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Maybe this is a wrong thinking, but sometimes I feel like big tech companies would be able to grow their profit faster by not increasing the amount of engineers

Maybe this is a wrong thinking, but sometimes I feel like big tech companies would be able to grow their profit faster by not increasing the amount of engineers so aggressively instead of the salary of great engineers (and kicking out engineers who are just good). At Google I felt that over time it was harder to make any change because of the huge overcomplicated code base for example (the scary part though is that I'm more a good engineer, I had seen much better SWEs around myself).

kache_ 6y ago
I've seen some companies hire more engineers simply to become "IPO ready". Seems like aggressive hiring is a result of a maladaptive goal.
setr 6y ago
The problem I think is that at a certain point, it stops being an engineering problem and starts becoming an organization/communication/coordination problem. You could have all the best engineers but if they’re not coordinated correctly, it still becomes a mess. And that’s ignoring the problem that messes are inevitable, because programs must eventually deal with the real world, and the real world is a shitshow. Changing requirements, abominable external interfaces, business logic generally, etc. The main draw for unnecessarily messy codebase however is putting novices in charge, but you don’t need to overpay to avoid this (and you don’t really need the best of the best) — you need better selection practices, and I’m not sure anyone’s ever found a good way to select new resources (hiring interviews have at best a very spotty record, and a very shallow filter)
didibus 6y ago
Lean teams of A+ engineers deliver great results, but they still do so at a slower pace, though more consistently. And contrary to popular belief, it is quite difficult to maintain such a team, attrition will happen naturally and cause problems for it over time. For a big tech company, it is thus faster for them to just grow the number of teams and engineers, and give them each smaller and smaller chunk of an overall more and more complicated set. Basically, it's like throwing money at the problem, but it works. You bootstrap some new product, program or feature quickly, the effort could be led by a single or a handful of A+ engineer and some PMs. And then you create a whole team to forever maintain it composed mostly of junior and mid with high attrition rates.
Kranar 6y ago
Google's profit in 2019 was 90 billion dollars. The amount of money they spent on employees in total compensation was 13 billion. There isn't really much to squeeze out by firing employees.

kache_ 6y ago

I've seen some companies hire more engineers simply to become "IPO ready". Seems like aggressive hiring is a result of a maladaptive goal.

setr 6y ago

The problem I think is that at a certain point, it stops being an engineering problem and starts becoming an organization/communication/coordination problem. You could have all the best engineers but if they’re not coordinated correctly, it still becomes a mess. And that’s ignoring the problem that messes are inevitable, because programs must eventually deal with the real world, and the real world is a shitshow. Changing requirements, abominable external interfaces, business logic generally, etc. The main draw for unnecessarily messy codebase however is putting novices in charge, but you don’t need to overpay to avoid this (and you don’t really need the best of the best) — you need better selection practices, and I’m not sure anyone’s ever found a good way to select new resources (hiring interviews have at best a very spotty record, and a very shallow filter)

didibus 6y ago

Lean teams of A+ engineers deliver great results, but they still do so at a slower pace, though more consistently. And contrary to popular belief, it is quite difficult to maintain such a team, attrition will happen naturally and cause problems for it over time. For a big tech company, it is thus faster for them to just grow the number of teams and engineers, and give them each smaller and smaller chunk of an overall more and more complicated set. Basically, it's like throwing money at the problem, but it works. You bootstrap some new product, program or feature quickly, the effort could be led by a single or a handful of A+ engineer and some PMs. And then you create a whole team to forever maintain it composed mostly of junior and mid with high attrition rates.

Kranar 6y ago

Google's profit in 2019 was 90 billion dollars. The amount of money they spent on employees in total compensation was 13 billion. There isn't really much to squeeze out by firing employees.