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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
At small shops, very much a thing.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
We had the same discussions recently at a large big tech company. We just need couple.of planning meetings and 3-5 senior devs to launch, but nah never happens, security, privacy reviews, leadership presentations, etc, etc
Other company, I assume they have the same stuff going on. Super ambitious ideas... not out the door.
I can just merge a branch all on my own most repositories if needed. Now that's not ideal but if you're disciplined, it's fast / effective.
There are times I wish we had more people / structure and such, but also times not.
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Why is getting better benefits and perks deemed worthy of derision rather than an admission that most employees in the world are treated like garbage? They aren't being completely exploited by their companies so they deserve to be taken down a peg to the sorry state you're in?
The current generation has been comprehensively screwed by the baby boomer generation, to perverse degrees. There should be rabid riots in the street over it, there sure as hell are ones in other parts of the world. But I don't shed tears for silicon valley workers that didn't ferret away money in the boom. These are not the people that got screwed by the modern American wealth distribution. You're allegedly the smar…
Even the most intelligent person can't consistently predict the market. Even if you could, and you knew the market was going to pop, what are you going to do? Leave one of these behemoths for a smaller company that's less likely to survive a recession? Or are you suggesting they caused the current downtown?
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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 time…
> These are not your "top talent", these folks are still happily employed at their BigN job. Assuming layoffs are both primarily designed to and effective at retaining general talent, both statements need more corroboration. Will they keep the ones who are "indispensable" in the short term, like an engineer who maintains a specific system? Often yes. Are they the best? Often no, and over-specialized knowledge is part…
However, the typical way layoffs happen is that managers are ordered to submit the names of their most dispensable reports, and typically these are the lower performers.
Of course, some of these will be high performers that the manager personally dislikes, and some of those spared will be low performers who just happen to be indispensable due to various irrelevant factors, such as specialized knowledge, or great politicians.
My point was more that if you're smugly waiting for the best and brightest to lose their jobs at BigN and come to work for you for the same bad pay and terms they rejected last year, you're going to be disappointed. The layoffs are going to be limited, and mostly affect lower performers, while any high-performer laid off is going to get multiple competitive offers and remain quite picky.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 time…
This is the sort of mentality that keeps recruiters chasing after already employed people and allowing age discrimination to flourish. Very few companies are organized well enough to layoff only the poor performers.
I agree that many talented folks will be laid off, but not nearly in the numbers that will make a dent in the overall talent crunch. See my response to klabb3 above.
People have had 10 year careers in tech thinking the world is a permanent bull market. I can imagine how this feels like the world is collapsing around them. For those of us who have weathered previous recessions, we know the world moves on. Things will be rough, for a while, we will rebound, and hopefully we will thrive again. I feel the current situation is more representative of the long term job market than the l…
It was emotionally hard.
After it was over I found myself, outside the entrance to the building, with no way in.
I reached into my pocket, and realized I left my keys inside at my old desk.
There’s a procedure for letting in visitors, but it takes a long time. When I went to the receptionist to explain the situation, I was immediately buzzed in, and walked back to my desk to receive the keys.
That meant a lot.
I’m sure there was a security person watching me on video, but that’s a resource intensive courtesy.
Now is the time to be nice. It’s a time for empathy.
Make it a point to get together outside work. Invite folks laid off. Invite contractors. Make it clear they’re still “part of the club.”
People appreciate this, and in the long run it pays off.
For a lot of folk, this type of severance will make them leave with a smile.
> 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.
While many of the inefficiencies of larger companies are, indeed, highly wasteful, it is also true that some of those inefficiencies are to increase resilience. Looking around and seeing lots of fast, flexible small companies is, at least in part, survivorship bias.