One of the best offensive strategies you can have is to make sure all talented people work for you, rather than the competition.

If smaller companies and startups fade away due to coronavirus-induced instability, making sure that their talent winds up with you is a smart move. If you are big enough to afford it, that is, which both of these companies arguably are -- regardless of whether their Q1 and Q2(?) results are worse this year than last.

Even if startups don't fade away, uncertain times means people look for stability. Unless a startup is in one of the sectors benefiting from the lockdown, top talent is likely looking to leave for stability at one of the big players. Which will just accelerate the fall of marginal startups or those struggling.

Plus, I bet they are getting these engineers much cheaper right now and presumably, that cost savings will continue indefinitely.

A lot of people are on Facebook and Instagram all day, stalking friends because there is not much else to do.

There are only so many Google searches I can do in a day. Many of them end on Amazon where I may or may not purchase something.

It doesn't matter much if they spend much time on their platforms now if advertisers stop advertising everywhere.

Exactly right. For example, many media organizations right now are reporting record traffic numbers, but are struggling to make ends meet as advertisers pull out.

Is there actually any numbers people can point towards?

I’ve read similar comments over different forum postings about advertisers tending to cut advertising during times like these to help their financials. And it makes sense to me. But now I’m sitting here, just wondering if anyone has actually looked at numbers during other financial downturns. Or is it just some catching conversation that’s been kicking off....maybe I need to go outside and smell some fresh air.

There have been a couple of articles recently about this:

"L.A. Times to Furlough Workers as Ad Revenue ‘Nearly Eliminated’" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22872711

"As YouTube traffic soars, YouTubers say pay is plummeting" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22856324

WSJ: Facebook Usage Soars, But Online Advertising Plunges https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-warns-that-skyrocketin...

WSJ: Facebook Ad Rates Fall as Coronavirus Undermines Spending https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-ad-rates-fall-as-coron...

Bloomberg: Facebook’s Ads Business Weakening Despite Surge in Usage https://www.bloombergquint.com/technology/facebook-says-ads-...

Even apart from the advertisement coming from the platform, most creators (podcast/Youtube) that I follow report that their direct ad placements have basically dropped to 0 and the only ones they have running now were negotiated pre-pandemic.

People are not working, hence no money. (less money to spent) advertising doesn't make much sense except your target are the wealthy working (or not working class)

But YouTube traffic must have increased, and Android app usage as well.. Google is more than a search engine

Traffic yes, a lot

People advertising on youtube is the problem, that number is only going down

YouTube is maybe... <10% of Google?

Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp... is >90% of Facebook.

> Sandberg announced last week or so that they are going to do accelerated hiring spree

That was a message to the stock market. In reality I haven't heard from a Facebook recruiter in a month now.

I've heard from at least 2 since the lockdown began, so anecdata all around :)

As an anecdote, I got an email from a Facebook recruiter yesterday. They're still hiring, though I'm not sure at what rate and for how long.

Not sure why RivieraKid was getting downvoted - there's no "just a message to the stock market". Lying in this context would be illegal, and would open FB up to shareholders suing the company IMO.

I'm not a securities lawyer, but I would assume that there is little deterrence for "sending a message to the stock market" with statements about hopes, plans, or predictions for the future. As long as there's nothing definitively false as of the moment you say it...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forward-looking_statement

Lying would be illegal...

Heard from 2 recently so they're certainly still hiring and hiring fast

Besides New Hiring, I would be impressed if large companies honour their existing job offers; Which IT services firms which does bulk recruiting in India seem to be doing.

IT firms such as TCS (30,000 recruits this financial year), Wipro (12,000), Cognizant (20,000) and Capgemini (10,000 over January-June) say they are sticking by their offer letters[1].

I've personally witnessed jobs from these companies lift several out of poverty in India (Most of them being the first graduate in their family).

But, obviously those who pass out this year especially the Engineering freshers are going to be the worst hit.

[1]https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/...

For bean counters looking to cut costs, outsourcing to India is going to look pretty attractive. Especially since the actual costs of doing this will only become apparent later...

I'm not sure if this will happen again so soon. Mostly because it seems like wages in technology flattened or even declined on the low-end due to the glut of college graduates capable of filling these roles. I see lots of applicants with non-CS/CE degrees applying for programming and analytics positions.

Part of Sundar's letter says Google is honoring existing job offers.

I don’t understand it either.

Facebook may well be the worlds most powerful sentiment capture and analysis engine ever built but Google tracks conversions and has pretty stellar sentiment capture/analysis capabilities.

Google appears to also have twice as much cash on hand as Facebook. Wonder what they’ll use it for if not to hire competent people to prevent them from starting the next big thing...

tik tok.... they have a real competitive threat, and probably want to make sure when the recession is over, they are still the #1 in social space

Also, back in 2008, Google didn't hire/freezed its hiring, but Facebook and Amazon were still hiring like mad, and it worked well for them. They are used to ride out recessions.

bingo. facebook needs to build the next Tik Tok or they’ll lose

its got me baffled. I wonder if this changed consumer behavior in such a way that it benefits facebook ads and detracts from google. I dont understand it, but it appears to be the message we are seeing

Facebook runs a lot more political ads than Google and it’s commercial ads that are halting.

Political ads make up a small fraction of overall ad spend though.

Content moderators for the election to make sure Uncle Joe wins?

> both depend on ads

True, but their value to advertisers depends on users. Facebook is likely seeing a massive spike in (ad-viewing) users, whereas Google a much more modest one. I'm sure Google Search and YouTube have gone up, but the former won't have gone up much, and the latter has not yet been profitable for Google in the first place.

> I'm wondering why one is tightening the belt and other is moving full speed on expansion

Neither needs to tighten belts. Both have enormous amounts of cash.

Should be easier for FB and Amazon to fill those positions now that Google is not sucking as much air from the atmosphere. I think Google may come to regret its decision for this reason. Part of the reason for these companies to hire is "area denial": the employee is not only hired to do great things, but also to prevent them from doing great things for a competitor. If you stop hiring, you allow a lower-paying competitor like Amazon or Microsoft to scoop up the engineers that would previously be inaccessible to them.

If I were to guess, Facebook's recruiting pipeline is centralized. Whether or not to hire is done at the executive level. When Facebook hires someone, they are first a "Facebook employee", go through the bootcamp, and decide on a team 1-2 months into the job.

Google on the other hand, the recruiting pipeline is more spread out. Whether or not to hire is done at the organizational level (i.e. Cloud, Ads, Search, Core, etc), and that depends on whether or not there are openings in any teams. You are matched with a team before you are even hired.

So, like, obviously, if you have the cash to burn, now is the right time to hire employees. You can get good talent pretty cheap right now. So it's in Google's best interest to ramp up hiring. Unfortunately Google's recruiting pipeline does not support hiring a bunch of people and figuring out what team to be on later.

So yeah, basically, Google has shitty hiring practices. It has nothing to do with them "losing money", they have so much cash in the bank which will easily last till this is over.

Going by your words, Google’s hiring process seems to be hurting them right now (which makes sense). But what are the benefits of hiring this way over Facebook’s style? (or rather where does centralized hiring fall short?)

I always thought it was just political/bureaucratic cruft nobody bothered to fix, because they're Google, and they can have the shittiest interview process in the world and it wouldn't really matter. It seems inferior in every way to Facebook's process. Even outside of this Coronavirus thing they lose out on a lot of good talent because of how long it takes