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

LinkedIn laying off nearly 700, mostly from core engineering teams

cnbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 294 posts

Re: LinkedIn laying off nearly 700, mostly from core engineering teams

#111

Post by wahnfrieden »

gabyar wrote: post #44
raybb wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are some tech worker unions (like at NYT) but not enough. A relevant book that recently came out but I have not read is You Deserve a Tech Union by Ethan Marcotte https://abookapart.com/products/you-deserve-a-tech-union

My first job was at a tech company with a union. Boeing. It was ridiculously bad. I've never worked with less talented people. One of my coworkers did nothing, at all, for 2 years. But with 17 years of experience, he couldn't be fired. I carried the team, but they couldn't pay me what I was worth or promote me. I left as soon as I could.

You were at Boeing

Re: LinkedIn laying off nearly 700, mostly from core engineering teams

#112

Post by JohnFen »

monero-xmr wrote: post #87
gabyar wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My first job was at a tech company with a union. Boeing. It was ridiculously bad. I've never worked with less talented people. One of my coworkers did nothing, at all, for 2 years. But with 17 years of experience, he couldn't be fired. I carried the team, but they couldn't pay me what I was worth or promote me. I left as soon as I could.

People love simple answers to complex problems. Unions are such an example. The core idea behind a union makes sense - it's legalised extortion. Unions have codified in the law the ability for everyone in the union to hold the owner of property at ransom until they meet the union's demands. The only counterweight is the threat of bankruptcy, which ruins everything for everyone, but because the ideology of labor is ve…

> The core idea behind a union makes sense - it's legalised extortion.

How is it extortion, legal or otherwise?

Re: LinkedIn laying off nearly 700, mostly from core engineering teams

#113

Post by berdario »

jihadjihad wrote: post #100
jongjong wrote: post #72

Damn. The market is already so tough for software engineers right now and the supply of engineers is going to increase again. I don't see how wages can drop lower than they are now. I think some engineers may have to consider a career in construction, plumbing, retail or other. Software development is just not worth the hassle and strain. Not to mention that it has become laborious, repetitive and inefficient without…

This is one of the more perplexing takes I've seen, assuming this isn't satire

Yeah, I agree that the trend is pretty bad... And little will fundamentally prevent things to get as bad as the parent describes

But construction and retail? Really?

We are paid multiples of what people working in those sectors are being paid :/

Re: LinkedIn laying off nearly 700, mostly from core engineering teams

#114

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

ss1996 wrote: post #89
huytersd wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why wouldn’t they? It’s like 7-10x cheaper.

The difference is much lesser 7-10x in big tech (Google, Amazon, Msft, etc). Big tech's Indian offices pays about 1/3 to 1/4 of what they would earn in the company's USA office. Levels.fyi will corroborate this. Yes, while the average software engineer in India might earn 7-10x less than in the US, this isn't the case within major tech companies.

Salaries are 1/4th - but you also don't have as high of pension / payroll costs as in US.

At l3 & l4 - when you factor in benefits (including health care costs), 401k matching, payroll taxes - it's probably 1/5th or less.

Re: LinkedIn laying off nearly 700, mostly from core engineering teams

#115

Post by AndrewKemendo »

slg wrote: post #81
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t you know? We 10x engineers are so special that we are waving off offer after offer and that will never end. Not only will that never end, but luckily I’m so perfect that I’ll never experience a disability or need any accommodation that I can’t just code or build myself. I mean even then, certainly you had a good enough exit at your first company (like anyone good) that you could basically retire whenever. I mea…

I know this is said in jest, but I just want to remind people there is no such thing as being too valuable to be a member of a union. LeBron James is in a union. Tom Cruise is literally striking right now as part of the SAG-AFTRA union strike. Unless John Carmack happens to be reading this, I guarantee you are not close to being as valuable an engineer as LeBron is a basketball player or Cruise is an actor.

Just look at the amount of sincerely antisocial comments that boil down to effectively what I wrote above

It’s disappointing but not surprising

Re: LinkedIn laying off nearly 700, mostly from core engineering teams

#116

Post by paxys »

bluGill wrote: post #110
newsclues wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No people thought they could cash Bay Area paycheques while working from low cost rural areas with WFH.

