Tech layoffs are feeding a new startup surge • Hacker News Board

Re: Tech layoffs are feeding a new startup surge

#91

Post by deelowe » Thu, Feb 23, 2023, 6:32 PM UTC

Salgat wrote: post #58

qqtt wrote: post #8

Good. Both Google and Amazon are barreling down the path of democratizing scale and infrastructure with their cloud offerings. It's never been easier to reach millions of users in a short amount of time with your product. These are the companies that will end up ultimately challenging them down the road for talent and potentially even hitting at their core business models of search and commerce (we've already seen hi…

I don't understand why Google and Amazon would invest all this money in these employees building up their tech and tribal knowledge just to lay them off. Do these companies not expect to grow in the future? Seems like just freezing hiring for a year or two would save you more money in the long run rather than having to rehire and rebuild all this expertise.

> Do these companies not expect to grow in the future?

Yes and wages were outpacing that growth, so as soon as someone took the first step, all the big tech companies piled on in short order. And, low and beyond, offers appear to be down right now. Mission accomplished?

Re: Tech layoffs are feeding a new startup surge

#92

Post by fullshark » Thu, Feb 23, 2023, 6:33 PM UTC

user3939382 wrote: post #62

Personally as a senior developer with a family, I wouldn’t stake my stability on a startup. Does that reservation generalize? Do startups end up lacking wiser devs?

Agreed, especially very early stage startups. I'd not work for one of those unless I was the (co-)founder.

Re: Tech layoffs are feeding a new startup surge

#93

Post by throwaway894345 » Thu, Feb 23, 2023, 6:33 PM UTC

SassyGrapefruit wrote: post #51

greenthrow wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

99.9% of startups never have a need for more scale/infrastructure than a single VPS. Maybe a dedicated server. Cloud infrastructure is great when organizations actually need it. But I think most startups would save money and time by keeping it simple until they really need more.

> But I think most startups would save money and time by keeping it simple until they really need more. Having done this several times I can definitively say given my experience it's best to start in the cloud with a cloud native architecture. I can run a fully containerized application in ECS or EKS for a few hundred bucks a month. Why would I incur all the costs and limitations of a VPS or even worse a server I hav…

I'm often perplexed when I hear people complain about cloud costs. I can't tell if people just have really different workloads than I've experienced or if they just haven't considered cost when they pick their compute, databases, etc. If you use object storage, some serverless database, and some serverless compute a small company (by which I'm thinking "normally very low volume with occasional, very important, often large bursts") can keep their cloud spend to tens of dollars per month and save considerably by not having to manage all of the stuff that goes along with running VMs, database instances, or physical hosts.

Like, I assume I'm the one missing something because people swear up and down that it's the other way around, but I haven't found the happy path for managing hosts (virtual or physical) that delivers on the promise of simpler-than-cloud. There's a disconnect somewhere because I'm sure there are a lot of people who can't find the happy cloud path that delivers on the simpler-than-diy approach.

Re: Tech layoffs are feeding a new startup surge

#94

Post by throw_pm23 » Thu, Feb 23, 2023, 6:33 PM UTC

tomcam wrote: post #83

BenFranklin100 wrote: post #59

Good. The best minds of a generation have wasted their talents figuring out how to best maximize media addiction and serve ads for Facebook and Google. Let’s hope a new generation engages in more socially productive endeavors.

If you took a job like that, were you really one of the best minds of your generation?

Anecdotally, of the five-ten people I knew throughout the years who ended up at Facebook, all had a very specific personality-trait.

Those that I knew who went to Google/Amazon/etc. were more diverse personalities: ambitious, interested in hard problems, wanting a good life, etc.

Those going to Facebook though, I'm not sure I can put it in a polite way. Let me just say, in different times and different places I could imagine them joining a certain type of organization.

Re: Tech layoffs are feeding a new startup surge

#95

Post by b112 » Thu, Feb 23, 2023, 6:34 PM UTC

shen wrote: post #76

Salgat wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why Google and Amazon would invest all this money in these employees building up their tech and tribal knowledge just to lay them off. Do these companies not expect to grow in the future? Seems like just freezing hiring for a year or two would save you more money in the long run rather than having to rehire and rebuild all this expertise.

Unfortunately the market does not work on a year or two timelines.

These companies still have more employees than just before the pandemic.

Re: Tech layoffs are feeding a new startup surge

#96

Post by forkwhilefork » Thu, Feb 23, 2023, 6:34 PM UTC

tomcam wrote: post #83

BenFranklin100 wrote: post #59

Good. The best minds of a generation have wasted their talents figuring out how to best maximize media addiction and serve ads for Facebook and Google. Let’s hope a new generation engages in more socially productive endeavors.

If you took a job like that, were you really one of the best minds of your generation?

Who are you to judge? Maybe they needed to support sick kids or parents. Arrogant and ignorant statement.

Re: Tech layoffs are feeding a new startup surge

#97

Post by seattle_spring » Thu, Feb 23, 2023, 6:35 PM UTC

How does someone currently unemployed by choice with a good financial cushion take advantage of this if I don't have any startup ideas I'm deeply passionate about? I've kept an eye on the startup market and all I see are exceedingly boring ideas with mind numbing pitches around them. "Democratizing shipping!" "Disrupting the collaborative saas text editor market!"

Edit: wow the ideas in OP are dumb as hell too.

Re: Tech layoffs are feeding a new startup surge

#98

Post by dmix » Thu, Feb 23, 2023, 6:37 PM UTC

deelowe wrote: post #91

Salgat wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why Google and Amazon would invest all this money in these employees building up their tech and tribal knowledge just to lay them off. Do these companies not expect to grow in the future? Seems like just freezing hiring for a year or two would save you more money in the long run rather than having to rehire and rebuild all this expertise.

> Do these companies not expect to grow in the future? Yes and wages were outpacing that growth, so as soon as someone took the first step, all the big tech companies piled on in short order. And, low and beyond, offers appear to be down right now. Mission accomplished?

On hiring outpaced need for employees or ROI

COVID era was a hiring boom. Most of the companies I saw doing layoffs still have significantly larger employment numbers than pre-COVID.

Re: Tech layoffs are feeding a new startup surge

#99

Post by disgruntledphd2 » Thu, Feb 23, 2023, 6:37 PM UTC

whymauri wrote: post #53

ericmcer wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The market for junior dev is even worse, imagine being fresh out of college in a market with 100,000 freshly laid off mid-staff level engineers

The junior dev market has been terrible since the COVID lockdown.

Remote is hard to make work with juniors, unfortunately.

Re: Tech layoffs are feeding a new startup surge

#100

Post by PyWoody » Thu, Feb 23, 2023, 6:39 PM UTC

user3939382 wrote: post #62

Personally as a senior developer with a family, I wouldn’t stake my stability on a startup. Does that reservation generalize? Do startups end up lacking wiser devs?

As a senior looking for FTE? Probably not. As a senior looking for a semi-retired interesting place to work? Definitely. We've hired the latter for shorter term but not really contract worthy work in the past that was beneficial for both parties.