The Money Mustache Community
General Discussion => Welcome and General Discussion => Topic started by: Paul der Krake on January 17, 2023, 08:37:53 PM
-
Amazon: 18,000
Meta: 11,000
Microsoft: 11,000
Salesforce: 9,000
Cisco: 4,000
Twitter: 3,700
Crypto.com: 2,000
Coinbase: 2,000
Carvana: 1,500
Snap: 1,300
Doordash: 1,200
Stripe: 1,000
Shopify: 1,000
Redfin: 850
...the list goes on and on.
Obviously missing from the list as of writing: Google, Apple, Netflix. Are we done clenching soon? Is this the end of 26 year old engineers with 400k total comp?
Let's hear everyone's predictions.
-
/popcorn
Another big wave coming to amazon tomorrow.
I think at least 1 more large wave for most companies.
And then there is this prediction ...
https://www.teamblind.com/post/The-real-reason-behind-layoffs-in-big-tech-Go3FX0GU
-
According to Wikipedia, MSFT has 220,000 employees, Meta 75,000. It's not like they're going out of business. And I'd wager most of the people being let go aren't the ones making 400k either.
A friend of mine who were trying to hire people during 2008 said it actually got a lot harder, companies were dumping the low performers so there was a huge pool of people you didn't want to hire diluting your chances of finding the good ones.
-
And then there is this prediction ...
https://www.teamblind.com/post/The-real-reason-behind-layoffs-in-big-tech-Go3FX0GU
I don't buy that at all, especially not at the top of the market for eng.
The simplest explanation is likely the best one: money isn't free anymore, and growth stonks must compete with 4.5% risk-free T-bills. Growth isn't as important anymore, unit economics and operational efficiency is the name of the game.
My company did layoffs recently and the leadership was quite candid about this. The message was "look we've never been profitable, some of it by choice but some of it because we we prioritized growth. If you want your stock to be worth something in this environment, we need to nail the basics. LFG".
-
According to Wikipedia, MSFT has 220,000 employees, Meta 75,000. It's not like they're going out of business. And I'd wager most of the people being let go aren't the ones making 400k either.
Microsoft is reducing headcount by 5% after increasing it 36% since the start of the pandemic. Plenty to nip and tuck.
-
Most techs are managing a tough economy pretty well IMO. I wouldn’t read too much into the minuscule #s of layoffs cited above. (Amazon’s # = ~1.2% of their headcount FWIW)
Some stocks are on sale if you’re interested in that sort of thing.
-
My company has laid off about 5-10% of the workforce at the start of every recession. They almost never fire people for any reason outside these events, so I think it's just a matter of saying "sorry the economy made me do it" instead of "you're not pulling your weight around here, we're going to have to let you go". It's usually the people that you think "what does this person do and why are they here?".
-
My company has laid off about 5-10% of the workforce at the start of every recession. They almost never fire people for any reason outside these events, so I think it's just a matter of saying "sorry the economy made me do it" instead of "you're not pulling your weight around here, we're going to have to let you go". It's usually the people that you think "what does this person do and why are they here?".
The most annoying and demotivating thing for hard-working people at a company is watching loafers hang on year after year. Fire ‘em!
-
According to Wikipedia, MSFT has 220,000 employees, Meta 75,000. It's not like they're going out of business. And I'd wager most of the people being let go aren't the ones making 400k either.
Microsoft is reducing headcount by 5% after increasing it 36% since the start of the pandemic. Plenty to nip and tuck.
This 100%
There are fewer headlines about all the hiring tech did and the crazy proffits durring the pandemic.
Amazon gross profit for the quarter ending September 30, 2022 was $56.833B, a 18.69% increase year-over-year.
Amazon gross profit for the twelve months ending September 30, 2022 was $216.165B, a 14.27% increase year-over-year.
Amazon annual gross profit for 2021 was $197.478B, a 29.28% increase from 2020.
Amazon annual gross profit for 2020 was $152.757B, a 32.85% increase from 2019.
Amazon annual gross profit for 2019 was $114.986B, a 22.68% increase from 2018.
-
And then there is this prediction ...
https://www.teamblind.com/post/The-real-reason-behind-layoffs-in-big-tech-Go3FX0GU
I don't buy that at all, especially not at the top of the market for eng.
The simplest explanation is likely the best one: money isn't free anymore, and growth stonks must compete with 4.5% risk-free T-bills. Growth isn't as important anymore, unit economics and operational efficiency is the name of the game.
My company did layoffs recently and the leadership was quite candid about this. The message was "look we've never been profitable, some of it by choice but some of it because we we prioritized growth. If you want your stock to be worth something in this environment, we need to nail the basics. LFG".
I think you're exactly right. My employer just furloughed half the engineers (myself included) because the changing investment environment made management worry that the next round of capital might not be forthcoming when it would have been needed given the prior salary expense.
Most techs are managing a tough economy pretty well IMO. I wouldn’t read too much into the minuscule #s of layoffs cited above. (Amazon’s # = ~1.2% of their headcount FWIW)
In the case of Amazon the bulk of their staff works in the warehouses. Those teams have no need to do layoffs (and are in fact still hiring) because people quit on their own all the dang time. The layoffs should be considered in the context of their much smaller corporate headcount and make up a more significant percentage there.
-
In the case of Amazon the bulk of their staff works in the warehouses. Those teams have no need to do layoffs (and are in fact still hiring) because people quit on their own all the dang time. The layoffs should be considered in the context of their much smaller corporate headcount and make up a more significant percentage there.
That's not quite right: some Amazon warehouses are closing altogether in a rationalisation programme (usually closing smaller older places in favour of newer bigger ones) so some warehouse staff are losing jobs they would rather keep.
-
My employer just furloughed half the engineers (myself included) because the changing investment environment made management worry that the next round of capital might not be forthcoming when it would have been needed given the prior salary expense.
Well that's super interesting, I've never heard of engineer furloughs in the private sector. It's usually for government employees while budget fights are ongoing. What are the mechanics like in your case? Are you eligible for unemployment, do you expect to come back and/or receive back pay eventually?
-
Most techs are managing a tough economy pretty well IMO. I wouldn’t read too much into the minuscule #s of layoffs cited above. (Amazon’s # = ~1.2% of their headcount FWIW)
In the case of Amazon the bulk of their staff works in the warehouses. Those teams have no need to do layoffs (and are in fact still hiring) because people quit on their own all the dang time. The layoffs should be considered in the context of their much smaller corporate headcount and make up a more significant percentage there.
[/quote]
Likely true but the numbers are still relevant. All companies need to adjust to inflation and the cost of money. Tech is no different.
The future for techies is bright.
-
My employer just furloughed half the engineers (myself included) because the changing investment environment made management worry that the next round of capital might not be forthcoming when it would have been needed given the prior salary expense.
Well that's super interesting, I've never heard of engineer furloughs in the private sector. It's usually for government employees while budget fights are ongoing. What are the mechanics like in your case? Are you eligible for unemployment, do you expect to come back and/or receive back pay eventually?
I am eligible for unemployment during the furlough. The company is paying for health insurance during this time and equity vesting continues uninterrupted. I expect no back pay since the stated purpose of this move is cost reduction, not merely a cost delay. They've estimated a two-month duration, but cautioned that it could last more or less time based on various factors. A permanent loss of my job is possible if the situation doesn't improve after a number of months. They also offered a severance package for anyone who wasn't interested in waiting around. From what I hear, a slim majority of my affected colleagues took it.
I am of course taking the time to explore other options. My last job search took a while because I was limiting myself to opportunities with solid missions I could get behind (particularly in climate tech). I expect a similar—if not longer—timeline this time around. I figure odds are good my current employer calls me back to work before I get a better offer. If not, so be it. I'm already FI. I did raise the possibility of returning part-time to our CTO and he seemed very receptive to the idea. The team is a bit lacking on leadership/experience at the moment as the furlough overwhelmingly targeted those likely to have higher salaries. I had been thinking of asking for part-time before the furlough anyway to get better work/life balance, but such arrangements are so rarely approved in this industry. Nothing like financial pressure to force consideration of something they would be unlikely to approve otherwise!
-
My friend at Google said they just laid off 12k. Said he got an email about it at 2 AM.
-
Came here to post the same news about google.
Sounds like the employees getting cut are receiving close to 6 months of pay (two months notice before being laid off, four months of severance), which is better than the folks at twitter got. But still has to be gut wrenching news to wake up to for those hit by it.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/20/tech/google-job-cuts/index.html
-
Good news is that monthly job growth is still strong in the face of rate hikes.
-
Good news is that monthly job growth is still strong in the face of rate hikes.
But which jobs? A bunch of openings in the low paying service sector isn't going to be much help to tech workers used to making six figures.
And really, the strong job market just increases the likelihood of further rate hikes or longer periods before rates might be dropped again.
-
I am eligible for unemployment during the furlough. The company is paying for health insurance during this time and equity vesting continues uninterrupted.
That's a good deal, especially since you're already FI. Likewise for the potential part-time work. We've hit our number, so I wouldn't mind a two month furlough under those conditions during the middle of ski season. :-)
-
Good news is that monthly job growth is still strong in the face of rate hikes.
