Ask HN: Did anyone land a job in FAANG after layoffs and how is it going?

[di-sukharev]

I'm still seeing a lot of open positions in FAANG, so what exactly has changed in FAANG's hiring process after the layoffs started? My friends in Google say it's like 10x less likely to get an offer now, but why would you layoff thousands of people and hire new middle (2+ years of exp.) engineers anyway? Let's hear more than 2 of my friends :)

[gregjor]

Laying off then re-hiring at reduced pay and benefits, a common practice not confined to the tech industry or FAANG. Also a way to get rid of troublesome and unproductive people under the guise of a mass layoff. Labor unions exist in part to prevent that practice.

I'll let you work out why companies might prefer hiring people with less experience, or discriminate against older and more experienced people -- a practice so widespread in tech we joke about it. Hint: seniority usually implies higher pay, lower chance of getting blinded by free pizza and dry cleaning, and more independence of thought in the workplace. Less work experience usually means a more compliant employee.

A more cynical take: the tech companies, especially FAANG and the startups that emulate them, over-hired to hoard "talent" and slow down their competitors. And they based their hiring binges on bad ideas like "the metaverse," or more generally sustained crazy growth as if markets never mature. The layoffs then represent the workers paying the price for poor management and short-sighted decisions, and pandering to Wall Street and VCs.

[mattbrewsbytes]

I would counter that much of our thought process here at HN is on engineering but at a company the size of a FAANG there are thousands of non engineering people. Unless they have shared a breakdown on layoffs per role/business area it could also be that they need less advertising, marketers, recruiters, sales, support, etc. and are slowing engineering hires down. Two of the FAANG rely heavily on advertising as their cash cow and in an economic downturn companies spend less on advertising.

Getting hired with RSU's at current prices as an element of total comp would put new hires in a good position financially once the economy cycles back into growth.

[badpun]

> The layoffs then represent the workers paying the price for poor management and short-sighted decisions, and pandering to Wall Street and VCs.

You could say that those laid off people were mostly not needed in the first place, and represented burning of billions of Wall Street and VCs funds on unnecessary salaries. So, these people got lucky they got $300k-$500k doing BS things that no one needs, and being the beneficiary of large, misguided wealth transfer from the capitalist class to the worker class. Now the party's over for them, but the money they earned in the meantime gets to stay in their pockets.

[gregjor]

I could say that, with a couple of caveats.

> those laid off people were mostly not needed in the first place, and represented burning of billions of Wall Street and VCs funds on unnecessary salaries

Sure. But they didn't hire themselves.

> these people got lucky they got $300k-$500k doing BS things that no one needs, and being the beneficiary of large, misguided wealth transfer

Agree, but again they didn't hire themselves or assign BS work to themselves.

> from the capitalist class to the worker class

At times like this we (programmers and technical managers) get reminded that despite our white collar trappings and high pay, what we do makes us workers rather than owners of capital. That probably comes as a surprise to the Silicon Valley tech-libertarians, except for the few who managed to start up their own business without going into hock with parasitical investors.

[FrontierPsych]

>discriminate against older and more experienced people -- a practice so widespread in tech we joke about it. Hint: seniority usually implies higher pay, lower chance of getting blinded by free pizza and dry cleaning, and more independence of thought in the workplace. Less work experience usually means a more compliant employee.

As someone who started in the industry in the mid-1980s, this practice was very well known back then, as I'm sure it was very well known before then.

At the start of my career in my mid-20s, we all talked about it all the time - that by 35-40, you are either in management or whatever else. But not a coder, for the most part, except for exceptions.

[gregjor]

62, still writing code and doing system admin. I started freelancing over a decade ago, that fixes some of the age discrimination. I specialize in taking over and fixing broken and abandoned projects, usually left behind when the younger people who apparently passed the "culture fit" test move on to something more fun.

[FrontierPsych]

Cool, good on you.

I did write: "except for exceptions." which of course, there always are.

Even back in the day when you and I were getting our first jobs in tech in the mid-1980s. I'm sure you were very aware of the whole thing about getting pushed out of tech when you are 35-40, no?

And even back in the day, we also knew people mainly got pushed out because people stopped keeping up with the latest trends, langauges, etc, and if someone did, then that is the kind of person who will have a much greater chance of coding into their 60s.

Personally I stopped and moved onto other things.

[gregjor]

I got my first programming job in 1979, at 19. Until I got to my 30s I mostly worked with people my age or older. I never had any trouble finding work and only ran into what I perceived as age discrimination when interviewing with teams of people a decade or younger than me.

It never bothered me to work with younger people, I can keep up, and experience still counts in most companies. I worked in Silicon Valley for a while, found my age counting against me there, but age didn’t seem to matter much outside of the SV environment.

As a freelancer my age never comes up, I don’t have to interview and sometimes I never even meet my customer in person.

Age discrimination does happen. On the other hand I’m not sure I would fit in to a team of people half my age. It also happens that people get older and set in their ways, resisting change and sticking to what worked in the past, and that trait will limit opportunities just as much as gray hair.

[FrontierPsych]

oh, wow, ok. 19...

I went to university and didn't get out until mid-1980s. We're the same age.

About 5 years ago, I did work in a tech company startup with 21 and 22 years old. On my side it was just fine. Don't know what they thought, but it worked out ok for me.

