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Where have all the laid-off tech workers gone?

economist.com

251–260 of 451 posts

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

#251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And only about half of the programmers I personally know have LinkedIn accounts in the first place.

I have one. Although it says I work at a place that shut down in 2017.

Mine says "see my Github".

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

#252
I turned 50, you hit middle age and then there's a huge negative wall of discrimination. This layoff hit me after I had been unemployed in the same year so I got no unemployment. I had moved in with my mom to help her during covid so I have been basically turned back into a child after having been forced to spend 478k for my education.

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

#253
post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is your reasoning here that it is selfish, because not everyone can do that, and if everyone could/did, then society would collapse due to no food production, garbage collection, emergency services, law enforcement etc, as all those people would also be out painting/kayaking etc? I ask because as I first read your comment I was unable to see the selfishness, since GP outlined that they lacked the financial means to s…

Right, my thinking here is that the dream of running away from the very society that granted you the freedom to run away seems like you're not "paying it forward" enough, to enable others to have the freedom you'd be taking advantage of. Rather, I would imagine the "not-selfish" version of this would be to spend your life doing those things, and finding ways to help others get to where you're lucky to be. I just find…

> Right, my thinking here is that the dream of running away from the very society that granted you the freedom to run away seems like you're not "paying it forward" enough, to enable others to have the freedom you'd be taking advantage of.

I see it completely the opposite. If someone has already made all the millions they'll ever need, it's better for society to free up that job for someone else who needs the income instead of keeping amassing more and more millions to one single person. Paying it forward here is opening up the opportunity for the next person.

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

#254
post #253
post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, my thinking here is that the dream of running away from the very society that granted you the freedom to run away seems like you're not "paying it forward" enough, to enable others to have the freedom you'd be taking advantage of. Rather, I would imagine the "not-selfish" version of this would be to spend your life doing those things, and finding ways to help others get to where you're lucky to be. I just find…

> Right, my thinking here is that the dream of running away from the very society that granted you the freedom to run away seems like you're not "paying it forward" enough, to enable others to have the freedom you'd be taking advantage of. I see it completely the opposite. If someone has already made all the millions they'll ever need, it's better for society to free up that job for someone else who needs the income…

Job? I'm not sure why we're talking about a job here, I'm not suggesting you stay at your employer beyond the time it takes to become independent.

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

#255

I turned 50, you hit middle age and then there's a huge negative wall of discrimination. This layoff hit me after I had been unemployed in the same year so I got no unemployment. I had moved in with my mom to help her during covid so I have been basically turned back into a child after having been forced to spend 478k for my education.

Wow that’s a lot of money. Did you have master’s/post doc degrees?

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

#256

I turned 50, you hit middle age and then there's a huge negative wall of discrimination. This layoff hit me after I had been unemployed in the same year so I got no unemployment. I had moved in with my mom to help her during covid so I have been basically turned back into a child after having been forced to spend 478k for my education.

> having been forced to spend 478k for my education

Go on...

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

#259
post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my head, "tech" refers to the segment of the labor market, not the product that the company produces. We can race to the bottom on the true definition of "tech" as far as actually producing new technology but in this context it doesn't matter.

Ok, but what is "tech" in this context? I can imagine those people being hired for infra stuff in other segments but the percentage seems high for programmer-level stuff.

Simple metric: if the office had a kombucha tap in 2021, it's a tech company.

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

#260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stripe. They are a payment processor and work in Finance. What significant contributions to tech have they produced? I'm not being snarky, I'm just not familiar with any off the top of my head like I know React came from FB/Meta, Google & Amazon produce all sorts of cloud computing stuff, Apple produces lots of libraries/frameworks (most likely for their own hardware/ecosystem), Bootstrap came out of Twitter, etc.

Providing an API abstracting over the complexity of payment processing is the technology. Google's search engine is technology but you would probably say "isn't that just a researching documents"? A bit weird how you only deem companies technological if they have released popular OSS or Apple because they produce libraries/frameworks they use internally. Pretty sure all software companies use internal libraries.

It sounds like: if they use computers, then they're tech, weird.

I don't share the sentiment, I don't see Netflix in the same group as MSFT / OpenAI / AMD / TSMC.

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