But which jobs? A bunch of openings in the low paying service sector isn't going to be much help to tech workers used to making six figures.
And really, the strong job market just increases the likelihood of further rate hikes or longer periods before rates might be dropped again.
There's a large middle ground between tech and low paying service jobs.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/pivoting-tech-seemed-thrilling-2018-heres-what-has-taken-anders/
IMO, tech sucking up gobs of talent isn't good for the economy. The current layoffs seem like a necessary rebalance after CEOs overhired and overpaid during the pandemic.
-
My company posted pretty good earnings/profits last year . . . and then followed it up with a round of layoffs 'because of the coming recession'. But the layoffs were a little weird. Usually layoffs target mostly dead weight, but we lost several good people.
-
Good news is that monthly job growth is still strong in the face of rate hikes.
But which jobs? A bunch of openings in the low paying service sector isn't going to be much help to tech workers used to making six figures.
And really, the strong job market just increases the likelihood of further rate hikes or longer periods before rates might be dropped again.
There's a large middle ground between tech and low paying service jobs.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/pivoting-tech-seemed-thrilling-2018-heres-what-has-taken-anders/
IMO, tech sucking up gobs of talent isn't good for the economy. The current layoffs seem like a necessary rebalance after CEOs overhired and overpaid during the pandemic.
Yup, between 2021-2022 I knew about 15-20 people that had worked at other companies or smaller consulting firms or the government that all went to Google, Amazon, and Meta. From my small consulting firm alone Amazon took 5 people within a year.
-
Good news is that monthly job growth is still strong in the face of rate hikes.
But which jobs? A bunch of openings in the low paying service sector isn't going to be much help to tech workers used to making six figures.
And really, the strong job market just increases the likelihood of further rate hikes or longer periods before rates might be dropped again.
There's a large middle ground between tech and low paying service jobs.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/pivoting-tech-seemed-thrilling-2018-heres-what-has-taken-anders/
IMO, tech sucking up gobs of talent isn't good for the economy. The current layoffs seem like a necessary rebalance after CEOs overhired and overpaid during the pandemic.
Agreed. My central point was that if the job openings don't align with the skills and salaries of the people being laid off, then it may not matter. Tons of jobs in hospitality probably don't appeal to tech workers. Tons of jobs in the medical field don't align with the skills of untrained service workers. So simply looking at job openings may not be an indicator of actual economic health.
Here's some data about which sectors of the economy have the most openings right now:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/872834/monthly-job-openings-in-the-united-states-by-industry/
-
Came here to say that my employer, a smallish startup which shall remain nameless, announced layoffs today of about 25% of the company. My role was not cut, but the mood on the all-company zoom call was, as you can imagine, very low.
It's tough because I, and at least some of my coworkers, had thought we were in a good position in terms of funding. But leadership believes we need to make that funding last longer than initially planned, because it's now expected to be a few years before we can do another round of fundraising.
-
Came here to say that my employer, a smallish startup which shall remain nameless, announced layoffs today of about 25% of the company. My role was not cut, but the mood on the all-company zoom call was, as you can imagine, very low.
It's tough because I, and at least some of my coworkers, had thought we were in a good position in terms of funding. But leadership believes we need to make that funding last longer than initially planned, because it's now expected to be a few years before we can do another round of fundraising.
I know that feeling. I got caught up in the 2000/2001 downturn when the startup I worked for folded unexpectedly. Fortunately, my position is much more secure this time. (knocks on wood). FWIW, I've worked in tech for a while now (27 years) and this feels similar to 2000/2001.
-
Came here to say that my employer, a smallish startup which shall remain nameless, announced layoffs today of about 25% of the company. My role was not cut, but the mood on the all-company zoom call was, as you can imagine, very low.
It's tough because I, and at least some of my coworkers, had thought we were in a good position in terms of funding. But leadership believes we need to make that funding last longer than initially planned, because it's now expected to be a few years before we can do another round of fundraising.
Yep, exact same situation here.
-
Came here to say that my employer, a smallish startup which shall remain nameless, announced layoffs today of about 25% of the company. My role was not cut, but the mood on the all-company zoom call was, as you can imagine, very low.
It's tough because I, and at least some of my coworkers, had thought we were in a good position in terms of funding. But leadership believes we need to make that funding last longer than initially planned, because it's now expected to be a few years before we can do another round of fundraising.
I know that feeling. I got caught up in the 2000/2001 downturn when the startup I worked for folded unexpectedly. Fortunately, my position is much more secure this time. (knocks on wood). FWIW, I've worked in tech for a while now (27 years) and this feels similar to 2000/2001.
My personal recollection of 2001 was alot worse than this. But we all had different experiences of the tech bubble... And this time around I'd be perfectly happy to collect a severance package. :-)
I'm interested in the original question about salaries - are mid-6 figure salaries in the tech sector sustainable in the long run?
-
Came here to say that my employer, a smallish startup which shall remain nameless, announced layoffs today of about 25% of the company. My role was not cut, but the mood on the all-company zoom call was, as you can imagine, very low.
It's tough because I, and at least some of my coworkers, had thought we were in a good position in terms of funding. But leadership believes we need to make that funding last longer than initially planned, because it's now expected to be a few years before we can do another round of fundraising.
I know that feeling. I got caught up in the 2000/2001 downturn when the startup I worked for folded unexpectedly. Fortunately, my position is much more secure this time. (knocks on wood). FWIW, I've worked in tech for a while now (27 years) and this feels similar to 2000/2001.
My personal recollection of 2001 was alot worse than this. But we all had different experiences of the tech bubble... And this time around I'd be perfectly happy to collect a severance package. :-)
I'm interested in the original question about salaries - are mid-6 figure salaries in the tech sector sustainable in the long run?
For many jobs, yes absolutely. The job of a software engineer is often quite literally to make other jobs obsolete by creating software to manage processes that used to require more human labor. So yes, if the code you write can make hundreds or thousands of jobs obsolete, that's absolutely worth lots of money.
-
What kind of packages are people seeing? 4 weeks per year of service? Instant vesting?
-
What kind of packages are people seeing? 4 weeks per year of service? Instant vesting?
Really depends on the company! A friend of mine was laid off from Google today and he's getting nearly a year of salary (slightly less than that length of time for stock vesting) since he was working there for almost a decade. The offer that I got from my startup if I didn't want to do the furlough thing was for four weeks of salary plus the cost of a month of COBRA.
-
Came here to say that my employer, a smallish startup which shall remain nameless, announced layoffs today of about 25% of the company. My role was not cut, but the mood on the all-company zoom call was, as you can imagine, very low.
It's tough because I, and at least some of my coworkers, had thought we were in a good position in terms of funding. But leadership believes we need to make that funding last longer than initially planned, because it's now expected to be a few years before we can do another round of fundraising.
I know that feeling. I got caught up in the 2000/2001 downturn when the startup I worked for folded unexpectedly. Fortunately, my position is much more secure this time. (knocks on wood). FWIW, I've worked in tech for a while now (27 years) and this feels similar to 2000/2001.
This divide is noted in the NYT about tech layoffs. https://www.yahoo.com/news/tech-layoffs-shock-young-workers-191628840.html
-
Came here to say that my employer, a smallish startup which shall remain nameless, announced layoffs today of about 25% of the company. My role was not cut, but the mood on the all-company zoom call was, as you can imagine, very low.
It's tough because I, and at least some of my coworkers, had thought we were in a good position in terms of funding. But leadership believes we need to make that funding last longer than initially planned, because it's now expected to be a few years before we can do another round of fundraising.
I know that feeling. I got caught up in the 2000/2001 downturn when the startup I worked for folded unexpectedly. Fortunately, my position is much more secure this time. (knocks on wood). FWIW, I've worked in tech for a while now (27 years) and this feels similar to 2000/2001.
My personal recollection of 2001 was alot worse than this. But we all had different experiences of the tech bubble... And this time around I'd be perfectly happy to collect a severance package. :-)
I'm interested in the original question about salaries - are mid-6 figure salaries in the tech sector sustainable in the long run?
For many jobs, yes absolutely. The job of a software engineer is often quite literally to make other jobs obsolete by creating software to manage processes that used to require more human labor. So yes, if the code you write can make hundreds or thousands of jobs obsolete, that's absolutely worth lots of money.
True, though I think there's the question of who captures that value. If there's a shortage of SWEs then most of the value goes to the engineers as comp packages get bid up in talent wars. If, on the other hand, there's a surplus of SWEs then most of the value goes to shareholders as engineers compete against one another.
-
Came here to say that my employer, a smallish startup which shall remain nameless, announced layoffs today of about 25% of the company. My role was not cut, but the mood on the all-company zoom call was, as you can imagine, very low.
It's tough because I, and at least some of my coworkers, had thought we were in a good position in terms of funding. But leadership believes we need to make that funding last longer than initially planned, because it's now expected to be a few years before we can do another round of fundraising.
