not claim
| that I generated 2MW of revenue by opening the lids.
| ma2rten wrote:
| This really depends on the team, and the individual
| productivity and ambition of the person in question.
| ryanmercer wrote:
| >Inevitable. Working 2 hours a day while getting paid 300K+
| is unsustainable
|
| Right? And some people are holding multiple full-time jobs
| doing that sort of "work" _glares at /r/overemployed_
| andsoitis wrote:
| > And some people are holding multiple full-time jobs doing
| that sort of "work" glares at /r/overemployed
|
| I would be highly surprised if there are any meaningful
| number of people who each hold multiple $300k jobs
| simultaneously. I just don't see how that would pass the
| hiring process.
| ryanmercer wrote:
| Maybe not 300k but /r/overemployed has a private paid
| discord that I checked out for one month out of
| curiosity, there are some extremely legit appearing
| people in there showing their setups and I fully believe
| the $$$ figures they are throwing around on the discord,
| not so much the sub itself but definitely on the paid
| discord there are some people with multiple lower
| 6-figure salaries laughing all the way to the bank while
| more upstanding people are carrying the bulk of their
| work load.
| fnands wrote:
| Seems like a sweet gig
| trasz wrote:
| It should be sustainable if those two hours were spent
| building something useful, and not just another random thing
| to be forgotten in three years.
| twirlock wrote:
| kleinsch wrote:
| 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 find a team or get a
| real offer.
| oneepic wrote:
| I stole this advice from a Blind post -- If one has trouble
| matching, one possibility is that they didn't impress the
| matching interviewers enough (no offense) for them to want the
| candidate to join. It can be helpful to treat those matching
| calls as interviews. Of course, it's also possible you don't
| see a team you like, but you gotta keep looking.
| bena wrote:
| It kind of makes sense to keep people in the pipeline as it
| were. If you shut down the whole apparatus, you have to spin it
| back up when hiring is unfrozen. But if you keep the machine
| running, you're ready to hire the instant you can.
|
| For them that is. Sucks for you and me.
| chem83 wrote:
| At Google, upon entering the process, recruiters explain that
| an offer within engineering (including PM, T/PgM etc.) is
| valid for 12 months from the date of approval from the hiring
| committee. So while it can take a long time for someone to
| find a team match, that flexibility is also available for the
| candidate, so they get to keep declining teams that are not
| interesting until a real match for both sides is available.
|
| At Facebook, it's possible to match before starting, but
| candidates usually try to do the matching in the 2 weeks (or
| so) of training they do in Menlo Park. It's up to them to
| cold call and find time with hiring managers to sell
| themselves (and vice-versa). But time-wise, the process is
| much more constrained than Google's.
| winternett wrote:
| I've noticed that many of the most "prestigious" places to
| work do a wildly fake process aligned with academia to
| recruit employees. It creates the illusion that jobs are
| coveted... They present you with challenges and questions
| over a long period of time which are actually directly tied
| to their own internal problem solving if you are a senior
| level hire as well (free work), and they catalogue personal
| info and data from you interview to build an internal
| profile on you that is used in God knows how many ways...
|
| They also subject you to high-school level team picking,
| which is deeply rooted in internal/company politics and an
| additional dynamic of company bias and it all enables the
| company orphan you easily if they find you don't submit to
| being overworked easily and complying with the deep team
| culture that each company evangelizes.
|
| People are pressured now more than ever to adopt rules of
| conduct that encroach upon and threaten their individuality
| now more than ever by large companies.. Even when you log
| on to apps like TikTok and Instagram. Your individuality
| and experience are often thrown out in working environments
| so that you become a cog in the wheel, and more easily
| replaceable for these companies, not so that you can one
| day grow to be a CEO or Exec, and even still, those types
| of positions are often reserved for others who can fail
| multiple times and not get fired, while if you fail on the
| months long hiring process, you'll never survive.
|
| On the inverse, I have been hired by smaller and medium
| sized contracting companies for much better salaries, and
| they often hire within days or weeks. I have very little
| patience for dragged out hiring and onboarding processes
| now. I work efficiently, do a good job, respect everyone's
| individuality and culture, and then go home to enjoy my
| life. I only work at companies there that is the culture.
| Luckily, if the market is screwed up or too hostile, I just
| work on my own ventures, it took 20 years of suffering
| through hostile corporate cultures and attempted
| indoctrination to get to this point where I have the
| choice.
|
| None of the large corporations I've worker for called to
| check on me since our breakups, but most of them would
| likely rehire me if I re-applied... Not being arrogant, but
| emphasizing that the internal rules are frequently bent to
| serve the needs of delivery...
|
| The people that get chewed up worst by the machine often
| have the lowest technical skills and ability, experience,
| and self esteem. I don't put any company on a pedestal; I
| just work efficiently and effectively with integrity,
| constantly learn (well aligned) stuff that works to get the
| job done, rely heavily on my prior experience, fight to
| keep solutions simple, and adapt constantly to efficiently
| meet goals... Company "culture workshops" and even colleges
| will never teach you that.
