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It's pretty tough to be met with the realization that big tech companies' code education initiatives, and their support of things in the US like H-1B visas, all

It's pretty tough to be met with the realization that big tech companies' code education initiatives, and their support of things in the US like H-1B visas, all stem from a coldly calculated strategy to make the compensation for programmers get and stay as low as possible.

jfim 2y ago
It's an interesting contrast to how Google used to operate; pay high salaries to get the best talent they could get their hands on. Looks like they've shifted to keeping the lights on and cutting costs now.
- MisterDizzy 2y ago
  Yet somehow they keep adding value (so far).
- SmellTheGlove 2y ago
  They’re also doing stock buybacks and dividends. Ads print money but they’ve basically thrown their hands up and admitted they don’t know how to invest that money into anything else. Google is at cruising altitude now, so cost cutting makes sense I guess.
- randomdata 2y ago
  The strategy hasn't changed. "Pay high salaries" doesn't happen in a vacuum. They only ever paid a small premium above the next best offer the workers had, and the second best offer only ever paid a small premium over the third best offer, and so on down the line. Google is still paying comparatively high salaries to get the best talent, but, thanks to the proliferation of developers, everyone else doesn't have to fight over the scraps anymore. There is enough to go around for everyone. As such, "mom and pop" don't have to pay as much to the not-so-great talent, which means the premiums found by the time you get al the way up to Google are starting from a much lower baseline.
- n_ary 2y ago
  Well, if we look back to those times, it was effective strategy to spray good money to keep talents occupied with dead end products because access to cheap VC money was plentiful due to prosperous decade of zero interest giving anyone ability to compete the slow moving behemoth with innovation as the crowd as hungry to accept new and shiny. Google also managed to lure away talents out of promising places to snuff any competition risks. Now that zero interest days of prosperity is effectively gone, economy and money is tight, everything easy had already been captured by Big Tech… now is the risk free time to ditch the dead weights. Anything easy under the sun has now 20+ clones, expectations are immense, crowd are cautious to accept anything new, no supply of long time cash to burn due ti cautious VCs & non-zero interest rates, plenty regulations to block all privacy shenanigans or other known loopholes. We forget that, the great ones(except M$) were all built in era of lax digital & privacy era and easy supply of cash. Anyone having any idea was showered with cash. Now those days are over. Any threat of competition is minimal. If I were google, this is the perfect time to shed some weight given all of the above.
- tssva 2y ago
  They also used to participate in illegal wage suppressing secret anti-poaching agreements, so this doesn’t seem so far out of line.
GenerWork 2y ago
I'm not sure how it's "tough" to realize this. This has been going on for decades, and people are just now starting to care because the job market isn't growing like it had been for years.
deleted 2y ago
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jasonlotito 2y ago
Google, Apple, and other large tech companies conspired illegally not to poach employees, and we should not be surprised by this at all. This is their MO. They are cheats and liars and actively work against their employees at best.
deleted 2y ago
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jfim 2y ago

It's an interesting contrast to how Google used to operate; pay high salaries to get the best talent they could get their hands on. Looks like they've shifted to keeping the lights on and cutting costs now.

MisterDizzy 2y ago
Yet somehow they keep adding value (so far).
SmellTheGlove 2y ago
They’re also doing stock buybacks and dividends. Ads print money but they’ve basically thrown their hands up and admitted they don’t know how to invest that money into anything else. Google is at cruising altitude now, so cost cutting makes sense I guess.
randomdata 2y ago
The strategy hasn't changed. "Pay high salaries" doesn't happen in a vacuum. They only ever paid a small premium above the next best offer the workers had, and the second best offer only ever paid a small premium over the third best offer, and so on down the line. Google is still paying comparatively high salaries to get the best talent, but, thanks to the proliferation of developers, everyone else doesn't have to fight over the scraps anymore. There is enough to go around for everyone. As such, "mom and pop" don't have to pay as much to the not-so-great talent, which means the premiums found by the time you get al the way up to Google are starting from a much lower baseline.
n_ary 2y ago
Well, if we look back to those times, it was effective strategy to spray good money to keep talents occupied with dead end products because access to cheap VC money was plentiful due to prosperous decade of zero interest giving anyone ability to compete the slow moving behemoth with innovation as the crowd as hungry to accept new and shiny. Google also managed to lure away talents out of promising places to snuff any competition risks. Now that zero interest days of prosperity is effectively gone, economy and money is tight, everything easy had already been captured by Big Tech… now is the risk free time to ditch the dead weights. Anything easy under the sun has now 20+ clones, expectations are immense, crowd are cautious to accept anything new, no supply of long time cash to burn due ti cautious VCs & non-zero interest rates, plenty regulations to block all privacy shenanigans or other known loopholes. We forget that, the great ones(except M$) were all built in era of lax digital & privacy era and easy supply of cash. Anyone having any idea was showered with cash. Now those days are over. Any threat of competition is minimal. If I were google, this is the perfect time to shed some weight given all of the above.
tssva 2y ago
They also used to participate in illegal wage suppressing secret anti-poaching agreements, so this doesn’t seem so far out of line.

GenerWork 2y ago

I'm not sure how it's "tough" to realize this. This has been going on for decades, and people are just now starting to care because the job market isn't growing like it had been for years.

deleted 2y ago

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jasonlotito 2y ago

Google, Apple, and other large tech companies conspired illegally not to poach employees, and we should not be surprised by this at all. This is their MO. They are cheats and liars and actively work against their employees at best.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]