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Tech layoffs are feeding a new startup surge

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Re: Tech layoffs are feeding a new startup surge

#101

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

spacemadness wrote: post #52
whstl wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Checked mine too and the difference is stark. However just setting Linkedin to "looking for a job" was enough to get a lot of attention in early February. I didn't want to wait for layoffs on my company, so, in advance, I got a much better paid job in about 2-3 weeks. Listings always suck, btw. Recruiters is where it's at.

I wonder what recruiting looks like as a career right now in comparison. I’m sure many will have to switch fields.

Depends. In Ireland, the tech recruiters will all move back into pharma. Dunno what'll happen in the US, maybe a bunch of them will do sales?

Re: Tech layoffs are feeding a new startup surge

#102

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

Salgat wrote: post #58
qqtt wrote: post #8

Good. Both Google and Amazon are barreling down the path of democratizing scale and infrastructure with their cloud offerings. It's never been easier to reach millions of users in a short amount of time with your product. These are the companies that will end up ultimately challenging them down the road for talent and potentially even hitting at their core business models of search and commerce (we've already seen hi…

I don't understand why Google and Amazon would invest all this money in these employees building up their tech and tribal knowledge just to lay them off. Do these companies not expect to grow in the future? Seems like just freezing hiring for a year or two would save you more money in the long run rather than having to rehire and rebuild all this expertise.

> Seems like just freezing hiring for a year or two would save you more money in the long run rather than having to rehire and rebuild all this expertise.

It took Google 6 years from 2012 to double headcount.

In that time, revenue went from $50B to $136B (almost triple). Profit from $10.7B to $30.7B (triple).

In 4 years from 2018 to 2022, Google more than doubled headcount.

In that time, revenue went from $136B to $279B (barely double). Profit from $30.7B to $50.9B (only up 65%).

Almost all these companies have similar stories.

They're still good companies. They just hired way too many people thinking that the pandemic trend would continue for a long period of time - rather than revert to the mean.

If Google continue to grow at it's more long-term average rate - without the layoffs, you're looking at being overstaffed for years.

Why?

Re: Tech layoffs are feeding a new startup surge

#103

Post by bitL »

jmartrican wrote: post #84
SassyGrapefruit wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But I think most startups would save money and time by keeping it simple until they really need more. Having done this several times I can definitively say given my experience it's best to start in the cloud with a cloud native architecture. I can run a fully containerized application in ECS or EKS for a few hundred bucks a month. Why would I incur all the costs and limitations of a VPS or even worse a server I hav…

> He instilled in me the lesson of knowing approximately where you are going to land and not do anything now that would jeopardize that landing. Thanks for sharing that. > object storage Is this like S3 or more like DynamoDB, or something else?

S3

Re: Tech layoffs are feeding a new startup surge

#104

Post by ketzo »

tomcam wrote: post #83
BenFranklin100 wrote: post #59

Good. The best minds of a generation have wasted their talents figuring out how to best maximize media addiction and serve ads for Facebook and Google. Let’s hope a new generation engages in more socially productive endeavors.

If you took a job like that, were you really one of the best minds of your generation?

I mean, by almost any measure, some of the most brilliant programmers of the past 20 years have worked in ads at Google and Facebook, yes.

Re: Tech layoffs are feeding a new startup surge

#105

Post by rshaban »

seattle_spring wrote: post #97

How does someone currently unemployed by choice with a good financial cushion take advantage of this if I don't have any startup ideas I'm deeply passionate about? I've kept an eye on the startup market and all I see are exceedingly boring ideas with mind numbing pitches around them. "Democratizing shipping!" "Disrupting the collaborative saas text editor market!" Edit: wow the ideas in OP are dumb as hell too.

same :)

dm if you want to hire an ex-Google linguist-engineer with search ranking experience

Re: Tech layoffs are feeding a new startup surge

#106

Post by throwaway894345 »

ceejayoz wrote: post #9
cameronfraser wrote: post #4

good luck getting funding

Not every startup idea needs millions of dollars to get started. Folks with a lengthy severance period have a cushion to experiment with fun ideas while job hunting.

I've been seeing a few things like moonrepo crop up and have been curious about why these seem to be cropping up now when the target market (tech) is cutting costs (although maybe these products can be advertised as money-saving?).

Re: Tech layoffs are feeding a new startup surge

#107

Post by snickerbockers »

BenFranklin100 wrote: post #59

Good. The best minds of a generation have wasted their talents figuring out how to best maximize media addiction and serve ads for Facebook and Google. Let’s hope a new generation engages in more socially productive endeavors.

> The best minds of a generation

that's debatable.

Re: Tech layoffs are feeding a new startup surge

#108

Post by _old_dude_ »

shen wrote: post #76
Salgat wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why Google and Amazon would invest all this money in these employees building up their tech and tribal knowledge just to lay them off. Do these companies not expect to grow in the future? Seems like just freezing hiring for a year or two would save you more money in the long run rather than having to rehire and rebuild all this expertise.

Unfortunately the market does not work on a year or two timelines.

There is a concept of internal layoff to invent, where a part of the workforce as to apply to a different teams, being fired from the previous one and hire by the next one.

For the anecdote, i know someone that was let go by IBM and hire by RedHat the same month two years ago.

Re: Tech layoffs are feeding a new startup surge

#109

Post by didgetmaster »

arbuge wrote: post #47
qqtt wrote: post #8

Good. Both Google and Amazon are barreling down the path of democratizing scale and infrastructure with their cloud offerings. It's never been easier to reach millions of users in a short amount of time with your product. These are the companies that will end up ultimately challenging them down the road for talent and potentially even hitting at their core business models of search and commerce (we've already seen hi…

> Both Google and Amazon are barreling down the path of democratizing scale and infrastructure with their cloud offerings. It's never been easier to reach millions of users in a short amount of time with your product. The second statement does not follow from the first. What is true (partly because of the first statement) is that building is now easier than ever. Precisely because of that, however, rising above all t…

The key word in the phrase is 'reach'. If by 'reach' you mean the equivalent of getting an email into someone's account, then the statement is true. You can easily spam millions of email addresses for pennies. You can get ad space on lots of browsers. You can cold call millions of people with automated systems.

On the other hand if by 'reach' you mean actually getting someone's physical and mental attention, then it can be harder than ever. Your message gets filtered out or swallowed up in the sea of other messages and ignored either by technology or by the users themselves.

It is like those pictures of NY Times Square (or any corner in Asia) where you have 10,000 billboards of all shapes and sizes all flashing some marketing message. It is easier than ever to buy a few seconds or minutes of ad time on one of them. It is harder than ever to get the passing crowd to take notice of your message when it is drowned out by all the others.

Re: Tech layoffs are feeding a new startup surge

#110

Post by est31 »

user3939382 wrote: post #62

Personally as a senior developer with a family, I wouldn’t stake my stability on a startup. Does that reservation generalize? Do startups end up lacking wiser devs?

Ideally if you are a senior big tech employee you are not living paycheck to paycheck any more, so you could endure a few months of not being employed. And even then, if you are good and have a network, you would find employment very quickly if a startup fails, unless there is some event that causes all startups to not look for new employees.

The problem with startups is I think more around the stock options trap (short excercise windows), stressful work environments, and the general lower compensation. And, if you are a parent, they will probably offer less programs for parents.

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