Hacker News Reader

Comment by throwaway19423 | Hacker News Reader

throwaway19423

Interesting read. There was one stat that seemed insane even with the legendary attrition of the tech industry. 1/3 of employees will be going to the office for the first time?? (article says 50K out of 165K new hires during the pandemic). That is an astounding stat. Did Google bloat when rates were low or did they have higher than normal attrition?

View on HN

Seems they grew a lot ... is this all for the cloud?

Alphabet total number of employees in 2021 was 156,500, a 15.67% increase from 2020.

Alphabet total number of employees in 2020 was 135,301, a 13.79% increase from 2019.

Alphabet total number of employees in 2019 was 118,899, a 20.38% increase from 2018.

Alphabet total number of employees in 2018 was 98,771, a 23.29% increase from 2017

I joined Google ~6 months before COVID. More than 60% the company was hired after my start date, so that 1/3 stat is probably higher.

Oh dear ... that is insane. The institutional continuity has to be so low.

It isn't people leaving. It is stupendously huge growth.

The number is also lower for eng-ftes.

Sibling comment has a good point, this number includes everyone from software engineers to kitchen staff. Very few of my direct peers have left and the Google is growing still.

Big tech has high attrition rates. There are several reasons:

1. Compensation structure. Hiring bonuses are easier to get than equivalent stock grants. So it's common for folks to boomerang around FAANG for 5-10 years.

2. Attrition from industry. If you're a committed DINK and manage your career well, you can semi-retire in your mid 30s.

3. After a few years at FAANG, you can "trade up" to a high-status/high-leverage position outside FAANG without too devastating of a compensation hit (especially relative to CoL).

4. FAANG is kinda brutal for lots of reasons. It's like the day-to-day PITA of enterprise with the competition/politics of a hedge fund after a certain level.

All these murder drones won't program themselves. Pandemic is a good time to hire some unscrupulous devs.

If you prefer an independent Ukraine and Taiwan, you might want to program some murder drones.

I would prefer peace but the empire makes it impossible.

Only because one can do evil things with impunity doesn't make it right. People are people and the murder is murder.

China will attack Taiwan regardless of the existence of the US. The US should help Taiwan to survive.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com