I know that feeling. I got caught up in the 2000/2001 downturn when the startup I worked for folded unexpectedly. Fortunately, my position is much more secure this time. (knocks on wood). FWIW, I've worked in tech for a while now (27 years) and this feels similar to 2000/2001.
My personal recollection of 2001 was alot worse than this. But we all had different experiences of the tech bubble... And this time around I'd be perfectly happy to collect a severance package. :-)
I'm interested in the original question about salaries - are mid-6 figure salaries in the tech sector sustainable in the long run?
For many jobs, yes absolutely. The job of a software engineer is often quite literally to make other jobs obsolete by creating software to manage processes that used to require more human labor. So yes, if the code you write can make hundreds or thousands of jobs obsolete, that's absolutely worth lots of money.
True, though I think there's the question of who captures that value. If there's a shortage of SWEs then most of the value goes to the engineers as comp packages get bid up in talent wars. If, on the other hand, there's a surplus of SWEs then most of the value goes to shareholders as engineers compete against one another.
But not every software position is a FAANG total comp package. To pick on one company, Glassdoor says that a Senior Software Engineer at GitLab might make ~$150k in salary plus perhaps ~$25k cash bonus and another $35k in stock:
https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/GitLab-Engineering-Salaries-EI_IE1296544.0,6_DEPT1007.htm
That's good money but not $400k out of school mid six figures.
-
Came here to say that my employer, a smallish startup which shall remain nameless, announced layoffs today of about 25% of the company. My role was not cut, but the mood on the all-company zoom call was, as you can imagine, very low.
It's tough because I, and at least some of my coworkers, had thought we were in a good position in terms of funding. But leadership believes we need to make that funding last longer than initially planned, because it's now expected to be a few years before we can do another round of fundraising.
I know that feeling. I got caught up in the 2000/2001 downturn when the startup I worked for folded unexpectedly. Fortunately, my position is much more secure this time. (knocks on wood). FWIW, I've worked in tech for a while now (27 years) and this feels similar to 2000/2001.
My personal recollection of 2001 was alot worse than this. But we all had different experiences of the tech bubble... And this time around I'd be perfectly happy to collect a severance package. :-)
I'm interested in the original question about salaries - are mid-6 figure salaries in the tech sector sustainable in the long run?
For many jobs, yes absolutely. The job of a software engineer is often quite literally to make other jobs obsolete by creating software to manage processes that used to require more human labor. So yes, if the code you write can make hundreds or thousands of jobs obsolete, that's absolutely worth lots of money.
True, though I think there's the question of who captures that value. If there's a shortage of SWEs then most of the value goes to the engineers as comp packages get bid up in talent wars. If, on the other hand, there's a surplus of SWEs then most of the value goes to shareholders as engineers compete against one another.
But not every software position is a FAANG total comp package. To pick on one company, Glassdoor says that a Senior Software Engineer at GitLab might make ~$150k in salary plus perhaps ~$25k cash bonus and another $35k in stock:
https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/GitLab-Engineering-Salaries-EI_IE1296544.0,6_DEPT1007.htm
That's good money but not $400k out of school mid six figures.
Agreed. To be clear, I'm too far removed from tech (FIREd ~8 years ago) to have a good sense of current market dynamics. Just describing the economic reality. My tech career started during the 2000/2001 implosion. In those days quality SWEs still generated a lot of value, it's just that there were a lot of people competing for a dwindling number of jobs. It was difficult to land a job and almost no one was getting raises/bonuses. Though not sure how 2023 compares.
-
What kind of packages are people seeing? 4 weeks per year of service? Instant vesting?
At my employer, 8 weeks severance, plus "more for people who have been there longer" but the details of that weren't disclosed. Three additional months of vesting and removal of the 1-year cliff. I think the layoff announcements that I've seen on HackerNews lately had a few more than weeks of severance than us. Otherwise quite similar, I haven't heard of any that didn't remove the vesting cliff.
-
The red hot post pandemic job market has clearly turned now, and the signs have been there for a while with crap like quiet quitting becoming a trending thing. If you have never been through a downturn then it can be a shock to the system, but everyone will likely go through at least a couple during their working careers.
Of course it's not just in tech. Layoffs are happening in most industries as I type this. It's only the typical 26yo six figure earning software engineers think that they are more irreplaceable than most.
-
I'm interested in the original question about salaries - are mid-6 figure salaries in the tech sector sustainable in the long run?
For many jobs, yes absolutely. The job of a software engineer is often quite literally to make other jobs obsolete by creating software to manage processes that used to require more human labor. So yes, if the code you write can make hundreds or thousands of jobs obsolete, that's absolutely worth lots of money.
True, though I think there's the question of who captures that value. If there's a shortage of SWEs then most of the value goes to the engineers as comp packages get bid up in talent wars. If, on the other hand, there's a surplus of SWEs then most of the value goes to shareholders as engineers compete against one another.
For sure. In the past several years the engineers got to capture more of this value as companies were snapping up SWEs left and right. Whether most of these new positions had a positive ROI or not is a question above my pay grade, but it's neither here nor there at the moment. The tech labor market is now definitely shifting in the other direction, and those who remain employed through all this will likely feel less empowered to demand to collect such a high percentage of the value they create.
-
Came here to say that my employer, a smallish startup which shall remain nameless, announced layoffs today of about 25% of the company. My role was not cut, but the mood on the all-company zoom call was, as you can imagine, very low.
It's tough because I, and at least some of my coworkers, had thought we were in a good position in terms of funding. But leadership believes we need to make that funding last longer than initially planned, because it's now expected to be a few years before we can do another round of fundraising.
I know that feeling. I got caught up in the 2000/2001 downturn when the startup I worked for folded unexpectedly. Fortunately, my position is much more secure this time. (knocks on wood). FWIW, I've worked in tech for a while now (27 years) and this feels similar to 2000/2001.
My personal recollection of 2001 was alot worse than this. But we all had different experiences of the tech bubble... And this time around I'd be perfectly happy to collect a severance package. :-)
I'm interested in the original question about salaries - are mid-6 figure salaries in the tech sector sustainable in the long run?
For many jobs, yes absolutely. The job of a software engineer is often quite literally to make other jobs obsolete by creating software to manage processes that used to require more human labor. So yes, if the code you write can make hundreds or thousands of jobs obsolete, that's absolutely worth lots of money.
True, though I think there's the question of who captures that value. If there's a shortage of SWEs then most of the value goes to the engineers as comp packages get bid up in talent wars. If, on the other hand, there's a surplus of SWEs then most of the value goes to shareholders as engineers compete against one another.
Could equally be argued that many of these tech entities will never be profitable amd only exist due to cheap money, therefore create no economic wealth (they are actually wealth-destroying as they tie up scarce resources and impoverish the rest of society), and the high salaries they are paying are just a gross misallocation of resources.
-
Came here to say that my employer, a smallish startup which shall remain nameless, announced layoffs today of about 25% of the company. My role was not cut, but the mood on the all-company zoom call was, as you can imagine, very low.
It's tough because I, and at least some of my coworkers, had thought we were in a good position in terms of funding. But leadership believes we need to make that funding last longer than initially planned, because it's now expected to be a few years before we can do another round of fundraising.
I know that feeling. I got caught up in the 2000/2001 downturn when the startup I worked for folded unexpectedly. Fortunately, my position is much more secure this time. (knocks on wood). FWIW, I've worked in tech for a while now (27 years) and this feels similar to 2000/2001.
My personal recollection of 2001 was alot worse than this. But we all had different experiences of the tech bubble... And this time around I'd be perfectly happy to collect a severance package. :-)
I'm interested in the original question about salaries - are mid-6 figure salaries in the tech sector sustainable in the long run?
For many jobs, yes absolutely. The job of a software engineer is often quite literally to make other jobs obsolete by creating software to manage processes that used to require more human labor. So yes, if the code you write can make hundreds or thousands of jobs obsolete, that's absolutely worth lots of money.
True, though I think there's the question of who captures that value. If there's a shortage of SWEs then most of the value goes to the engineers as comp packages get bid up in talent wars. If, on the other hand, there's a surplus of SWEs then most of the value goes to shareholders as engineers compete against one another.
Could equally be argued that many of these tech entities will never be profitable amd only exist due to cheap money, therefore create no economic wealth (they are actually wealth-destroying as they tie up scarce resources and impoverish the rest of society), and the high salaries they are paying are just a gross misallocation of resources.
Yes, I'm sure lots of tech positions don't create any net value. And it's not necessarily because of the people, there are lots of cancelled projects and products.
We'll see what happens to tech salaries over the next year or two as all of these unemployed people find new work. It could create a job market where people with pre-2022 salaries are unable to leave their positions without taking a large pay cut.
-
My employer just furloughed half the engineers (myself included) because the changing investment environment made management worry that the next round of capital might not be forthcoming when it would have been needed given the prior salary expense.
Well that's super interesting, I've never heard of engineer furloughs in the private sector. It's usually for government employees while budget fights are ongoing. What are the mechanics like in your case? Are you eligible for unemployment, do you expect to come back and/or receive back pay eventually?
Auto and steel manufacturers do it pretty regularly. I've never heard of anyone getting back pay.
