Tags: big tech hiring spree | layoffs

Big Tech's Hiring Spree Created Idle Workers

By    |   Monday, 10 April 2023 04:04 PM EDT

Now that Meta, Amazon, Google, Apple and other technology behemoths have laid off 168,000 people since the start of the year, some of those who got the pink slip are lashing out about excessive hiring that led to their losing their jobs, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Big Tech companies that found themselves flush with cash during the pandemic went on a hiring spree to build a deep bench and squeeze out the competition, according to some workers who say they were hired to do virtually nothing.

Madelyn Machado, a 33-year-old former recruiter who joined Meta in September 2021, says she spent the lion’s share of her time in meetings that didn’t accomplish anything and that she wasn’t expected to hire anyone but to “learn the ropes” during the six months she lasted in the $190,000-a-year job.

“'We just don’t hire anybody and, like, we still get paid,'” Machado recounts another recruiter telling her.

Hundreds of former technology workers are now confessing their monotonous experiences in TikTok videos going viral.

Spurred by a “war for talent, they were hiring ahead of demand,” says Dartmouth Tuck School of Business Professor Vijay Govindarajan.

Venture capitalist and former PayPal executive Keith Rabois says that for some Big Tech companies, hiring is a “vanity metric.”

A former Meta worker who claims she was being “set up for failure” says on TikTok, “They were just kind of, like, hoarding us like Pokemon cards.”

From the perspective of a competitive technology company, making a smart hire is a long-term investment and is hard to forecast exactly right, says Patrick Moloney, co-head of the global technology practice at consultancy Willis Towers Watson Plc.

“If you’re looking from the outside, you’d wonder, why did you hire that person?” Moloney says. In point of fact, many key technology executives do become very productive and slammed, but it can take time.

Still, others blame a laissez-faire environment that has developed at big technology companies and that only became far worse during the pandemic. One such individual is Thomas Siebel, CEO of software company C3.ai Inc.

“People were job-hopping from jobs where they were doing nothing, working from home, to another where they were doing nothing, working from home—and got paid 15% more,” Siebel says.

Derrick McMillen, who worked at Facebook and Salesforce before the pandemic, says only about 20% of the employees at Big Tech companies do the bulk of the work, while the majority kicks back in their highly compensated jobs, concentrating on frivolities like on-site yoga and long lunches.

“When culture doesn’t let you tell people they’re underperforming, you end up with a team of slackers,” McMillen says.

Bloat and inefficiency at some technology companies has become so pervasive that even witnessing mass layoffs around them has failed to put a fire to work harder under many remaining workers, says Val Katayev, founder of several advertising technology companies.

Managers there are now thinking about additional waves of layoffs, he says, telling themselves, “‘We didn’t realize how inefficient we were.’”








 

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StreetTalk
Now that Meta, Amazon, Google, Apple and other technology behemoths have laid off 168,000 people since the start of the year, some of those who got the pink slip are lashing out about excessive hiring that led to their losing their jobs, The Wall Street Journal reports.
big tech hiring spree, layoffs
502
2023-04-10
Monday, 10 April 2023 04:04 PM
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