| granshaw wrote:
| Wait, small/mid contracting companies (aka agencies)
| paying more than Google? Are you based in the US? Care
| sharing the company name(s)?
| winternett wrote:
| You're focused on a different angle than on what I
| posted.
|
| There are so many factors that affect compensation for
| each individual employee, comparison of pay is useless.
| Geographical region also has big bearing on the
| discussion, and it really makes no sense to compare
| compensation online with a public audience in that
| manner. I won't discuss specific details and employers
| online for obvious reasons.
|
| I reside on the East Coast, West Coast is a completely
| different labor market, and the cost of living in silicon
| valley is higher, another reason why comparison is
| futile. Jobs also rely on skill and experience, to which
| each person ranks differently, so individual salary
| comparison online is ultimately not accurate, why even
| try?
|
| That being said, 6 months of work at $200k or 1 year of
| work at $100k is the same amount of money, but one job
| costs the employee a lot more time out of their life.
| Work is meant to supplement our lives, not the other way
| around. We're either marketable as employees or not,
| small companies that want to compete and grow within a
| workspace often pay more for highly skilled employees for
| shorter work terms overall, because they have vital work
| to do in order to be competitive...
|
| Sure small and medium (non-public) companies don't offer
| RSUs and other things that large (FAANG) companies do,
| but if you really take a look at how long it takes to be
| vested in those huge companies, and how most people don't
| last long enough to vest, and how much big company
| culture changes employees to the point that when they're
| laid off or quit after bad experiences they suffer in
| readjusting to the regular working world... The
| compensation can be a lot better in small/medium sized
| companies.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| I think you have some misunderstanding, because it takes
| approximately one month to start vesting at Google (and
| Facebook) and at Google your equity is frontloaded.
|
| I'll happily tell you what the approximate compensation
| is by Google in Atlanta or NYC, because there's really no
| reason not to discuss those things.
| winternett wrote:
| Again... No the main point of my original post.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| Idk, the rest of your post isn't any truer. The (major)
| companies don't use potential hires for free labor, they
| give them toy problems, and nobody reputable
| "catalogue[s] personal info and data from you interview
| to build an internal profile on you".
| alasdair_ wrote:
| >At Facebook, it's possible to match before starting, but
| candidates usually try to do the matching in the 2 weeks
| (or so) of training they do in Menlo Park. It's up to them
| to cold call and find time with hiring managers to sell
| themselves (and vice-versa). But time-wise, the process is
| much more constrained than Google's.
|
| This may differ on which office you are at. In Seattle, we
| started working with teams during the tail end of bootcamp,
| with some people finding a team in 1-2 weeks and others in
| 6-8 weeks.
|
| One thing I liked was that if a team had an open position
| and you said "I want that position", the hiring manager
| basically had to take you, whereas at Google, each hiring
| manager could reject you for their team, so you can spend a
| long time trying and failing to match.
|
| The other thing I liked about FB's process was that you
| actually got to work directly with the team and do real
| work, rather than having the position filtered through a
| hiring manager. Spending a week actually writing code
| helped a lot with understanding which team would be the
| best fit and isn't something you can really do with a non-
| employee.
| anonymoushn wrote:
| > At Google, upon entering the process, recruiters explain
| that an offer within engineering (including PM, T/PgM etc.)
| is valid for 12 months from the date of approval from the
| hiring committee. So while it can take a long time for
| someone to find a team match, that flexibility is also
| available for the candidate, so they get to keep declining
| teams that are not interesting until a real match for both
| sides is available.
|
| This is inaccurate. In 2019 a Google recruiter decided on
| my behalf which team I would match, extended a 4-day
| exploding offer, and blacklisted me when I said that other
| processes would take more than 4 days. This was within a
| couple months of passing hc.
| jboggan wrote:
| There was a TGIF Q&A session in 2016 or 2017 and someone
| asked Sergei what his worst business decision at Google was,
| and he replied that it was slowing down and stopping hiring
| during 2008-2009.
| daniel_reetz wrote:
| True. And people can submit your resume internally. I've been
| rejected by Google three times (I have the letters) and I've
| never applied for a job there. Thanks, geniuses.
| nwsm wrote:
| After completing ~9 interviews (2 video interviews, 5 on-site
| interviews, and then was asked to complete 2 additional video
| interviews after mediocre on-site results), I passed Google's
| "hiring committee" and then was put in their team match
| process. Over the next 4 months I had ~4 calls with hiring
| managers, none of them fruitful (and not for lack of my own
| enthusiasm or willingness to leave my comfort zone). After this
| the recruiter basically said they'd be in touch if any other
| opportunities came up.
