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by teling 646 days ago
As someone involved in hiring, there are a few factors going on:

1. There's no available headcount. No one is leaving since there are no opportunities elsewhere. Especially those on visas.

2. When we do have headcount, we get 1000 resumes within an hour or two. We also have a stack of referrals to get through first. A lot of these resumes are experienced folks with backgrounds in FAANG.

3. Supply remains high (100k CS undergrads every year including global supply) whereas innovation is low.

2 comments

As someone who has recently hired within a FAANG, another problem is internal transfers and downsizing. The external hire process for a big company takes minimum 6 weeks. Within 24 hours of posting a job opening, I've got 20 internal transfers interested, all highly qualified, all familiar with our internal systems and processes, and all desperate to avoid being actually laid off from their team that is disappearing. My last two positions went to a returning ex-employee (who don't have to re-interview if they come back within 2 years) and to a transfer. I wanted to hire externally because I know there are good candidates out there, but it's impossible to justify waiting 6 weeks for the pipeline to close when you know that good internal candidates will get laid off if you don't take them, and the headcount likely will disappear anyway if it's not filled.
background in FAANG means nothing
depends whatchu did at said FAANG and who is doing the hiring. but generally agree.

places like the GOOG are so far out there in terms of tooling and approaches (and size, and bureaucracy, etc.) that you end up with a hire who is damn good at whatever unique internal tooling and job sets are, but can't handle anything else.

they'll expect 250k at minimum, get surly when they don't get it, constantly look to jump or climb, and won't jive with the culture, esp. once that's still using a lot of the more basic approaches that are more common in larger, non-STEM enterprise orgs.

inevitably these guys jump in 1.5 years or less, and achieve nothing of note in that time, except harping on how great tool X is at Meta, or how we did Y at the GOOG and everyone else should. or some sort of PTSD from working at Amazon.

after a couple rounds of getting burned by people with amazing resumes we are now weary of the FAANG pedigree.

Means something if those doing the hiring think it means something.
Means a lot actually. For example, expensive and not great at innovation. But with 3 years of enshittification experience.