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Comment by sys_64738 | Hacker News Reader

> It added more than 27,000 employees in 2020 and 2021, and added an additional 15,344 in the first nine months of this year—about a fourth of that in the most recent quarter.

So it basically doubled employee count in the last three years. Insanity.

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In some organizations, you want to hire big going into the hiring freeze, so that once the layoffs start (and you get told from higher up, "cut x%), you can keep the people you actually care about. Insanity from the point of view of the organization, but rational from the point of view of the mid-level manager.

Don't know if this is what happened at FB, but it happens in some places.

Amazon actually has an 'unregretted attrition rate' metric that it holds managers to. Essentially they are expected to shed a percentage of employees annually. This metric gets gamed as "hire to fire" to keep your core team intact.

https://www.inc.com/jason-aten/amazons-controversial-hire-to...

"The problem is, that's not what's happening. Instead, Amazon managers are hiring people they otherwise wouldn't, or shouldn't, just so they can later fire them to hit their goal. "

Oh god, this is horrific. :-/

Um - if you are retired, can you take an Amazon job for a couple of months every year or two with the express goal of collecting the paychecks until you contribute to the manager's unregretted attrition rate?

Go through all the leetcode rounds with the intention to be fired?

I hope you're joking.

ura means u won't be hired again. so it's a one time thing

That's also why Amazon is running out of people to hire, because it hires and fires people so fast: https://nypost.com/2022/06/17/amazon-could-run-out-of-people...

"Amazon is sounding the alarm over an internal memo which estimates that the retail giant could run out of people to hire and man their US-based warehouses within the next 18 months, according to a report. ... “If we continue business as usual, Amazon will deplete the available labor supply in the US network by 2024,” according to the memo cited by Recode."

I assume the 'hire to fire' metrics are for engineering; not warehouse. Two different labor pools. I assumed the warehouse attrition rates were due to the work being taxing (and audited). It pays well but you can get much more relaxed atmospheres for not much less $$ if you look.

Seems like I have been hearing (FM radio) and seeing (online) ads touting Amazon jobs like in the warehouses.

And at the same time completely expected as per Goodhart's Law.

Is that why just a rumor that you know how to code can lead AMZN recruiters to call you every week?

Just to play devil’s advocate why is that horrific? Presumably the lack of transparency? Would it be morally acceptable if the hiring manager were honest about the scenario and the prospective employee knew to discount equity comp and focus on cash comp and being ready to find a new role?

Edit: Consider if you were offered 200k per annum plus some irrelevant RSUs a year to be fired in 6 months, would you really be offended to take that 100k if you knew up front that those were the terms of the deal? Point being that the arrangement is only immoral if it's dishonest, otherwise it's just basically a gift for reasons that are perhaps odd, but within the giver's rights.

The devil really doesn't need more advocates.

I hate this phrase and I'm not sure why it's getting so much more popular. It's just pithy because it concerns an unliked figure, a devil. We could easily say instead "looking at the other side of the coin" but no one would then say "the coin doesn't need more sides" because that wouldn't make any more sense.

That isn't true, though. The phrase "devil's advocate" almost always refers to taking the other side of an issue where doing so is understood to be negative. When used to low-key argue in favor of the position because one believes in shitty things--and it's usually pretty obvious!--the user of the phrase is merely telling on themselves.

"Well, maybe shitty people doing shitty things is good, actually??" does no one any favors.

No, the phrase is most often used to simply mean, "the other side of this discussion." In fact I almost never see it to mean what you said, to take the side of the negative side of an issue where said negative side would condemn one to be a "shitty person." It seems again that the phrasing creates this pervasive idea that the person using the phrase is using it in a fully intended negative way when it's just said off hand without thought. That is to say, it is replaceable with a phrase like "looking at the other side of the coin," as I initially stated.

Examples:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33544320

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6315113#6315483

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2564385

I'm sympathetic to your view, but I worry where it leads us too. Is it people never questioning whether they're "on the right side" or doing the right thing? Some of the worst things I've seen done were done by people who thought they were doing good.

Sorry, did I imply somewhere that criticism is bad? Because heck no, and if I apologize. Counter-analysis is important! Critical, even. And there are plenty of ways to do that. Like "if I were to steelman the opposition". Or, if you're going to put your chips down: "this feels incorrect, because X."

