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Comment by wnevets | Hacker News Reader

> stop them working for rivals,

I thought this well known within the industry? Isn't this the point of the university to FAANG pipeline?

This is and has always been nonsense. FAANGs (and more) all compete against each other and if they do not derive significant value from these hires, it doesn't make any strategic sense to bloat your headcount just to prevent your rivals from also bloating their own headcounts.

In case someone goes "but what about the startups" - it doesn't make sense for any individual large tech company to hire people just to prevent them from starting startups or being hired at startups, given that most startups don't compete with them and often help create moat for their own business, not to mention that their own hiring (as opposed to big tech hiring as a whole) has a negligible effect on the talent pool as a whole.

> FAANGs (and more) all compete against each other

That didn't stop Google and Apple on agreeing to not compete against each other on talent [1].

[1] https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-tech-jo...

Sure but that collusion actually makes sense from their perspective and is literally the exact opposite of what's being alleged, which is that Big Tech is essentially keeping the cost of talent artificially high in order to hurt their competition.

> Sure but that collusion actually makes sense from their perspective and is literally the exact opposite of what's being alleged

But it absolutely calls in question the notion these companies wouldn't do something just because they're "competing" against each other.

> But it absolutely calls in question the notion these companies wouldn't do something just because they're "competing" against each other.

This doesn't make any sense and you're misunderstanding the original comment. The point is the idea that they are hurting their bottom line by overhiring, but the whole thing works out because it prevents their competition from hiring is completely nonsensical, when you're alleging that they are all doing it. If they are all hurting themselves by overhiring, they can't be deriving any benefit from keeping the talent away from your competition. Your competition is also overhiring and doesn't need the talent either. So keeping them away from your competition helps your competition at your expense.

> The point is the idea that they are hurting their bottom line by overhiring, but the whole thing works out because it prevents their competition from hiring is completely nonsensical, when you're alleging that they are all doing it. If they are all hurting themselves by overhiring, they can't be deriving any benefit from keeping the talent away from your competition.

Is there a reason why you think FAANG only competes against each other and no one else? FAANG colluding to prevent other companies from getting access to tech talent is exactly something they would do even tho they are "competing" against each other. OpenAI for example is now seen a direct competitor against Alphabet and its cash cow.

Once again, this doesn't even make the slightest bit of economic sense and you're once again failing to understand extremely very basic points. No one is saying saying FAANG only competes against each other. It's just that you're completely unable to articulate any actual theory as to what's going on and why anyone would do it. Like which companies are talent-starved vs which companies are part of the cabal? How does the cabal even know which other companies are talent-starved and which other companies are trying to do the same thing they are? How do they even coordinate this? Even assuming your theory (which is simply mathematically impossible) is plausible, do you think all these big company CEOs meet and decide on quotas, so that everyone has to hire X amount? Everyone benefits from hiring less, right? What is the enforcement mechanism here?

Also, it's simply not economically possible for the cabal to be so threatened by the talent-starved companies as to engage in completely self-sabotaging actions to increase their own cost, while these apparently exceptional talent-starved companies are unable to outbid companies that derive no actual value from the talent.

Anyone who's familiar with any type of organization (and even have cursory knowledge of economics) should be able to see that overhiring has mostly to do with the fact that managing a larger team confers status to the manager while the cost is borne by the organization, so there are systemic incentives for managers at all levels to increase and compete for scope, which is inherently inefficient with respect to the goals of the organization at large. Ignoring these dynamics and focusing on implausibly airtight collusion between large entities that are made up of 10s or even 100s of thousands of people that constantly leak everything is just pure naivete.

Many outright ridiculous and false things are "known". This talk of bullshit hiring sounds more like a massive amount of copium from envious people.

It feels like an open secret, but that's still not evidence. I was expecting something like leaked emails from execs explicitly talking about it or something.

I kinda doubt Google is having anyone do actual known-useless-to-all work just so they don't work at a competitor, but I think it's probably very possible that preventing someone form working at a competitor is _part_ of the value-add Google sees in hiring someone, which means they don't need to see quite as much clear value in what they'll be working on at Google.

You can hire to outpace your competitors without having them do "fake work" once hired (whatever that means).

It doesn't make much sense to not fully utilize people once hired.

I'm not convinced most people at very large companies are doing "real" work most of the time anyway. Wouldn't need to do anything special at these large companies to create fake work just for these people, it would just be "regular" work.

I don't understand why this sentiment is so prevalent. It's like people watch Silicon Valley the TV show and think it's actually representative of big tech.

I don't know anyone who does what I could consider "fake work".

Unless you think anyone who doesn't measurably and immediately impact the bottom line is doing "fake work".

> I don't understand why this sentiment is so prevalent. It's like people watch Silicon Valley the TV show and think it's actually representative of big tech.

I'm not limiting this sentiment to just big tech.

For example very big companies tend to have a large number of people who do a lot of talking without saying actually saying anything. I would argue being trapped in those long meetings is "fake" work. The large number of employees working from home since COVID has shown most of those long meetings didn't need to happen.

Now that the four day work week is gaining momentum with no lost of productivity[1] we have even more proof of the amount of "fake" work being done.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/22/business/four-day-work-we...

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