211–220 of 315 posts
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“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
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/average https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Average
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…
Which means it’s more syndicalist organized rather than purely for profit
Not perfect but as close as you can get to ideal organizationally
It’s that simple.
Why do people want to find more sophisticated explanation?
There is no great conspiracy. Except maybe conspiracy of corrupted governments and terrorists profiting from the war.
But even that is a less likely explanation than people stupidity
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…
"Your average colleague is an idiot" is never an unpopular opinion among tech workers. "You are average," now that is unpopular opinion.
why lay them off when there is hiring in other teams ?
why not move workers from unproductive projects to more promising ones ?
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…
I’d be shocked if you didn’t enter the industry 20-25 years ago.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The quality of your average tech worker has completely nosedived in the last 10-15 years. Not my experience. I've conducted 300+ interviews at FAANG in the last 15 years and haven't seen a meaningful drop in the hiring bar. Based on anecdotes, I have another theory. The people that build the systems got old and are unwilling to work the crazy hours. The new folks are hired to work on maintaining these systems, and…
Not arguing over original point of quality of tech workers but... > I've conducted 300+ interviews at FAANG in the last 15 years and haven't seen a meaningful drop in the hiring bar. Are FAANG interviews these days an indicator of anything besides being good at FAANG interviews? Some of the best people I worked with that brought real value would never pass big tech leetcode interview...
FAANGs don't do leetcode. They may ask about data structures knowledge, but even their coding interviews are aimed at evaluating stuff like system design, write readable code, be coachable, and even soft skills.
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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…
That's a lot of money over the span of even a few years to miss out on.
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…
Initially this sounded right, but then I remembered all the trash that showed up during the dot boom and subsequent booms. It's just hiring booms attract a lot of people who want to make easy money and those people think programing is easy money (it's not). Bootcamps and even CS degrees are just step one of many steps and many people think step one is the only step and don't work to further their craft. Once it becomes evident that an org has way too many of these people, it starts to cull. Unfortunately, large orgs are very bad at "rightsizing," and just "mow the lawn."
The problem with tech is to be good at it, you have to be passionate about it to the point of near obsession. That's a requirement above and beyond just being smart or good at math, or even good at programming. You can fill a room with brilliant but dispassionate people and you won't get much done.
So you're right in a 15 year cycle, but this cycle has happened before and we're now in the the culling part.
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GP left a fair number of qualifiers in their post which you have conveniently ignored so that you could cherry pick an example of people being laid off from roles perceived to be comparatively hard / prestigious. This is a bad-faith argument. If you disagree with what they’re clearly trying to convey, and want to make a case against it, I’d be keen to hear one without cherry-picking some compiler engineering layoffs…
If you feel my argument is in bad faith it would be useful if you could provide evidence for OP's opinions. I personally find the comment quite uninsightful, unfounded and specially disrespectful towards those affected by this new wave of layoffs.