Gravity is coming back to Silicon Valley: workers are realizing that the Bell Labs image they were sold was mostly innovation theater and hoarding talent for websites overstuffed with ads designed to manipulate users into buying junk
The tech market is fundamentally fucked up and AI is just a scapegoat
21–30 of 230 posts
Re: The tech market is fundamentally fucked up and AI is just a scapegoat
#22> Yesterday, the news of 16k Amazon layoffs plus two LinkedIn posts on the same topic back-to-back encouraged me to finally write about it. Amazon is fundamentally a logistics + robotics company and is one of the worst companies to join for 'stability' as they have razor-thin margins. With almost 1.6M workers, the layoffs there are at least in the 5 figures and they will not stop to do the easiest thing possible in o…
> Amazon is fundamentally a logistics + robotics company and is one of the worst companies to join for 'stability' as they have razor-thin margins.
You seem to forget that AWS exists.
Re: The tech market is fundamentally fucked up and AI is just a scapegoat
#23I am about to give my take on software development:
Most [sane] software out there, but not all, has a main development time which is ridiculous compared to its life cycle (you could code in binary machine code, for several ISAs, it would not even matter).
Then, it is extremely hard to justify _HONESTLY_ a permanent income in software development. Really, really hard.
Re: The tech market is fundamentally fucked up and AI is just a scapegoat
#24Anecdotally, I didn't see more safety for engineers working on cash cows. Quite the contrary, if a product is already bringing revenue, it is an easy decision for the business to squeeze a bit more margin by letting people go. Stable, cash-generating projects are often first to be put into efficiency/maintenance mode.
Re: The tech market is fundamentally fucked up and AI is just a scapegoat
#25> Yesterday, the news of 16k Amazon layoffs plus two LinkedIn posts on the same topic back-to-back encouraged me to finally write about it. Amazon is fundamentally a logistics + robotics company and is one of the worst companies to join for 'stability' as they have razor-thin margins. With almost 1.6M workers, the layoffs there are at least in the 5 figures and they will not stop to do the easiest thing possible in o…
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Re: The tech market is fundamentally fucked up and AI is just a scapegoat
#26There is some fat in the system that likely needs to cut off.
Here is Google complaint about not serving lobster biscue:
https://x.com/Andercot/status/1768346257486184566?s=20
Zero interest rate phenomenon.
Re: The tech market is fundamentally fucked up and AI is just a scapegoat
#27>In traditional industries like manufacturing you don’t hire 500 factory workers unless you have a production line that needs them. You don’t over-hire based on a guess. Traditional factories do make wrong guesses about the future and overhire all the time. Example: https://www.google.com/search?q=Ford+f150+lightning+laid+off...
Sure, factories also overhire sometimes or shrink their businesses
but not at the scale or frequency we see in tech.
Re: The tech market is fundamentally fucked up and AI is just a scapegoat
#28Ofcourse, AI does have an impact. We can't close our eyes to that. Atleast, it created a belief that massive layoffs are affordable now without affecting productivity.
Re: The tech market is fundamentally fucked up and AI is just a scapegoat
#29From around 2010-2020 the stock market was rewarding growth more than profit. That means large tech employers hired like crazy to indicate growth. Then came COVID and the economy contracted. As a result the stock market changed to reward profitability. So, excess developers had to go. We are still feeling this. I do agree that AI is not to blame for this. In fact I will go further and claim that AI is a net negative…
Qualification is a very difficult problem, but I think everyone resents the characterization of "bad devs". Things like the Metaverse failure - apparently $70bn spent for no results - are primarily management failures. Like the Cybertruck, they succeeded 100% at building a product that the CEO wanted. The problem is that the CEO is basically the only person that wants that product. There's also the thought nobody wan…
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Re: The tech market is fundamentally fucked up and AI is just a scapegoat
#30I don't really understand this writer's objection: Big tech is big money and big risks. If some giant FAANG company is going to take a gamble on paying you $350,000 TC you should be squirreling most of that away for yourself in case the bet goes south.
If you want stability, go write Java for an insurance company for $85,000/year in Hartford, CT.
OP is horrified to discover risky gambling happening in Las Vegas.