-
My employer just furloughed half the engineers (myself included) because the changing investment environment made management worry that the next round of capital might not be forthcoming when it would have been needed given the prior salary expense.
Well that's super interesting, I've never heard of engineer furloughs in the private sector. It's usually for government employees while budget fights are ongoing. What are the mechanics like in your case? Are you eligible for unemployment, do you expect to come back and/or receive back pay eventually?
Auto and steel manufacturers do it pretty regularly. I've never heard of anyone getting back pay.
I'm an engineer in manufacturing, and my company favors furloughs over layoffs. We'll do a 1 day a week furlough for example, or a temp layoff (usually voluntary) due to some seasonality in our business. We get health insurance and unemployment. It's actually a pretty good deal if you are financially aware. A lot of people love the temp layoff because they use it for extended travel.
Regarding the layoff age divide, I see that very very strongly at my company. We had company wide temp layoffs when Covid first hit (our sales dropped like a rock). Younger folks lost their damn minds. I remember the 2001 layoffs (was in college) and experienced the 07-10 layoffs, and to me and other folks my age and older, it was not a big deal.
My H works for a boring manufacturing company that hires tech folks, and they regularly bail for Amazon at twice the salary.... Guess who isn't laying anyone off? The boring companies. There are jobs, they just aren't as flashy and fancy.
-
I don't exactly remember when it clicked that I was, fundamentally, in the job-destruction business. Gotta be okay with that.
Tech is largely about storing, manipulating, and retrieving data, for one business process or another. Maybe we don't do it yourself, maybe w merely build tools for others to do it. At the end of the day, we're here to replace expensive humans who would otherwise be using some version of a filing cabinet. The tech being cool or clever is a very distant secondary concern.
Sometimes the replacement is worse, and the displacement is real regardless of which is doing a better job. But on net we're freeing humanity from boring repetitive tasks, and that's pretty cool. I'm not interested in going back to a world of elevator operators and travel agents.
-
I don't exactly remember when it clicked that I was, fundamentally, in the job-destruction business. Gotta be okay with that.
Tech is largely about storing, manipulating, and retrieving data, for one business process or another. Maybe we don't do it yourself, maybe w merely build tools for others to do it. At the end of the day, we're here to replace expensive humans who would otherwise be using some version of a filing cabinet. The tech being cool or clever is a very distant secondary concern.
Sometimes the replacement is worse, and the displacement is real regardless of which is doing a better job. But on net we're freeing humanity from boring repetitive tasks, and that's pretty cool. I'm not interested in going back to a world of elevator operators and travel agents.
Sounds closer to IT than tech. Automobile driver assist, manufacturing robotics and jet airplanes don't do a lot of data storage, manipulation and retrieval for business processes. Relatively speaking.
-
I don't exactly remember when it clicked that I was, fundamentally, in the job-destruction business. Gotta be okay with that.
Tech is largely about storing, manipulating, and retrieving data, for one business process or another. Maybe we don't do it yourself, maybe w merely build tools for others to do it. At the end of the day, we're here to replace expensive humans who would otherwise be using some version of a filing cabinet. The tech being cool or clever is a very distant secondary concern.
Sometimes the replacement is worse, and the displacement is real regardless of which is doing a better job. But on net we're freeing humanity from boring repetitive tasks, and that's pretty cool. I'm not interested in going back to a world of elevator operators and travel agents.
Sounds closer to IT than tech. Automobile driver assist, manufacturing robotics and jet airplanes don't do a lot of data storage, manipulation and retrieval for business processes. Relatively speaking.
No PdK is correct, the majority of tech is about storing, manipulating, and moving data around. While I was an engineer at Google there was a popular internal meme lamenting the plight of SWEs that went something like "I take data from one protobuf and put it into a different protobuf" (protobuf, or Protocol Buffer, being Google's proprietary method for serializing and storing data). Manipulating data is so common that we have acronyms such as CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete). As you say, parts of tech don't deal with large amounts of data, but these are relatively small, and I'd be willing to bet that companies doing robotics and driver assist software deal with a lot of CRUD to mange and test their products. Yes, day to day life in the software mines is a lot more mundane than the slick marketing sold to the public.
-
I don't exactly remember when it clicked that I was, fundamentally, in the job-destruction business. Gotta be okay with that.
Tech is largely about storing, manipulating, and retrieving data, for one business process or another. Maybe we don't do it yourself, maybe w merely build tools for others to do it. At the end of the day, we're here to replace expensive humans who would otherwise be using some version of a filing cabinet. The tech being cool or clever is a very distant secondary concern.
Sometimes the replacement is worse, and the displacement is real regardless of which is doing a better job. But on net we're freeing humanity from boring repetitive tasks, and that's pretty cool. I'm not interested in going back to a world of elevator operators and travel agents.
Sounds closer to IT than tech. Automobile driver assist, manufacturing robotics and jet airplanes don't do a lot of data storage, manipulation and retrieval for business processes. Relatively speaking.
No PdK is correct, the majority of tech is about storing, manipulating, and moving data around. While I was an engineer at Google there was a popular internal meme lamenting the plight of SWEs that went something like "I take data from one protobuf and put it into a different protobuf" (protobuf, or Protocol Buffer, being Google's proprietary method for serializing and storing data). Manipulating data is so common that we have acronyms such as CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete). As you say, parts of tech don't deal with large amounts of data, but these are relatively small, and I'd be willing to bet that companies doing robotics and driver assist software deal with a lot of CRUD to mange and test their products. Yes, day to day life in the software mines is a lot more mundane than the slick marketing sold to the public.
I once read a book that said that "the essence of Computer Science is input and output." Now I don't know where I read that and I wish that I did. But yes, a self driving car is 100% input and output with bunch of algorithms in the middle.
-
I don't exactly remember when it clicked that I was, fundamentally, in the job-destruction business. Gotta be okay with that.
I prefer the term "drudgery-destruction", but yes.
-
I once read a book that said that "the essence of Computer Science is input and output." Now I don't know where I read that and I wish that I did. But yes, a self driving car is 100% input and output with bunch of algorithms in the middle.
Correct. And most programming/software issues are related to input and output, not to processing/manipulation.
-
The most challenging part of a software engineering job is reading someone else's code and understanding it well enough that you are able to make changes/enhancements/bug-fixes to it, without causing any (any more?) problems/bugs.
-
I tend to think that at least the timing of the latest layoffs (e.g., Google) is explained by this article:
https://news.stanford.edu/2022/12/05/explains-recent-tech-layoffs-worried/
[tl;dr: copycat behavior]
My company posted pretty good earnings/profits last year . . . and then followed it up with a round of layoffs 'because of the coming recession'. But the layoffs were a little weird. Usually layoffs target mostly dead weight, but we lost several good people.
IME, the first round of layoffs is usually dead weight. But later rounds tend to focus on the money, often leading to a sort of reverse seniority effect where greybeards get the axe because they're paid more [and the implicit age discrimination is totally incidental...].
Sounds like your company may have skipped straight to Round 2? Probably means a beancounter was in charge of the process, and possibly the decision itself.
-
The most challenging part of a software engineering job is reading someone else's code and understanding it well enough that you are able to make changes/enhancements/bug-fixes to it, without causing any (any more?) problems/bugs.
You get paid the big bucks to figure out why the last guy wrote a 150 line long method with a switch statement inside of a try/catch block inside of a do/while loop inside of an if/else inside of a using block where all the variable names are single letters and they used full namespaces when declaring them. After attempting to troubleshoot it, you realize the name of the method doesn't actually describe what the method does.
-
The most challenging part of a software engineering job is reading someone else's code and understanding it well enough that you are able to make changes/enhancements/bug-fixes to it, without causing any (any more?) problems/bugs.
You get paid the big bucks to figure out why the last guy wrote a 150 line long method with a switch statement inside of a try/catch block inside of a do/while loop inside of an if/else inside of a using block where all the variable names are single letters and they used full namespaces when declaring them. After attempting to troubleshoot it, you realize the name of the method doesn't actually describe what the method does.
It's more like: You get paid the big bucks to figure out how a multi-hundred (or thousand) source code file sub-system works, (created by dozens of developers, some of which no longer work at the company)
-
I don't exactly remember when it clicked that I was, fundamentally, in the job-destruction business. Gotta be okay with that.
I prefer the term "drudgery-destruction", but yes.
One person's drudgery is another persons paycheck. Not everyone has the cognitive ability earn a living as an engineer. The best some people can do is drive a truck, file documents, or run a cash register.
-
I tend to think that at least the timing of the latest layoffs (e.g., Google) is explained by this article:
https://news.stanford.edu/2022/12/05/explains-recent-tech-layoffs-worried/
[tl;dr: copycat behavior]
Interesting. The behavior described in the article is consistent with my experience.
But later rounds tend to focus on the money, often leading to a sort of reverse seniority effect where greybeards get the axe because they're paid more [and the implicit age discrimination is totally incidental...].
