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Google to pause all hiring for two weeks
- timcavel 4y ago
- Rastonbury 4y agoOh nice I had an interview last week... Let's see how it goes for candidates in middle of the process...
- exact_string 4y agoIn my case the only step left was supposed to be getting the offer and compensation approved, surprise!
- Rastonbury 4y agoOuch good luck for it, hope it works out. You've passed the committee I'm guessing?
- exact_string 4y agoYup, passed the hiring committee. Also the team is happy to have me. :'(
- actuator 4y agoDon't worry, it is highly unlikely Google doesn't offer someone who has already cleared HC. If they slow down, it would most likely mean it for new candidates who still haven't finished the interview process.
- uptownJimmy 4y agoI had someone from Google Recruiting reach out to me Friday. I wonder if he knows about the hiring freeze.
- Rastonbury 4y agoAccording to a friend, Sundar sent out the company wide memo on Tues
- sjtindell 4y agoHired 10,000 people in Q2 this year alone? What percentage of those people actually do anything of value besides cash the company’s checks? That’s actually staggering to me. Cloud division I can see growing. What else?
- oceanstone 4y agoGoogle offers a lot. They want to offer more. The market will determine what's valuable.
- timomax2 4y agoGoogle products are mostly over rated.
- ReaLNero 4y agoGoogle products are usually loss leaders, so as a user they feel much better to use than dedicated services that are more clearly monetized e.g. Yelp allowing businesses to remove reviews compared to Google Maps reviews, Google Docs being free and decent compared to Microsoft's Office suite.
- ghaff 4y agoWhile Google's cloud revenues are a fairly small portion of the total overall, Google Workplace sales (i.e. supported suite) would still be pretty significant at many companies. I'm not sure it's fair to call it a loss leader.
- badlucklottery 4y agoI'm guessing it's 10k total hires not +10k net hires.
- jihadjihad 4y agoEven with that distinction and knowing Google's size, that's still a staggering figure for one quarter.
- hericium 4y agoAlso recently: Google pausing hiring for two weeks (seekingalpha.com)[1] with 14 comments Google, GitHub, and Azure are freezing hiring effective immediately (linkedin.com)[2] with 24 comments [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32169672 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32169672 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32185152 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32185152
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- stephc_int13 4y agoThose big and insanely rich corporations are suffering big time from the nasty effect of Price's Law. In my opinion this is a good thing, otherwise their power would be indestructible, they already have waaay too much power.
- danaris 4y ago...which Price's Law is this? The one I could find referred to the relationship between scientific literature on a subject and the number of authors publishing on it...
- stephc_int13 4y agoThat one, yes, generalized to any organization. https://dariusforoux.com/prices-law/ https://dariusforoux.com/prices-law/
- ghaff 4y agoIt's certainly true to some degree and it's pretty clear in areas like research. That said, even with the sales example, the superstar sales reps I know are generally selling to particularly lucrative industries and, critically, they're supported by a lot of other sales and marketing people (to say nothing of product) without which they'd be a whole lot less effective. Oh, and a company actually needs finance people and backoffice people to process orders etc. I don't doubt there's some truth to the notion. But people look at other groups even within their company and wonder what all those people could possibly be doing. And, guess what, people there are probably looking at your group and thinking the same thing even though you think you're ridiculously understaffed.
- tcmb 4y agoTwo weeks seems like a really short time to have any effect... aren't the open positions and people applying for them going to be almost identical two weeks later?
- notacoward 4y agoThis might have less effect on direct hiring than on attrition. It's a signal that the next review cycle at each of these companies will be absolutely brutal. As a result, both the truly marginal and the good-but-undervalued employees will be flying for the exits. Net effect might be greater than if only hiring had stopped.
- Rastonbury 4y agoIf Google and mega cap gang are scared and slowing hiring where are their current employees going to go that doesn't have a greater risk of layoffs?
- ghaff 4y agoProbably nowhere. There are probably boring industries that might be more stable but they would likely involve a pay cut so expected value probably suggests staying put.
- notacoward 4y agoYes, there might be a pay cut, but half of that pay cut's already there (via reduced stock prices) and the rest will come anyway for someone about to be PIPped out. Expected value then is zero. There are still other companies both in and outside of tech - possibly including the one we both worked for - that are still hiring and offer pay that's still good by most standards. There's contracting, which in past downturns has often picked up a bit to fill gaps left by hiring freezes. Also, for someone who has been pulling down GAMMA pay for even a few years, "nowhere" is very much an option either temporarily or permanently. I'm pretty glad to be "nowhere" myself. ;)
- 4y ago
- barbarbar 4y agoBeside selling ads. Does it earn money in any other way?
