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Ask HN: What is the current driver of tech layoffs?

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Re: Ask HN: What is the current driver of tech layoffs?

#21

Post by Freedom2 »

leetharris wrote: post #19

This is going to be a controversial opinion. The quality of your average tech worker has completely nosedived in the last 10-15 years. All these huge companies wanted more products, more marketshare, more money, etc. They needed more people to pull this off. They started lowering hiring standards across the board because there just weren't enough people in tech. Simultaneously, a huge portion of the world saw tech sa…

The proliferation of LeetCode for interviews means that we have an army of employed software engineers who are great at solving toy puzzles, but when it comes to actual business and / or customer problems, they stumble and falter. Management only have themselves to blame for spreading this kind of culture of interviewing around.

Re: Ask HN: What is the current driver of tech layoffs?

#22

Post by Solvency »

Apreche wrote: post #13

The same thing that always drives layoffs. You are a company. The system we have demands growth. Even very stable and reliable profits are seen as failure. There must be growth. The people who run a company can not press a magic button to increase revenues. They can't just pull a successful new project out of nowhere. Anything like that is going to be a risk, and will probably fail. It will also take time. The one th…

"You are a company. The system we have demands growth. Even very stable and reliable profits are seen as failure. There must be growth."

But take a software company like McNeel. They make a popular but extremely niche market product called https://www.rhino3d.com. They've been around for decades. They have extremely low turnover. Many developers have worked there since the beginning.

They are used around the globe by architects, product designers, industrial designers, etc.

What are they doing right? Why/how do so many others get it wrong? Are humble software companies like this unicorns? Why?

Re: Ask HN: What is the current driver of tech layoffs?

#24

Post by pi-e-sigma »

leetharris wrote: post #19

This is going to be a controversial opinion. The quality of your average tech worker has completely nosedived in the last 10-15 years. All these huge companies wanted more products, more marketshare, more money, etc. They needed more people to pull this off. They started lowering hiring standards across the board because there just weren't enough people in tech. Simultaneously, a huge portion of the world saw tech sa…

Even if we assume that what you think is true then it is still solely the companies' fault. Because if the prospective employees are so shit why would you hire them in the first place?

Re: Ask HN: What is the current driver of tech layoffs?

#25

Post by tverbeure »

Solvency wrote: post #22
Apreche wrote: post #13

The same thing that always drives layoffs. You are a company. The system we have demands growth. Even very stable and reliable profits are seen as failure. There must be growth. The people who run a company can not press a magic button to increase revenues. They can't just pull a successful new project out of nowhere. Anything like that is going to be a risk, and will probably fail. It will also take time. The one th…

"You are a company. The system we have demands growth. Even very stable and reliable profits are seen as failure. There must be growth." But take a software company like McNeel. They make a popular but extremely niche market product called https://www.rhino3d.com . They've been around for decades . They have extremely low turnover. Many developers have worked there since the beginning. They are used around the globe…

"The system" is either the stock market or VCs. McNeel is privately owned without VC funding (AFAIK.)

Re: Ask HN: What is the current driver of tech layoffs?

#26

Post by LarsDu88 »

Solvency wrote: post #22
Apreche wrote: post #13

The same thing that always drives layoffs. You are a company. The system we have demands growth. Even very stable and reliable profits are seen as failure. There must be growth. The people who run a company can not press a magic button to increase revenues. They can't just pull a successful new project out of nowhere. Anything like that is going to be a risk, and will probably fail. It will also take time. The one th…

"You are a company. The system we have demands growth. Even very stable and reliable profits are seen as failure. There must be growth." But take a software company like McNeel. They make a popular but extremely niche market product called https://www.rhino3d.com . They've been around for decades . They have extremely low turnover. Many developers have worked there since the beginning. They are used around the globe…

How are people still paying for this when blender exists?

Re: Ask HN: What is the current driver of tech layoffs?

#27

Post by methodical »

Solvency wrote: post #22
Apreche wrote: post #13

The same thing that always drives layoffs. You are a company. The system we have demands growth. Even very stable and reliable profits are seen as failure. There must be growth. The people who run a company can not press a magic button to increase revenues. They can't just pull a successful new project out of nowhere. Anything like that is going to be a risk, and will probably fail. It will also take time. The one th…

"You are a company. The system we have demands growth. Even very stable and reliable profits are seen as failure. There must be growth." But take a software company like McNeel. They make a popular but extremely niche market product called https://www.rhino3d.com . They've been around for decades . They have extremely low turnover. Many developers have worked there since the beginning. They are used around the globe…

McNeel is not a public company. Public companies are driven towards prioritizing revenue and growth much more than private companies because growth is a shared goal of all shareholders. I suppose it could be said that companies with outside PE or VC funding would also prioritize growth, but that would be in the same vein of getting to an exit or IPO rather than just making the stock go up.

Re: Ask HN: What is the current driver of tech layoffs?

#29

Post by rickydroll »

why? this is why (kinda). https://www.axios.com/2024/01/10/wealthy-own-record-share-st...

The financial beast demanding growth feeds on increasing gains in the value of stocks and other financial instruments. One of the easier ways to fake growth is layoffs.

Your 401(k) is part of that beast, and your investments in stocks, etc., contribute to the system that drives layoffs.

Re: Ask HN: What is the current driver of tech layoffs?

#30

Post by babyshake »

leetharris wrote: post #19

This is going to be a controversial opinion. The quality of your average tech worker has completely nosedived in the last 10-15 years. All these huge companies wanted more products, more marketshare, more money, etc. They needed more people to pull this off. They started lowering hiring standards across the board because there just weren't enough people in tech. Simultaneously, a huge portion of the world saw tech sa…

And yet, the engineering interviews still typically revolve around Leetcode algorithms instead of the messy but hardly CS-intensive day to day work that engineering typically involves.
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