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

> A quick review of people on LinkedIn with Open to Work badges seems to paint a different picture than any claim of people being let go are of lower quality.

Come on, LinkedIn (CVs) tell nothing. Having been somewhere is often made up as great experience even if did not yield much experience, or one wasn't as involved as claimed, and even been somewhere is a lie. It is usually the opposite if I check known colleagues: null performers and phonies have outstanding profiles, the good or super programmer somtimes an awkward or does-not-care profile.

(But yeah, also admitting: Companies usually fire by the wrong metrics and even direct managers, which are bad managers, do not know the real differences of their underlings..)

> notion of newer generation not being dedicated and smarter

Full agree, I don't think it is much new generation vs old, there are the same kind of great peoples.

But computer science really changed and grew. E.g. I strongly remember when I joined university 20 years or so ago how all tutors claimed how big our year is, and that before us everybody knew each other (profs/tutors/students), but now impossible. But still, 80-90% of the students that survived the first semesters just belonged there and would be great coders or computer scientists, with the right skills and ambitions. If you look nowadays, it is different and maybe more similar to other professions, and more 50/50 between those guys, and the other half which is ambitionless and/or just lack the skills, mindset, whatever, and would have better become something else. If you aks those some even freely admit they hate their job, but only drawn by the money.

> It turns out that compared to the dedicated nerds of the previous generation, most new people just don't care that much about tech and don't want to go deeper than the bare minimum required by their job.

The average day-to-day work is menial, for example investigating a production issue. That isn't something that people get into as a hobby, that's work in a very unromantic sense. Maybe having good systems background can help in those situations, but it's a little more subtle

I do think though that it works the other way: people who actually care about computers don't care if tech is no longer a money field, they just want to work on computer stuff. And maybe earlier it wasn't as much of a money field. But that doesn't imply that the enthusiasts are better at fulfilling work responsibilities. A lot of work stuff is business specific and not very dependent on systems background

So yeah, I don't think the part about over-hiring is necessarily wrong, but this sort of "I'm better than you" attitude isn't very becoming. Maybe you should give this [0] a read, just to see a different perspective

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Jante

I think it all comes down to the fears of investors. At larger companies they have to answer to share holders who are moody, pessimistic, and very bipolar. They will look at a companies revenue, see that its doing well, but still lose sleep over every negative piece of financial news they hear. Then they'll demand costs to be cut. 'd-dont you see the economy...' Next thing you know executives have to do the same thing as every other company to be perceived as competent. Investors love their group think so if you're doing something different during a time like this they're going to lose their shit (even more.)

For smaller companies the explanation is probably much simpler: there's less spending on new companies and therefore maximizing 'runaway' is critical. So if its not absolutely essential it needs to be cut. People who don't do that might not survive until things turn around, unfortunately. It's not a great situation to be in.

I think it's a combination of things and will vary by company.

For the largest companies, it's likely to some extent to put downward pressure on salaries in the market.

For others it can be like the Twitter case were they hired way too many devs for what was needed and that simply makes a bigger communications mess not more productivity.

For others still it's outside pressure to become financially stable or income positive with a reduction in investment capital over time.

The larger economy, the potential for a more widespread military conflict and a number of other factors taking their toll in different ways.

When belts need to tighten, late and expensive projects get cut.

There are still jobs out there, but with remote roles in particular, which I'm personally experiencing. Pay scales are all over the map and there are hundreds of applicants to many jobs out there.

It sucks to be looking and I imagine it sucks to be hiring as well. The latter because of the shear volumes of applicants to sift through.

I will say, I'd rather receive no contact at this point than the boilerplate rejection emails. If there's no substance or advice, it's just a net negative IMO. Used to hate getting dropped. But having to fill out a few dozen applications a day competing against hundreds and seeing the ones where you're less than ideal sucks.

I took 4 months off because I needed to get past the burnout. Now it's just hard getting back in.

Explains why tools like Copilot seems to be so hyped, yet I as an old school developer really can't find a place where it would help me.

I guess most people really benefit from a tool to autogenerate an Erathostenes sieve in Python or a fizzbuzz function in Prolog or yet another React Router boilerplate.

EDIT: a more nuanced version of this comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38965283