Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Laid-off devs who left tech?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 26 posts

Re: Ask HN: Laid-off devs who left tech?

#11

Post by kypro »

giantg2 wrote: post #8
almosthere wrote: post #3

I was ready to go into construction (which I actually enjoy) but I just got an offer today for a lower pay remote tech job. The only reason I got this job is because the company can only hire US citizens. I wouldn't be surprised if a large portion of devs have gone hard nationalist after Biden's tech layoffs. (Zirp ending + S174 left to wither during Biden)

I don't think people are really going hard nationalist. But it does seem like the offshoring has increased over the past 5 years. Im probably going to lose my job in part because offshore has essentially eliminated the internal job moves available to me so I can't get off a shitty team. Everything keeps getting automated or shipped overseas. It's hard to be optimistic for my kids to have good job opportunities when t…

Genuinely curious – what do you think the solution is?

Personally I think labels like "nationalist" are unhelpful, but regardless what you label it what I do believe is that there needs to be a genuine conversation about whether it's better to have more expensive goods and services if it means people have jobs and opportunities.

I'd be fine with iPhones costing 2-3x more if I knew they were built domestically. Those who couldn't afford them could always buy second hand or hold on to them for longer. And historically of course this was often how things worked... People brought quality clothes or quality furniture and looked after them for years – decades even. Whereas today because we can exploit foreigners for super cheap goods we don't really care if we need to buy a new pair of shoes every 6 months – it's created a completely different economic model and one that a skilled worker cannot compete with, at least on price.

Perhaps the economy on the whole wouldn't grow as fast if there were more protectionist policies, but at the same time I'd be amazed if it didn't significantly improve job prospects and inequality.

That said, we almost everyone in the middle-class deserves to lose their jobs to foreign workers for how awful they've treated those below them for struggling to find good work in the era of globalisation.

Re: Ask HN: Laid-off devs who left tech?

#12

Post by paulcole »

kypro wrote: post #11
giantg2 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think people are really going hard nationalist. But it does seem like the offshoring has increased over the past 5 years. Im probably going to lose my job in part because offshore has essentially eliminated the internal job moves available to me so I can't get off a shitty team. Everything keeps getting automated or shipped overseas. It's hard to be optimistic for my kids to have good job opportunities when t…

Genuinely curious – what do you think the solution is? Personally I think labels like "nationalist" are unhelpful, but regardless what you label it what I do believe is that there needs to be a genuine conversation about whether it's better to have more expensive goods and services if it means people have jobs and opportunities. I'd be fine with iPhones costing 2-3x more if I knew they were built domestically. Those…

> I'd be fine with iPhones costing 2-3x more if I knew they were built domestically

This is easy to check!

Pretend they are built domestically and give 2x the cost of it to a charity you love the next time you buy an iPhone.

Re: Ask HN: Laid-off devs who left tech?

#13

Post by histriosum »

I've been without an IT gig for the last year, though it had nothing to do with the overall tech market tightening.

Prior to my gig ending, I'd already made the decision to change careers (at least for a while), so I haven't really looked for anything new, I've been focusing on the career change. At 46, I just wasn't really looking forward to starting to experience the tech ageism; and, the AI craziness is really grating to me. It's feels like the seagulls from Finding Nemo except instead of "Mine Mine Mine" it's "AI AI AI". :-D

I'm about two weeks away from leaving for pilot training at a regional airline, so hopefully in a few months I'll be just another cog in a machine for a while, flying people around on jet powered busses. If the airline life turns out to be my speed for the long haul, then the goal would be to get over to a mainline carrier ASAP; if not, I can always fall back to tech later, and for now I'll enjoy the office view from 34k ft.

I'm aware that I've traded upcoming implicit ageism for explicitly regulated ageism, but if I am lucky enough to stay healthy I don't have to worry about that kicking in until I'm 65.

Re: Ask HN: Laid-off devs who left tech?

#14

Post by gcheong »

histriosum wrote: post #13

I've been without an IT gig for the last year, though it had nothing to do with the overall tech market tightening. Prior to my gig ending, I'd already made the decision to change careers (at least for a while), so I haven't really looked for anything new, I've been focusing on the career change. At 46, I just wasn't really looking forward to starting to experience the tech ageism; and, the AI craziness is really gra…

That's interesting. How long have you been flying?

Re: Ask HN: Laid-off devs who left tech?

#15

Post by [deleted] »

lordkrandel wrote: post #6

The layoffs affected mostly the US market. In EU, there never has been an excess of salaries or hiring, so it's almost just bad as usual. You don't see much "funding" and "VC"s here. If you wanna stay on the market, you better have positive cash flow. In Italy, salaries are about 1/4 of what's overseas, it is very hard to job hop, those who do are seen as opportunistic people. So, you feel this slightly less. All thi…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Laid-off devs who left tech?

