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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?

#221

Post by grepfru_it »

vidro3 wrote: post #203
mixdup wrote: post #94

I'm convinced that it's because the recession that has been predicted for the past 3 years has not happened, and now we're in the election year and it must happen. The layoffs will continue until we get the macro outcome we're looking for It's the only explanation for companies that are at all time highs in revenue, profit, and stock value to be laying off double digit percentages of their employees

Why does an election year indicate a recession? Rather, who precisely wants a recession now, in your opinion?

Jerome Powell

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

#222

Post by oceanplexian »

forward1 wrote: post #15

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.

It wasn’t free money, it was COVID. We had low rates and low inflation for years before 2020.

Remember when the government used emergency powers and forced the economy to shut down over health mandates? Remember the thousands of dollars in checks the government mailed to every person or business with a pulse?

That whole operation completely distorted and screwed up the economy. It boosted tech companies with unnatural growth. It boosted real estate prices. It increased the cost of grocery staples. The market reacted in the rebound, the Fed reacted to the market, and we are playing out the effects of the bad decisions made in 2020.

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

#223

Post by Zelphyr »

A reason that I can think of is it's a result of the hiring that happened during COVID. First you had Amazon saying they were going on a massive hiring spree. The other tech companies (except for Apple it seems) said to themselves, "Oh no! They're going to snap up all the talent!" so they ramped up their hiring too.

Interest rates were at record lows so there was a lot of available money and nobody (except for the scientists) knew how long this COVID thing would last. These companies are used to short-term thinking because they're public companies and the public markets won't think further than six months from now.

Now that interest rates are back up to where they were 20 years ago, and Amazon has gone through a few rounds of layoffs, the rest of the industry is doing some belt tightening as well.

I predict several of these companies will be a shell of themselves in 10-15 years for this and many other reasons.

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

#224

Post by iancmceachern »

playcache wrote: post #132
iancmceachern wrote: post #98

Debt is more expensive. Startups are by definition financed by debt. The barriers to entry, and risk apatite are different now.

Its not startups doing the biggest layoffs, its IPO companies like Google etc.

But those companies still have to "finance" their projects

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

#225

Post by idkyall »

fritzo wrote: post #63
smiths1999 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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].

After 5 years of this law being in effect, will the numbers balance back out to pre section 174? That is, does that deduction from year Y carry over into year Y+1, Y+2, etc.?

I mean, this probably still matters a lot for startups given their shorter lifetimes, but it seems any large company(I'm thinking of, e.g. Apple, who has plenty of cash on hand) that's been around for a while could just wait it out? I am not familiar with corporate tax law and how deals are structured, but could you also defer revenue in the same way to offset(e.g. customers with a 5 year contract paying progressively more but keeping the same total $ amount to sync with your deductions)?

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

#227

Post by tdy_err »

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…

> These blanket statements on Hackernews are so frustrating to read. > Please understand that every environment, company, and project is different.

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

#228

Post by foofie »

throwbadubadu wrote: post #112
akg_67 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you define "quality" of tech worker? What is the profile of people being let go? Are they recent hire or people with quick certification, bootcamp, etc? 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. > It turns out that compared to the dedicated nerds of the previous generation, most new people just do…

> 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 colleague…

> 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.

I don't think you're interpreting these things right, and I'll tell you why.

I know superb software engineers who don't update their online presence and didn't even bothered to update their LinkedIn profile to change their profile photo uploaded over a decade ago. I also know newly graduated software engineers who have a well polished CV complete with profile photo taken by a pro photographer.

The key difference in both cases is that the newly graduated software engineer had to go through recruitment processes very recently, while the superb veters software engineer climbed the corporate ladder and eventually landed a CTO role in the very same company he joined over a decade ago, and during this time he had zero need to even look at job boards.

Most people don't update their CV if they aren't applying for jobs, let alone update profiles in job boards if they are not applying to jobs ads.

Failing to update your profile in a job board does not correlate with expertise. It correlates with the need to seek a new job. Whether you're a lazy incompetent fool or a software engineering wizard, you won't update your LinkedIn profile unless you feel you need to switch jobs.

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

#229

Post by znpy »

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…

I mostly agree with your point and I have a corollary around this part:

> Simultaneously, a huge portion of the world saw tech salaries and wanted in on it so they started taking every quick certification, bootcamp, degree, etc to get into tech.

In 2007-2017 the concept of "startup company" was also heavily romanticized, to the point it was almost toxic. I was in university in 2013 and pretty much anyone wanted to build a startup. More often than not it was non-tech people exploiting tech people into building MVPs. It was painful to see (and in a few cases, to experience).

Don't even get me started on "apps". Every moron on the block had some kind of "idea for an app" and was completely clueless to how the app markets worked (let alone how to actually do that).

Of course, being pretty much all amateurish at best, no single business plan was in sight.

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

#230

Post by ljm »

armitron wrote: post #218
ljm wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 all well and good if you're willing to leave a lot of money on the table. All the companies that hand out half-a-million to a million-dollars/yr total compensation packages operate using similar hiring processes. That's a lot of money over the span of even a few years to miss out on.

I'm in the UK so that kind of compensation package is completely unheard of. In London it's still feasible to pull in 100k+ without running the gauntlet.
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