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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

#221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never apply through LinkedIn. It is so low-friction that the vast majority of applicants are nowhere near qualified, and hiring managers quickly learn to ignore anything that came in from LinkedIn.

OTOH, if you are job hunting, be sure to keep your LinkedIn profile up to date.

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Re: Tech layoffs are feeding a new startup surge

#222
post #12

I imagine it is a tiny fraction of the people getting laid off that go that route - imo, most are out applying for jobs. I work for a fortune 50 company - (not faang), on our team we had 2 openings posted back in early November - one for a developer, one for a lead developer (same tech stack) - this was for a fully remote positions, but limited to timezones that mostly overlapped with the USA - we got 3 applicants fo…

It’s not mutually exclusive. Applying for jobs takes a few hours a week. Maybe a little more if you get a hit. You have a lot of bandwidth to work on an mvp and do bootstrapped startup stuff.

IDK about you, but applying, recruiting calls, company research, HM call, leetcoding, practicing system design interviews, scheduling coding/arch interviews, practicing with arch diagramming tool, telling recruiter it was good and no i still wont show my hand with comp, followups because layoffs hit recruiting and coodrinators (they're short handed now), more scheduling conflicts, interviewing, and then telling the recruiter "no you offer first, then I'll tell you what i think", "Ok I'll talk to your VP finance about how valuable you think the options are", more scheduling...

It's easily a full time job.

Re: Tech layoffs are feeding a new startup surge

#223
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last summer and also before that, when I applied, I would get ~90% response rate and would have at least a call from recruiter/HM. Last week I sent a bunch of applications and crickets... this is something that I've never experienced in +10 years being in the industry. I'm not in dire need for a job but I can imagine how much,much stressful is to be unemployed now vs even 3-5 years ago.

I think you should stop sending crickets. It might annoy prospective employers.

It definitely sends the wrong message about introducing bugs rather than removing them

Re: Tech layoffs are feeding a new startup surge

#225
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree, mostly because if your product takes off, that single day or few weeks where the adoption rate sky rockets may be your defining moment for your startup, and scaling up on the cloud is trivial in comparison. Remember, when you're that small, the expenses of the cloud vs dedicated hardware is tiny compared to your employee expenses anyways.

Twitter used to go down regularly in the early days. Reddit did too, even years after it became popular. Facebook I can't be certain now, but I think it would break in the early days. And even right now today, ChatGPT regularly displays "too busy" messages. i.e. this is absolute tosh. And if you know what you're doing you can take something down overnight and put it on a dedicated server.

"ChatGPT regularly displays "too busy" messages."

ChatGPT scaled from 0 users to 100 million in 2 months. Probably millions online at any given second.

Its too busy, because it literally exhausted all the GPUs Azure has as its disposal.

Without the Cloud, scaling ChatGPT would have been impossible. It would have been nowhere near its current success. Remember that GPT3 was released to the public in Mid 2022, had no public reaction, because it was put behind a paywall. ChatGPT had to be free, and able to cope with the load, to be successful.

Re: Tech layoffs are feeding a new startup surge

#226

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.

> “Disrupting the collaborative saas text editor market”

Im currently working on something like this. Yes it’s boring but it does have potential. you’re exact opinion is why I’m having a hard time looking for a cofounder!

Re: Tech layoffs are feeding a new startup surge

#227
post #26
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI continues to advance (there is mich more beneath the surface if the endless ChatGPT nonsense), the fediverse is gaining more traction, biotech continues to advance. There continues to be immense opportunity. But you have to skill up and look past the tech and business models of 15 years ago.

These are very specialised industries though, requiring some deeper and more formal knowledge than when a new platform appears and there's a sudden hunger for experiences on that platform. The web and later smartphones have been the real startup breeders of the past 30 years. Biotech and AI require quite a bit of academic knowledge to innovate on and aren't on the same potential of big platforms like web/phones.

Not at all, only passion is needed.

Look at websites like CivitAI. Its literally just a front-end + a S3 bucket backend that allows people to share and download large stable-diffusion models (100MB-8GB).

The website founder was not an AI guy, he was a web-dev background and former founder. The website is already a huge success, forcing the incumbent (Huggingface, backed by Amazon) to try and hurriedly copy its features.

Re: Tech layoffs are feeding a new startup surge

#228

good luck getting funding

If you can clearly articulate a path to profitability in the current economy, there's no shortage of investors willing to place 100K-1M bets on startups right now, contrary to the narrative perpetuated here. Ask how I know :) I think the problem we have is a generation of people in the industry have been convinced hifalutin money making schemes are sustainable business ideas. I'm glad that nonsense has finally past.…

> Ask how I know

I’ll bite. How?

I’m working a startup and would give 50% of my company to an investor just so I could work on this thing full time.

Re: Tech layoffs are feeding a new startup surge

#229
post #3

I imagine severance packages are a big factor here. People laid off by Google might have a full six months or more of severance pay, plus health insurance through Cobra. That's a pretty fantastic opportunity to spend six months on a startup in relative economic safety!

As someone laid off from a company with no name recognition and two weeks of severance, I’m just hoping to find something before all the more impressive resumes come flooding back into the system. Honestly, I have a few startup ideas I’d love to try, but this cycle has not put me in a place to try them.

Hang in tight brother, and if you have a public CV you can share, maybe you could join one of those startups.

Re: Tech layoffs are feeding a new startup surge

#230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never apply through LinkedIn. It is so low-friction that the vast majority of applicants are nowhere near qualified, and hiring managers quickly learn to ignore anything that came in from LinkedIn.

OTOH, if you are job hunting, be sure to keep your LinkedIn profile up to date.

Thats helpful (but rare) to hear. Does anyone have any concrete anecdotes reinforcing the importance of keeping linkedin looking fresh?

Also what matters? Artful descriptions of past positions? Activity on timeline? Upvotes on skills? Links to projects?

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