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

Re: Tech layoffs are feeding a new startup surge

#161

Post by skeeter2020 » Thu, Feb 23, 2023, 7:42 PM UTC

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #156

WalterBright wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somebody in a garage today is working on a business that will be worth billions within 5 years, and we'll all kick ourselves with "why didn't we think of that!"

Right, but for everyone of those people, there are 1,000 other people just as smart also working on good ideas that are going nowhere fast. I'm not sure if you're agreeing or disagreeing or neither. But I think the "why didn't I think of that guy" is mostly luck. Lots of people are smart and work hard and don't really get anywhere.

Smart and Work Hard are only two of the 5+ components needed for success, of which Luck, Opportunity and Timing also belong. I'm sure there's more.

Re: Tech layoffs are feeding a new startup surge

#162

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Feb 23, 2023, 7:45 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…

[deleted]

Re: Tech layoffs are feeding a new startup surge

#163

Post by no_wizard » Thu, Feb 23, 2023, 7:50 PM UTC

greenthrow wrote: post #57

no_wizard wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on the cloud. Looking at Supabase, I think it would be a good choice for most startups[0] and it will scale as the business does, but it removes most of the overhead of getting started. It has Auth, A database, Lambda Support, CDN and File Storage. Baked in are REST APIs and GraphQL APIs out of the box. Its reasonably well priced and there's little friction on setting up and far, far less to worry about hosti…

Yeah but we are talking about startups. Brand new ones. They have no customers. Let alone enough customers to necessitate cloud scaling.

Gotta build the prototype on something eventually. It’s a solid OOTB tech stack. Lets you focus on building the business with peace of mind. Not fiddling with servers etc.

Re: Tech layoffs are feeding a new startup surge

#164

Post by twblalock » Thu, Feb 23, 2023, 7:50 PM UTC

skeeter2020 wrote: post #158

FormerBandmate wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Holocaust absurdly outweighs the Autobahn, the Nazis were the worst people in history. The net result of big tech has been relatively good (for the average person’s material conditions, the jury’s still out on psychological effects but regardless of anything, it’s not even comparable to the Nazis).

now equate tech executives to specific Nazis - circle complete!

No, just stop responding to or encouraging this kind of behavior. It probably seems funny to you in the context of a thread but it pollutes the discourse and gradually wears down the standards on this site.

The signal to noise ratio needs to be good, or there will be no point to reading the comments.

Re: Tech layoffs are feeding a new startup surge

#165

Post by twblalock » Thu, Feb 23, 2023, 7:52 PM UTC

BenFranklin100 wrote: post #160

twblalock wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sad that when I open a thread the first comment I see is cheap cynicism that comes close to trolling, and the replies are even worse. Look at all the stuff this generation of workers have built in big tech — the amazing devices in all areas of the market, the progress in electric cars, the massive scale in compute infrastructure that enables most smaller companies to easily spin up entire regions rather than run thei…

[flagged]

What you actually did was post a cynical dismissal of the efforts of an entire generation of tech workers by focusing on one contentious aspect of the industry’s output.

You said they wasted their talents.

It’s pretty clear that they didn’t, and they actually produced a huge amount of good things, and I listed only a subset of the major achievements we’ve seen recently.

Re: Tech layoffs are feeding a new startup surge

#166

Post by MajimasEyepatch » Thu, Feb 23, 2023, 7:55 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.

Sometimes, you'll hear pundits say that these kinds of layoffs are aimed at "the bottom 5%" or whatever, but who's been around for these cycles knows that lots of good people get cut alongside the actual underperformers. There's also a lot of "last to be hired, first to be fired" in big layoffs, so presumably with those people you aren't losing too much tribal knowledge.

In some cases, the layoffs were targeted at particular areas of the company, like Amazon targeting their devices group. If they don't anticipate growth in that area, it may not be worth it (to management, anyways) to reallocate those employees to other parts of the company.

All that being said, these things tend to be driven by short-term financial metrics rather than long-term ones. A hiring freeze wouldn't have as dramatic an impact on next quarter's earnings.

Re: Tech layoffs are feeding a new startup surge

#167

Post by shostack » Thu, Feb 23, 2023, 7:57 PM UTC

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.

HN: "finally all these brilliant minds can contribute something real to society now that they are free!"

HN: "wait, not like that!"

Re: Tech layoffs are feeding a new startup surge

#168

Post by BenFranklin100 » Thu, Feb 23, 2023, 7:57 PM UTC

twblalock wrote: post #165

BenFranklin100 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

What you actually did was post a cynical dismissal of the efforts of an entire generation of tech workers by focusing on one contentious aspect of the industry’s output. You said they wasted their talents. It’s pretty clear that they didn’t, and they actually produced a huge amount of good things, and I listed only a subset of the major achievements we’ve seen recently.

[flagged]

Re: Tech layoffs are feeding a new startup surge

#169

Post by joaogui1 » Thu, Feb 23, 2023, 8:02 PM UTC

swyx wrote: post #75

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.

those endeavors: - Maida AI, which automates health care administration tasks like patient intake and note-taking - a platform that aggregates home furnishing listings from different stores into one place - a software design and development studio

What's the name of the 3rd one?

Re: Tech layoffs are feeding a new startup surge

#170

Post by ejb999 » Thu, Feb 23, 2023, 8:09 PM UTC

ahi wrote: post #89

ejb999 wrote: post #12

I imagine it is a tiny fraction of the people getting laid off that go that route - imo, most are out applying for jobs. I work for a fortune 50 company - (not faang), on our team we had 2 openings posted back in early November - one for a developer, one for a lead developer (same tech stack) - this was for a fully remote positions, but limited to timezones that mostly overlapped with the USA - we got 3 applicants fo…

I got laid off in November (not faang). I was going to wait until the right position came around, but as the lay offs kept coming in January I jumped on the first non-terrible opportunity. If the music stops I don't want to be without a chair.

good choice - you definitely don't want to be caught without a chair when the music stops.

Whether one likes musk or not, and whether or not you agree with how he is running twitter or not - he let go like 80% of the company and it is still more or less running (with some bumps) - I don't think other companies will go to quite that extreme, but I'd bank that some executives right now in some companies are asking themselves "can we at least cut 33% of the staff and still keep things (more or less) running"?