|
| The process is absolutely insane and an obvious symptom of
| Google knowing people really, really want to work there. They
| do not respect the candidate at all, and then will cold email
| you again a year later as if you've forgotten how painful it
| was the first time. I'll probably end up interviewing again.
| knicholes wrote:
| I told Google and Facebook to please stop contacting me, as
| after three attempts, either you know I suck or you'd accept
| me. It takes way too much effort to brush up on my
| algorithms/data structures each time I interview.
| culi wrote:
| Does it feel worth it to go through it at least once
| though? I'm a junior engineer and I remember studying
| really hard for this one "hiring platform" (once you're in
| they find you contracts, sorta. One of the few non-scammy
| ones out there). The interview was pretty intense but I got
| a TON of good study material and really in-depth feedback
|
| I guess a key difference though is that it's not very "data
| structures and algorithms"-y and much more "optimizing
| React performance"-y
|
| I ended up actually passing but, being the only junior
| there, no company was interested in a contract with me.
| However, I don't really consider it a waste of time because
| I really learned a lot from that interview and I think it
| played into how I interviewed later
|
| At the current company I work for they're really surprised
| at certain skills I have. Skills that I can trace back to
| having to study for that one interview
| knicholes wrote:
| I can remember some pretty intense plane trips home
| trying to figure out why my answers were insufficient or
| why they failed to understand that my answers did
| actually work. The problems made me think a lot more
| about architecture than I would have otherwise, but
| really the main experience is that I'm really not good at
| programming on a whiteboard and changing pace quickly.
|
| Yeah, I'd say definitely try it at LEAST once just to see
| what's out there. You might just get an offer of life-
| changing money.
|
| One time all of my interviews involved reinforcement
| learning. I didn't know much about it, so I tried to
| answer all of the questions the best I could using CS
| concepts and programming. Years later, when learning
| about Reinforcement Learning, I face-palmed pretty hard
| when it became extremely obvious that they were testing
| my knowledge of policies.
| ajkjk wrote:
| Yeah, it's insane. When I turned down a Google offer because
| they did such a bad job of the post-interview process, my
| recruiter was _surprised_. All I could say was: why? what did
| you think would happen if you didn't find a team I actually
| could get excited about?
|
| (It was worse than that: I told the recruiter I was
| interested in roles in any location except the South Bay and
| Seattle's Eastside, and they came back and said those were
| the two places they found matches, so I took a different job.
| And they were surprised. As far as I can tell Google can't
| figure out how to not assume that they're everybody's dream
| job choice like I guess they might have been in the 2000s.)
| nwsm wrote:
| I didn't want to go this far into detail because it's
| embarrassing how much I put up with, but I actually let
| Google alter the direction of my life.
|
| When I was interviewing, my significant other was looking
| to go to grad school in either NYC or Cambridge. NYC was
| her preference, so I told the recruiter I preferred NYC or
| Boston and I did my on-site in NYC.
|
| After all my interviews, the recruiter told me that the NYC
| office was doing "renovations", and so some teams were
| holding off hiring until they had the physical space (in
| retrospect this excuse makes no sense). He asked if I was
| still open to Boston and I said yes. But at this point, my
| SO had to accept one of her grad school offers, and based
| solely on the fact that I thought I would have a Google job
| lined up in Cambridge, she committed to the Cambridge
| school.
|
| At one point during the pointless team match process (after
| we were committed to Cambridge and after I had several
| unfruitful Cambridge team match calls), my recruiter
| actually asked me if I wanted to go back to looking for NYC
| teams. I couldn't believe it- what a slap in the face! (I
| had told him our priorities and timeline)
|
| We live in Boston right now, 4 years later, solely because
| I thought Google would have a role for me here after having
| passed 9 interviews. Thankfully, everything worked out. I
| found a different job, my SO got a great degree and is
| using it here in Boston, etc. Of course I'm the lone idiot
| in this story, but it's incredible how flexible I was just
| because I thought big G was making my dreams come true.
| cowmoo728 wrote:
| Similar story here. My wife and I were living in NYC
| together and she was searching for PhD fellowships and I
| was searching for my next job. Our intersections were
| NYC, London, and Amsterdam, but between her fellowships
| and my offers we didn't find any great match. The google
| recruiter kept stringing me along and warning about a
| lack of space and offers with NYC based roles but I had
| tons of match offers in MTV. It was not reassuring at all
| to hear "well, you may find something in 6 months in NYC,
| but you may not, idk lol".
|
| I ended up taking an offer in MTV and my wife went to
| Amsterdam. 1 year down, 1 more year to go. We're again
| going through the process of trying to find something
| that works for both of us between NYC, London, and
| Amsterdam.
| nwsm wrote:
| Wow I'm sure that's been tough. Hopefully you will both
| have ample opportunities now though. Good luck!
| yieldcrv wrote:
| > And they were surprised. As far as I can tell Google
| can't figure out how to not assume that they're everybody's
| dream job choice like I guess they might have been in the
| 2000s.
