When a company is in serious financial trouble, layoffs might be a way of saving it, but outside of emergency, does anyone think that laying off larger parts of the workforce is a good idea long term? Next thing is, we read about shortages of skilled engineers...
Tech Layoffs for 2016 Projected to Be Deep
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Re: Tech Layoffs for 2016 Projected to Be Deep
#12While at the same time they beg Congress to expand the cap on H1B's...
Re: Tech Layoffs for 2016 Projected to Be Deep
#13Earlier rounds of job losses were often replaced with offshoring and classic wage arbitrage, but this time feels different. A lot of the companies are cutting jobs, without the expectation to replace them (at all). I think ageism will play a part in the selection process, but not always because of the age directly, rather the older staff may have larger pay, pension and benefits costs.
All these companies are under pressure to grow their revenue. Guess what- they won't be able to do this without hiring.
While some companies are reducing their workforce others are growing, some of this is because market share is switching. Traditional business losing to the cloud for example.
There is more software work today than at any point in history. This is only going one way. Until AI will be able to develop software at least.
With respect to age while there are pockets of ageism I think most of the big players and some of the smaller don't have a problem with anyone's age. There are still a lot of companies who can't find enough people regardless of age and I don't think there's a huge salary differential between someone really good in their late 20's to 30's and someone really good who is older. So there's really no economic incentive for ageism. Yes, you can hire someone out of school for cheaper but you need to invest a lot more in them and then they disappear for a more lucrative job...
Re: Tech Layoffs for 2016 Projected to Be Deep
#14This is why I started my own company. All of my developer friends that told me I was stupid 5 years ago are now on their 5th or more job (and are scared about the next round of layoffs). While I've had continued stability. I would rather not get pushed out of my own industry for being too old or demanding too much pay. I think I would be pretty depressed if a snot-nosed kid out of college was managing me. As a side e…
>>All of my developer friends that told me I was stupid
Did they really? That's very surprising. In my experience, developers tend to be very understanding and supportive of other developers who leave stable jobs to start their own company.
>>While I've had continued stability.
I'd say you're in the minority. Startups are much riskier, and "stability" would be one of the last words people would use to define them. Everyone knows that.
Re: Tech Layoffs for 2016 Projected to Be Deep
#15I wonder: with capital still highly available for the right opportunity, Deep learning technologies have become highly effective across varied domains and can be a relatively simple way to do many complex things, and 260K engineers are being laid of and VC's talk abut an AI boom - how all this will affect the economy ?
Re: Tech Layoffs for 2016 Projected to Be Deep
#16When a company is in serious financial trouble, layoffs might be a way of saving it, but outside of emergency, does anyone think that laying off larger parts of the workforce is a good idea long term? Next thing is, we read about shortages of skilled engineers...
At the very least it means the company isn't able to grow. It also means it's a poorly managed business.
A lot of the businesses laying people off aren't even in financial trouble. Some of them have piles of cash in the bank and are profitable. They just lost what it takes to enter new markets and grow their business.
The sad thing is that the stock market will often reward this strategy because in the short term the cost goes down and the revenue decline lags. The good thing is that it's a healthy process that leads to new businesses being created that are better than the old ones.
Re: Tech Layoffs for 2016 Projected to Be Deep
#17This is why I started my own company. All of my developer friends that told me I was stupid 5 years ago are now on their 5th or more job (and are scared about the next round of layoffs). While I've had continued stability. I would rather not get pushed out of my own industry for being too old or demanding too much pay. I think I would be pretty depressed if a snot-nosed kid out of college was managing me. As a side e…
A colleague at a previous firm took his severance pay, and opened a coffee shop, right in the tech area. He does very well now, even worried about their jobs, everyone still seems to buy expensive coffee!
>>He does very well now
Does he really? That's very surprising. In a previous life, coffee shops used to be a big part of my client-base[1]. Out of all the coffee shop owners I knew, I didn't know a single one who wasn't worried about putting food on the table. It's a very cut-throat business with lots of competition, and even if you're located in an expensive area, the margins tend to be razor-thin.
[1]I learned an important lesson from the experience: it is a horrible idea to have clients with little or no disposable income.
Re: Tech Layoffs for 2016 Projected to Be Deep
#18This is why I started my own company. All of my developer friends that told me I was stupid 5 years ago are now on their 5th or more job (and are scared about the next round of layoffs). While I've had continued stability. I would rather not get pushed out of my own industry for being too old or demanding too much pay. I think I would be pretty depressed if a snot-nosed kid out of college was managing me. As a side e…
>>All of my developer friends that told me I was stupid Did they really? That's very surprising. In my experience, developers tend to be very understanding and supportive of other developers who leave stable jobs to start their own company. >>While I've had continued stability. I'd say you're in the minority. Startups are much riskier, and "stability" would be one of the last words people would use to define them. Ev…
"developers tend to be very understanding and supportive of other developers who leave stable jobs to start their own company."
Have you ever started a business? Most people are not supportive, including developers. You might even lose friends over it. You are going against the norm and most people can't relate and find it strange. The only people that are supportive are those that have a business mindset.
"I'd say you're in the minority. Startups are much riskier, and "stability" would be one of the last words people would use to define them. Everyone knows that."
All businesses have some risk. It took a year or two to get to the point where it was stable. But I was profitable from day one.
I'm not sure what you define as a 'startup', but if you mean create an app and hope that people come to it with no real business plan, I didn't create a startup. I formed a company around a business model and slowly built it up.
Too many people in IT think they aren't replaceable or that the good times will last forever.
Re: Tech Layoffs for 2016 Projected to Be Deep
#19We have other articles about some engineer with not much experience getting 250k. These stories seem contradictory.
Re: Tech Layoffs for 2016 Projected to Be Deep
#20Earlier rounds of job losses were often replaced with offshoring and classic wage arbitrage, but this time feels different. A lot of the companies are cutting jobs, without the expectation to replace them (at all). I think ageism will play a part in the selection process, but not always because of the age directly, rather the older staff may have larger pay, pension and benefits costs.
All these companies are under pressure to grow their revenue. Guess what- they won't be able to do this without hiring. While some companies are reducing their workforce others are growing, some of this is because market share is switching. Traditional business losing to the cloud for example. There is more software work today than at any point in history. This is only going one way. Until AI will be able to develop…
A certain firm got rid of all their expensive staff, who must just sit there all day, being expensive, probably not doing much, except for you know - having about 200 years worth of experience on the core clearing system that was a critical part of the system. A small part was offshored, but most roles cut. Sure enough, soon enough, said important system fails, offshore reduced size team without the benefit of experience on this 40year mainframe app, could not solve it. I know one of devs there who made a phenomenal day rate there fixing that mess.
Big firms are greedy and dumb. IT is a cost centre too them, every tech employee is a moocher sucking cash that could be used in yet another stock buy back to try and keep the stock price high a bit longer so the board can cash out and run.