5 ms·

Ex-Meta recruiter was paid $190K ‘to do nothing’ ahead of mass layoffs

27 points by thedrbrian 4y ago

garlandkey 4y ago
Surely this is why recruiters ghost me so much. /s
madeofpalk 4y ago
Probably why they were laid off?
- blamazon 4y ago
  FTA, although grain of salt: > In a follow-up video, Machado told her followers that she was fired in spring 2022 by the company because an earlier video in which she touts the benefits package she received went viral. > Machado said her superiors weren’t pleased when she revealed that the firm offers “$4,000 in baby cash” as well as “$3,000 for child care reimbursement.”
  - lallysingh 4y ago
    I guess they didn't want some employees to know what others were getting? If it were part of the standard package, that's good marketing for the company.
whalesalad 4y ago
This is usually the kind of thing you keep to yourself. This individual went completely in the opposite direction and is using it for clout and attention on Tik Tok.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- Gualdrapo 4y ago
  I read somehwere on Reddit this morning someone saying attention is one of the most important currencies of our society nowadays.
micromacrofoot 4y ago
The nypost is a tabloid, and I'm not sure what the value of this post is. I'm sure there are plenty of people at large organizations that get paid much more than the value they provide, and this was mostly a case of bad timing. It's nearly impossible to keep large organizations in sync while also secretly planning mass layoffs. She correctly got caught in a following wave.
monero-xmr 4y ago
This is common at large orgs. Not specifically about recruiters, but entire teams of people that have very little to do and exist to enhance the prestige (budget / headcount) of a leader or department. FAANG companies had this weird dynamic of competing with each other on every metric, from employee benefits to total employees to employees-per-manager to catered lunches and on and on, but that's over now. Anecdotally I know a laid off Meta engineer. They are really trying to get that ~$700k total comp they had before but it just isn't happening, and his lifestyle includes multiple houses, private schools, luxury cars, and a boat. He's aware that he has to downsize soon but is still holding out hope.
- dangwhy 4y ago
  > ~$700k total comp Must give META credit for really setting a standard for dev compensation. Kudos to Mark.
- logicalmonster 4y ago
  > This is common at large orgs. Not specifically about recruiters, but entire teams of people that have very little to do and exist to enhance the prestige (budget / headcount) of a leader or department. There's probably more than one reason for anything complicated in a large bureaucracy, but it's hard not to assume in some cases that the more pointless positions partially exist to meet some kind of corporate DEI goals.
TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
This woman was fired from Meta for posting a social media video about Meta’s “baby benefits”. Now she posts another video saying she was useless to the org for 2 years and liked that job. Does she enjoy sabotaging her career for likes?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- seydor 4y ago
  I think she got a new career now. Recruiting doesnt seem to be in high demand
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- Overtonwindow 4y ago
  This woman
  - dekhn 4y ago
    Could you clarify the meaning of your comment?
    - Overtonwindow 4y ago
      I found the use of "this woman" as the opening of the paragraph to be a tad offensive. To me, it felt like another form of the phrase "these people"
      - mmh0000 4y ago
        The only correct grouping to use which avoids offending anyone is "This fucker, That fucker, These fuckers, You fuckers): This fucker was fired from Meta for posting a social media video about Meta’s "baby benefits". Now the fucker posts another video saying they were useless to the org for 2 years and liked that job. Do they fucking enjoy sabotaging their career for likes? Now it is gender neutral, uses no identifying groups, and is acceptable grammar to a large majority of the population.
Aeolun 4y ago
Why is it bad to be happy about Meta’s baby benefits? Presumably their employees are aware. Are they worried about floods of women that join Meta only to constantly pop out babies?
fnordpiglet 4y ago
In my experience recruiters routinely do nothing. I hired a substantial team of about 50 engineers at a FAANG by getting a LinkedIn recruiter account, thinking hard about the geographical state of tech and where I could find engineers looking to get a better job in a better place and directly in mailing them as the leader of the org. I customized each message and made it clear I was the one hiring and I’m not a recruiter. I had as much as a 70% initial conversion rate and a 30% overall conversion to offer rate. It was grueling because we are still talking about somewhere in the 200+ person range to interact with in addition to my normal job. But in that time I got precisely zero hires out of recruiting and sourcing.
- logicalmonster 4y ago
  I don't think many engineers want to do hiring, but I'm 100% certain that even the most introvert and unmotivated engineer would do a better job at it for technical fields than 99% of recruiters. I think many recruiters do about as much as they can without knowing technology at all. The problem is that they can't really do much of anything other than being a middleman without knowing technology. I don't mean that recruiters must be able to code or anything. I mean that recruiters should be able to have an intelligent 5 minute conversation with somebody about some of their projects, ask an intelligent question or two, and be able to have a fairly solid idea if the applicant is likely to be full of shit or not. This is why we get plenty of dumb things like recruiters asking job applicants for a laundry list of dumb "How many years of experience do you have with X technology?" questions. It's about all they are capable of.
  - fnordpiglet 4y ago
    Yeah and to be clear I’m the most introverted of all folks, and it was literally torture forcing myself to do this but I wanted to actually get my effort done and I could see from my peer teams the sourcing and recruiting functions were not functional. I don’t think they actually do nothing though. They’re just highly ineffectual. Not only do they target candidates wrong as you mention they’re known to be five steps removed from any decision. The power of being the hiring manager and directly involved in the project is hard to measure but it’s significant. The other issue is recruiters don’t actually know the tech landscape in enough detail. They know the rough shape of major employers, but details like “UIUC is in central Illinois and there aren’t many employees in the area and those that are there aren’t that desirable so recruiting phd students out of the program isn’t that hard” or “national labs under Trump are a terrible place to work so recruit folks working on climate change super computing projects” aren’t practically tractable. They’re also, to your point, unaware of the adjacencies of technologies - while they know what stack you’re hiring for, they can’t know X is similar to Y so X is sufficient. It’s a hard job and entirely thankless, and I always feel tremendous empathy and sympathy for folks in the recruiter role. But that doesn’t help the fact they’re almost entirely useless in that role.
Kaotique 4y ago
If you are a $190k recruiter you should not be that surprised large orgs are like this. Meta wanted to recruit people, hired a recruiter and then higher ups changed course. Shit happens. Count your blessings and coast will ya?
billpg 4y ago
"Hey, giant rectangle here just passing through." "Another giant rectangle. I'm also going to make the rest of the screen darker. Hope that's okay." "Look, I know you were part way through reading something but it's vitally important you stop and pay attention right now to this thing that's actually stalled loading."
Overtonwindow 4y ago
I've met with maybe a half a dozen recruiters in my career and the only bad one was Facebook. The guy just flat out, lied to me. For a counterpoint for anyone interested, recruiters looking to hire away government folks have been exceedingly professional.
xnx 4y ago
My offer still stands: I will do nothing for half the price.
- znpy 4y ago
  I see your offer and raise with mine: I will do twice as much nothing for a quarter of the price, remotely. You don't even have to give me a desk or a company laptop.