|
| I think this is a symptom.
|
| Their experience _getting hired_ is likely the same as
| yours: all your family and friends and even significant
| others sometimes think its the dream job and the most
| important accolade in your life.
|
| You know thats its not. They're not in big tech, they're
| not in medium tech either. You know there's plenty of
| organizations you can get paid in lottery ticket securities
| from, you know there's publicly traded organizations with
| faster vesting schedules and higher stock market upside.
| But they don't know that.
|
| Many of the people that go into Google was surrounded by
| that same pressure by their friends and family of getting
| accepted, and then they also are beneficiaries of Google's
| infrastructure and financial weight off their shoulders. It
| distorts their view whether they realize they can get paid
| more elsewhere or not.
|
| So it selects for that distortion field where people forget
| that Google is just a choice.
| x86_64Ubuntu wrote:
| Were you paid during this time?
| itg wrote:
| You don't get paid because they don't formally extend an
| offer until you match with a team.
| saagarjha wrote:
| You don't get paid until your start date.
| ahmadss wrote:
| A friend of mine spent ended up spending 9 months in the Google
| pipeline for a PM role. During the early phases of the cycle (1
| month in) he received and accepted an offer at Capital One and
| joined as a PM. Spent 7 months at Capital One while still
| interviewing for Google, and then managed to get an offer and
| team placement.
|
| Surprised it took that long, but he's happy he stuck w the
| Google process.
| Balgair wrote:
| I'm sorry, someone must have spiked my coffee this morning.
|
| Am I reading this right? Your friend spent 9 months
| interviewing for a single job?
|
| And then he decided that the company that had been trying to
| hire him for a pregnancy's worth of time was somewhere that
| he wanted to work after already having a job that hired him
| in a month?
|
| Is this 'normal' for the Goog? If so, why am I not shorting
| this company?
|
| No really, what did they put in my java today?
|
| EDIT: Actually, yeah, someone put in some sort of super
| caffeinated beans today. Sorry for the somewhat manic posting
| here.
| luckydata wrote:
| The process has two steps:
|
| 1. validate that you pass the minimum bar to work at Google
| as a PM. Whichever team ends up talking to you, they know
| you're at least minimally competent.
|
| 2. understand if you are a fit for the specific team and
| product. That might take a long time cause openings come
| and go, sometimes they get filled by internal candidates
| which are always a favorite cause learning how to function
| inside Google takes time.
|
| It's annoying from the perspective of an external candidate
| but now that I work at Google I understand why it's done
| this way, especially considering that Google has a very
| weak internal training system and the chaos is so prevalent
| it takes at least 6 months to get the hang of things.
| slt2021 wrote:
| if you know the history of Google's product launches
| (virtually all of them have failed/were killed, only
| successful products are search/ads and acquired products
| like youtube, maps, etc) - you will understand why they
| hire 9 mo for simple PM role
| crazygringo wrote:
| Yes that's not abnormal for a Google PM.
|
| Basically it takes ~2 weeks of initial phone screening and
| scheduling, then another ~4 weeks that will involve setting
| up the full day of interviews and collecting feedback and
| making a decision on whether or not to hire.
|
| So basically after ~6 weeks from first being contacted by a
| recruiter, you know whether or not Google wants you. This
| is not unreasonable for a large company.
|
| BUT -- this is just as "generic PM". Because _then_ there
| needs to be a match made between you and a _specific_ PM
| position.
|
| And so this is where you basically wait around for a PM
| position to be open that is in a geographic location where
| you're willing to work and the team thinks you're a good
| fit. If you're willing to relocate anywhere in the world
| (or especially Mountain View) it's not going to take
| anywhere close to 9 months. But if you're only willing to
| work in Boston, for example, it may very well take that
| long. Over those 9 months, you might wind up having ~3-hour
| interviews with 5 different teams seeing if you're a good
| fit. Also remember that even if a team wants you, you might
| decide you don't like the team (e.g. you want to be a PM on
| something closer to Waymo than to Ads).
|
| Also remember that PM jobs aren't nearly as fungible as
| software engineering jobs -- if it's an enterprise product
| they might want a PM with an enterprise background, if a
| consumer hardware product then a PM with consumer hardware
| experience.
|
| But it's not like you're having a new interview every week
| for 9 months or anything. It simply can take 9 months to
| match up the right person for the right role when there are
| geographic constraints.
| Balgair wrote:
| I want to make sure I'm on the right page here:
|
| PM = Project Manager.
|
| Projects can range from something like all of Project
| Loon down to some one small little thing.
|
| Project managers can manage many people (and other
| managers) down to only one other person.
|
| Project managers are given access to budgets, including
| hiring and project budgeting.
|
| The role is somewhat ambiguous, but you are definitely in
| the 'Management' side of the business now, not the
| 'Labor' side.
