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The Coronavirus Recession and What It Means for Developers

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Re: The Coronavirus Recession and What It Means for Developers

#21

Post by to11mtm »

vanniv wrote: post #20
Hydraulix989 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given how difficult it is for FAANG to hire highly qualified engineers, I really doubt it. These companies are sitting on mountains of cash.

True, but... every company of more than about 100 people has some dead weight. Often, low level managers know who they are. In good times, it might not be worth doing anything much about it. In bad times, the rest-and-vesters are out. Well... at a well-run company, it works that way. At a less-well-run company, they instead squeeze everyone with more work and more hours and less benefits and no raises, figuring that…

I had to deal with this in the first recession.

It was an hourly position, but they started doing 'required' overtime; 66 hours a week for an hourly person was still 'cheaper' than hiring another person.

And yeah. As a result we had a whole team did 50-60 hour work weeks for 17-23$/hr (lol, being paid 23$ an hour to do C#, LISP, entry level Oracle and SQL server DBA alongside drafting.) Physical and mental health injuries happened across the team.

They also took away our holiday pay, and changed the PTO structure so that 1st year employees didn't even have enough PTO to cover being paid for the holidays.

Yes, they lost most of their good people. I was among the first wave to go when the economy in my area started picking back up (We didn't really start to recover here till 2012-2013.)

Re: The Coronavirus Recession and What It Means for Developers

#24

Post by Hydraulix989 »

vanniv wrote: post #20
Hydraulix989 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given how difficult it is for FAANG to hire highly qualified engineers, I really doubt it. These companies are sitting on mountains of cash.

True, but... every company of more than about 100 people has some dead weight. Often, low level managers know who they are. In good times, it might not be worth doing anything much about it. In bad times, the rest-and-vesters are out. Well... at a well-run company, it works that way. At a less-well-run company, they instead squeeze everyone with more work and more hours and less benefits and no raises, figuring that…

At Facebook, Amazon, and Netflix, the dead weight proactively get PIP'd and fired all of the time (Facebook cuts the bottom 10% every six months). From the Netflix culture note:

> We have no bell curves or rankings or quotas such as “cut the bottom 10% every year.” That would be detrimental to fostering collaboration, and is a simplistic, rules-based approach we would never support. We focus on managers’ judgment through the “keeper test” for each of their people: if one of the members of the team was thinking of leaving for another firm, would the manager try hard to keep them from leaving? Those who do not pass the keeper test (i.e. their manager would not fight to keep them) are promptly and respectfully given a generous severance package so we can find someone for that position that makes us an even better dream team

Re: The Coronavirus Recession and What It Means for Developers

#26

Post by DyslexicAtheist »

_bxg1 wrote: post #9

I'm currently about to change jobs. The company I'm leaving is a small AI company with much of its business coming in the form of speculative investments/proof-of-concept contracts from large corporations with research budgets. I'm mainly leaving because the new opportunity is more exciting. But between the economic downturn and the "AI autumn", I'm definitely feeling like I made the right decision. The new company i…

> unbeholden to investors, and it provides a very tangibly valuable service to an industry which itself provides a very tangibly valuable product

if you wouldn't mind sharing, what do they build/provide?

Re: The Coronavirus Recession and What It Means for Developers

#27

Post by futhey »

ErikAugust wrote: post #6

“FAANG types aren't going to be as affected as early stage startup types or freelancer types.” I wouldn’t be so sure. Corporations use down cycles to shed employees. And often they will hire contractors.

True. Public companies will use a layoff to fix one quarter of missed earnings (in the eyes of investors).

Re: The Coronavirus Recession and What It Means for Developers

#28

Post by DyslexicAtheist »

ErikAugust wrote: post #6

“FAANG types aren't going to be as affected as early stage startup types or freelancer types.” I wouldn’t be so sure. Corporations use down cycles to shed employees. And often they will hire contractors.

not FAANG but this is also my experience with large companies in automotive, NEV's and even banking. There is almost always a hiring stop followed by a huge ramp-up in outsourcing.

Existing ongoing projects still need to be delivered and are usually chronically understaffed so the hiring stop adds even more pressure and gives the justification for bringing in consultants.

The whole thing usually plays out like this: investor meeting where cost cutting is a top priority. Agreement to slash all permanent hiring budgets and put new hiring plans on hold. This cascades down the chain with engineering departments revising their projections and raising alarm about risks to not meeting deadlines for existing projects. Budget gets approved for onboarding freelancers.

Re: The Coronavirus Recession and What It Means for Developers

#29

Post by redis_mlc »

Hydraulix989 wrote: post #13
ErikAugust wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that window had closed regardless. Maybe nail-gunned shut now, but I don’t think it was ever going to happen.

I'd love to invest in temporarily cheaply-priced Airbnb shares right now.

Until they solve the "I'm the condo owner so I have the right to broadcast naked fotos of your wife and daughters over the Internet" b.s., I wouldn't use or invest in Airbnb in any capacity.

Re: The Coronavirus Recession and What It Means for Developers

#30

Post by lioeters »

_bxg1 wrote: post #9

I'm currently about to change jobs. The company I'm leaving is a small AI company with much of its business coming in the form of speculative investments/proof-of-concept contracts from large corporations with research budgets. I'm mainly leaving because the new opportunity is more exciting. But between the economic downturn and the "AI autumn", I'm definitely feeling like I made the right decision. The new company i…

Knowing nothing about the AI field, I think your point applies in general, that in an economic downturn, companies which are providing practical value to meet an existing demand are likely to fare better than speculative ventures (R&D, startups).

On the other hand, VC money seems to operate on a different sphere and logic, that it will probably continue to be hungry for risk, in search of the big payoff.

The article makes a good point about considering our economic dependency chain. If there's a recession (with the pandemic as a possible contributing factor), surely those chains will be shaken to shed some "weight" - those areas which are not clearly providing tangible, immediate business value.

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