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How much have tech layoffs affected engineers vs. other departments?

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Re: How much have tech layoffs affected engineers vs. other departments?

#111

Post by openfuture »

qchris wrote: post #84
dijit wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think both exist, but you're right. The majority of Architects I've brushed against in the last decade have been exclusively an additional marketing force for AWS with very little ability to objectively reason from first principles or assist with knowledge of anything outside of the AWS ecosystem.

Totally genuine question as someone coming from a background in mechanical engineering, who now does a lot of software-y things: what do you consider to be "first principles" in computing? Are you talking about first principles in terms of project development processes (i.e how information systems evolve) or code (i.e. bits and bytes, where microservices might not be the answer because the network connections are gua…

I think I can name an example, which is how I am approaching datalisp; https://sr.ht/~ilmu/tala.saman/ the first principles bit for my context refers to: fixing a standard encoding that is sufficient for the task, determining inputs and outputs of model, setting a general guideline for expressivity of model (space of conflict-free programs), sketching interaction modes and user interfaces.

These are the first principles in question, now from there your architecture is mostly determined, you can fall back on known patterns and decades of research. The axioms are the architecture.

Re: How much have tech layoffs affected engineers vs. other departments?

#112

Post by swader999 »

leeny wrote: post #81
wepple wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a flimsy PR piece for interviewing.io submitted by the founder. It worked, front page of HN is great for backlink value

Founder here. This piece took my team and I months to research and tag and write. We spent hours counting individual layoffs in spreadsheets and on LinkedIn and running and rerunning the numbers. And the conclusion wasn't even what I wanted. When I started writing, I really thought that the layoffs were overblown and weren't affecting engineers. That's not what's happening at all. Now, you're right, why do we put eff…

Ok, now I'm motivated to go read the article.

Re: How much have tech layoffs affected engineers vs. other departments?

#113

Post by superfrank »

thwayunion wrote: post #2

The market is still extremely tight for good talent in-between Senior and Junior.

I agree it's still tight, but it's not as bad as it was a few months ago, IMO.

Anecdotal evidence, but I've had 2 open positions on my team since April and it's just been a constant flow of terrible candidates. I'm in a tech hub and we pay above market average according to levels.fyi, but we're competing with FAANGs for our candidates. The few good ones that popped up over that time often had multiple offers and it was hard to get them to choose us over a household name. In the last 6 weeks I've started to see the number of qualified candidates with no other offers increase to the point where I've filled both positions in a 2 week span.

Re: How much have tech layoffs affected engineers vs. other departments?

#116

Post by fleddr »

MisterBastahrd wrote: post #88
bloppe wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unemployment is at a historic low, which is not typical of a recession.

The economy is shrinking because boomers are retiring at a rate faster than we can fill jobs. The Boomer economists at the Fed have responded by raising interest rates so that Xers, Millennials, and Zoomers don't get uppity and ask for more money.

Really? I thought it was high inflation triggering consumers into savings mode. And monetary tightening destroying investments.

Re: How much have tech layoffs affected engineers vs. other departments?

#117

Post by RC_ITR »

nostromo wrote: post #108
RC_ITR wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like a broken record but, the 'Two quarters' rule is an unofficial metric that does a bad job of representing recessions when you back-test it (no recessions from 1992-2008 in that case). In the US, a recession is defined by NBER after the fact.

> In the US, a recession is defined by NBER after the fact. This isn't true. There is no "official" declaration of recessions in the US by law. Yes, some federal officials will reference NBER, but that's not the same thing. Bar far, the most common definition used worldwide is two quarters of negative growth -- and by that definition we're already in a recession. NBER itself has never not declared a recession after t…

> In general usage, the word recession connotes a marked slippage in economic activity. While gross domestic product (GDP) is the broadest measure of economic activity, the often-cited identification of a recession with two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth is not an official designation. The designation of a recession is the province of a committee of experts at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), a private non-profit research organization that focuses on understanding the U.S. economy.

From: https://www.bea.gov/help/glossary/recession

Do you not consider the BEA an official source? Because I have bad news for you about who tracks GDP if so.

EDIT: and if you’re going to try to wriggle around with the “by law” part of your statement, there’s no legal definition of GDP.

EDIT2: And, just to cut you off at the pass, here's the archive from 2019 with the same exact text: https://web.archive.org/web/20190831041001/https://www.bea.g...

EDIT3: Going for the trifecta, from 1960-2011, NBER had never not declared a recession after one quarter of decline. And in its history, only 1955/1957/2011/2014 break that rule! US GDP just doesn't decline very often in general! And as I've said in other comments this is the very first time that the effect is explained mostly by net exports.

Re: How much have tech layoffs affected engineers vs. other departments?

#118

Post by nickstinemates »

humanwhosits wrote: post #76
no_wizard wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm seeing a massive uptick in recruiting for contract roles compared to a year ago though. A year ago (and even, 3-4 months ago) it was all full time positions nearly exclusively, now it's all heavily weighted toward contract Lots of "18+ month" or "long term" contract verbiage, but contract none the less. Definitely a shift. Seeing more contract to hire too

I guess hiring for contracts routes around arbitrary headcount limits.

Not really arbitrary. Headcount are typically approved in tranches, budget is a lot more fluid. Headcount is also part of long term forecasting whereas again contractors are just a budget item.

"A $100k engineer costs $150k per year all in" vs. "We need to spend $150k to get X done"

Re: How much have tech layoffs affected engineers vs. other departments?

#119

Post by ethbr0 »

adam_arthur wrote: post #93
chrischen wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tech is pretty different in that its whole point is automation and reduction of redundancies. I would imagine over time there wouldn’t be a need for a mediocre engineers as their jobs would just be done by code written one time by a superior engineer. We’ve seem this already happen to “mom and pop” web dev shops getting pushed out by the work of a handful of companies (Weebly, squarespace, Shopify).

Yup, a single dev can build out a massive business via severless cloud components in what used to take a large army of engineers. It just so happens job growth has historically exceeded efficiency gains. The equilibrium point seems close from my perspective, especially if there’s a shock of recession to hammer tech employment

The real value add of software engineering hasn't been code for awhile, it's figuring out what code needs to be written and which architecture/services are the most efficient to implement it.

Re: How much have tech layoffs affected engineers vs. other departments?

#120

Post by vsareto »

victor9000 wrote: post #85

I just went through a round of interviews and received offers from large, small, and medium sized companies. So the opportunities are still there if you can navigate the interview gauntlet.

There's more scrutiny of shorter-term stays, so you can't just leetcode yourself into a job.
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