| jtefera wrote:
| PM at Google is normally Product Manager. Project
| Managers are called Program Managers (PgM). Most program
| managers at Google do not manage anyone.
| Balgair wrote:
| Yes, thank you. Big difference in my understanding there.
| vidarh wrote:
| Turned down Google receuiters way too early to know if
| that's typical, but Facebook recruiters told me from the
| outset the process was 6 months and that they'd provide me
| with a reading list, and was then surprised when I told
| then I'd let them know if I was willing to consider that if
| they provided me with a compensation range. Days after,
| once they'd figured out the comp range, I told them I
| wasn't interested. This is London, and while their total
| comp was good, it was not SV good and not a big enough step
| up to be worth 6 months of interviews and a _reading list_.
| Balgair wrote:
| What would such a list even include?
| alasdair_ wrote:
| > Facebook recruiters told me from the outset the process
| was 6 months
|
| That's crazy. When I joined FB a few years ago the total
| time was under a month.
|
| The reading list thing makes sense for some people who
| have never done a FAANG-like interview before. I remember
| moving from London to the USA early in my career and I
| had no idea how the process worked and so I got my first
| phone screeen with Amazon, thinking I'd explain a bit
| about my background and we'd have a bit of a chat and
| instead I got "Okay. Give me code to perform an in-order
| traversal of a binary tree." which was NOT something I
| was remotely prepared to do at the time :)
|
| If you know the format and basic types of questions (and
| have access to leetcode etc.) it's not too bad, but a lot
| of these resources weren't around 15 years ago,
| especially to people from another country with no
| context.
|
| A second Amazon interview aside: in an in-person
| interview I did, things had been going very well and I
| was on my fifth interview of the day. Again, I was
| recently from London and hadn't fully understood that
| words mean different things in the USA than they do in
| the UK. I was asked to design a GPS system. This seems
| simple enough if you know that "GPS" in the USA is the
| same thing as a "SatNav" or "Satellite Navigation" system
| in the UK and that the goal would be to build a system
| that could compute an efficient route between two points.
|
| The problem was that I assumed the person wanted, well, a
| GPS system. i.e. he wanted a design for a set of
| satellites in geosynchronous orbit that would, using very
| precise timing, allow a person almost anywhere on earth
| to get a latitude and longitude like "12.345, -2.345" and
| so we spent almost the whole of the conversation talking
| about two different things and even when I was given the
| hint that maybe I could use some kind of graph algorithm,
| I had no idea how to use Dijkstra's to solve clock drift
| on a satellite :)
| michaelt wrote:
| If a company had a 9-month-long hiring pipeline for me, I
| would worry their internal decision-making processes would
| make achieving anything of interest a Sisyphean task.
| mattkrause wrote:
| You're gonna _love_ how academia works :)
| alasdair_ wrote:
| In many ways, I prefer the Meta approach where they hire you
| and then you spend 6-10 weeks in bootcamp and working on
| different teams for a week each time and then the engineer gets
| to decide which team they want to join (rather than the hiring
| manager - if the position is open, they have to take you).
| anonymoushn wrote:
| Had a multi-month team matching phase followed by a 4-day
| exploding offer for ~50% below market and got blacklisted for a
| year or more when I didn't sign it. Great.
| compiler-guy wrote:
| Not saying an exploding offer didn't happen, but it is very
| uncommon.
|
| The blacklisted for a year thing sounds like the normal
| Google, "Try again in a year" messaging that happens whenever
| someone doesn't get an offer for failing interviews. Again,
| don't know if that is what happened, but it hardly
| constitutes anything nefarious.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > got blacklisted for a year or more when I didn't sign it
|
| Never heard of anything like this in the non-startup industry
| nosefrog wrote:
| That's weird, most people I know with Google offers say
| they're good for a year or more.
| ayberk wrote:
| Not quite. If you pass the hiring committee, you have one
| year to find a team. So it's more like your interview
| result is good for a year. After you match with a team you
| get the actual offer and it has the usual deadlines.
|
| Hiring processed has changed though, so I'm not sure if
| this is still true.
| anonymoushn wrote:
| I have not found 4 days to be a usual deadline at any
| other company.
| luckydata wrote:
| team matching has been removed. Now you get interviewed
| for a specific role, which streamlines the process quite
| a bit and saves time for everyone.
| ffggvv wrote:
| think they tell you its exploding. but if you end up
| turning them down they reach out a few months later and
| tell you its valid for a year
| EGreg wrote:
| Google's freeze was supposed to last two weeks since May. Are
| they still doing the freeze?
| paganel wrote:
| > Moreover, these freezes materially affect our business.
|
| Related and slightly OT, but I didn't know that there were people
| actually making money off other people wanting to get into a
| FAANG company. Which, in retrospect, of course that it makes a
| lot of sense and I get it, from an economic pov, but I still find
| it kind of strange.