That was me in 2008. I made it through a couple rounds of layoffs, even getting an out-of-cycle performance bonus ~3 months before they whacked the entire team. It all worked out, though. I was deeply unhappy at that job and let my management know that I'd happily take a package. We weren't FI at that time, but I had a decent cushion and received a generous package. That went down in early December (Merry Christmas...you're fired), so I spent the next 6 months being a ski bum, writing code for my own enjoyment and searching for an ideal gig.
Six years later, the company for whom I was working was acquired by the company that laid me off. Somewhat related to the article - the work my group was doing was a factor in the acquisition. I think the acquiring company could have developed that work in house instead of buying it if they hung on to and took care of their talent. Regardless, it worked out great for those of us involved. Our outstanding options vested when we were acquired and we were given retention bonuses to stay on for at least a year to help with the transition. I have no love for this company, but they bankrolled a good portion of our stash due to their questionable decisions.
-
Not quite the same as private sector tech but I'll never forget the almost-experience of being laid off on a moment's notice. I was 22/23 and already on my third contract in the meat grinder of government software engineering. We all got called into the conference room on a Friday and were informed the government had issued a stop work order. Everyone was fired. A sister contract operating out of the same office suite was going to take on some positions and if they wanted you they'd come calling after the meeting. I was one of the lucky ones but if there were any lingering doubts that being a cog in that system was not for me, they were extinguished that day. It took a decade more for me to feel like we'd saved enough to get out and I promptly pulled the trigger on FIRE.
-
I don't exactly remember when it clicked that I was, fundamentally, in the job-destruction business. Gotta be okay with that.
I prefer the term "drudgery-destruction", but yes.
One person's drudgery is another persons paycheck. Not everyone has the cognitive ability earn a living as an engineer. The best some people can do is drive a truck, file documents, or run a cash register.
Yes, and it will probably get worse from there, especially if the rate of tedious labor destruction vastly outpaces the rate of bullshit job creation.
I’m not sure how we’ll reckon with this as a society—probably haphazardly. Anything short of a revolution might be wishful thinking.
In a similar vein, I’ve noticed that FIREing and not having a job doesn’t work for many people, so I’m not sure how something like UBI would pan out.
-
The most challenging part of a software engineering job is reading someone else's code and understanding it well enough that you are able to make changes/enhancements/bug-fixes to it, without causing any (any more?) problems/bugs.
You get paid the big bucks to figure out why the last guy wrote a 150 line long method with a switch statement inside of a try/catch block inside of a do/while loop inside of an if/else inside of a using block where all the variable names are single letters and they used full namespaces when declaring them. After attempting to troubleshoot it, you realize the name of the method doesn't actually describe what the method does.
It's more like: You get paid the big bucks to figure out how a multi-hundred (or thousand) source code file sub-system works, (created by dozens of developers, some of which no longer work at the company)
"developers"
When MegaCorps started asking business graduates, who took one python course in college, to work on scripts and processes, I knew it was going to be a shitshow. The end result was multi-thousand line source files with no methods/functions.
-
The most challenging part of a software engineering job is reading someone else's code and understanding it well enough that you are able to make changes/enhancements/bug-fixes to it, without causing any (any more?) problems/bugs.
You get paid the big bucks to figure out why the last guy wrote a 150 line long method with a switch statement inside of a try/catch block inside of a do/while loop inside of an if/else inside of a using block where all the variable names are single letters and they used full namespaces when declaring them. After attempting to troubleshoot it, you realize the name of the method doesn't actually describe what the method does.
It's more like: You get paid the big bucks to figure out how a multi-hundred (or thousand) source code file sub-system works, (created by dozens of developers, some of which no longer work at the company)
"developers"
When MegaCorps started asking business graduates, who took one python course in college, to work on scripts and processes, I knew it was going to be a shitshow. The end result was multi-thousand line source files with no methods/functions.
I blame the hardware. Processing speeds and memory way too high. The software quality has gone in the opposite direction because those one course wonders can make code sort of kind of function.
-
More details are coming out (https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/21/google-employees-scramble-for-answers-after-layoffs-hit-long-tenured.html) from the Google layoff. Letting long-tenured employees go may be the right thing to do, some deadwood there with folks getting a little too comfortable and riding their reputation as an early employee. [I was headed down the same path, which was part of my reason for FIRE, just didn't want to go there.] However, laying off recently promoted employees? That's strange. Google has a pretty difficult peer-based promotion process, so it should be rare that someone is promoted to their level of incompetence. Of course, we're only hearing one side of the story, so who knows what's really going in, but part of me wonders if Google just isn't very good at layoffs due to inexperience. Notifying folks via email/canceled access cards who've dedicated 10-20 years to the company is pretty awful form IMO.
Yesterday I logged in to LinkedIn for the first time in 5+ years and it's filled with story after story of layoffs. As expected, recruiting orgs got hit hard, but also seeing a lot of experienced engineers got the ax. Sad, and my heart goes out to all affected. But the same time, it's a good reminder that no job is your identity, the workplace isn't your family, and despite all the flowery propaganda from corporate saying otherwise, business is always transactional which means you will be chewed up and spit out if that's what's "right" for the shareholders.
-
I tend to think that at least the timing of the latest layoffs (e.g., Google) is explained by this article:
https://news.stanford.edu/2022/12/05/explains-recent-tech-layoffs-worried/
[tl;dr: copycat behavior]
Interesting. The behavior described in the article is consistent with my experience.
Me too. :P
-
I tend to think that at least the timing of the latest layoffs (e.g., Google) is explained by this article:
https://news.stanford.edu/2022/12/05/explains-recent-tech-layoffs-worried/
[tl;dr: copycat behavior]
Interesting. The behavior described in the article is consistent with my experience.
Me too. :P
Not so much mine. Most of the layoffs I've been through were driven by declining sales, not social proof/social contagion.
-
I tend to think that at least the timing of the latest layoffs (e.g., Google) is explained by this article:
https://news.stanford.edu/2022/12/05/explains-recent-tech-layoffs-worried/ (https://news.stanford.edu/2022/12/05/explains-recent-tech-layoffs-worried/)
[tl;dr: copycat behavior]
Interesting. The behavior described in the article is consistent with my experience.
Me too. :P
Not so much mine. Most of the layoffs I've been through were driven by declining sales, not social proof/social contagion.
Tech staffed up wildly during COVID. Now they are winding back down toward normal staffing levels.
-
I tend to think that at least the timing of the latest layoffs (e.g., Google) is explained by this article:
https://news.stanford.edu/2022/12/05/explains-recent-tech-layoffs-worried/
[tl;dr: copycat behavior]
Interesting. The behavior described in the article is consistent with my experience.
Me too. :P
Not so much mine. Most of the layoffs I've been through were driven by declining sales, not social proof/social contagion.
Our management said that although our profits were up and the business was doing great, the layoffs were necessary to 'correctly position the company for the coming recessionary period'.
So . . . basically it was all done on a hunch.
-
I tend to think that at least the timing of the latest layoffs (e.g., Google) is explained by this article:
https://news.stanford.edu/2022/12/05/explains-recent-tech-layoffs-worried/
[tl;dr: copycat behavior]
Interesting. The behavior described in the article is consistent with my experience.
Me too. :P
Not so much mine. Most of the layoffs I've been through were driven by declining sales, not social proof/social contagion.
Our management said that although our profits were up and the business was doing great, the layoffs were necessary to 'correctly position the company for the coming recessionary period'.
So . . . basically it was all done on a hunch.
If there had been a hiring binge before that, it was also probably done on a hunch based on projected growth, demand, etc.
-
I tend to think that at least the timing of the latest layoffs (e.g., Google) is explained by this article:
https://news.stanford.edu/2022/12/05/explains-recent-tech-layoffs-worried/
[tl;dr: copycat behavior]
Interesting. The behavior described in the article is consistent with my experience.
Me too. :P
Not so much mine. Most of the layoffs I've been through were driven by declining sales, not social proof/social contagion.
Our management said that although our profits were up and the business was doing great, the layoffs were necessary to 'correctly position the company for the coming recessionary period'.
So . . . basically it was all done on a hunch.
If there had been a hiring binge before that, it was also probably done on a hunch based on projected growth, demand, etc.
Nope.
-
I tend to think that at least the timing of the latest layoffs (e.g., Google) is explained by this article:
https://news.stanford.edu/2022/12/05/explains-recent-tech-layoffs-worried/
[tl;dr: copycat behavior]
Interesting. The behavior described in the article is consistent with my experience.
Me too. :P
Not so much mine. Most of the layoffs I've been through were driven by declining sales, not social proof/social contagion.
Our management said that although our profits were up and the business was doing great, the layoffs were necessary to 'correctly position the company for the coming recessionary period'.
So . . . basically it was all done on a hunch.
If there had been a hiring binge before that, it was also probably done on a hunch based on projected growth, demand, etc.
Nope.
Maybe they need the money to hire some more executives?
-
The most challenging part of a software engineering job is reading someone else's code and understanding it well enough that you are able to make changes/enhancements/bug-fixes to it, without causing any (any more?) problems/bugs.
You get paid the big bucks to figure out why the last guy wrote a 150 line long method with a switch statement inside of a try/catch block inside of a do/while loop inside of an if/else inside of a using block where all the variable names are single letters and they used full namespaces when declaring them. After attempting to troubleshoot it, you realize the name of the method doesn't actually describe what the method does.