[opisthenar84]

This is one of the most level-headed comments I've seen in a long while. :+1:

FAANG only cares about bottom line. Ignore whatever leadership says about overhiring or whatever other BS.

[mouzogu]

> over-hired to hoard "talent" and slow down their competitors

to say they are "hoarding talent" is to give them far too much credit.

they have budget they spend it so next year have more budget. and big team makes boss look important.

[VirusNewbie]

But the vast majority of folks laid off were entry level or jr engineers.

[roland35]

Source: work at a FAANG which has had layoffs.

There is still some hiring going on, but obviously very much reduced so just by the numbers it's going to be harder. I don't think actual $ offers are lower, if anything they will be better since new hires get better stock grant prices. I think one factor is that you won't see bidding wars like we did in 2021 since it's harder to get multiple offers.

As far as firing and rehiring at lower prices - I honestly don't think this is a thing at larger tech companies. It just takes too long to ramp up new people. I think these companies just needed to shed headcount due to over hiring and the fact that no one quit during the last few years!

Hiring remote people is much much harder now though. Remote is non-existent for new hires, maybe you can get it after working on site a bit.

As far as the process itself, I don't think anything has really changed. Expect a tech screen, then an interview loop with leet code coding, system design, and behavioral sessions.

All that said, I think it seems to be a good time to be a specialist. It is still hard to hire embedded engineers for example.

[dbish]

Having worked across multiple of the FAANGs, I would not trust joining them right now. They have not shown they will stop layoffs and morale has to be dropping as they each (most of them) do multiple rounds instead of the normally suggested single cut.

[Ivoirians]

I received this email yesterday, which I found amusing in a sad way.

Hello, Thank you for booking time with me to discuss your background and opportunities at Microsoft. Unfortunately, I need to cancel our meeting because I will be leaving the company due to changes in our business and reduction in force in Talent Acquisition. I am grateful for my time here and recommend Microsoft to anyone. I wish you all the best in your career and your next opportunity!

[fatnoah]

I was in a job search from late August through early November last year. I've been around a while as a manager, including inside a FAANG, so I have lots of recruiting contacts inside those companies.

I estimate that at least 75% of my recruiter contacts (existing, plus new ones from the job search) have been laid off in the past 6 months. Ones least affected seem to be at smaller companies, though they're not immune either.

My interview "process" at Amazon was hilariously broken, as the following sequence happened:

  1) Recruiter screen  

  2) Initial hiring manager screen  

  3) Re-org, so position went away 

  4) Recruiter radio silence 

  5) New recruiter for new role reaches out and we chat 

  6) New recruiter laid off 

  7) Another recruiter reaches out for previous role, and we chat 

  8) That recruiter laid off 

  9) I decide this isn't the time to try to move to Amazon

[pleasantpeasant]

100% an AI generated response.

[yellow_lead]

This is a message I received from a Google recruiter.

--

This is *** again reaching out to see if you were open to new opportunities? The team I am on supports Software Engineer III - in most other places this would be more of a Software Engineer IV or V.

Based on your experience in ******, there were a few specialized roles that you would have been a great fit for, which closed earlier this month. With those positions opening up again in no time, I wanted to have a 30-minute conversation and learn more about your background. If you or anyone you know would be a good fit for one of our opportunities, please feel free to reach out.

If you or anyone you know would be a good fit for one of our many opportunities, please feel free to reach out.

--

So they are reaching out to candidates without even having job openings. This is likely in order to keep pipelines open for when positions become available. But it comes off as though they have low retention, or plan to do more layoffs and replace them with lower paid workers.

[water-your-self]

This is the shortage of tech workers they were talking about.

[CommanderData]

I'm interested if any Twitter employees remain in the UK?

I can't find anything solid online, seems the UK office is closed.

Were all UK staff get let go?

[Beaver117]

Just one data point at one company, I passed the final stage with good feedback but after a long delay was told the offer was given to an internal candidate instead as headcount is really low for new hires. So a waste of time

[dbish]

This is also why I’ve been recommending people to focus on small company roles. The big techs have too many internal folks who may have their job cut, and they also have recruiting orgs (mostly still) that are willing to burn your time without making sure the job will still be there after you spend all your time interviewing for them.

[idoh]

I started a job at Meta after the November layoffs. The process felt pretty long for me (four months) but talking to other people it was not atypical. I’ve never worked at a FAANG before so I can’t comment on how things are different or anything like that. I am on a specialized area - privacy. From my job search I can tell you that privacy and security continue to be hot areas for hiring.

[illwrks]

I know some recruiters not in faang. From what I've been told before they are likely 'pipelining' talent, essentially looking to always have a pool of warm talent for general roles so when a role is approved and ready to hire for they can slot in a good match.

[idunno246]

I’ve had a few companies that “had openings” and i passed hiring bar, but then actually didn’t have the headcount to hire me. Talking to some others this is very common right now, so I wouldnt trust job postings to reflect how many people are actually being hired

[badbird3]

In contract to start as a security engineer at a FAANG in a few weeks. I passed the loop before the hiring freeze. Current pay is less than the offer before the hiring freeze.

wish me luck...

[AHOHA]

Maybe the layoffs were for non-engineers and more of business folks, or rehiring but at a lower compensations.