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Comment by eschneider | Hacker News Reader

Some much for doing the big cut and getting it over with. Worst of all possible worlds.

The employees must have seen the writing on the wall when the company was hiring en masse.

Hiring standards must have fallen if they added people so rapidly.

Engineers vocally advocated for hiring more people because they have “too much work”. Engineers are on the interview panels and so are also responsible for hiring standards to drop (if, in fact, that is true).

There’s always more work to be done. Doesn’t mean it’s worth doing.

Facebook went through some really massive, traumatic growth and the amount of work increased far faster than hiring or engineering could keep up. This left scars on the organization—better to have too many engineers than too few, the wisdom went.

During this period of growth, the “more work” that needed to be done really was critical. It just isn’t critical any more.

Most of the engineers I worked with (non-tech industry) never seemed to have a clue about the business situation of the company. They could just see there were lots of requirements and assumed the future was bright.

Edit: Yes, I see this contradicts my original post. I was hoping the employees in big tech would be a bit smarter.

> Hiring standards must have fallen if they added people so rapidly

I have been hearing this about Meta / FB for the last 10 years. This line of thinking is overly simplistic. If a company like FB wants to ramp up hiring, they have many tools at their disposal. Hiring bar isn't the only tool, or even a very important one. Things they can do:

1. They can really jack up the compensation package and signing bonuses 2. Open offices in places where they didn't have any presence 3. Open up to remote work 4. Allow flexible hours 5. Increase retention through outstanding perks and benefits 6. Scale hiring efforts - expand the recruiting org, train more employees to conduct interview, reward employees for referrals and conduct interviews 7. Expand outreach into communities from where we historically didn't get much applicants

Meta tried everything above, and possibly more. Hiring bar doesn't matter when you have boatload of money.

Ok maybe you're right (I have no experience of trying to integrate huge numbers of people coming from outside big tech in a way that doesn't devalue their skills), but I would feel a bit concerned for my future compensation regarding #2, #3 and #4 in your list if I wasn't extremely bullish about the future of the business (especially #3).

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