Anyone being paid big bucks doesn’t have to worry about any of that nonsense :)
The more you are paid in tech, (usually) the easier the working conditions !
-
The most challenging part of a software engineering job is reading someone else's code and understanding it well enough that you are able to make changes/enhancements/bug-fixes to it, without causing any (any more?) problems/bugs.
You get paid the big bucks to figure out why the last guy wrote a 150 line long method with a switch statement inside of a try/catch block inside of a do/while loop inside of an if/else inside of a using block where all the variable names are single letters and they used full namespaces when declaring them. After attempting to troubleshoot it, you realize the name of the method doesn't actually describe what the method does.
Anyone being paid big bucks doesn’t have to worry about any of that nonsense :)
The more you are paid in tech, (usually) the easier the working conditions !
I've noticed that too. I was wondering if I just became used to it over time, but I think my working conditions have become easier.
-
A VC CEO worth 7.9B is urging Alphabet to continue layoffs/salary cuts because "salaries are too high". Like my dude, what's your compensation plan?
https://techstory.in/tci-fund-ceo-chris-hohn-calls-for-more-layoffs-and-salary-cuts-at-google/
Google has over 150k employees, and the median salary is $300k?! I don't want to side with the cold billionaire here, but if that's true, it seems like a shit ton of fat that could potentially be trimmed.
-
The most challenging part of a software engineering job is reading someone else's code and understanding it well enough that you are able to make changes/enhancements/bug-fixes to it, without causing any (any more?) problems/bugs.
You get paid the big bucks to figure out why the last guy wrote a 150 line long method with a switch statement inside of a try/catch block inside of a do/while loop inside of an if/else inside of a using block where all the variable names are single letters and they used full namespaces when declaring them. After attempting to troubleshoot it, you realize the name of the method doesn't actually describe what the method does.
Anyone being paid big bucks doesn’t have to worry about any of that nonsense :)
The more you are paid in tech, (usually) the easier the working conditions !
I've noticed that too. I was wondering if I just became used to it over time, but I think my working conditions have become easier.
I'm not even close to the elite level of programmers in the industry. I end up cleaning up after the cheap hires my company makes. It's fine. It pays the bills :)
-
A VC CEO worth 7.9B is urging Alphabet to continue layoffs/salary cuts because "salaries are too high". Like my dude, what's your compensation plan?
https://techstory.in/tci-fund-ceo-chris-hohn-calls-for-more-layoffs-and-salary-cuts-at-google/
Google has over 150k employees, and the median salary is $300k?! I don't want to side with the cold billionaire here, but if that's true, it seems like a shit ton of fat that could potentially be trimmed.
Median compensation is around $300k, median salary is significantly lower due to the amount of compensation paid through stock and bonuses at these companies. Also Google (like so many other companies these days) keeps this median high by outsourcing the lower-paid half of its workforce: people like food service workers, bus drivers, janitors, security guards, receptionists, and a whole bunch of other folks who spend their entire working day at Google don't technically work for Google.
-
I don't exactly remember when it clicked that I was, fundamentally, in the job-destruction business. Gotta be okay with that.
I prefer the term "drudgery-destruction", but yes.
One person's drudgery is another persons paycheck. Not everyone has the cognitive ability earn a living as an engineer. The best some people can do is drive a truck, file documents, or run a cash register.
I would way, way rather run a cash register than be an engineer, and programming was the most boring thing ever.
-
The hedge fund dude is rage baiting employees and boy is it working well.
Some incredible discourse around stock buybacks too. Did you know that if Google hadn't done spent 57 billion on buybacks last year they could have solved world hunger 8 times and given every American a million dollar?
-
A VC CEO worth 7.9B is urging Alphabet to continue layoffs/salary cuts because "salaries are too high". Like my dude, what's your compensation plan?
https://techstory.in/tci-fund-ceo-chris-hohn-calls-for-more-layoffs-and-salary-cuts-at-google/
Google has over 150k employees, and the median salary is $300k?! I don't want to side with the cold billionaire here, but if that's true, it seems like a shit ton of fat that could potentially be trimmed.
There's more to the story, which is more about bloated leadership than overpaid engineers. Good summary here (https://andzwa.medium.com/why-the-google-layoffs-are-about-personal-ambition-and-poor-leadership-817236947368). After working there for 10 years I can say the author is spot on.
-
A VC CEO worth 7.9B is urging Alphabet to continue layoffs/salary cuts because "salaries are too high". Like my dude, what's your compensation plan?
https://techstory.in/tci-fund-ceo-chris-hohn-calls-for-more-layoffs-and-salary-cuts-at-google/
Google has over 150k employees, and the median salary is $300k?! I don't want to side with the cold billionaire here, but if that's true, it seems like a shit ton of fat that could potentially be trimmed.
There's more to the story, which is more about bloated leadership than overpaid engineers. Good summary here (https://andzwa.medium.com/why-the-google-layoffs-are-about-personal-ambition-and-poor-leadership-817236947368). After working there for 10 years I can say the author is spot on.
12,000 employees? Amateurs. I worked for a company that laid off 90,000 employees. They're gone now, though. Just a whisper on the wind.
That's a good summary article. It also explains the executive behaviour I experienced at another company around 2012. I've never really understood the drive to be in charge of a business unit. Or an entire business. It's a huge commitment. It's really hard to be successful. And the politics are ruthless. These people measure their success based on their paygrade instead of their actual accomplishments. Status seekers.
-
Does anyone else remember all those "Day in the Life" vlogs/videos/social media posts that were getting created and shared around a few months back? If you don't know what I'm talking about, a quick search will net you a bunch of these. "Tech" employees from LinkedIn, Google, and many other tech companies were sharing what they did in a given day and it was hilarious. Most of the people posting these were generally not "tech" strictly speaking (i.e. not coders, architects, server admins, etc.). They were tech-adjacent people: Analysts (super vague job title), scrum masters, social media strategists, supervisors, etc. All the people who kind of help tech people with the things that are not explicitly tech like meetings, working with the business side of the organization, reporting, etc. You didn't see a lot of back-end developers or automation engineers posting these things.
And boy, these vloggers got dragged all over the place online because their "work days" consisted of things like taking advantage of the ridiculous freebies and frills of their company (nap rooms, abundant free snacks, swag, Google dogs they could pet, etc.) and not really doing a lot of actual work. It made tech companies look like adult daycare rather than workplaces.
So it comes as no surprise to me that thousands of "tech" employees got laid off. I'm sure actual hard workers were impacted and actual developers too, but I have a hunch that the majority was fat just waiting to be trimmed. Now that the news of these layoffs is making headlines, those social media posts are circulating again as if to say "this might be why you were axed." I feel bad for all those who lost their jobs because that sucks, but I think it was necessary from the company's standpoint. Those companies should not have been hiring like they did or creating workplaces filled with non-work.
-
Does anyone else remember all those "Day in the Life" vlogs/videos/social media posts that were getting created and shared around a few months back? If you don't know what I'm talking about, a quick search will net you a bunch of these. "Tech" employees from LinkedIn, Google, and many other tech companies were sharing what they did in a given day and it was hilarious. Most of the people posting these were generally not "tech" strictly speaking (i.e. not coders, architects, server admins, etc.). They were tech-adjacent people: Analysts (super vague job title), scrum masters, social media strategists, supervisors, etc. All the people who kind of help tech people with the things that are not explicitly tech like meetings, working with the business side of the organization, reporting, etc. You didn't see a lot of back-end developers or automation engineers posting these things.
And boy, these vloggers got dragged all over the place online because their "work days" consisted of things like taking advantage of the ridiculous freebies and frills of their company (nap rooms, abundant free snacks, swag, Google dogs they could pet, etc.) and not really doing a lot of actual work. It made tech companies look like adult daycare rather than workplaces.
So it comes as no surprise to me that thousands of "tech" employees got laid off. I'm sure actual hard workers were impacted and actual developers too, but I have a hunch that the majority was fat just waiting to be trimmed. Now that the news of these layoffs is making headlines, those social media posts are circulating again as if to say "this might be why you were axed." I feel bad for all those who lost their jobs because that sucks, but I think it was necessary from the company's standpoint. Those companies should not have been hiring like they did or creating workplaces filled with non-work.
Those "day in the life" videos are, for the most part, carefully curated marketing masquerading as organic content. Recruiting is the goal so an idealized version of daily life is presented. Google (and other tech companies) are very strict about recording videos on the inside, everything you see is vetted. Sure, there are always a few naive folks that don't understand the game and come into Google thinking it's adult daycare, but in my experience they don't last long.
Tech adjacent roles are generally very necessary, and I say this as a SWE with a CS degree and a MBA. You need non-technical artsy/designy people doing UX. In a large project you need project managers (scrum master plays a similar role in agile teams). You also need management types to work across org boundaries and up/down the management chain. And you need product people/analysts doing market research and evaluating business strategy... by the sheer number of products Google births and then subsequently kills, I would argue that they don't do enough analysis of ideas before wasting huge sums of money and damaging the brand along the way. Products that idealize l33t coders at the expense of other areas tend to produce whiz-bang solutions in search of a problem. Every Wozniac needs a Jobs.
