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Google added nearly 30k employees in the prior year. No way that amount of growth is sustainable. I doubt even half of those employees are up to speed sufficie
by compiler-guy 4y ago
Google added nearly 30k employees in the prior year.
No way that amount of growth is sustainable. I doubt even half of those employees are up to speed sufficiently to add value to the company. Just absorbing that many people means scores of new teams, hundreds of new managers, and mountains of additional hardware.
I'm sure they are seeing this in the costs.
- chickenpotpie 4y agoNot really that crazy when you have 174,000 employees. A 20% increase in employees isn't really that high when you also have a 13% increase in revenue.
- compiler-guy 4y agoProcuring 30,000 laptops is quite different than procuring 200 laptops. The logistics for 20% growth are materially different for a 100,000 person company vs a 1,000 person company.
- CydeWeys 4y ago> Procuring 30,000 laptops is quite different than procuring 200 laptops. Yes, you get a cheaper per-unit basis in bulk, and it becomes worth investing in larger scale automation to set up those laptops, so that the per-laptop cost of getting them ready for the employees is cheaper too. Economies of scale work in favor of larger numbers. A company that "only" procures 200 laptops per year won't even have a dedicated person for that job; if you're procuring 30k laptops per year you're going to have several full-time people whose only responsibility is working on and improving that process.
- onlyrealcuzzo 4y agoDwarfed by the advantage of printing billions per quarter in profits.
- Aethella 4y agoEvery employee they add also takes potential talent away from adding value to a start-up or competitor trying to catch-up. It's one way to protect your monopoly when there is a shortage of skilled labor.
- londons_explore 4y agoA common route for people is to join a big tech company for a few years, then quit and do a startup using the skills + cash gained...
- gigatexal 4y agoThis is how I think as well.
- jmathai 4y agoThe suggestion here being that hiring is a strategic play by Google to prevent startups from forming? I think a much better play is to let the startups form at no cost to you and buy them if/when they show signs of success.
- gigatexal 4y agoSure that’s viable but also hiring top talent means that talent can’t join Meta (sic) or Microsoft or Apple etc. keep the brain trust full and add to your advantage.
- vineyardmike 4y agoThe feds surely won’t allow it for ever though. There’s already so much scrutiny.
- SilverBirch 4y agoI think this is basically wrong. One thing lots of companies do during a recession is they try to get rid of the worst 10% of their employees. Instead they lose the top 8% and the bottom 1% and a random 1%- the top 8% see the bad news, have options and leave, the bottom 1% are obviously bad and get let go, and the other 1% are just unlucky becuase the company doesn't really have a clue who is good. This the same thing for trying to corner the smartest engineers in the market. You're not going to corner the smartest engineers, the smartest are going to go off and work on interesting meaningful projects. But what you will get is a lot of employees who are smart, not that effective but very happy for you to pay them not to work anywhere else. So even if the intention is to corner the top talent, they're not going to succeed because that's not what motivates most decent engineers. But also, the pool of talent is so vast that they'd bankrupt the company with that pay roll. Oh and the non-compete situation in California means even if you do manage to hire someone, if they do have a good idea they're just going to quit and build it - safe with a nest egg you helped them build.
- tmp_anon_22 4y ago> hundreds of new managers Thousands of new managers. Think about that.
- lifeisstillgood 4y agowhat does a manager actually do in a software business these days?
- adam_arthur 4y agoDepends how competent the people they manage are. Anywhere from invasive micromanager, to "do little" figurehead that conveys information. The best people don't need to be managed really, just alignment of direction, but there are far too few of them to depend on that at scale
- lifeisstillgood 4y agoI am not convinced the best people are few and far between. I think we could have said that about women doctors in the 19C or poor people at any time. Then again ... maybe
- hiddencost 4y agoAt Google? Cross org coordination, identifying and prioritizing opportunities, work trading with other teams (you do this and I'll do that), communicating why the team's work matters to mid management that has no idea, helping engineers avoid pitfalls, helping engineers craft project portfolios and a narrative for promotion. Helping engineers develop the right skills to succeed at Google.
- tmp_anon_22 4y agoThey create value [1]. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYvhC_RdIwQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYvhC_RdIwQ
- 4y ago
- ceeplusplus 4y agoGoogle funds a huge number of teams internally that (in my opinion) don't do anything that contributes to the top line or bottom line or the company's image. Not only that, but Google is known for being a "chill" place to work - good WLB, low pressure to deliver, very low chance of PIP. That attracts the wrong kind of employee. When you start seeing TikToks of people who work at Google documenting their life rather than delivering results, that's when you know the company's standards are too low.
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- ProAm 4y agoThink about all the chat apps we'll have in a year...
- jeffdn 4y agoThat's ~575 new employees per week (probably more, making up for turnover)! Absolutely wild.
- xhkkffbf 4y agoBut don't worry. They've paused hiring for two full weeks!
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