That particular phrase is pretty much used for bad faith remarks when one wants to distance themselves from the blast radius. It's hiding the ball. Doubly so when one, as the person to whom I replied did, has to invent a situation where it'd be okay (so as to imply by transference that others are okay).

You had to make up a scenario to justify your position.

Instead of doing that, discuss the scenario at hand.

There is no mention that people are being informed up front that they will be fired in 6 months, so your reply is not helpful.

It's a shame you were down voted so heavily for your question. I think it's a good one to consider. Surely at some point it does become a worthwhile deal. Imagine if they offered you $2 Mil/year? I would work my ass off and be damn happy for it for a few months knowing I'll be fired for that kind of money. Even if it were only 3 months long and I pocketed $500k, that would be a good deal to me.

Amazon already discounts equity comp. You vest 5% the first year and 15% the second year, but you get paid in cash equivalents those first two years.

If you can find one example of a hiring manager being honest about the scenario, I'll eat my RSUs

I doubt middle managers are coming from that perspective, most likely it's just "empire building", i.e. grabbing all the headcount that you can get as that gives you more clout and influence ("oh X had Y people under him, we have to promote him !")

An additional role for "The Project Scapegoat" in Dilbert.

https://www.dilbert.com/strip/1999-03-15

I would say “hiring big” in the context you mention is nowhere near the level of hiring mentioned in the parent comment.

Ahh the good ol' hire to fire

And when you consider the fact that pretty much every other tech company did the same wild overhiring in those same years, where did all this new talent suddenly show up from? The simple answer – it didn't. The companies just lowered their hiring bar wayyy down to fill quotas, and are now suffering because of it.

Or they just hire everybody else's employees? Anecdotally, we tried to hire during the past few years as a mid-sized, well known tech company, pretty much nobody showed up. It got so bad we had to stop giving coding tests because nobody was passing them.

And this is with great pay and perks. I can't imagine how are traditional companies were hiring tech people.

>And this is with great pay and perks

How do you know the pay was great? Because you were offering twice what existing employees make, as one does?

And as far as "great perks", does that mean healthcare with almost no out-of-pocket costs and a leave policy that is attractive to people who want to have a family, or does it mean a foosball table and free k-cups?

Pay at big tech companies is well known, we were competitive with that.

No out-of-pocket healthcare costs actually. 14wk parental leave for both parents, unlimited sick days, 20 days PTO, something like 15 holidays etc. Not a scam.

Which company was this?

If the marginal return per employee is still good then "lowering the bar" makes sense, not lowering the bar would be throwing money away - right?

And during the pandemic certainly some of the new talent showing up was good, things changed and people stuck in jobs they were actually "too good for" moved on.

I wouldn't assume it was "filling quotas" - it was filling positions and the positions existed for some reason, they were making a lot of money and there was probably more work to do!

You have to keep in mind that in this type of organization, managers are highly incentivized to grow their teams, by all means.

The number of people "under" you is the dick measuring tape.

At my last company, the team's budget for merit increases was based upon the size of the team. More headcount meant more money available for promotions and fixing historical pay imbalances. It was not a good system that directly caused good employees to leave.

This size=power issue is in my opinion an often-underestimated flaw of organization relying on middle-management.

"Filling quotas" vs "hiring as many people as I can for clout" are different things and I suppose both are possible, but one imagines that both are enabled by the fundamental metric of generating revenue as justification.

You hire ahead of growth, so you need to overcorrect when contraction occurs so it makes sense that if revenues are now shrinking so are the staffing levels.. it kinda feels like these explanations are projecting some weird politics on to very basic business logic.

Traditionally, Facebook hired in line with revenue, to keep revenue per head constant.

It's crazy phenomenon going on.. hiring people a lot and laying off them later..

Irony is these companies developing AI algorithms to analyse humans and their behaviours.. but failed to predict their workforce requirements..

Did it occur to you that the fired fodder trained the AI :p

Only crazy as growth stalled. If it kept pace with prior years they’d of had doubled revenue in that time frame

Perhaps, but once you're as big as FB, you should be able to guess that your growth rate will inevitably slow. No company that big keeps growing at the same rate, or they'd take over the entire economy in short order. AT&T, GE, IBM, Dell, Microsoft, all had their growth rate slow as they got big. If FB was hiring on the assumption that it wouldn't happen to them, they were foolish to do so.

It's also a way to take advantage of high-priced stock while they can. Of course that doesn't mean they should hire recklessly and pay through the nose for people to do VR research or whatever that won't pay off this decade.

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