- knorker 4y agoRevenue, yes billions. Profit? We'll see soon if it's changed. Q2 earnings report is on Tuesday. You can find previous reports at abc.xyz
- barbarbar 4y agoThank you for the link. I will study that. Since I think it is interesting to see how they earn on essentially harvesting user data and sell adds based on that. The ads I see are completely useless to me so it is a mystery why companies want to pay for that.
- yreg 4y agoUseless to you might not be useless to the advertiser.
- Rastonbury 4y agoRead their and compare it to other regular companies, this is a company that makes 20bn+ a quarter but can manage double digit revenue growth year on year
- MrDresden 4y agoWe know from the Oracle vs Google court case documents[0] that through the Android OS Google had made 22 billion $ in profit, as of 2016. It is a drop in the bucket for a company the size of Google, and the platform was obviously not bought for the direct profit generating capabilities of it. But it seems it has certainly paid for it self. [0] https://www.theverge.com/2016/1/21/10810834/android-generated-31-billion-revenue-google-oracle https://www.theverge.com/2016/1/21/10810834/android-generate...
- juujian 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- yreg 4y agoHow are others doing these days? Is Amazon, et al. slowing down hiring as well? Our company (~300 engineers, fintech clients) is slowing down and the bench (people who don't bring in money at the moment) is as large as it ever was.
- Surfactant7 4y agoGoogle is still an advertising tech company. As such it's highly levered to two things: 1. The fluctuations in stock prices. Like many tech companies, Google uses its shares in place of currency. This work great when prices are going up. 2. Business spending on advertising. Despite ambitions in other areas, the company still just mostly sells ads. One of the first things companies cut back on when they start hurting is advertising. When the stock market declines because the business cycle turns, Google gets a double whammy. In many ways, it's the canary's canary in the coal mine. Doubly levered to the business cycle. There is such a taboo around pay cuts, that then the inevitable downturn happens, the only option is to first stop hiring and then start laying off. I expect GOOG to be the epicenter of tech worker pain for this leg of the cycle. During these booms, tech leaders take on a mythological quality. To even suggest that they could begin a protracted decline seems absurd. But it has happened time and again. Maybe it's this time or the next cycle that does it, but there's no version of the future where GOOG retains its dominating position.
- onlyrealcuzzo 4y agoI don't think your use of "levered" makes sense, and I don't think GOOG is the "canary in the coal mine" - basically the entire small-cap NASDAQ has already been obliterated - but otherwise your point stands.
- ghaff 4y ago>There is such a taboo around pay cuts Yes. But much less so about reduced bonuses, RSU grants (and esp. stock appreciation), and not matching inflation. At a lot of tech sector companies among others, you're already seeing pretty large effective comp decreases. It's also the case that, as people often observe, large comp increases often come from switching jobs and that's probably going to be more difficult in general for the next few years. ADDED: And one of the escape valves for people at smaller companies especially over the last year or two has been to try to get a job at Big Tech. (This doesn't only apply to developers.) Increasingly this looks to be a much tougher option.
- spaceman_2020 4y agoWhat percentage of Google’s ad revenue come from (unprofitable) startups?
- erganemic 4y agoI commented on the last post about Google hiring slowdowns, hoping that it wouldn't hit technical workers as hard, but it looks like that's not the case. I've got an L3 interview literally tomorrow. Can anyone with more insight into hiring practices comment on whether that's just a complete wash? (Outside of getting more interview experience, that is). I know getting an offer "two weeks" (yeah, right) from now isn't gonna happen, but is there anything measurable I actually gain from doing well on the interview, e.g. skipping the phone screen or giving more positive data to the hiring committee if I end up applying again?
- UncleMeat 4y agoInterview results live in the system forever so if you interview well but don't end up with an offer you will be a target for recruiters later and have an advantage in the hiring committee on the next attempt. If you've already matched with a team, the key is knowing what that team is doing and whether they are on a company-critical path. I suspect the number of such L3 positions is low, but it is definitely not zero.
- slaymaker1907 4y agoDon't take any gap between L3 and your current job of you have one. They laid off my step mom a few years ago right after she started working. Luckily, she was able to get unemployment, but L3 should not be trusted.
- capitalsigma 4y agoWas she working as a SWE? I don't believe there have ever been SWE layoffs at Google.
- MisterMower 4y agoFirst time for everything, I guess.
- jwilk 4y agoArchived copy without GDPR nag screen: https://web.archive.org/web/20220720184258/https://techcrunch.com/2022/07/20/google-to-pause-all-hiring-for-two-weeks/ https://web.archive.org/web/20220720184258/https://techcrunc...