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Where have all the laid-off tech workers gone?

economist.com

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Re: Where have all the laid-off tech workers gone?

#201

Post by hadlock »

commandlinefan wrote: post #107
gumby wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Only 56.7% of these people joined a tech company. There’s a very good chance that their new jobs are similar to their former jobs. Unfortunately, the term “tech” has become diluted to the point of worthlessness. Every company of any size needs programming, statistics, and such. Conversely many companies swept under the “tech” term don’t develop any technology at all. It’s so bad that actual technology development i…

> There’s a very good chance that their new jobs The linked blog post reads like the other 43.3% don't seem to have found any new jobs at all (if I'm reading it right). ("There could of course still be many that have found new jobs, which they might not yet update their profiles - a common practice on LinkedIn").

Not everyone needs to go get a job immediately after being laid off. Most people I know that when laid off from a tech company, take a minimum of 60 days off before starting a new job.

If you're 22, saddled with student debt, just signed a lease on an apartment and just bought a fancy new car you might be in a different situation but there's a lot of engineers in their 30s and 40s where a 3-6 month break from employment ("sabbatical") is something they've been planning for, for a few years now anyways.

Re: Where have all the laid-off tech workers gone?

#202

Post by RajT88 »

gumby wrote: post #100
nubela wrote: post #18

We actually tracked every laid off individual from Google to understand the story behind the layoffs. Here's the summary: - 747 out of the 2,762 laid-off Googlers have since updated their profiles to indicate a change of employment status in the last 4 months since November 2022. - Only 56.7% of these people joined a tech company. - 1/3 of these ex-Googlers joined startups. See the full blog post here: https://nubela…

> Only 56.7% of these people joined a tech company. There’s a very good chance that their new jobs are similar to their former jobs. Unfortunately, the term “tech” has become diluted to the point of worthlessness. Every company of any size needs programming, statistics, and such. Conversely many companies swept under the “tech” term don’t develop any technology at all. It’s so bad that actual technology development i…

> Unfortunately, the term “tech” has become diluted to the point of worthlessness. Every company of any size needs programming, statistics, and such.

Reminds me of this:

https://www.satellitetoday.com/innovation/2019/02/26/microso...

Re: Where have all the laid-off tech workers gone?

#203

Post by inconceivable »

jghn wrote: post #103
dathinab wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FANG like companies also do a lot of things different then most other, especially smaller companies, so it's not that uncommon for small companies to hesitate to hire someone directly coming from FANG. Then for lower paying jobs a lot of people are hesitant to hire "overqualified" people as they expect them to jump ship the moment they find something better, i.e. no FANG people. Then team leads no matter which job/in…

> FANG like companies also do a lot of things different then most other, As a hiring manager, this is a factor that weighs heavily in my mental math. My experience with ex-BigTech engineers has been that they tend towards wanting to make everything to match their BigTech experience. But they often don't have the pragmatism to understand that X is a good pattern at BigTech because *of the size of BigTech*. Have had wa…

i got into an argument with a bigtech employee (outside of work, in a social setting) that senior engineers should spend 25% of their time mentoring junior hires.

he literally could not understand that a small company can't afford to do this.

not only that, he also could not understand that small companies doesn't even make junior hires. there's nobody to mentor!

and i would guess this guy has like a top 1% iq, whatever that is.

Re: Where have all the laid-off tech workers gone?

#204

Post by [deleted] »

wonder_er wrote: post #150

Laid-off tech worker here. (backend engineer, ruby/rails/javascript). 5 years of experience. I'm working on not ever going back into tech. I've changed careers a number of times in my 34 years of life, and am doing it again. I'm only a mediocre software developer, have always had strong people/business skills, informed by my pre-software experience of commercial construction, teaching/training at a climbing gym, cust…

[deleted]

Re: Where have all the laid-off tech workers gone?

#206

Post by 734129837261 »

Many of the ones I know end up at other companies that had troubles finding good employees before. And a bunch of others started their own companies, and they are/will hire their own employees, too.

I wonder if there are statistics about this kind of trend. How many new companies spawn for ever 100 tech layoffs? How many more jobs are created in 1, 2, 4, and 8 years after the layoffs?

Re: Where have all the laid-off tech workers gone?

#207

Post by p0pcult »

bradlys wrote: post #200
elzbardico wrote: post #41

One thing that is very important to realize after being laid-off from a very big company during a recession is that you need to adjust your salary expectations for the new reality. And the other thing is that you should have been prepared for this a long, long time ago. Economic cycles are a thing, it is in all history books, there's no excuse for not being aware of them. I have always been very very conservative wit…

> You really don't need a Peloton bike and other conspicuous consumption signs. This kind of just general bashing on tech people is so conceited. You're acting like a $2,000 stationary bike is really worth fussing over when you're making $400-500k/yr. Very few people at these incomes in tech are living month to month. They're overall saving a fuckload even if they own a 911.

Go to the local gym and work on actual social networking. Peloton is just goofy.

Re: Where have all the laid-off tech workers gone?

#208

Post by stcroixx »

ikiris wrote: post #180
stcroixx wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We might be unique, but here's no situation we're using Kafka where someone unfamiliar with it would be able to design and support production level systems to the standards we do after a couple hours. That would result in a time bomb for someone else to clean up later when all the stuff you weren't aware you didn't know becomes a problem. These skills are common, some would say table stakes, so it's not hard finding…

You aren't unique, you're just really bad at training and documentation.

We don't train people on or write our own documentation for any widely used open source tools. We use them as they're provided and don't expect any unique knowledge beyond that. That's a large part of the value in choosing tech like this instead of proprietary solutions we'd have to document and train people on. It's also why a developer with those skills can take them with them from job to job over the course of their career and they're still valuable or start at a new company and make valuable contributions from day one before they learn the proprietary bits of the company.

Re: Where have all the laid-off tech workers gone?

#209

Post by klooney »

quesera wrote: post #153
Eumenes wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. I'm also seeing this trend among new grads/early career SWEs. AWS, MongoDB, and all sorts of cloud first product companies have been plugging their software to the university system, and these kids come out of college w/o understanding of the computing layer below these products. Like they don't know what a server is, what a data center is, how storage works. Is that not being taught in CS programs?

Ugh. I've been interviewing Ops/Sec candidates lately, and I'm genuinely confused every time an experienced candidate struggles with their chosen shell.

Lol- "switched to fish but can't use it"?

Re: Where have all the laid-off tech workers gone?

#210

Post by chasd00 »

gramie wrote: post #123
toomuchtodo wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most shocking thing to me I’ve observed during my career is how many good technologists lack empathy. I hazard it’s because the same neurological structure that optimizes for what makes a good dev/technologist is also what makes empathy and social skills lacking, very broadly speaking. You can learn/fake it with enough time and practice (I’ve met those who do), it just doesn’t seem to be that common of a hack. ht…

One of the programmers I used to work with took an online personality test, and told us that it reported him having "less empathy than Stalin". He was a good programmer, though!

many years ago i signed up for an online dating site where i had to take a very long (maybe 200 questions) personality test. I reach the end and it says "due to your personality our services cannot help you" or something like that. That was a blow to the old ego heh.

/happily married for 13 years now with two kids so i guess my personality isn't that toxic heh

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