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> For the past several years tech companies were desperate to hire because everyone was growing and the hiring market was tight. I'd rather categorize it as fo

> For the past several years tech companies were desperate to hire because everyone was growing and the hiring market was tight. I'd rather categorize it as for the past several years the managers in tech companies seize the chance to inflate their teams to boost their careers at the cost of their companies, while the leadership in those companies are just too incompetent to tell separate the Wheat from the chaff. It's not their money, after all. I mean, why the hell does DocuSign need 7000+ people? Why the funk did Uber need to build their own Slack? Why in whoever's name does Uber's ATG need to hire > 2000 people under two years to build a research project? Why did Coinbase need to have > 3000 people to build a god damn crypto exchange? Incompetence is just not enough to explain these jokers. And the crown of the crowns, of course and again, goes to Uber: they think that k8s wouldn't scale yet their in-house crap would beat the k8s community and therefore they hire a freaking organization to build their own resource scheduler, as if Uber has "internet scale". Yeah, right.

parentheses 4y ago
I have had the same thought and my only explanation is “empire building”. There are indeed companies running at full capacity; most do not. Empire building in the small is “growing your org” and in the large is “growing your company”. Until we stop measuring company performance by customer counts and employee counts, this will probably continue.
foobiekr 4y ago
I think this is a good theory. I almost wonder if it's an accidental synchronization of a burst of hiring caused by the FAANGs snatching candidates away from their peers and having outsized psychological impact. Classically, the way to go from l1 manager to l2 manager to director, senior director and VP was to grow your organization in headcount terms, so in a situation where it is "hard" to hire, say Amazon is busy grinding through the entire valley, you might accidentally create a situation where everyone feels urgency but no one feels backpressure.

parentheses 4y ago

I have had the same thought and my only explanation is “empire building”. There are indeed companies running at full capacity; most do not. Empire building in the small is “growing your org” and in the large is “growing your company”. Until we stop measuring company performance by customer counts and employee counts, this will probably continue.

foobiekr 4y ago

I think this is a good theory. I almost wonder if it's an accidental synchronization of a burst of hiring caused by the FAANGs snatching candidates away from their peers and having outsized psychological impact. Classically, the way to go from l1 manager to l2 manager to director, senior director and VP was to grow your organization in headcount terms, so in a situation where it is "hard" to hire, say Amazon is busy grinding through the entire valley, you might accidentally create a situation where everyone feels urgency but no one feels backpressure.