The layoffs are here for those who chose to ‘learn to code’ • Hacker News Board

Re: The layoffs are here for those who chose to ‘learn to code’

#111

Post by jzb » Tue, Apr 25, 2023, 5:11 PM UTC

soVeryTired wrote: post #22

jzb wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but this article is about developers getting laid off - not c-suite and VPs.

Over the past decade more and more devs have been out-earning surgeons and white-shoe lawyers. The tech salaries of today feel like the i-banking salaries of the early 2000s. It’s not just the c-suite that’s been earning crazy money.

Yeah, but I have little interest in pointing a finger at developers for inflated salaries while there's the Sundar Pichai crowd being paid north of $200 million a year.

A mediocre developer can be a drag on a company or just keep the lights on. A mediocre CEO gets paid enough to fund an overpaid developer at $400K a year for... oh, about 560 years.

The damage that a mediocre (or worse) C-suiter or VP does to a company is a lot worse than the mediocre developer (and, in fact, there's a straight line to overstaffing/overpaying and the "leadership") will ever do.

As long as folks are calling out other workers as overpaid and neglecting the execs, the industry is going to continue to get worse.

Re: The layoffs are here for those who chose to ‘learn to code’

#112

Post by everforward » Tue, Apr 25, 2023, 5:49 PM UTC

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #100

everforward wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that's happening, it's either a calculated decision or the senior devs aren't doing their job. Someone should be communicating to management that the solution won't scale, with estimates of when it will fail or maximum load and the amount of time it will take to do it correctly. Sometimes it's legitimately not worth optimizing something that will never need those optimizations. Sometimes management doesn't realize…

Senior devs aren't the big decision makers. Management is.

Right. My point is that senior devs should be communicating the consequences of continuing down a rushed path. If management doesn't listen, they're making a calculated business decision (right or wrong).

If management is going down a rushed path and unaware of the tech debt piling up, that's a failure of senior developers to raise those issues.

Re: The layoffs are here for those who chose to ‘learn to code’

#113

Post by theGnuMe » Tue, Apr 25, 2023, 5:54 PM UTC

whoomp12342 wrote: post #59

CraigRo wrote: post #2

A lot of very mediocre people were getting pretty astounding money. Happens every cycle.

whats the next phase in the cycle?

After exiting the expansion phase, we are in a consolidation and cut expenses cycle. If you can increase productivity then you will find value. If you take a tech specific viewpoint this is the hope for AI. At the same time AI will create new market opportunities overall. In addition the digital transition and the digital to cloud transition will continue.

Re: The layoffs are here for those who chose to ‘learn to code’

#114

Post by naravara » Tue, Apr 25, 2023, 5:55 PM UTC

projectazorian wrote: post #96

naravara wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I tried warning people- here on HN the sentiment was 'we are indisposable'. Maybe if you were actually any good. I reckon at least 60% of these bootcamp alumni were just dead weight. I've interviewed so many people who "learned to code" but had no meaningful logical reasoning or problem solving skills. They could maybe understand syntax, but for the most part they just have some basic familiarity with various frame…

> Developers are there for their programming skills, not pedagogical ones This mindset will limit your advancement, teaching and mentorship work becomes increasingly key for senior and senior+ roles. But I suppose by the time someone has a senior title and 5+ years of experience they’re not really in the category being discussed in this article.

> This mindset will limit your advancement, teaching and mentorship work becomes increasingly key for senior and senior+ roles.

Yes but there aren't enough of them, and they're not being paid to teach fundamentals to fresh faced entry-level hires. We'd expect them to teach higher level things than the basics of how to program. The skill set to be able to teach and explain to a complete naif is a little different from the skill set to communicate with someone who has already been inducted into the jargon and practices of your field.

Re: The layoffs are here for those who chose to ‘learn to code’

#115

Post by epolanski » Tue, Apr 25, 2023, 6:06 PM UTC

908B64B197 wrote: post #107

epolanski wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I've met plenty of terrible developers from the best universities and with the best grades and interviewing skills, people that was easily outclassed and outperformed by 3-month bootcampers, I can't lie crappiest one are much worse, people who struggle to implement very basic algorithms such as Fizz-Buzz.

> was easily outclassed and outperformed by 3-month bootcampers I've literally never seen this happen in real life.

Happens all the time.

Just the average graduate who got a degree and then a low effort job that put to sleep the little he knew from college.

I've seen countless especially in consulting.

