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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?

#241
post #128
post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Back in my day, man pages and --help were enough. The thing about great documentation is that it rarely hallucinates.

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

#242
post #128
post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Back in my day, man pages and --help were enough. The thing about great documentation is that it rarely hallucinates.

It’s just a bit more slow.

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

#243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back in my day you needed a PhD in CSS to center a div vertically. We used to pore over the freshest W3C drafts with excitement. You don't see that anymore since jQuery.

I was making good buck being ie6 expert, wish the tech didn't progress that quickly ))

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

#244
post #193
post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's nonsense. Your typical developer had to deal with all those things in the past maybe, but is no more than specialization knowledge. You don't care about how many ticks you need to MOV with indirect addressing when you are developing Django. Feels like complaining because someone that is not a Django developer doesn't know how proxy model inheritance works.

All abstractions leak like a sieve. Being a developer at ANY layer of the stack without knowing what's happening underneath you is default gross incompetence and a recipe for eventual disaster. Are we cool with surgeons not knowing what mitochondria are, or how cells work? All you gotta know is where to put the scalpel, bro. I'm sure it will work out just fine.

This is laughably over blown.

I don’t expect my doctor to know the component parts of atoms. Nor do I need them to.

I don’t expect a designer to know how a pixel works.

At some point in the stack we have to draw a line and say this level of detailed knowledge is not generally useful to the majority.

In terms of generic web development today, I would be fine at drawing that line at low level system concerns (memory allocation, cpu cycles, hell even compilation)

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

#245
post #217
post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

> 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.

I interviewed at Microsoft and I got multiple questions lifted straight from leetcode word for word. Some easy and some hard DP questions.

Google and Netflix had hard questions as well, but they were all novel questions not on leetcode/hackerrank. However, CS algorithms 101 were fundamental to both.

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

#246

One reason I think not given enough weight is that it is now acceptable to do layoffs. These huge companies accrue a ton of dead weight and dead-end projects that they would love to flush routinely, but 5 years ago their stock prices would halve if they suddenly laid off 10% of their work force because of bad optics. Now it has become acceptable for all the various reasons so any company that wants to clean house is…

Agree, twitter layoff set an example that it's ok to layoff. Then all FAANG followed

Except Twitter is trying to hire a ton of people right now... I think they need more engineers pretty bad and Elon knows it.

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

#247

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…

If they overhired by 50%, and hired a bunch of idiots, the tech executives should be the ones on the chopping block.

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

#248

One reason I think not given enough weight is that it is now acceptable to do layoffs. These huge companies accrue a ton of dead weight and dead-end projects that they would love to flush routinely, but 5 years ago their stock prices would halve if they suddenly laid off 10% of their work force because of bad optics. Now it has become acceptable for all the various reasons so any company that wants to clean house is…

Yep, executives just copy each other all the time. They start thinking about layoffs when other companies in the industry are doing it.

My company is discussing having people show up three days a week in the office. The only justification mentioned was that other companies are doing it. I am quite doubtful they did any sort of analysis to ensure it's a good idea.

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

#249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> increase worker productivity by 10x-1000x. Tell me you're not an engineer without telling me you're not an engineer

Tell me you're not using LLMs to code without telling me you're not using LLMs to code ¯ \ _ ( ツ ) _ / ¯

No way is anyone getting things delivered 10x faster because of ChatGPT. Software engineering isn't like folding bedsheets in the prison laundry.

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

#250

The "free money" is going away, now that the Boomers are all retiring and taking their money out of the stock market. Interest rates are about to rise to 8-10% and stay there for a few decades, if all goes well . This will mark the beginning of an immense era of innovation as all of that talent floods the market and is put to far more productive use.

Innovation, at least in our sector, requires capital investment. Hardly any startup can bootstrap. At high interest rates, and with people retiring and moving their money into safe assets, there will be little appetite to fund startups in the coming years. At least that's the theory that Peter Zeihan is presenting on his youtube channel.
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