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They aren't doing this for charity - they are doing it to ensure a steady supply of technical hires. Technical jobs are profit centers; non-technical contracte

They aren't doing this for charity - they are doing it to ensure a steady supply of technical hires. Technical jobs are profit centers; non-technical contracted services are cost centers.

samfisher83 9y ago
They are getting tons of apps from top schools like harvard, stanford, etc. I don't think they will have any problem hiring people. Maybe this would help some small company a lot more that can't afford pay google salaries. Also If you believe the Pareto principle most of people at google probably aren't that important to their successes.
- losteric 9y ago
  Their goal is to increase the supply and diversity of good engineers, likely decreasing salaries in the long run. It's about damn time!
  - closeparen 9y ago
    Google could cut salaries by half or more while delivering equal or better quality of life if it built substantial engineering presence in cheap cities. Education is a wickedly complicated problem compared to not being in California.
- shados 9y ago
  They actually do have problems hiring enough. They get tons of applications, but the vast majority are not worth looking at. The people from top schools are in high demand, and Google no longer has monopoly on cool tech workspaces with free lunches and random expensive perks. They have plenty of openings and they harass qualified people trying to poach them just as hard as everyone else. And since they actually DO have some unique challenges, they sometimes actually DO need people who know more than Rails CRUD apps, which makes things even trickier.
  - samfisher83 9y ago
    It seems the only stories you hear of them are interviewing people and then ghosting them. If they actually cared about hiring people you figure at least they would treat their candidates better. In my experience even amazon has been more on the ball with the recruiting process.
    - shados 9y ago
      I'm not particularly fond of Google or the way they interview, but I've lived just a few blocks from their Cambridge office (so almost every engineer I know around here has interviewed there at one point or another). Aside for their criterias and interview questions which I find absurd (but that's subjective, I know a bunch of people who think they're fine), I haven't heard much that was really wrong with it aside for obviously underqualified candidates being brought in and then leaving pissed off after bombing it. The reality is that in this industry right now, unless what you're doing is little webapps with REST apis that store/retrieve data and not much else, hiring people is hard. All the somewhat large companies have 100+ openings at any given time and the majority of candidates are code monkeys. My current employer is doing decently and our reputation seems to allow us to get a steady stream of above average people applying, but there's still so many openings. Only so much you can do.
- ryguytilidie 9y ago
  >They are getting tons of apps from top schools like harvard, stanford, etc. I don't think they will have any problem hiring people. You're outright dismissing the idea that hiring is difficult for Google? You know they have over a thousand recruiters working for them, right?
evanlivingston 9y ago
Don't forget that if they increase the supply of technical jobs, they get to drive down the cost of those technical hires.
- sulam 9y ago
  I think I know what you meant to say, but what you typed is logically wrong. s/jobs/workers/
nbanks 9y ago
Even if google doesn't hire most of the people who graduate, having more people who can do tech jobs could help increase the supply and stop salaries from inflating more.
jondubois 9y ago
The thing about hiring more software developers than you need is that it just adds complexity to the project without adding any new features. Big companies are terrible at this. As companies add more engineers, the engineers become less productive, then managers get worried and so they 1. Hire more engineers and 2. introduce new project management tools and methodologies to the company which lowers productivity even more but which creates an illusion of progress for idiotic upper management — Over time managers and engineers get used to lower levels of productivity as it keeps declining and the company keep hiring more and more engineers whose engineering skills themselves keep declining from being poorly used.
- speedplane 9y ago
  > As companies add more engineers, the engineers become less productive This is definitely true, but it's a necessary evil. If you want to build something small, you can do it with a super efficient tiger team. But if you want something huge, you need a massive inefficient team, even if each additional engineer is only 1/10th as efficient as the engineer in the tiger team. This is explained, with real-life examples, in the classic Mythical Man Month.

They aren't doing this for charity - they are doing it to ensure a steady supply of technical hires. Technical jobs are profit centers; non-technical contracted services are cost centers.

samfisher83 9y ago

They are getting tons of apps from top schools like harvard, stanford, etc. I don't think they will have any problem hiring people. Maybe this would help some small company a lot more that can't afford pay google salaries. Also If you believe the Pareto principle most of people at google probably aren't that important to their successes.

losteric 9y ago
Their goal is to increase the supply and diversity of good engineers, likely decreasing salaries in the long run. It's about damn time!
- closeparen 9y ago
  Google could cut salaries by half or more while delivering equal or better quality of life if it built substantial engineering presence in cheap cities. Education is a wickedly complicated problem compared to not being in California.
shados 9y ago
They actually do have problems hiring enough. They get tons of applications, but the vast majority are not worth looking at. The people from top schools are in high demand, and Google no longer has monopoly on cool tech workspaces with free lunches and random expensive perks. They have plenty of openings and they harass qualified people trying to poach them just as hard as everyone else. And since they actually DO have some unique challenges, they sometimes actually DO need people who know more than Rails CRUD apps, which makes things even trickier.
- samfisher83 9y ago
  It seems the only stories you hear of them are interviewing people and then ghosting them. If they actually cared about hiring people you figure at least they would treat their candidates better. In my experience even amazon has been more on the ball with the recruiting process.
  - shados 9y ago
    I'm not particularly fond of Google or the way they interview, but I've lived just a few blocks from their Cambridge office (so almost every engineer I know around here has interviewed there at one point or another). Aside for their criterias and interview questions which I find absurd (but that's subjective, I know a bunch of people who think they're fine), I haven't heard much that was really wrong with it aside for obviously underqualified candidates being brought in and then leaving pissed off after bombing it. The reality is that in this industry right now, unless what you're doing is little webapps with REST apis that store/retrieve data and not much else, hiring people is hard. All the somewhat large companies have 100+ openings at any given time and the majority of candidates are code monkeys. My current employer is doing decently and our reputation seems to allow us to get a steady stream of above average people applying, but there's still so many openings. Only so much you can do.
ryguytilidie 9y ago
>They are getting tons of apps from top schools like harvard, stanford, etc. I don't think they will have any problem hiring people. You're outright dismissing the idea that hiring is difficult for Google? You know they have over a thousand recruiters working for them, right?

evanlivingston 9y ago

Don't forget that if they increase the supply of technical jobs, they get to drive down the cost of those technical hires.

sulam 9y ago
I think I know what you meant to say, but what you typed is logically wrong. s/jobs/workers/

nbanks 9y ago

Even if google doesn't hire most of the people who graduate, having more people who can do tech jobs could help increase the supply and stop salaries from inflating more.

jondubois 9y ago

The thing about hiring more software developers than you need is that it just adds complexity to the project without adding any new features. Big companies are terrible at this. As companies add more engineers, the engineers become less productive, then managers get worried and so they 1. Hire more engineers and 2. introduce new project management tools and methodologies to the company which lowers productivity even more but which creates an illusion of progress for idiotic upper management — Over time managers and engineers get used to lower levels of productivity as it keeps declining and the company keep hiring more and more engineers whose engineering skills themselves keep declining from being poorly used.

speedplane 9y ago
> As companies add more engineers, the engineers become less productive This is definitely true, but it's a necessary evil. If you want to build something small, you can do it with a super efficient tiger team. But if you want something huge, you need a massive inefficient team, even if each additional engineer is only 1/10th as efficient as the engineer in the tiger team. This is explained, with real-life examples, in the classic Mythical Man Month.