zlacker

>>tech-h+(OP)
Google works like crazy to hire all of the smartest and the best people, but do they really need them? Billions and billions in shareholder value could be extracted by hiring a bunch of mid-tier Java programmers and having them farm Ad Words for the next decade, until the first competition shows up.

>>whatsh+Ac
Many great people are hired not necessarily to move Google forward, but so that they don’t move a Google-competitor forward.

>>ulfw+3d
This makes me think about something.

I don't work at a FAANG company, nor have I ever been to SV, nor do I know anyone who works at one of the many enormous tech companies around SV.

In the TV show Silicon Valley they have characters who sit around unassigned doing nothing at the Google-like company in the show. Does this actually happen? Are there people hired at these companies who just don't have a project? Its entirely feasible that Google could afford to do this just to create a dearth of engineers in the area.

>>dmurdo+be
I have, in the last year, twice been hired then found myself way under-utilized because the company wasn't really ready to do anything with me, or the thing they hired me for fell through, or whatever. A few years ago I was brought on to a mid-sized business software company as part of an acquisition, and in the short time before I ran away was used at maybe 1/8 capacity in the most anti-productivity low-wall-cubicle open-floorplan office I've ever experienced.

Organizational/planning/managerial waste of expensive developer time is real and huge. I'd be surprised if companies the size of Google didn't do similar things some of the time, and if their management's a little more clueful than average they might even make such light-weight or non-assignments official and highly visible to make them easier to account for.