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Tech layoffs are feeding a new startup surge

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Re: Tech layoffs are feeding a new startup surge

#232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last summer and also before that, when I applied, I would get ~90% response rate and would have at least a call from recruiter/HM. Last week I sent a bunch of applications and crickets... this is something that I've never experienced in +10 years being in the industry. I'm not in dire need for a job but I can imagine how much,much stressful is to be unemployed now vs even 3-5 years ago.

I guess I don't exactly understand as my experience is quite different. I have recruiters beating down my LinkedIn and email literally every day for pretty decent jobs.

> I have recruiters beating down my LinkedIn and email literally every day for pretty decent jobs

Some companies (not many) are still recruiting, and there's now a massive amount of laid off people fighting for those jobs. Just because some recruited spammed you doesn't mean it would have been easy to get an offer...

Re: Tech layoffs are feeding a new startup surge

#233
In the last decade most startups it seems were being created with the end goal being getting bought by the a larger company and if not by the first or 2nd round of investments the investors would push the startup in that direction . I think with these layoffs as well as big 4 now slowing acquisitions we probably will start seeing new startups with actual profits and business plans in mind.

Re: Tech layoffs are feeding a new startup surge

#234
post #81
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking back 20-30 years, it absolutely was a primary limiting factor. Massive capital outlays were required to serve the kind of traffic you can get with the free tier of modern cloud infra providers.

That depends on what you are doing. Serving static websites needs a great pipe, but doesn't need much CPU.

Yup, just gotta lay good pipe.

Re: Tech layoffs are feeding a new startup surge

#235
post #89
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.

Excellent choice. If/when things improve you can make the switch, for now you've got steady income and a non terrible position. That's better than a lot of people.

Re: Tech layoffs are feeding a new startup surge

#236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The companies (at least Meta/Google) are paying the full cost of healthcare for 6 months, at zero cost to those laid off.

Oh shit, nice. That's not COBRA, but a benefit on top of it (to be clear, for anyone who may one day be able to use COBRA and might not realize the company doesn't usually pay for it) but is pretty great for those who were laid off, in this case.

I'd imagine it's technically "COBRA, but we pay for it" as opposed to "We have kept you in the same status as an employee"

Re: Tech layoffs are feeding a new startup surge

#237

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.

It was pretty shitty in the late 2000s/early 2010s IIRC.

Re: Tech layoffs are feeding a new startup surge

#238

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?

Is big tech more stable than startups now ? There's firing across the board and we're not nearly done yet.

Re: Tech layoffs are feeding a new startup surge

#239
post #110

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?

Ideally if you are a senior big tech employee you are not living paycheck to paycheck any more, so you could endure a few months of not being employed. And even then, if you are good and have a network, you would find employment very quickly if a startup fails, unless there is some event that causes all startups to not look for new employees. The problem with startups is I think more around the stock options trap (sh…

Not all startups are terrible. In general yes the workload is higher but big tech is now a stressful place as well (layoffs, performance reviews etc). I'm positive many people in big tech started working harder, unless they wanna get fired.

A startup with a good runway (say 2-3 years) and faith from investors is an OK place to be in. And there are many parents in such companies.

Re: Tech layoffs are feeding a new startup surge

#240
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

cloud infrastructure was never the limiting factor.

I think it was in a way. Having an old school style IT structure was a pain. Maintaining your severs, networking gear if needed, OS updates ... on and on. For very small teams (maybe not the well funded start ups) that could eat a lot of time and trouble.

You used to be able to scale up to millions of users in less time than you could memorize all the AWS acronyms, and with lower hardware and bandwidth costs to boot.

It’s true that it would take a couple weeks to order all the hardware and a couple more to install and configure it, but that’s about the same amount of time you spend writing all the terraform and Kubernetes scripts and configuring cloudformation and VPCs and IAMs.

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