|
| I had recently become quite bearish on these companies
| (especially Google and FB), this type of info only reinforces
| that opinion, you cannot truly innovate while you're employing
| people who see working there has an end in itself. Hope that
| monopoly-like thingie will continue to work for them (again, I'm
| thinking mainly about FB and Google), otherwise I see dark days
| ahead for these two companies.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| > but I didn't know that there were people actually making
| money off other people wanting to get into a FAANG company
|
| I've made xxk of side income every year over the last few years
| working for companies that help people land at faang companies.
| It's a huge business.
|
| If you're an average swe making 100K-150K and you could spend 6
| months and xk-xxk to be making 200K+ for the rest of your
| career, its a pretty easy decision.
| user_named wrote:
| Does anybody know what's going on with Walmart Global Tech? A
| couple of weeks ago I was told I got great feedback and was
| moving on to the final step which was a call with a VP. Then
| silence for two or three weeks and no response when I email. Will
| they come back?
| ShamelessC wrote:
| Walmart's tech hiring is a complete and total shit show
| regardless of the economy. I wouldn't be surprised if they
| never get back to you.
|
| In fact (and you didn't hear this from me), I've never
| witnessed a higher density of incompetence than when [SWIM]
| worked as a coder at their home office. Don't work there if you
| want to maintain your sanity.
| treis wrote:
| > [SWIM]
|
| What does this mean?
| user_named wrote:
| Someone who is not me
| nick__m wrote:
| Someone Who Isn't Me
| selimthegrim wrote:
| "Someone who isn't me"
| ricardobayes wrote:
| Sometimes yes, it's the summer and people go on long vacations.
| coliveira wrote:
| This may also be a big mistake by Google. I fully expect other
| companies such as Apple will take advantage of this mistake to
| hire even more in specific areas.
| choeger wrote:
| My hunch is that these companies are cargo-culting their
| strategies. The hiring freeze is as essentially a gut reaction.
| If one starts with layoffs, others will follow. The real problem
| is that companies of the Google scale will always need new
| engineers for particular projects and have a surplus for others.
| A global freeze or even layoffs simply don't fit.
| philjohn wrote:
| Or they both over-hired and are taking similar steps to lean
| into natural attrition.
|
| As for new engineers and surplus of others, I'm sure they'll be
| moving people around. A backend dev on one project can move to
| another backend project. Same for frontend, mobile, etc. So
| little of the work being done at these companies is massively
| specialised as they all have mature systems you're weaving
| together to deliver solutions.
| blagie wrote:
| The best businesses I've seen work counter-cyclically.
|
| When there are hiring freezes and layoffs, it's easy to find
| good cheap engineers and you hire. When job markets are hot,
| you put a pause on hiring.
|
| The same goes for many other things. A recession is an ideal
| time for deep R&D. There's little competition, and it's
| possible to do long-term thinking. When the recession ends, and
| the bubble begins, you hit jackpot.
|
| All of this requires deep enough pockets to weather a few
| years, though, and patient investors. That's rare.
|
| Cargo culting for Google and Facebook make little sense
| organization-wide, since they do have deep pockets. They make
| complete sense employee-wise. No one got fired for following
| industry best practices, conventions, or cycles.
| bluGill wrote:
| The problem is when things are going well you have the sales
| and thus money to hire and pay more staff, when things are
| bad you don't have the sales and thus don't have the income.
|
| You are absolutely correct. This is one of the best measures
| of how good/bad management is: how many people they keep
| around in bad times, and ideally hire. Any idiot can manage a
| company when there is a ton of money coming in, it takes real
| talent to manage well in hard times.
| int0x2e wrote:
| I couldn't agree with you more. A FAANG-tier company with
| which I'm closely familiar pretty much did the worst thing
| every time during the past 2 years - they tried to tighten
| the belt when COVID first hit (missing a ton of great talent
| when the initial uncertainly killed off some of the smaller
| companies), then they tried growing and chasing talent really
| hard, right when the bubble was at its peak, and now that the
| economic outlook is negative, they've halted / significantly
| slowed down hiring. My personal opinion is that Warren
| Buffett's old quote to be "fearful when others are greedy,
| and greedy when others are fearful" rings really true.
| Espressosaurus wrote:
| You need a counter-cyclical business to really make that work
| however. And given how interconnected things are these days,
| what out there is counter-cyclical?
| gen220 wrote:
| Having a counter-cyclical business is helpful but not
| strictly necessary and actually not sufficient.
|
| What is actually most important are a long-term outlook,
| backing from shareholders to pursue anti-fragility at the
| cost of short-term growth, and well-managed and well-
| protected cash reserves.
|
| Few well-known, public or VC-funded companies operate this
| way, because collective greed is a far more powerful force
| than the desire to build an anti-fragile, long-lasting
| company.
|
| And in a world where it's fairly easy to close a company's
| book and move on to start the next thing, and where the
| economy hasn't experienced _real_ stagnation in over a
| generation, this arrangement of incentives makes sense.
