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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

#271

Post by ahstilde »

asim wrote: post #117

Happy to help anyone starting up. I raised a couple mil in seed funding for an open source project after bootstrapping for a few years. I'm sure the YC crew would be more helpful but I got rejected by YC like 8 times and took the direct route to funding. We built this https://M3O.com . It was based on this https://github.com/micro/micro Just happy to help given my own tough experiences. Pitch deck reviews, intros, et…

> I'm sure the YC crew would be more helpful but I got rejected by YC like 8 times and took the direct route to funding.

Sounds like you were successful without giving up 7+% of your company.

Re: Tech layoffs are feeding a new startup surge

#272

Post by dsq »

myth_drannon wrote: post #63
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…

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.

Highly reminiscent of 2001 and 2008. From feast to famine.

Re: Tech layoffs are feeding a new startup surge

#273

Post by sublimefire »

asim wrote: post #117

Happy to help anyone starting up. I raised a couple mil in seed funding for an open source project after bootstrapping for a few years. I'm sure the YC crew would be more helpful but I got rejected by YC like 8 times and took the direct route to funding. We built this https://M3O.com . It was based on this https://github.com/micro/micro Just happy to help given my own tough experiences. Pitch deck reviews, intros, et…

It is an interesting approach to developing services. The company did not survive though, found this in a blog:

> Jan 12, M3O was developed as a VC funded company. There is no longer a path to towards a sustainable outcome or further funding. For this reason we’re not able to support the platform any longer.

Re: Tech layoffs are feeding a new startup surge

#274

Post by ejb999 »

yunwal wrote: post #202
ejb999 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 them…

I mean, twitter’s worth about 40% of what it was when Musk bought it. Hardly a success story.

and they are the only tech company that is down 40% or more since their high, correct?

Re: Tech layoffs are feeding a new startup surge

#275

Post by fakedang »

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.

I've used Supabase for some production level projects, and it's seriously a very good starting point which you can scale up to mid-tier levels. Brand new ones with no customers can easily leverage their free tier.

Re: Tech layoffs are feeding a new startup surge

#276

Post by maleldil »

claytonjy wrote: post #145
mortenjorck wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was laid off in December and this has been by far the hardest search of the now four times (yes, really) I’ve been laid off in my career. The few times I’ve received anything resembling feedback in this cycle has been along the lines of “we have a large number of highly qualified candidates for this role” and with a lot of LinkedIn postings citing 200+ applicants, I believe it.

Never apply through LinkedIn. It is so low-friction that the vast majority of applicants are nowhere near qualified, and hiring managers quickly learn to ignore anything that came in from LinkedIn.

What should one do instead?

Re: Tech layoffs are feeding a new startup surge

#277

Post by hughesjj »

whstl wrote: post #35
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

That's true, however I've been seeing complaints for a little longer than that. Perhaps in FAANG they were hiring, but in general I remember seeing a lot of junior devs (not from elite colleges) commenting about how they applied for 50 positions sometimes during COVID. Something unthinkable in my time.

eh, this was life foe me in rhe eaely 2010s too. Super hard to get into a good spot back then.

Re: Tech layoffs are feeding a new startup surge

#278

Post by Aromasin »

pkdpic wrote: post #230
HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OTOH, if you are job hunting, be sure to keep your LinkedIn profile up to date.

Thats helpful (but rare) to hear. Does anyone have any concrete anecdotes reinforcing the importance of keeping linkedin looking fresh? Also what matters? Artful descriptions of past positions? Activity on timeline? Upvotes on skills? Links to projects?

Despite the criticism from other people in this thread, pretty much every role I've received is through LinkedIn. I probably get 4 or 5 recruiters reach out a week regarding one role or another, of which 1 of those is worth my time. That increased over time as I've built my network of recruiters in my field.

In terms of prior experience, I simply state what I achieved at each role in a bullet list. Nothing fancy. My university education is a list of all the modules I took.

Forget the "social media gamifying" side of it. Likes and posts don't matter if your goal is just getting offers. Keeping the profile current, and have your skills section up to date as recruiters use that to filter applicants. Block any recruiters that send you insultingly low-ball offers. Connect with those that provide value.

Re: Tech layoffs are feeding a new startup surge

#279

Post by mattmanser »

anonylizard wrote: post #225
mattmanser wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter used to go down regularly in the early days. Reddit did too, even years after it became popular. Facebook I can't be certain now, but I think it would break in the early days. And even right now today, ChatGPT regularly displays "too busy" messages. i.e. this is absolute tosh. And if you know what you're doing you can take something down overnight and put it on a dedicated server.

"ChatGPT regularly displays "too busy" messages." ChatGPT scaled from 0 users to 100 million in 2 months. Probably millions online at any given second. Its too busy, because it literally exhausted all the GPUs Azure has as its disposal. Without the Cloud, scaling ChatGPT would have been impossible. It would have been nowhere near its current success. Remember that GPT3 was released to the public in Mid 2022, had no p…

False. It is not coping with the load. It is successful.

Therefore, it did not have to be able to cope with the load to be successful.

All you did is illustrate my point.

Re: Tech layoffs are feeding a new startup surge

#280

Post by pjmlp »

pkdpic wrote: post #230
HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OTOH, if you are job hunting, be sure to keep your LinkedIn profile up to date.

Thats helpful (but rare) to hear. Does anyone have any concrete anecdotes reinforcing the importance of keeping linkedin looking fresh? Also what matters? Artful descriptions of past positions? Activity on timeline? Upvotes on skills? Links to projects?

The headhunter spam helps to keep aware of who's hiring in the region, then when you will something that might seem interesting apply directly.

Although some of them are also good, and might help you to at least skip directly to the interview on site.

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