There is one advantage to Bay area when WFH: you can go into the office on request. I go into the office every 3 months or so - it is only a 7 mile bike ride. Sometimes things are better handled in person (I don't live in the Bay area). WFH with the ability to get into the office in a couple hours is valuable. Once you cannot get into the office easily if you need to you are worth less even if the need to get into th…

If you need to go to the office once every 3 months you can fly in from anywhere in the country. No need to live within commuting distance for that.

Re: LinkedIn laying off nearly 700, mostly from core engineering teams

#117

Post by bluGill »

ss1996 wrote: post #89
huytersd wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why wouldn’t they? It’s like 7-10x cheaper.

The difference is much lesser 7-10x in big tech (Google, Amazon, Msft, etc). Big tech's Indian offices pays about 1/3 to 1/4 of what they would earn in the company's USA office. Levels.fyi will corroborate this. Yes, while the average software engineer in India might earn 7-10x less than in the US, this isn't the case within major tech companies.

Pay in India is variable. They have a lot of great engineers who make good money - not what they would in the US, but the difference is not that much. They also have a lot of "engineers" who shouldn't be engineers doing the simplest tasks who may 10x less than they would in the US. If you just need a simple web app that is just like every other web app except with your logo you don't need the great engineers.

Re: LinkedIn laying off nearly 700, mostly from core engineering teams

#118

Post by [deleted] »

rocgf wrote: post #53
paxys wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is anyone really surprised? Did you think the end result of the WFH movement was going to be companies continuing to pay you to live out of your Bay Area house?

Anecdotally, in my circles, most truly thought that this won't have an impact in the compensation levels. Always struck me as incredibly short-sighted and your comment is actually the first I see that explicitly states what I thought as well. There is still an argument that, if you truly want top talent, then that top talent might actually want to live in high COL locations like NY or whatever.

[deleted]

Re: LinkedIn laying off nearly 700, mostly from core engineering teams

#119

Post by losteric »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #45
coldpie wrote: post #4

Good news for those 700: because we don't have tech worker unions, they are able to individually bargain the terms of their layoff! ...right?

Don’t you know? We 10x engineers are so special that we are waving off offer after offer and that will never end. Not only will that never end, but luckily I’m so perfect that I’ll never experience a disability or need any accommodation that I can’t just code or build myself. I mean even then, certainly you had a good enough exit at your first company (like anyone good) that you could basically retire whenever. I mea…

I'm all for unions (going as far as organization attempts at my company)... that said, in all my conversations there is one big thing that people seem to miss, which separates tech unions from automotive or sports unions: The type of work we do and how we're compensated for it.

Our work is closer to tool and die makers, we make money printers that keep running without our day-to-day involvement.

Let's take S3 as an example. AWS S3 was started with 10 engineers or so (according to Andy). AWS S3 is now an organization with over 800 SDEs alone, that headcount costs well over $300MM per year (still excluding all the SDMs, Ops, QAs, PMs, TPMs, DCAs, etc also involved). That headcount made sense as the product exploded with new features, hardware, regions, etc etc... but the "greenfield" new feature development pace is likely an S-curve, and we are now on the slowing side that will only continue to slow.

How many SDE hours/year are needed for S3's steady state operation? How do companies compensate skill for rapid growth, and then transition to their steady-state needs? What changes in terms of headcount and/or compensation, if anything?

(Of course this isn't about S3, the same questions apply to any software product)

How would unions operate in this environment? It seems quite different than, eg Boeing's manufacturing unions with the long lead times and relatively stable production volume/labor needs.

(There are also interesting questions for shareholders - what happens if S3 lays off 90% of their SDEs? Where would those people go, what would they be most valuable working on - how "safe" is S3's revenue as competitors and startups hire their layoffs?)

Re: LinkedIn laying off nearly 700, mostly from core engineering teams

#120

Post by throwaway9191aa »

LewisVerstappen wrote: post #3

> LinkedIn is now ramping up hiring in India, according the person familiar. So, laying off people in the US and hiring in India?

This is something my company's internal RTO channels seem to have missed. What if large corporations really *did* collect enough data during covid to justify working from home? Now faang can justify outsourcing the rest of US based jobs.

Force RTO in the US, replace those who leave with less expensive resources.

Post reply on HN