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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?

#271

Post by BizarroLand »

mikebelanger wrote: post #177
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…

Interesting idea. But supposing that the quality never nosedived, I suspect companies would still be doing these mass layoffs. Quality is always relative to the overall pool of job applicants, and companies would just layoff people with a higher bar in mind.

This is my bet as well. They're not firing because they have to. They're firing because the bean counters showed them how much more money they could have if they did.

Coast for a year or two, save millions, then rehire back when they need to innovate or update.

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

#272

Post by mikewarot »

badpun wrote: post #250
mikewarot wrote: post #95

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.

Innovation happens in personal projects that eventually get commercialized.

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

#273

Post by Noumenon72 »

foofie wrote: post #228
throwbadubadu wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 p…

I update my LinkedIn profile whenever I add a colleague and want to give a recent first impression.

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

#276

Post by wait_a_minute »

dijit wrote: post #240
pera wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The quality of your average tech worker has completely nosedived in the last 10-15 years I find this opinion hilarious: Almost 30 years ago the second most popular software product was Windows 95 (Doom was the #1), which couldn't run for a few hours without BSODing. Almost 20 years ago the average tech worker was building atrocities with Visual Basic, MS Access and PHP. Meanwhile today it was announced that Google…

This is great, I find your opinion hilarious. Yeah, Windows 95 BSOD'd a lot; however the people developing it were doing it for the very first time, largely with single-digits of megabytes of memory to work with and with a CPU that not only contained bugs[0] but was so slow that every single operation would take milliseconds of wall time[1]. It's not comparable, it's almost to the level that rendering a character on…

php is awesome

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

#277

Post by SergeAx »

pera wrote: post #162
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…

> The quality of your average tech worker has completely nosedived in the last 10-15 years I find this opinion hilarious: Almost 30 years ago the second most popular software product was Windows 95 (Doom was the #1), which couldn't run for a few hours without BSODing. Almost 20 years ago the average tech worker was building atrocities with Visual Basic, MS Access and PHP. Meanwhile today it was announced that Google…

I will fully discard your argument because Windows 95 was a tech marvel of its time, huge leap in consumer OS segment and stayed unchallenged until introduction of Windows 2000 Professional, which was actually more on the workstation side.

BSODs were mostly avoided by using MS-authored drivers.

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

#278

Post by SergeAx »

snarkyturtle wrote: post #232
Fervicus wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Developers who were building atrocities with VB and PHP 20 years ago are the seasoned vets that you would want on a team today.

lol those are the people who can't let go of their beloved, outdated stacks, no way can they develop as well as the new kids on the block

Right. New kids will deliver you 50k LOC React frontend app with additional 1GB of `node_modules`, where you may actually feel good with PHP website sprinkled with jQuery.

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

#280

Post by romanhn »

foofie wrote: post #217
atraac wrote: 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.

This is incorrect, they absolutely do Leetcode and Leetcode is full of questions cribbed from FAANGs.
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