Devon (nickname given by Fortune), a software engineer over 20 years old, only works about an hour a day despite being paid 0,000 a year by Google.
He said that after waking up at about 9am, he had breakfast and cleaned himself before working for Google until 11am. Then Devon spends the rest of the day on his startup.
This may sound ridiculous, but Devon has code ready for “important projects” that can be sent as soon as the boss asks, which makes Devon’s boss think he’s busy. , there are thousands of technologists working like you.
In fact, big tech firms like Meta, Google, and Salesforce have been “recruiting ahead of demand,” drawing in too many engineers to prepare for the next phase of growth. Many engineers are recruited but are not assigned the job as in the job announcement.
The results of an anonymous survey on the Blind forum show that one-third of participating technology workers only spend half of the day’s administrative time at work.
Devon says the company wants to get all the engineers involved just to make sure they don’t fall into the hands of a competitor. Google CEO Sundar Pichai has to admit that the company was hiring too many people compared to actual needs when it laid off 12,000 people in January.
Devon says he chose Google to work because he wanted more time for himself.
A Google survey shows that 97% of the company’s employees say the working environment here is great, in addition to high salaries and bonuses, the campus is full of bicycles, gyms, and free meals.
From his experience as an intern at Google, Devon thinks he shouldn’t work too hard. With a salary of several thousand dollars a week, this Gen Z engineer works less than two hours a day and rarely comes to the office. Although the company’s regulations require employees to be present at the office, his manager does not put too much emphasis on this issue.
Devon still completes the assigned code on time, so to his superiors, he is not a lazy employee.
Devon said, people choose Google to “join” because they want to balance work, life and the benefits received. “And if you want a job that pays twice as much as Google, programmers can Apple could be considered but would have to work more intensely, 40 hours a week instead of 5.
Gen Z engineer further revealed, you don’t have to work hard to get promoted, many colleagues work hard for many years but don’t get promoted.
In addition, Google’s policy of being willing to re-hire old people is also one of the reasons why this Gen Z engineer is not fully committed to the company. And even if they are laid off, Google will still give employees a generous amount, enough to pay for a year’s rent and find a new job.
Devon is not an isolated case in the tech industry, and industry experts call this the “doing nothing” generation of engineers and the “virtual work” trend.
Big tech companies ramp up hiring to try to stand out from the competition, so there aren’t enough jobs to keep their employees busy. And as a result, earlier this year there were massive layoffs in Silicon Valley, leaving thousands of engineers out of work.