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Meet Silicon Valley’s rattled layoff ‘survivors’

fortune.com

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Re: Meet Silicon Valley’s rattled layoff ‘survivors’

#31

Post by nytesky »

MikeTheRocker wrote: post #13
AzzieElbab wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, we should all be very very worried when companies with 1m profit per employee start laying people off. Excesses of SV aren’t really relevant from my point of view

Agreed. Tech workers at large companies often earn income commensurate with the economic value they produce. When each employee nets the company 7 figures on average, it's hard to make a case that they shouldn't earn some meaningful fraction of that IMO.

I thought a company like Snap didn’t make a profit, so I dont think the employees are netting 7 figures for the company? That probably only applies to Google, FB, Apple, Amazon?

Re: Meet Silicon Valley’s rattled layoff ‘survivors’

#32

Post by NeverFade »

bitexploder wrote: post #30
NeverFade wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fresh-out-of-college engineers weren't making $300k, let alone $500k. I'm not sure where you got these numbers. Even at the highest paying BigN, fresh grads don't typically get over $200k. > It was very hard to recruit when all the best and above average talent just got sucked up into the giant companies that build advertising machines in SV. The talent crunch has been getting worse for the past couple of decades. Do…

I am just working from my anecdotal experience hiring engineers into high end infosec consulting and what we were told about other offers. Even now, with companies pushing for in office again and the stock component of BigN salaries crashing down to earth it has changed things in our recruiting pipeline noticeably.

I'm also involved in recruiting, and the biggest change I see is that folks who were laid off or pushed out of prestigious tech companies are now in the market. These are not your "top talent", these folks are still happily employed at their BigN job.

I hear similar stories about 2001. The folks who get laid off are mostly the lower performing engineers, who clear the lower hiring bars typical of frothy economic times.

Re: Meet Silicon Valley’s rattled layoff ‘survivors’

#33

Post by hotpotamus »

b1gnasty wrote: post #27

Layoffs aren't what are "rattling" folks in this industry, at least not the tech folks outside of FAANG. If you've worked in startup land, you've experienced layoffs. Probably multiple rounds. You anticipate them, and they aren't scary because the market for your skills is so competitive. Our "Job Security" comes from the overall state of the hiring market, not finding a job at the most stable company and putting in…

> I'm still getting recruiter emails from many of the recent companies that have publicly said they are freezing/slowing down hiring

I wonder what a recruiter at a company with a hiring freeze in place is expected to do? I'd be inclined to say, "well then I'll be on vacation until you need me, thanks for keeping the paychecks coming", but I suspect that wouldn't work so well. I think they would want to "keep the pipeline flowing" or however you'd want to say it for a mix of practical as well as BS reasons.

Re: Meet Silicon Valley’s rattled layoff ‘survivors’

#34

Post by fragmede »

hotpotamus wrote: post #33
b1gnasty wrote: post #27

Layoffs aren't what are "rattling" folks in this industry, at least not the tech folks outside of FAANG. If you've worked in startup land, you've experienced layoffs. Probably multiple rounds. You anticipate them, and they aren't scary because the market for your skills is so competitive. Our "Job Security" comes from the overall state of the hiring market, not finding a job at the most stable company and putting in…

> I'm still getting recruiter emails from many of the recent companies that have publicly said they are freezing/slowing down hiring I wonder what a recruiter at a company with a hiring freeze in place is expected to do? I'd be inclined to say, "well then I'll be on vacation until you need me, thanks for keeping the paychecks coming", but I suspect that wouldn't work so well. I think they would want to "keep the pipe…

Fired, probably. Recruiting, as a department, is unfortunately seen as expendable and the pipeline doesn't need to flow. Not that I think that's a smart decision.

Re: Meet Silicon Valley’s rattled layoff ‘survivors’

#35

Post by solalf »

dasil003 wrote: post #17

> from a Snap survivor: ”So it’s frustrating; they expect us to still go out and win with these products, yet we have fewer resources.” I don’t know what function this is it their manager is telling them, but this quote really reflects a bull market mentality that success is a function of resources applied without acknowledging the inefficiency of throwing money at a problem. People who want to be successful over the…

I think your statement may be a bit broad here.

Let’s say upper management considers they need both feature A and B to win the market by end of quarter. But suddenly your team is half the number of people it used to be. You’re not realistically going to achieve more than you used to just through sheer elasticity. So either A or B will get done and it becomes a matter of prioritization.

Smaller companies and shops are nimble because they don’t have the burden of the past, red tape and standards that exist at scale. For engineering orgs the size of Snap’s things take longer and having more people very often does solve the velocity problem.