-
Regarding tech-adjacent jobs, it's hard to draw hard conclusions because every company is different, but I've observed a few trends.
1) the forerunners were in recruiting. Cruel as it may sound, a lot of the first layoffs were dismissed as "not real layoffs because engineering isn't impacted". Recruiting later got obliterated in the big cuts, often losing 50% or more of the department. Which makes sense if everyone is freezing hiring.
2) people on Blind/Twitter love to make fun of PMs, even though everyone who's worked with a good one knows they can be worth their weight in gold. A lot of mean jokes in this format: "Sad to announce I have been laid off by Google, I was the PM in charge of renaming our chat apps 5 times in the last 2 years". PMs in charge of "expansion" projects got hit pretty hard. This is a direct consequence of focusing on unit economics. It's just not worth it to spend valuable headcount to work on expanding to, say, Mexico, if expected sales will take years to get to the point where that market pays for itself. Nail the basics in existing markets first.
3) I seriously doubt the "day in the life" videos are condoned/pushed by the companies, they're young employees who are proud to work for their companies and want to show off, it's that simple. Inject this shit straight into my veins, I love it. Look, those offices are pretty cool, people take their friends on tours there all the time, whereas nobody ever asks to visit the corporate Wells Fargo office. Name another industry where you get restaurant-grade food every single meal if you so desire.
4) the "real eng" cuts started in late October and are very real. Are you safer if you sit close to the revenue generation machine rather in some long shot vanity project? Yes, but not that much. My team literally controls the inbound money hose, and we still lost engineers. Nobody is 100% safe.
-
I also doubt that the "day in the life" posts were condoned by the companies as FINate suggested. Perhaps some of them. But these gained popularity only threeish months ago. If the company leadership did not see the layoffs on the horizon that recently, they have some sad leadership. If they did, they wouldn't be okaying curated recruitment videos with impending mass layoffs. Also, some individuals with particularly popular posts are among those laid off. Would be cruel to lay off the people you're using to help attract talent, but who knows.
As someone in tech myself (software dev) I think the value of tech-adjacent roles just depends. No matter the role you're going to have good and bad people. But I assure you - never in my decade in the field have I ever felt that a scrum master was necessary. They are literally meeting runners/schedulers/note takers. Absolutely worthless. Analysts depend on the person - many of these roles could be consolidated into fewer roles. Project managers/owners are another that depend on the person. I do agree, however, that good artsy UX/design people are valuable. We don't need many of them, but they are great.
Also agree that no one is 100% safe so keep those skills sharp and your resume up to date. You never know. But I do recommend going into a very technical area like automation, architecture, development, etc. and get as close to the "money hose" as possible.
-
Regarding tech-adjacent jobs, it's hard to draw hard conclusions because every company is different, but I've observed a few trends.
1) the forerunners were in recruiting. Cruel as it may sound, a lot of the first layoffs were dismissed as "not real layoffs because engineering isn't impacted". Recruiting later got obliterated in the big cuts, often losing 50% or more of the department. Which makes sense if everyone is freezing hiring.
2) people on Blind/Twitter love to make fun of PMs, even though everyone who's worked with a good one knows they can be worth their weight in gold. A lot of mean jokes in this format: "Sad to announce I have been laid off by Google, I was the PM in charge of renaming our chat apps 5 times in the last 2 years". PMs in charge of "expansion" projects got hit pretty hard. This is a direct consequence of focusing on unit economics. It's just not worth it to spend valuable headcount to work on expanding to, say, Mexico, if expected sales will take years to get to the point where that market pays for itself. Nail the basics in existing markets first.
3) I seriously doubt the "day in the life" videos are condoned/pushed by the companies, they're young employees who are proud to work for their companies and want to show off, it's that simple. Inject this shit straight into my veins, I love it. Look, those offices are pretty cool, people take their friends on tours there all the time, whereas nobody ever asks to visit the corporate Wells Fargo office. Name another industry where you get restaurant-grade food every single meal if you so desire.
4) the "real eng" cuts started in late October and are very real. Are you safer if you sit close to the revenue generation machine rather in some long shot vanity project? Yes, but not that much. My team literally controls the inbound money hose, and we still lost engineers. Nobody is 100% safe.
I would add that I lived through the .com bubble bursting and this list is accurate both forwards and backwards. The people with credentials who can actually write code are the last to go and the first to get new jobs. I know VPs from the .com era that were lucky to get PM jobs after a long time. But they people who could actually write code had no problem finding a new gig (although usually for a pay cut).
As someone in tech myself (software dev) I think the value of tech-adjacent roles just depends. No matter the role you're going to have good and bad people. But I assure you - never in my decade in the field have I ever felt that a scrum master was necessary. They are literally meeting runners/schedulers/note takers. Absolutely worthless. Analysts depend on the person - many of these roles could be consolidated into fewer roles. Project managers/owners are another that depend on the person. I do agree, however, that good artsy UX/design people are valuable. We don't need many of them, but they are great.
Have you ever worked in an organization that is just pure chaos? I have/do. I wish that we had a scrum master to manage the process.
-
My experience working with SWEs from the client side is that they absolutely need PMs to keep on track. Without a PM, they will leave work until the last moment, or past that moment, before doing anything. I’ve worked on several applications without a PM where I as the client ended up doing the work of the PM. Never again.
I will say that I find SWEs to be more receptive than average at having the proverbial whip cracked at them. I’ve always been able to be very blunt with them about their failures and they don’t seem to get offended by it. I do appreciate that. But they do seem to need someone to crack the whip even if they believe they don’t.
-
My experience working with SWEs from the client side is that they absolutely need PMs to keep on track. Without a PM, they will leave work until the last moment, or past that moment, before doing anything. I’ve worked on several applications without a PM where I as the client ended up doing the work of the PM. Never again.
I used to work in an organization with 350 SWEs on one project. Of course the PMs were absolutely necessary. Who else is going to help coordinate everything? I think that the average SWE loves a good PM. The hard part is finding the good ones. The other hard part is middle management measuring which ones are the good ones.
-
But I assure you - never in my decade in the field have I ever felt that a scrum master was necessary. They are literally meeting runners/schedulers/note takers. Absolutely worthless.
Scrumbags are necessary not because the job is impossible/difficult, but because without them, the job of scrum master ends up being done by software engineers . . . which then reduces overall productivity.
-
@GuitarStv "Scrumbags" - I love it!
Software developer here. In the mid-2010s, I was browsing Google for some Python questions I had, and saw the page "open up" with an animation, then a link to a Google job application, because I had been randomly selected. Now, I know what you're thinking - that sounds super sketchy, but it appeared flawlessly on the page and appeared to be very professionally done, and it turned out to be legitimate. I was taken to this system that posed several difficult algorithm problems to solve using Python.
Problem is, my algorithm skills suck. At one time, I had the problem written down and saved, but I think I eventually axed it. Although it was cool to be given a rare and random opportunity to prove my stuff to Google, I had to be real, I was probably never going to solve those problems. That's just not my strength.
However, the funny thing is that knowledge of algorithms doesn't necessarily make you a good developer. I knew a guy who was brilliant with that stuff, but he was arrogant and couldn't write code that anybody could understand. Somewhere deep inside, I've ever since felt that these big companies with big reputations do hire smart people, but not always for the reasons that make the most sense. I could be wrong, but that's always been my gut feel.
Also honestly, when Facebook came out with the Metaverse and nobody cared, I think that was the death knell. I think people started looking around and seeing that companies were pouring billions into projects the world neither asked for nor wanted. Tech guys do that - they start thinking that technology can solve everything, when it can't.
It's hard to know where things will go. There are still lots of job listing, though. With all the tech bloat, some of these devs won't necessarily be great, but with Google or whatever on their resume, they might get first dibs on some of these jobs (or maybe not). I'm just thankful that I don't live paycheck-to-paycheck and have a sizable stache, so I don't have to lose sleep over this at night :)
-
We used to have dedicated PMs, but they were laid off years ago. That role got absorbed by the first-level managers. Once scrums became a thing, they wound up taking that over as well.
One side effect is that sometimes backlog meetings and occasionally even "standups" get hijacked to talk about the overall project schedule, rather than just the current or next software sprint.
What's going to be "interesting" is that the number of "hot" projects has just now started to exceed the number of managers in our group. Not sure how that one's gonna shake out yet.
-
The most challenging part of a software engineering job is reading someone else's code and understanding it well enough that you are able to make changes/enhancements/bug-fixes to it, without causing any (any more?) problems/bugs.
You get paid the big bucks to figure out why the last guy wrote a 150 line long method with a switch statement inside of a try/catch block inside of a do/while loop inside of an if/else inside of a using block where all the variable names are single letters and they used full namespaces when declaring them. After attempting to troubleshoot it, you realize the name of the method doesn't actually describe what the method does.
