Programmer productivity is really hard to measure, so managers will act in their own interest and push for larger teams. The shift to digital due to COVID provided the excuse. Low interest rates provided the means. Eventually external factors force a reevaluation/correction.
Ask HN: What is the current driver of tech layoffs?
61–70 of 315 posts
Re: Ask HN: What is the current driver of tech layoffs?
#62This 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…
More charitably: Many people who 10-15 years ago would have excelled in a non-tech field have since then been drawn into tech due to shrinkage in those other fields and to the attractively high compensation in tech.
Re: Ask HN: What is the current driver of tech layoffs?
#63Gergely Orosz's theory[1]: > An IRS tax code change in Section 174. This change eliminates the ability for businesses to deduct R&D as an expense. > Hear of lots of layoffs directly because of this, as a start. [1] https://twitter.com/GergelyOrosz/status/1735030983173230944?...
I don't follow. Aren't employee salaries a deductible expense? The above makes me think more along the lines of no longer being able to deduct GPU costs incurred from deep learning research.
IIUC, whereas previously companies could deduct salaries in year Y from revenue in that same year Y, now section 174 allows deduction of only 1/5 of those salaries in each of the 5 years [Y,Y+1,Y+2,Y+3,Y+4].
Re: Ask HN: What is the current driver of tech layoffs?
#64This 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.
The more experience you rack up in your career, the more likely you are to walk away from jobs with laborious hiring processes too.
I will politely decline any opportunity that requires me to do multiple code and architecture tests and several other lengthy meetings, usually spread out over the course of months, because it’s not worth my time to jump through so many hoops. It signals to me that there is already a tendency to implement process for the sake of process.
What will really sell me on a company is a more in depth conversation with the leadership and the team where we learn more about what we value and how we like to operate. And that’s how I would interview anyone who was referred by someone I trust.
Re: Ask HN: What is the current driver of tech layoffs?
#65This 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…
I think this is only half the answer (or atleast part of it). This not only ends up attracting the make-quick-buck-with-certification types but also the political sociopaths who knows how to optimize time on the ladder over quality. This not only has lowered the bar but also made these places very toxic to work in! Passive aggressiveness anybody?
Re: Ask HN: What is the current driver of tech layoffs?
#66This 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…
This exact complaint was common in 2001. Which hey maybe it’s true! Maybe the nerds from 2 generations ago could have built all this technology 10x over… except they didn’t.
Re: Ask HN: What is the current driver of tech layoffs?
#67This 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 quality of your average tech worked has completely nosedived in the last 10-15 years.
It's definitely got worse over the last ~10 years, but the pandemic era hiring from 2020-2021 took it to new level of bad at many companies. Anyone who had done some basic coding was getting hired at a great salary in 2021, and these individuals are still around today – some now calling themselves "senior developers".
But I completely agree with what you're saying here about about it no longer being nerds working in tech. A nerd who isn't the best coding will still engage with me about technical details, be keen to learn new things, and care about their work. A lot of the new guys I work with today are just doing the bare minimum and they think you're an idiot for caring.
Re: Ask HN: What is the current driver of tech layoffs?
#68Interest rates went up and now profitability matters. Tech companies' biggest expense is employees, so it's the lowest hanging fruit to generate higher profits. It's really that simple.
Re: Ask HN: What is the current driver of tech layoffs?
#69A lawyer commenting on the game industry (which is largely copying the Silicon Valley business model) has an excellent explanation of these cycles, and why it is that the industry is simultaneously reporting record profits and mass layoffs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-653Z1val8s
tl;dw (in my own words): investors like it when you have extreme hiring during the good times, and they like it when you have extreme cutbacks during the bad times. Investors don’t like slow and steady growth.
Interestingly, Nintendo quite firmly rejects the Silicon Valley approach, sticking firmly with the slow & steady - and while the rest of the games industry was doing layoffs, Nintendo gave all their employees 10% raises.
Re: Ask HN: What is the current driver of tech layoffs?
#70The 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…
Rhino is an amazing product that I use every day. The developers are active and responsive on their forums and I’ve had feature requests and bug fixes go from forum posts to shipping in a couple weeks. You can also pick up a telephone and immediately talk to a knowledgable tech support person. It’s amazing and I wish more companies operated like McNeel.
Edit: They also do that thing that everyone says is impossible and sell perpetual licenses. Every 18 months or so they offer paid upgrades to the next version and I always buy it because the price is reasonable and they're jam packed with useful new features.