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Google is pretty well-known for maintaining a very deep bench-- if an engineer isn't effective in some role, they'll just move them to some other team. Heck, a
by choppaface 7y ago
Google is pretty well-known for maintaining a very deep bench-- if an engineer isn't effective in some role, they'll just move them to some other team. Heck, a lot of hires (especially 3rd/last attempt) go directly to the bench. This strategy pays off well when a new competitor (like Facebook or Uber) comes along and snatches up people in the lead roles, or if the company feels the need to pivot to something really fast (e.g. Google+, which drew from many teams across the entire company).
Moreover, hiring a long-term employee today versus tomorrow might save money for a place like Google, assuming we expect competition and wages to continue to increase.
It strikes me that if Uber is laying off software engineers, their company outlook must be very, very dire. A layoff is perhaps better strategy than firing the bottom 5%, which would likely preclude the departed from re-joining at a better time. But probably the wrong message to send to a cohort like software engineers-- a layoff is a legal confirmation that the company made a big mistake.
- wutbrodo 7y agoIm not sure how much one can extrapolate from this. Google also has the massive scale, in terms of both headcount and profit, to smooth out things like this and hold onto talent for the longterm. As huge and well-capitalized as Uber is, Google really is on another level.
- hendzen 7y agoThis strategy works very well if you have a gigantic money printing machine, which Google does. Uber has a gigantic money incinerating machine. They don't have the ability to just have engineers spinning their wheels on non-business critical projects like Google does.
- trenning 7y agoOr in the case of Amazon you have both, printing money with an awful culture of churning through employees. They even structured their stock vesting around it.
- bonestamp2 7y agoEspecially with the outlook that thousands of contractors might become full time employees by law soon.
- seibelj 7y agoGoogle makes a ridiculous amount of profit. Uber loses a ridiculous amount of money. They can’t afford a back bench of expensive California engineers that do not help to quickly reverse the huge losses.
- bitL 7y agoWhat is 3rd/last attempt?
- ageitgey 7y agoGoogle will only re-interview you 3 times for the same type of role total. After that, you are out for good.
- groby_b 7y agoAnd you know that because...?
- ageitgey 7y agohttps://www.quora.com/How-many-times-can-you-interview-with-Google-1 https://www.quora.com/How-many-times-can-you-interview-with-...
- southphillyman 7y agoInteresting. Never knew that, it seems like it's almost a normal part of the process to be told to "try again in 6 months".
- OBLIQUE_PILLAR 7y agoFrom my own experience, this is not true!
- smeyer 7y agoWhat do you mean by "3rd/last attempt"?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- choppaface 7y agoGoogle only lets candidates interview three times: https://www.quora.com/How-many-times-can-you-interview-with-Google-1 https://www.quora.com/How-many-times-can-you-interview-with-... (edit: sorry, see below too)
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- jkp56 7y agoI was told by a Google HR that on average a candidate tries 4 times before passing the interview. That's believable because when any of the 5 interviewers saying "probably not" translates to a no hire, stars really need to align even for stellar candidates.
- saisundar 7y agoI believe it's 3 times per level or role. One could interview 3 times for l5 SWE role and thrice more for l6 when they are deemed eligible again.(With more experience etc.)
- nyrulez 7y agoI mean one company prints money, and the other has some of the biggest losses in tech industry. What do you expect? If anything, Uber has invested in too much tech for the sake of being tech heavy, which may not be best suited for their business (outside self-driving, which needs heavy tech investment).
- blackflame7000 7y agoYea but self-driving would instantly turn Uber into a cash cow and it's not that far away. Edit: By not that far away I'm talking 5-15 years. I'm not talking next week. Amazon burned cash for at least 20 years.
- inimino 7y ago> not that far away [Citation needed]
- blackflame7000 7y agohttps://waymo.com/ https://waymo.com/ I wasn't referring to Uber's technology specifically, only that self-driving cars are what is required to make Uber as successful as they hope to be.
- jfk13 7y ago> it's not that far away That's a pretty optimistic view; many people don't seem to share it.
- sabujp 7y agoI've been wondering about this for years, do you have any data to actually back that up? Seeing how teslas are "very close" to self driving why doesn't uber up the game and go full self driving with lidar.
- outside1234 7y agoThe last 1% of corner cases is the hard, potentially decades long problem, that also happens to kill people, that is unsolved.
- gdilla 7y agoYou can't actually terminate that many people without a planned layoff, according to CA labor law. It's to protect workers from mass firings (at least a little) https://www.shouselaw.com/employment/warn-act.html https://www.shouselaw.com/employment/warn-act.html
- matchagaucho 7y agoThe press release mentions the hires were the result of "decentralized hyper-growth". That is basically code word for political fiefdoms seizing power. No cloud-hosted or SaaS company should allow silos or redundancy around communal services. This is long overdue and Dara is making the right move to clean up. But to your point.... should the Engineers be reallocated to a bench until properly utilized? Yes. Moves like this can be poisonous to culture long-term.
- sjg007 7y agoI mean Google and Facebook want the option to prevent their engineers from building something that may compete with it n the ad space. Rest and vest right? Uber competitors would need to do something in the delivery, leasing, transportation and ride sharing space to be specific threats. Maybe ride share could be disrupted with a peer to peer model. I always thought that the carpools across the bay bridge where interesting. That's basically self organized and very effective.
- balls187 7y ago> It strikes me that if Uber is laying off software engineers, their company outlook must be very, very dire I doubt that. Uber's place in the market is very much theirs to lose. It's more reasonable to think that this is the market for software engineers in SV/SF starting to correct itself.