Re: The layoffs are here for those who chose to ‘learn to code’

#116

Post by ProllyInfamous » Tue, Apr 25, 2023, 6:08 PM UTC

safety1st wrote: post #51

ProllyInfamous wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a blue collar IBEW electrician that inevitably injured myself working in confined spaces. Summer 2022, I set out on my quest to become a technical writer, but by Holidays 2022 I was generating images and tip-toe-ing into the emerging ChatGPT stuff. By January 2023, I was already certain that professional writing would be increasingly-difficult to enter (as a career field) as a novice content creator: I was alread…

Here's one thing you've got going for you: you can reason about electrical work far better than the general population as well as ChatGPT, which can barely reason at all. It can regurgitate what it scoops up from its training data very well. When it has to combine ideas in novel ways it starts to hallucinate and requires an operator with genuine expertise to separate fact from fiction. As a general purpose novice cop…

I have been observing GPT responses to basic circuit design (specifically in battery cell arrangements for EVs, a client's specialty) and although it is not able to understand "big picture" overall objectives — at present — once re-trained, it is then able to derive correct solutions to similar and same problems.

Thank you for your motivational participation — I have actually copyedited tons of technical documentation (some even paid, lol =P ) but definitely would need to specialize fiercely and apply realworld knowledge into the computer systems.

Re: The layoffs are here for those who chose to ‘learn to code’

#117

Post by moate » Tue, Apr 25, 2023, 6:30 PM UTC

randomdata wrote: post #72

moate wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, don’t do that, now you’ve upset math. Or rather: I’ll mortgage my house and put my life savings on the line against that bet.

Shame about your house and life savings. One man's brilliance is another man's "who wrote this crap?" It is indeed quite likely that most of us, possibly even all of us, will fall below the median of someone's measure.

Your sampling is flawed then.

If you're arguing for some quantum metric that could make me lose it, you're for some reason not providing the word "us" with the same leverage which puts us into a situation we should just default to the literal definition of median since there's literally no way to prove (or disprove) your point.

But sure, you've proven you can buzzkill anything, so you win!

Re: The layoffs are here for those who chose to ‘learn to code’

#118

Post by smahs » Tue, Apr 25, 2023, 6:41 PM UTC

908B64B197 wrote: post #106

WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you it’s in a lot of way similar to the dotcom bubble but the issue seems to me simpler than you make it seems. Propped by an easy access to cheap investment fonds, companies massively over hired developers to work on projets which have actually no value. The massive demand leads to under qualified people being hired. The current layoff is a return to a sustainable situation. And even then if you look at…

> companies massively over hired developers to work on projects which have actually no value. It's still unclear to me the layoffs are affecting actual engineers, outside of Meta and Twitter. Meta is trying to execute one of the biggest company pivot in tech's history after completely giving up on the metaverse. Industry-wide they account for a huge number of laid-off developers. In the meantime, Twitter's layoffs ar…

This is surely a gross oversimplification of what's happening. If you see layoffs.fyi, there are a lot of rows with more than 5% fired or where the numbers are in several hundreds to thousands.

While some companies are known to regularly use the tactics you mention (and a lot others also do the same from time to time), they don't use mass firing as a means.

Re: The layoffs are here for those who chose to ‘learn to code’

#119

Post by ChuckNorris89 » Tue, Apr 25, 2023, 7:38 PM UTC

JaDogg wrote: post #74

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

High performing people adding the most value to the business were rarely the highest paid ones as they had long tenure and the best institutional knowledge but got mediocre wage increases as a punishment for being to loyal too the business. The highest paid ones were usually the ones who job hopped the most during the times of economic boom. They added little value where they went as their tenure was too short for th…

Also it does not matter that a person is loyal, loyal ones can be fired too.

Anyone can be fired

Re: The layoffs are here for those who chose to ‘learn to code’

#120

Post by ChuckNorris89 » Tue, Apr 25, 2023, 7:40 PM UTC

everforward wrote: post #112

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Senior devs aren't the big decision makers. Management is.

Right. My point is that senior devs should be communicating the consequences of continuing down a rushed path. If management doesn't listen, they're making a calculated business decision (right or wrong). If management is going down a rushed path and unaware of the tech debt piling up, that's a failure of senior developers to raise those issues.

Senior devs are good at communicating but management and execs aren't good at listening, they're good at counting beans. They don't care about tech debt because that's the issue of devs to work with.