|
| Berkshire Hathaway has historically worked this way, as an
| example. One of Buffet's basic playbooks was to combine the
| books of cyclical and counter-cyclical businesses, and
| harvest temporarily high prices of the former to plow into
| the latter, and vice versa.
| klempner wrote:
| You don't need a counter cyclical business, what you need
| is somewhat counter cyclical funding.
|
| You develop during recession when it is easy to hire
| people, and when the economy is on the up side of the
| business cycle you have a product that's ready to sell.
| qeternity wrote:
| > The real problem is that companies of the Google scale will
| always need new engineers for particular projects and have a
| surplus for others. A global freeze or even layoffs simply
| don't fit.
|
| Markets are trying to communicate the exact opposite: tighten
| the belt and focus on core profitability.
|
| Just because Google can continue to throw money at idea after
| idea doesn't mean that investors want them to.
| drawkbox wrote:
| The other side to this is that businesses tend to follow the
| leaders of the industry. So if engineer salaries were getting
| too high, they start a "freeze" which then cascades down to
| medium then small companies. However, the goal wasn't actually
| a freeze, it was to lower salaries, increase the pool of
| candidates and they can then find talent better. In a sense it
| is manipulation of the labor market and businesses that just
| follow the trends.
|
| On the labor side, if talent is looking for work right now,
| they might accept less or even stay around longer during change
| in fear.
|
| For VCs, this allows some time again for lowering investments,
| letting others play out and decreasing valuations.
|
| While there is a slowdown and some macro market conditions,
| those are always exploited for companies looking to contain
| labor costs and increase availability.
|
| There are some geopolitical elements going into it as well
| currently but in that case really it would make sense to hire
| more as the pools have shrunk due to division.
|
| It is just another game really, there is no slow down or
| "freeze" there is a tightening, and the goal is constraining
| costs and increasing the pool of talent.
|
| If I was in charge of hiring right now, I'd look at this
| current market as a huge time to increase hiring if you are set
| for multiple years. If a round is up soon, you might have to
| pull back. The "freeze" is a buy low moment of the market.
| datavirtue wrote:
| "the goal wasn't actually a freeze, it was to lower salaries,
| increase the pool of candidates"
|
| This.
| sitkack wrote:
| Two gas stations on either side of the intersection with
| prices within a penny of each other. Always.
| Dave3of5 wrote:
| > My hunch is that these companies are cargo-culting their
| strategies
|
| Yes most of these tech companies are the same. Their strategy
| is based off what other successful companies are doing. Also
| they want shareholders / investors to be on board. @paulg
| himself started this run with an email telling investors and
| companies to turtle up and stop hiring.
|
| The whole thing has become a self perpetuating loop.
|
| Companies also use this type of thing as an excuse. You'll be
| seeing companies blaming their poor performance on this
| downturn for the next few years long after it's all over.
| andsoitis wrote:
| > blaming their poor performance on this downturn
|
| Do you think their poor performance is primarily due to
| something other than this downturn?
| taormina wrote:
| Over a decade of ignoring their customers and riding on
| their laurels probably doesn't help. But don't worry,
| everything is COVID's fault.
| haliskerbas wrote:
| Advertisers are usually the customers and they are
| listened to very well at most of these places.
| klipt wrote:
| > @paulg himself started this run
|
| No the fed started it by raising rates with the explicit goal
| of triggering a hiring freeze to chill the economy and reduce
| inflation: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/why-the-fed-wants-
| corporate-a...
|
| Everything else is just a consequence of the fed deploying
| its one big lever.
| [deleted]
| nojito wrote:
| Rates rising have been priced in for many years already.
|
| The tech bubble is popping.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Is it just doing what markets expect? They currently expect the
| companies to signal hiring freezes, thinking it will lower
| costs and increase profitability... Probably started by some
| that needed to do something and now rest just follow.
| natch wrote:
| A legit Google recruiter emailed me about multiple roles this
| week. But then, that's just the kind of quality (none) and
| attention to detail (nil) I already have learned to expect from
| Google.
|
| Comment from kleinsch in this thread is spot on.
| thehappypm wrote:
| Google knows you wont get an offer for months, and the hiring
| freeze will be long over by then.
| firstSpeaker wrote:
| My process with Google just stopped. No further update form the
| recruiter. It just went on silence. Sometimes it feels like I
| made the right choice not changing to Klarna early this year and
| staying at my current work.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| This happened to me. In general, G has a terrible process - but
| I ended up getting a higher offer elsewhere.
|
| Turns out my recruiter had been fired.
| [deleted]
| Kharvok wrote:
| I think companies have had to lower expectations for new hires
| over the last several years. These companies now see an
| opportunity with a slight market correction to freeze hiring to
| deal with the lower performers and possibly replace.