#16

Post by histriosum »

gcheong wrote: post #14
histriosum wrote: post #13

I've been without an IT gig for the last year, though it had nothing to do with the overall tech market tightening. Prior to my gig ending, I'd already made the decision to change careers (at least for a while), so I haven't really looked for anything new, I've been focusing on the career change. At 46, I just wasn't really looking forward to starting to experience the tech ageism; and, the AI craziness is really gra…

That's interesting. How long have you been flying?

I did a chunk of my primary training back when I was 21, but as often happens, I got to around the cross country solo portion and ran out of money and life priorities changed.. unfortunately, I then set it down for a really long time; sort of forgot that I actually really loved it, I guess.

Came back to flying in 2019 and finished up my private certificate, with no particular intention other than I wanted to fly because I enjoyed it, and perhaps instruct because I do enjoy teaching. Went on to get my instrument and commercial, and around the time I got my commercial certificate, I started toying with the idea of pursuing it as a possible career change. Went on to get my multi-engine add on, which kind of cemented the idea of trying it for a living. CFI and CFII after that, and between doing some instructing and flying a lot just because I liked flying, I started applying at airlines around December of last year and I crossed the 1500hr mark in March of this year. Interviewed at my first choice regional in May, they gave me a CJO, and training class date in mid July.

Pilot hiring right now is pretty tight, so I've been pretty fortunate to get the regional I wanted right out of the gate, and to not have a long delay for a class date. As with anything involving timing in life, I definitely timed it wrong -- my earning potential and qualify of life outlook would've been vastly improved if I'd been ready to make this jump 2 to 3 years ago, but what can you do :-D

Re: Ask HN: Laid-off devs who left tech?

#17

Post by volk45 »

Laid off game dev from 2024 (3D art). Looked into how I could participate in industries and economy at the county level.

Became a survey tech for a survey firm that has been around for three generations.

I’m looking to enjoying a new career where there is no homework, small supportive team, and helps serve people and businesses that are part of the community I live in

Re: Ask HN: Laid-off devs who left tech?

#18

Post by muzani »

detaro wrote: post #5
almosthere wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would like to know one thing about the games industry - are one reason AAA game releases dropped off a cliff is remote work? Reason I say is that as soon as Covid hit, it seems like the triple As just stopped - which makes no sense because all they did was hire. I have to assume it's like the companies I worked at: All of a sudden people's individual life at home was more important than work - EVEN during work hour…

Hiring lots of people and setting grander goals (because you have lots of money and just hired tons of people) is an excellent way of slowing development down for a while, it doesn't make things go faster. Bigger projects take longer, and many studios chased bigger and better, instead of aiming smaller. Which then meant that these things had to be standout hits to be considered successful, which puts more pressure on…

Yeah, it's unintuitive that more people = slower, as most people have never hit that level of scale. But it means teams and managers and communication communication communication.

Will Wright said that you go from 4 hours of work per hour of meetings to 1 hour of work per 4 hours of meetings. This can be scaled down with wikis and tools. Chinese companies tend to have "living documentation" aka system analysts - a person whose job is to understand everything and be asked questions whenever someone gets stuck. Western companies are very resistant to this model for some reason.

Bethesda is another way to build things at scale. Lots of isolated sections that don't link into the main thing. But it's hard to build something like Fallout 2 that way when the whole story isn't in one person's head.

Part of the reason for so many layoffs recently is because it works. It's a magic tool that increases speed and reduces costs, and you just pay for it with everyone's motivation and soul.

Re: Ask HN: Laid-off devs who left tech?

#19

Post by rl1987 »

lordkrandel wrote: post #6

The layoffs affected mostly the US market. In EU, there never has been an excess of salaries or hiring, so it's almost just bad as usual. You don't see much "funding" and "VC"s here. If you wanna stay on the market, you better have positive cash flow. In Italy, salaries are about 1/4 of what's overseas, it is very hard to job hop, those who do are seen as opportunistic people. So, you feel this slightly less. All thi…

Layoffs certainly do happen outside US and ZIRP was not uniquely American thing.

Re: Ask HN: Laid-off devs who left tech?

#20

Post by lordkrandel »

rl1987 wrote: post #19
lordkrandel wrote: post #6

The layoffs affected mostly the US market. In EU, there never has been an excess of salaries or hiring, so it's almost just bad as usual. You don't see much "funding" and "VC"s here. If you wanna stay on the market, you better have positive cash flow. In Italy, salaries are about 1/4 of what's overseas, it is very hard to job hop, those who do are seen as opportunistic people. So, you feel this slightly less. All thi…

Layoffs certainly do happen outside US and ZIRP was not uniquely American thing.

I haven't heard of anyone being laid off in my circle, no newspaper talking about that. Sure there must have been some Microsoft or Google employee laid off, but they do not represent big numbers here, so it's totally different. There are also almost no startups here.
Post reply on HN