Re: Meet Silicon Valley’s rattled layoff ‘survivors’

#36

Post by [deleted] »

hotpotamus wrote: post #33
b1gnasty wrote: post #27

Layoffs aren't what are "rattling" folks in this industry, at least not the tech folks outside of FAANG. If you've worked in startup land, you've experienced layoffs. Probably multiple rounds. You anticipate them, and they aren't scary because the market for your skills is so competitive. Our "Job Security" comes from the overall state of the hiring market, not finding a job at the most stable company and putting in…

> I'm still getting recruiter emails from many of the recent companies that have publicly said they are freezing/slowing down hiring I wonder what a recruiter at a company with a hiring freeze in place is expected to do? I'd be inclined to say, "well then I'll be on vacation until you need me, thanks for keeping the paychecks coming", but I suspect that wouldn't work so well. I think they would want to "keep the pipe…

[deleted]

Re: Meet Silicon Valley’s rattled layoff ‘survivors’

#37

Post by vxNsr »

duxup wrote: post #23
dasil003 wrote: post #17

> from a Snap survivor: ”So it’s frustrating; they expect us to still go out and win with these products, yet we have fewer resources.” I don’t know what function this is it their manager is telling them, but this quote really reflects a bull market mentality that success is a function of resources applied without acknowledging the inefficiency of throwing money at a problem. People who want to be successful over the…

Amen. I work at a small shop, 3.5 devs. That presents limits to some extent. And yet we were faster and more flexible than a company who had wads of cash thrown at them by some parent company who is now shutting them down.

I’d love to meet this half person

Re: Meet Silicon Valley’s rattled layoff ‘survivors’

#38

Post by mjr00 »

hotpotamus wrote: post #33
b1gnasty wrote: post #27

Layoffs aren't what are "rattling" folks in this industry, at least not the tech folks outside of FAANG. If you've worked in startup land, you've experienced layoffs. Probably multiple rounds. You anticipate them, and they aren't scary because the market for your skills is so competitive. Our "Job Security" comes from the overall state of the hiring market, not finding a job at the most stable company and putting in…

> I'm still getting recruiter emails from many of the recent companies that have publicly said they are freezing/slowing down hiring I wonder what a recruiter at a company with a hiring freeze in place is expected to do? I'd be inclined to say, "well then I'll be on vacation until you need me, thanks for keeping the paychecks coming", but I suspect that wouldn't work so well. I think they would want to "keep the pipe…

In my experience "hiring freeze" at a large company usually means "hiring freeze, but..."

Exceptions can and will be made, but need higher level approvals. The problem at these companies is that managers just want to infinitely expand their teams, because more people in your chain of command = more important manager, so they tend to use all of their budget regardless of whether they actually need to expand staff by 10% this year. Naturally, these approved hires tend to be specialized senior positions that are seen as business-critical.

In general, I think anyone with 10+ years experience will be fine, but now's a shit time to be a new grad trying to break into the market.

Re: Meet Silicon Valley’s rattled layoff ‘survivors’

#39

Post by b1gnasty »

hotpotamus wrote: post #33
b1gnasty wrote: post #27

Layoffs aren't what are "rattling" folks in this industry, at least not the tech folks outside of FAANG. If you've worked in startup land, you've experienced layoffs. Probably multiple rounds. You anticipate them, and they aren't scary because the market for your skills is so competitive. Our "Job Security" comes from the overall state of the hiring market, not finding a job at the most stable company and putting in…

> I'm still getting recruiter emails from many of the recent companies that have publicly said they are freezing/slowing down hiring I wonder what a recruiter at a company with a hiring freeze in place is expected to do? I'd be inclined to say, "well then I'll be on vacation until you need me, thanks for keeping the paychecks coming", but I suspect that wouldn't work so well. I think they would want to "keep the pipe…

Totally, I suspect pursuing a bunch of these "opportunities" would lead to dead ends, but I'm not looking for a job currently so I haven't found out.

This is why I'd find reporting that tries to figure this out a bit more interesting and relevant for most of our industry.

Layoffs are inevitable, will getting a new job after be a lot more difficult? Is the current deluge of recruiter emails still being spammed at me an illusion/a lagging indicator of where the hiring market is actually at?

Re: Meet Silicon Valley’s rattled layoff ‘survivors’

#40

Post by fakecrusade »

duxup wrote: post #23
dasil003 wrote: post #17

> from a Snap survivor: ”So it’s frustrating; they expect us to still go out and win with these products, yet we have fewer resources.” I don’t know what function this is it their manager is telling them, but this quote really reflects a bull market mentality that success is a function of resources applied without acknowledging the inefficiency of throwing money at a problem. People who want to be successful over the…

Amen. I work at a small shop, 3.5 devs. That presents limits to some extent. And yet we were faster and more flexible than a company who had wads of cash thrown at them by some parent company who is now shutting them down.

Ah yes the 0.5 dev, conjured up by the manager to push 4 devs work onto 3 realistic devs
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