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Startups Are Scooping Up Big Tech’s Cast-Off Workers

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321–330 of 349 posts

Re: Startups Are Scooping Up Big Tech’s Cast-Off Workers

#321
post #52

Am I missing something or is this literally "Displaced workers get new jobs"?

I used to be a hiring manager in robotics. It was _impossible_ to find good workers. Now, I am a laid off roboticist who found I had my pick of jobs at smaller companies who were suffering from big-tech's vacuum hiring policy. It was always just moat-making, until it got too expensive.

Re: Startups Are Scooping Up Big Tech’s Cast-Off Workers

#322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In EU, you also pay for healthcare and transport, just indirectly in the form of taxes, which is why tax rates are much higher. There is a cross over point for salary in US where below that, it becomes advantageous to live in EU, but tech salaries are well above this point.

My manager moved from the US to Sweden, said he got about 60% in Sweden. His Wife isn't working in Sweden yet and they still have more money on pocket. Very anecdotal and might be inflated one way or the other. But I'm not so sure it's as clear-cut as some might think. Unless you're the top X % raking in the biggest $$

For anyone working in big tech it is very clear cut from a financial perspective. That isn’t the only consideration for sure, but it’s wishful thinking to believe otherwise.

Re: Startups Are Scooping Up Big Tech’s Cast-Off Workers

#323
post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you let your bottom 20% performers go, what are the odds you'll want them back?

Far be it from me to try to change your mind here, but based on my first hand experience this isn't true. Myself, and all of members of my team in my location, were laid off 2 weeks ago from one of the big 4 tech companies. Within the 4 people on my team one was stack ranked within the top 20% of the org of ~75 engineers earlier this year and another was in the process of being promoted. The other two were new to the…

Exactly my experience. Most of the layoff sweeps are to eliminate projects or business lines, not people. Very few orgs got a "remove your bottom 20%" mandate, they just canned 20% of orgs.

Re: Startups Are Scooping Up Big Tech’s Cast-Off Workers

#324

I don’t understand what the opportunities for startups are these days. Anyone know? I feel like the world doesn’t need more saas companies or otherwise you’re doing a chatgpt api company.

Robotics (not autonomous road vehicle necessarily). Some hot defense. Those areas are thriving.

Re: Startups Are Scooping Up Big Tech’s Cast-Off Workers

#325
post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies this profitable and large often actually overhire a small degree to deny the competition talent and to give a layer of people that can be laid off to boost profits quickly to make a board think management is good. Google or FB can lay off 5k people and not even NOTICE a change in productivity, but the boards eat it up.

They might hire to scoop people up, but when they fire, don't they fire based on performance? Or is it purely a random pick?

Some from every column. In larger companies, firing decisions are often political decisions.

Re: Startups Are Scooping Up Big Tech’s Cast-Off Workers

#326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ReflectedImage thinks large companies layoff engineers based on a random number picker. The truth: everyone knows who the underperformers are.

Everyone in a team might know who the underperformers are. But team members and EM are kept out of layoff-related decisions, which are generally done by upper management with the help of external consultants. Those external consultants are about as good as a random number generator.

This is my experience. The last company I worked for that did layoffs while I was there was an example. None of the middle managers had any input in the firing decisions at all. They were just given a list of names by upper management. They were very upset about it, because they couldn't lay off people that were underperforming and were forced to lay off people who were critical or performed very well. Many of them said that it didn't appear that the decision-makers even looked at performance reviews, either. It appeared random.

Re: Startups Are Scooping Up Big Tech’s Cast-Off Workers

#327

I don’t understand what the opportunities for startups are these days. Anyone know? I feel like the world doesn’t need more saas companies or otherwise you’re doing a chatgpt api company.

Startups aren't limited to SaaS or AI work at all. Most startups are neither.

Re: Startups Are Scooping Up Big Tech’s Cast-Off Workers

#328
post #285
post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come on over to Europe. Don't forget your stabproof vest, your riot gear, and blankets because we have no heating.

Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

No, I'll keep matching the energy I see here. This place isn't as sophisticated as you think it is.

Re: Startups Are Scooping Up Big Tech’s Cast-Off Workers

#330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people who work in ‘big tech’ have previously worked elsewhere. Having worked both in small (<100 people and sometimes <10 people) startups and now in Big Tech(TM), it’s not necessarily clear to me that one’s better than the other. They’re different, but working in a startup is not clearly _worse_.

Personally i find startups better to work at. Instead of being a cog in a machine that takes years to “approve” what’s actually needed for the task at hand or having some inexperienced “cio” worker dictating what os or kit you can use you actually get to play with modern tech and do fun things. Even as a manager it’s more fun.

I'm with you. But this is a matter of personality and preference. It's not that startups are objectively better or worse -- it's that startups have different tradeoffs.
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