121–130 of 315 posts
Unfortunately when it comes to layoffs, many of the factors that lead to this overexpansion will also ensure that the parts that ballooned are not axed more than the actual tech positions.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.” ― George Carlin
That only applies to the median, not the average. Every time I see this quote I can't help but think that. Funny tho
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…
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
I've seen these answers: - excess hiring during the pandemic; - interest rates raised; - salaries too high; - cut in remote work (to ease return to office later); - some weird thing coming; - AI; (I could replace all those semi-colons with question marks.) (Edit: formatting)
The past ten years of tech have been subsidized with low interest rates, i.e. free money. That is now gone and companies must tighten belts. There really is no greater mystery here.
AFAICT from recent quarterly reports, the big tech companies are still seeing double-digit YoY growth in profits and revenues. So from whence comes the pressure to tighten belts?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 ten…
In a productive day as a solo dev, hitting keys on my keyboard is the easiest part, the hardest part is thinking about a problem in front of my notepad, usually staring out my living room window or while taking a shower.
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…
Also, one can make the argument the other way as well. Tools and infra have gotten good enough that the work doesn’t require the “dedicated nerds”. So let’s get rid of the highest paid engineers as that’s the most impactful to our bottom line. They coincidentally happen to be the nerds. We can always hire them back for less because what else are these nerds going to do in this market.
Not saying that’s the case but demonstrating that it’s pretty easy to string together silly notions we might have to explain reality.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
I do really benefit from finally having a way to use shell scripting. Life is too short to remember hundreds of one letter options with obscure combinations
obviously a steve-jobs-like backroom deal like the one from 2005 having most companies agreeing on doing it at the same time "with no quick hires backsies".