27 points by thedrbrian 4y ago

garlandkey 4y ago

Surely this is why recruiters ghost me so much. /s

madeofpalk 4y ago

Probably why they were laid off?

blamazon 4y ago
FTA, although grain of salt: > In a follow-up video, Machado told her followers that she was fired in spring 2022 by the company because an earlier video in which she touts the benefits package she received went viral. > Machado said her superiors weren’t pleased when she revealed that the firm offers “$4,000 in baby cash” as well as “$3,000 for child care reimbursement.”
- lallysingh 4y ago
  I guess they didn't want some employees to know what others were getting? If it were part of the standard package, that's good marketing for the company.

whalesalad 4y ago

This is usually the kind of thing you keep to yourself. This individual went completely in the opposite direction and is using it for clout and attention on Tik Tok.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Gualdrapo 4y ago
I read somehwere on Reddit this morning someone saying attention is one of the most important currencies of our society nowadays.

micromacrofoot 4y ago

The nypost is a tabloid, and I'm not sure what the value of this post is. I'm sure there are plenty of people at large organizations that get paid much more than the value they provide, and this was mostly a case of bad timing. It's nearly impossible to keep large organizations in sync while also secretly planning mass layoffs. She correctly got caught in a following wave.

monero-xmr 4y ago

This is common at large orgs. Not specifically about recruiters, but entire teams of people that have very little to do and exist to enhance the prestige (budget / headcount) of a leader or department. FAANG companies had this weird dynamic of competing with each other on every metric, from employee benefits to total employees to employees-per-manager to catered lunches and on and on, but that's over now. Anecdotally I know a laid off Meta engineer. They are really trying to get that ~$700k total comp they had before but it just isn't happening, and his lifestyle includes multiple houses, private schools, luxury cars, and a boat. He's aware that he has to downsize soon but is still holding out hope.

dangwhy 4y ago
> ~$700k total comp Must give META credit for really setting a standard for dev compensation. Kudos to Mark.
logicalmonster 4y ago
> This is common at large orgs. Not specifically about recruiters, but entire teams of people that have very little to do and exist to enhance the prestige (budget / headcount) of a leader or department. There's probably more than one reason for anything complicated in a large bureaucracy, but it's hard not to assume in some cases that the more pointless positions partially exist to meet some kind of corporate DEI goals.