It's more like: You get paid the big bucks to figure out how a multi-hundred (or thousand) source code file sub-system works, (created by dozens of developers, some of which no longer work at the company)
We used to push our developers to comment their code for the benefit of the next person. Is that a thing anymore? Because it never was a thing. The devs considered the obscurity of their process to be job security. They never would write a simple note about what the software was doing at any given point, even if it would have helped them stay organized and even if they were probably going to be the next person.
We used to have dedicated PMs, but they were laid off years ago. That role got absorbed by the first-level managers. Once scrums became a thing, they wound up taking that over as well.
One side effect is that sometimes backlog meetings and occasionally even "standups" get hijacked to talk about the overall project schedule, rather than just the current or next software sprint.
What's going to be "interesting" is that the number of "hot" projects has just now started to exceed the number of managers in our group. Not sure how that one's gonna shake out yet.
I predict the rehiring of PMs/scrumbags when the issues reach a critical point, perhaps with a shift to matrix management.
-
We used to have dedicated PMs, but they were laid off years ago. That role got absorbed by the first-level managers. Once scrums became a thing, they wound up taking that over as well.
One side effect is that sometimes backlog meetings and occasionally even "standups" get hijacked to talk about the overall project schedule, rather than just the current or next software sprint.
What's going to be "interesting" is that the number of "hot" projects has just now started to exceed the number of managers in our group. Not sure how that one's gonna shake out yet.
I predict the rehiring of PMs/scrumbags when the issues reach a critical point, perhaps with a shift to matrix management.
Maybe, though the cynical part of me wonders if they'll try to draft some poor sucker to play PM or (more likely) "scrumbag" on top of their current role(s), likely without a proper promotion. They tried that with "software leads" at one point, before shifting it all onto the managers.
-
Maybe, though the cynical part of me wonders if they'll try to draft some poor sucker to play PM or (more likely) "scrumbag" on top of their current role(s), likely without a proper promotion. They tried that with "software leads" at one point, before shifting it all onto the managers.
That's exactly what they'll do. My current org did that a while back and moved a couple of us into lead positions reporting directly to a senior director when the manager quit. At one point, I wore all of the following hats simultaneously - team lead, scrum master, UI developer, backend developer, architect and dev-ops engineer. It was my own damn fault. Declaring myself as part of the 2025 cohort helped me step away from some of those roles and concentrate on the stuff I like (architecture & backend work).
We used to push our developers to comment their code for the benefit of the next person. Is that a thing anymore? Because it never was a thing. The devs considered the obscurity of their process to be job security.
I don't fuss my guys about comments, but I'm merciless about having minimal documentation. We have a wiki page in which git repos, deployment details and basic architecture are specified. Having that information has saved our bacon more than once.
-
We used to push our developers to comment their code for the benefit of the next person. Is that a thing anymore? Because it never was a thing. The devs considered the obscurity of their process to be job security.
I don't fuss my guys about comments, but I'm merciless about having minimal documentation. We have a wiki page in which git repos, deployment details and basic architecture are specified. Having that information has saved our bacon more than once.
I don't understand the typical engineer's total lack of desire for minimal documentation. At my work I'm know as one of the very few who actually document what they did. Since there are only two of us that document anything of note, by comparison our documentation is amazing. Except the thing is, I didn't write it for the other developers. I wrote it for myself so that when I have to come back to it a year from now I have some idea of what I did.
-
We used to push our developers to comment their code for the benefit of the next person. Is that a thing anymore? Because it never was a thing. The devs considered the obscurity of their process to be job security.
I don't fuss my guys about comments, but I'm merciless about having minimal documentation. We have a wiki page in which git repos, deployment details and basic architecture are specified. Having that information has saved our bacon more than once.
I don't understand the typical engineer's total lack of desire for minimal documentation. At my work I'm know as one of the very few who actually document what they did. Since there are only two of us that document anything of note, by comparison our documentation is amazing. Except the thing is, I didn't write it for the other developers. I wrote it for myself so that when I have to come back to it a year from now I have some idea of what I did.
Two part answer:
- Typically managers prioritize building new stuff over documentation. The new stuff looks good on metrics as your new software is being built, the impact of documentation comes later on in maintenance phases. If a project manager knows that they're going to be moved to something else by then, they're not going to want you to work on docs.
- As an engineer it's a bit safer. The less you document the more it hurts the company when they fire you. And the more likely that they'll have to hire you back after a poorly thought out round of layoffs. I've been at several companies where employees were able to leverage the lack of documentation available to the company to extract a good chunk of money after being laid off.
-
I wrote it for myself so that when I have to come back to it a year from now I have some idea of what I did.
A million times this. I can barely remember what I did last week, much less a year ago.
-
most don't realize how many worthless positions are created by tech companies just to 'hoard engineers', they'd rather shell out fat quarter-half mil salaries to keep the top talent satisfied with a couple hrs/wk of actual work at their company rather than let them go build up their competition or worse heading a startup bound to disrupt their industry that they'd have to put up 8-9 figures to buy out down the road
-
most don't realize how many worthless positions are created by tech companies just to 'hoard engineers', they'd rather shell out fat quarter-half mil salaries to keep the top talent satisfied with a couple hrs/wk of actual work at their company rather than let them go build up their competition or worse heading a startup bound to disrupt their industry that they'd have to put up 8-9 figures to buy out down the road
Count me in, I didn't realize hoarding engineers was a thing. I'd have to go invent something to do if that happened to me.
-
I've been resisting joining in, but...
There's more to the story, which is more about bloated leadership than overpaid engineers. Good summary here (https://andzwa.medium.com/why-the-google-layoffs-are-about-personal-ambition-and-poor-leadership-817236947368). After working there for 10 years I can say the author is spot on.
This article, and the chatter here is kicking up PTSD!
It’s like Game of Thrones played out through email and calendar and over video call.
I mean, it's not always like this, and not every high level manager is a barracuda. But yeah, that's the gist of it. One of the reasons I want to do something meaningful on my own.
-
Along the lines of inefficiencies, like hoarding engineers. My (least) favorite inefficiency is when there's a lot of political infighting among orgs, you might get engineers* that are like enforcers in hockey instead of doing productive work. Microsoft was famous for this (https://www.globalnerdy.com/2011/07/03/org-charts-of-the-big-tech-companies-plus-an-enhancement/).
* or engineering managers who are not quite an enforcer, but someone angling to make themselves look better by making other team's proposals, prototypes, or projects look bad, but it seems like it's their full time job
-
I predict the rehiring of PMs/scrumbags when the issues reach a critical point, perhaps with a shift to matrix management.
Those of us that are of a certain age will remember reporting to several bosses, matrix management is horrible (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wqQXu13tLA)!
-
Has anyone read the awful layoff email sent out by the PagerDuty CEO? Ouch. It's not just tone deaf. Some sections are borderline incomprehensible.
https://withoutbullshit.com/blog/pageduty-sends-the-worst-layoff-email-ever-written (https://withoutbullshit.com/blog/pageduty-sends-the-worst-layoff-email-ever-written)
-
Has anyone read the awful layoff email sent out by the PagerDuty CEO? Ouch. It's not just tone deaf. Some sections are borderline incomprehensible.
https://withoutbullshit.com/blog/pageduty-sends-the-worst-layoff-email-ever-written (https://withoutbullshit.com/blog/pageduty-sends-the-worst-layoff-email-ever-written)
That's truly awful. Leveraging a MLK Jr. quote to praise the board and executive leadership in a layoff letter should earn her a Cersei Lannister style walk of shame through downtown Atlanta.
-
Has anyone read the awful layoff email sent out by the PagerDuty CEO? Ouch. It's not just tone deaf. Some sections are borderline incomprehensible.
https://withoutbullshit.com/blog/pageduty-sends-the-worst-layoff-email-ever-written (https://withoutbullshit.com/blog/pageduty-sends-the-worst-layoff-email-ever-written)
Wow, yeah that is really bad
-
Has anyone read the awful layoff email sent out by the PagerDuty CEO? Ouch. It's not just tone deaf. Some sections are borderline incomprehensible.
https://withoutbullshit.com/blog/pageduty-sends-the-worst-layoff-email-ever-written (https://withoutbullshit.com/blog/pageduty-sends-the-worst-layoff-email-ever-written)
Wow, yeah that is really bad
People have suggested that ChatGPT could have written it better. Hey, maybe ChatGPT could do the entire CEO job better!
-
I wrote it for myself so that when I have to come back to it a year from now I have some idea of what I did.
A million times this. I can barely remember what I did last week, much less a year ago.
ahem - https://www.get-digital.se/the-code-is-documentation-enough.html !
-
Has anyone read the awful layoff email sent out by the PagerDuty CEO? Ouch. It's not just tone deaf. Some sections are borderline incomprehensible.
https://withoutbullshit.com/blog/pageduty-sends-the-worst-layoff-email-ever-written (https://withoutbullshit.com/blog/pageduty-sends-the-worst-layoff-email-ever-written)
Wow, yeah that is really bad
People have suggested that ChatGPT could have written it better. Hey, maybe ChatGPT could do the entire CEO job better!
Hah, you've found a good use for ChatGPT. Writing those awful corporate emails.