IT sector is teeming with layoff news with every major company announcing load shedding. The looming economic crisis is one of the major reasons the tech sector is going for the job -cuts putting many of the current tech employees in constant fear of losing their jobs. Amazon, Meta, Apple, and Microsoft, name a company, and there is a good probability that it had already laid off hundreds if not thousands of employees or is planning to in 2023. That apart, the hiring freeze companies are implementing is turning out to be a genuine and imminent threat, particularly for freshers. Close to the heels of this chaos, the massive Google layoffs resulted in the hacking of around 10,000 employees. Google, an employee-friendly company took this drastic step for more than one reason, the most pressing one being tiding over the economic crisis. Google CEO Sundar Pichai made very clear the inability of Google to assure the retention of all employees in 2023. "It's really tough to predict the future, so, unfortunately, I can't honestly sit here and make forward-looking commitments," said Pichai during a companywide meeting with employees. However, surprisingly there are reports suggesting Google is still hiring for certain key positions including for freshers.
Blind, an anonymous professional network has registered a few posts on how hiring agencies are contacting tech people with opportunities for employment with Google. At Blind, employees can post anonymously with Blind supported credential verification. Under the handle 'Google is Still Hiring?', a user named fElony wrote, "Do we know if Google is still hiring? Google recruiter reached out to me for an introduction call. Is it for real or they are just filling hours?" The comments in the thread suggest the interviews really happening and for multiple but limited positions. "I'm on a few different interview panels as an interviewer so I can say yes! It's extremely limited hiring however so for most people it's still a hard hiring freeze" commented another user. Seems like good news, right? Wait till you explore the India-specific thread. It is a real ghost buster.
Google India Hiring thread has one comment that goes like "Can someone explain what's really happening? My interviews were finished a month back with 3 hires and 1 strong hire feedback but my recruiter says no opening or team matching. But I today received a LinkedIn message from the recruiter saying they are hiring for L3/L4 swe." Out of many interesting replies, a user points to how team mismatch leads to delays in recruitment or an instance of corporate ghosting. A reply explaining the mismatch and the possible other option says, "The issue is that there's a disconnect between openings and the recruiter in a sense that the recruiter only hires for a subset of openings, if those get filled then they would say there are no openings. The good news is if there's another recruiter with openings you can tell them about your interviews then they can take you to HC with a team match".
While Google's complacency seems to be synonymous with the typical HR dynamics of a corporate company, it is creating quite a ripple in the tech community. The median salary at Google is $295,884, a comparatively high figure, 70% more than what Microsoft paid for its employees and 153% greater than what its peer companies pay their employees. No wonder why random posts on a website like Blind are causing such a flutter raising hopes among aspiring techies. Putting aside the inductive reasoning here, the company certainly stands at the top of the ladder for anyone to see the Google job coming. The fact that a handful of people have posted certain comments should and would not stop someone from applying for the most coveted Google jobs. The only caveat here lies in not keeping an open mind to other opportunities.