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disgruntledphd2HNSource author
Business & incomeExperience excerpt · English

It's funny to me that everyone talks about pandemic over-hiring, as if this hadn't been a thing for …

… It's funny to me that everyone talks about pandemic over-hiring, as if this hadn't been a thing for a decade before that. Like, when I started at FB in 2013, they probably had about 75% of the engineers they needed (and about 10% of the sales people). But they grew engineering much faster than sales for some reason (engineering in the broad sense including data and product). That being said, it's easy for people to look at other parts of a company and think they are over-staffed, because we don't see all the work necessary to keep the balls in the air.

Original discussionThe Companies Cutting Headcount for AI Will Lose to the Ones Who Didn't203 source comments · at import
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elktownHN

I think the unfortunate reality is that lots of companies in our industry have suspiciously inflated employee counts in the first place. Even when removing AI and the pandemic over-hiring, I wouldn't have been surprised to see corrections sooner or later. Employee count seems to correlate to stock market incentives - which is how GitLab is like 5x larger than Valve.

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TeriyakiBombHN

Exactly this - the late 00s and 10s we were riding the wave of the internet and smartphone adoption. Those markets have matured now and this is ultimately just the response. Covid was like some weird last hurrah for irrational spending. LLMs are just where all of that silly energy is going.

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WarmWashHN

AI aside, if we just look at other engineering disciplines in mature sectors, the future is not bright(er). No fully paid golden cadillac benefits packages (for your dog too!), no twice daily uber eats comps, no $150k entry level, no unlimited PTO, no 6 months leave. If you go to your uncles engineering department at the boiler company, these guy's engineering roles are about as pampered as the warehouse managers. The upside is that it will cull those in it just for the money/lifestyle, and concentrate it down to those in it for the love of the craft.

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SomeoneHN

> when I started at FB in 2013, they probably had […] about 10% of the sales people [they needed] I find that hard to believe. Looking at https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/META/meta-platform... , they had a good revenue growth in the early ‘10s. What did they leave on the table by not having more ten times as many sales people as they did? Revenues? Profits?

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CurosinonoHN

FB is the weirdest company though. For a lot of companies like gitlab you know they have sales for customers, roadmap for their core product etc. FB has what? Intel has around the same number of people and they make chips, laptops, different types of chips. Hardware, software, supply chain etc. FB does what? And what do they do with all these very well paid people?!

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