TedDoesntTalk 4y ago

This woman was fired from Meta for posting a social media video about Meta’s “baby benefits”. Now she posts another video saying she was useless to the org for 2 years and liked that job. Does she enjoy sabotaging her career for likes?

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
seydor 4y ago
I think she got a new career now. Recruiting doesnt seem to be in high demand
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Overtonwindow 4y ago
This woman
- dekhn 4y ago
  Could you clarify the meaning of your comment?
  - Overtonwindow 4y ago
    I found the use of "this woman" as the opening of the paragraph to be a tad offensive. To me, it felt like another form of the phrase "these people"
    - mmh0000 4y ago
      The only correct grouping to use which avoids offending anyone is "This fucker, That fucker, These fuckers, You fuckers): This fucker was fired from Meta for posting a social media video about Meta’s "baby benefits". Now the fucker posts another video saying they were useless to the org for 2 years and liked that job. Do they fucking enjoy sabotaging their career for likes? Now it is gender neutral, uses no identifying groups, and is acceptable grammar to a large majority of the population.

Aeolun 4y ago

Why is it bad to be happy about Meta’s baby benefits? Presumably their employees are aware. Are they worried about floods of women that join Meta only to constantly pop out babies?

fnordpiglet 4y ago

In my experience recruiters routinely do nothing. I hired a substantial team of about 50 engineers at a FAANG by getting a LinkedIn recruiter account, thinking hard about the geographical state of tech and where I could find engineers looking to get a better job in a better place and directly in mailing them as the leader of the org. I customized each message and made it clear I was the one hiring and I’m not a recruiter. I had as much as a 70% initial conversion rate and a 30% overall conversion to offer rate. It was grueling because we are still talking about somewhere in the 200+ person range to interact with in addition to my normal job. But in that time I got precisely zero hires out of recruiting and sourcing.

logicalmonster 4y ago
I don't think many engineers want to do hiring, but I'm 100% certain that even the most introvert and unmotivated engineer would do a better job at it for technical fields than 99% of recruiters. I think many recruiters do about as much as they can without knowing technology at all. The problem is that they can't really do much of anything other than being a middleman without knowing technology. I don't mean that recruiters must be able to code or anything. I mean that recruiters should be able to have an intelligent 5 minute conversation with somebody about some of their projects, ask an intelligent question or two, and be able to have a fairly solid idea if the applicant is likely to be full of shit or not. This is why we get plenty of dumb things like recruiters asking job applicants for a laundry list of dumb "How many years of experience do you have with X technology?" questions. It's about all they are capable of.
- fnordpiglet 4y ago
  Yeah and to be clear I’m the most introverted of all folks, and it was literally torture forcing myself to do this but I wanted to actually get my effort done and I could see from my peer teams the sourcing and recruiting functions were not functional. I don’t think they actually do nothing though. They’re just highly ineffectual. Not only do they target candidates wrong as you mention they’re known to be five steps removed from any decision. The power of being the hiring manager and directly involved in the project is hard to measure but it’s significant. The other issue is recruiters don’t actually know the tech landscape in enough detail. They know the rough shape of major employers, but details like “UIUC is in central Illinois and there aren’t many employees in the area and those that are there aren’t that desirable so recruiting phd students out of the program isn’t that hard” or “national labs under Trump are a terrible place to work so recruit folks working on climate change super computing projects” aren’t practically tractable. They’re also, to your point, unaware of the adjacencies of technologies - while they know what stack you’re hiring for, they can’t know X is similar to Y so X is sufficient. It’s a hard job and entirely thankless, and I always feel tremendous empathy and sympathy for folks in the recruiter role. But that doesn’t help the fact they’re almost entirely useless in that role.

Kaotique 4y ago

If you are a $190k recruiter you should not be that surprised large orgs are like this. Meta wanted to recruit people, hired a recruiter and then higher ups changed course. Shit happens. Count your blessings and coast will ya?

billpg 4y ago

"Hey, giant rectangle here just passing through." "Another giant rectangle. I'm also going to make the rest of the screen darker. Hope that's okay." "Look, I know you were part way through reading something but it's vitally important you stop and pay attention right now to this thing that's actually stalled loading."

Overtonwindow 4y ago

I've met with maybe a half a dozen recruiters in my career and the only bad one was Facebook. The guy just flat out, lied to me. For a counterpoint for anyone interested, recruiters looking to hire away government folks have been exceedingly professional.

xnx 4y ago

My offer still stands: I will do nothing for half the price.

znpy 4y ago
I see your offer and raise with mine: I will do twice as much nothing for a quarter of the price, remotely. You don't even have to give me a desk or a company laptop.