| jasonwilk wrote:
| We lost a product manager candidate to Meta yesterday so not so
| sure about any hiring freeze.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| It's only for eng
| kafrofrite wrote:
| For what it's worth, Meta offered me slightly after the hiring
| freeze was announced for a security engineer position (L4 IIRC).
| I'm interviewing with Google for Security Engineering as well and
| still they haven't told me anything about a hiring freeze yet.
| modarts wrote:
| A hiring freeze is typically a freeze on _new_ job reqs
| (candidates already interviewing wouldn 't be exposed to this)
| gen220 wrote:
| In this instance, Google is freezing people below the Staff-
| Eng level who have already done their onsites.
| gen220 wrote:
| As far as I understand, the freeze is applying to standard SWE
| roles at levels below staff.
|
| If you're interviewing for something more specialized
| (security, sre, production engineering), the freeze may not
| apply to you.
|
| The hiring pipeline for those specialized roles is
| comparatively quite narrow and competitive, it doesn't make
| sense to squeeze them.
| kweinber wrote:
| Apple. Do not track. Ad impressions plummet. Revenue drops.
| Hiring stops.
|
| That's why Facebook is trying to get you to stop looking at your
| phone and strap on an oculus..... there are no privacy guards
| there.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Don't think the Apple thing was as impactful to Google as it is
| to other players. I think the primary problem is that
| attribution becomes difficult, not that impressions plummet.
| aulin wrote:
| maybe they realized hiring leetcode junkies is not a great
| strategy and they want to freeze that while they find a better
| interview system
| nowherebeen wrote:
| 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]
| distrill wrote:
| it's not a company requirement that no one questions. it's an
| industry requirement that literally everyone questions all
| the time.
| ahtihn wrote:
| Why do they pay more than anyone else if they want cheap?
|
| They could easily pay 30% less and still fill their positions
| if they just lowered the bar to get hired.
| nowherebeen wrote:
| If they are paying 30% less then they will be competing
| against late stage startups. They have a cash cow to help
| tilt the lever to their advantage. However that 30% is
| unlikely to make older workers works more because they have
| other family obligations. Priorities change in your 30s.
| ascar wrote:
| Your logic doesn't add up.
|
| Sure, these tests are not an ideal proxy for job performance
| and indeed they shifted more and more from general
| intelligence assessment to algorithm coding assessment.
| Solving the algorithm is only part of the equation though.
| Writing readable code, explaining your thought process and
| decisions and communicating well with the interviewer are
| also vital points of the assessment. Is it a perfect or even
| good proxy for job performance? I dunno. Do we have a better
| one within a 40 minute interview? Not really. Past experience
| is unfortunately also a weak indicator, starting with the
| question if what's in the CV is an accurate reflection of the
| truth. There is also an interesting cultural aspect to lying
| on your CV.
|
| Every approach comes with its own unique set of problems and
| as long as the position is sought after people will prepare
| and try to game the system.
|
| The opinion of a recruiter on the matter isn't really the
| most relevant either. Especially Google should have quite
| some data on their various approaches and correlation to job
| performance _and_ seems to use it. E.g. the trick questions
| were abandoned as they didn 't show a correlation to job
| performance.
| nowherebeen wrote:
| > these tests are not an ideal proxy for job performance >
| Past experience is unfortunately also a weak indicator
|
| If past experience of doing the actual job is bad indicator
| and these test are not a good proxy, then according to your
| logic, experience is worthless and we should all optimize
| for these tests.
|
| And this is _exactly_ what is happening in the industry.
| Younger professionals spent hours memorizing Leetcode
| because they just graduate to pass the test. Older
| professionals having years of experience and family
| obligations don 't.
|
| > Writing readable code, explaining your thought process
| and decisions and communicating well with the interviewer
| are also vital points of the assessment.
|
| Maybe to you, but I have seen many candidates get an
| automatic fail if they can't solve 2 questions in 50
| minutes. The key metric being 2.
|
| > Especially Google should have quite some data on their
| various approaches and correlation to job performance and
| seems to use it.
|
| Source?
|
| > Every approach comes with its own unique set of problems
| and as long as the position is sought after people will
| prepare and try to game the system.
|
| Agree
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| The questions I see don't use any tricky DS/algo that
| needs memorising. They are all solved by some loops and a
| simple data structure like an array or dictionary. If you
| can't use those comfortably then you probably aren't
| actually going to do well at the job. I don't practice at
| all for interviews and have had no problem passing, I get
| an offer maybe 70% of the time.
|
| If anything companies are desperate for experienced hires
| and give them really softball interviews. If you are a
| new grad you get grilled hard but if you are going for
| staff+ then you get asked some generic soft questions and
| a fizz buzz
|
| (Have 15 years experience)
| sorry_outta_gas wrote:
| Well obviously it's not working well, I've meet better
| engineers in the defense and automotive industries than I
| have at google -- which to be honest is better for everyone
| when you think about it
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