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Epic Games is laying off 16% of its staff

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Re: Epic Games is laying off 16% of its staff

#241

Post by sarchertech »

IKantRead wrote: post #32
sarchertech wrote: post #4

Wonder why the waited until after the layoff train was over.

Did tech fundamentals suddenly get sane or did the layoff train just stop at the AI hype station? While I do believe AI (imho shorthand for LLMs and Diffusion models) has a lot of potential, it's main function has been to reignite irrational exuberance in the tech industry. I work in this is space and I'm very curious how long the mania can hold out, and even more curious what the consequences will be for the people…

That’s just the boom bust cycle in general. It constantly moves from one boom to another.

You could look back after any market downturn leveled off and lament that it’s surely doing to happen again. And of course it will.

Re: Epic Games is laying off 16% of its staff

#242

Post by algoatecorn »

enriquec wrote: post #205
hdjjhhvvhga wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Massive government spending? Sure. But "massive recession"? Really?

Recession = two quarters of negative growth. We've had a lot more. I'm not playing with the kafkaesque political redefinitions and find them pretty pathetic actually.

They aren't "kafkaesque political redefinitions". You are just choosing to use an overly simple definition because it supports your argument. The NBER determines recession based on a sophisticated methodology. One that considers the holistic status of the economy. This whole "two quarters of negative growth" is unga bunga economics

Re: Epic Games is laying off 16% of its staff

#243

Post by ResearchCode »

otteromkram wrote: post #47
n4r9 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first two paras I agree sound fairly likely. Regarding the second para, the interesting part for me is: how do these companies determine which are the unproductive devs? My impression so far is that senior management has no way of measuring this, given how little data is provided to back up decisions to RTO. Not so sure about the third para. Why would one company be more ahead of the game than any other, if indee…

Developers usually follow scrum frameworks, so productivity could easily be measured by overall activity, number of issues closed, merge requests completed, etc.

The software engineers working on the best projects don't follow "scrum" frameworks. Where are the story velocity ticket points in Linux kernel development?

Re: Epic Games is laying off 16% of its staff

#244

Post by Jensson »

lesuorac wrote: post #49
eigenvalue wrote: post #26

This is probably just continued post-COVID demand normalization. Basically all software and gaming got a massive bump that was obviously going to have an unsustainable component to it. But in many cases companies planned like it was totally sustainable and would continue. That’s why even super profitable companies like Microsoft and Epic are doing layoffs in 2023. The other reason of course is that they went a bit cr…

> Basically all software and gaming got a massive bump that was obviously going to have an unsustainable component to it. Well, this sounds logical and all but isn't always. For example, Google's revenue/employee exploded during covid but it didn't crater post-covid [1]. So even with a hiring spree, the company is on the same track as it was pre-covid. You might need to layoff employees to get that same covid high bu…

Control for inflation and look at the chart again, and those numbers are after layoffs.

Re: Epic Games is laying off 16% of its staff

#245

Post by two_in_one »

hibikir wrote: post #69
eigenvalue wrote: post #26

This is probably just continued post-COVID demand normalization. Basically all software and gaming got a massive bump that was obviously going to have an unsustainable component to it. But in many cases companies planned like it was totally sustainable and would continue. That’s why even super profitable companies like Microsoft and Epic are doing layoffs in 2023. The other reason of course is that they went a bit cr…

I'd argue that the productivity boost is mich higher for the lower end developers than for the best ones. They are best at the simple tasks in the most verbose programming languages: Easier to think of them as higher quality auto-completion. The terser the language, and more innovative the problem is, the smalle the LLM help. So if anyone gains from this, is the companies paying under-market, and therefore typically…

> I'd argue that the productivity boost is mich higher for the lower end developers than for the best ones.

I'd say it depends on the task more than on dev level. If it's maintaining, improving, or refactoring of a large project LLM can't help much. When it comes to small utilities GPT-4 is a time saver. You can even write a small playable game with it in a matter of hours. Using any popular language. Simple web pages, JS are much easier. With ChatGPT-4 I've learned how to do certain things using ffmpeg. Without it would take hours of googling.

PS: talking about ChatGPT degradation with the time. I didn't see it on programming tasks. But it became noticeably faster.

Re: Epic Games is laying off 16% of its staff

#246

Post by ynx »

softfalcon wrote: post #183
madeofpalk wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think the top 10% of workers are getting, at a minimum, a 30% productivity boost? You think they're getting in an extra 1.5 days worth of work a week because they're using Copilot?

You mostly have to ignore these AI solution hopefuls. They're living in a momentary dream that AI LLM tools will solve all our coding problems. They don't and reality hasn't hit them yet. I don't know any real seasoned dev who is getting a 30% boost because they installed Co-Pilot. The tools poop out too many errors/fake-garbage to be useful to devs working on battle hardened codebases.

My productivity boost is much more modest than 30% to be sure, but I'm less tired at the end of the day.

The productivity boost for non-seasoned devs, or devs of average skill level or above doing relatively routine but needed work? For a large chunk of the nearly-invisible-to-silicon-valley workforce doing those tasks, I would be surprised if it wasn't more than 30%.

Re: Epic Games is laying off 16% of its staff

#247

Post by mistrial9 »

maneesh wrote: post #232
enriquec wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recession = two quarters of negative growth. We've had a lot more. I'm not playing with the kafkaesque political redefinitions and find them pretty pathetic actually.

The economy has been growing in 2023 though https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/gdp-growth

consolidated economic activity has been growing massively, while Main Street continues to fail. how is this "us" or "we" .. investors here tell one side of a story.. look at the cities where people live.

Re: Epic Games is laying off 16% of its staff

#248

Post by madeofpalk »

madeofpalk wrote: post #64
eigenvalue wrote: post #26

This is probably just continued post-COVID demand normalization. Basically all software and gaming got a massive bump that was obviously going to have an unsustainable component to it. But in many cases companies planned like it was totally sustainable and would continue. That’s why even super profitable companies like Microsoft and Epic are doing layoffs in 2023. The other reason of course is that they went a bit cr…

You think the top 10% of workers are getting, at a minimum, a 30% productivity boost? You think they're getting in an extra 1.5 days worth of work a week because they're using Copilot?

Another way of spinning this - if "fancy autocomplete" is giving you a 30% productivity boost then either you're not actually in the top 10%, or you're doing working on "top 10% problems".

Re: Epic Games is laying off 16% of its staff

#249

Post by WorldMaker »

politelemon wrote: post #121
jzb wrote: post #95

From the announcement: "The company also announced that it’s divesting Bandcamp, an online audio distribution platform it acquired last year" I don't care a ton about Epic, but I love Bandcamp. It's my primary mechanism these days for discovering and acquiring music. I was puzzled when Epic bought Bandcamp, apparently they were too. They're being kicked over to Songtradr -- I hope that's a neutral to good move, but I…

I can't see it as a good thing at all. They're effectively being thrown about to yet another operating model which will have a disruptive impact on them. The new company Songtradr focuses on licensing, it's a b2b, while Bandcamp is a b2c. So it can be easy to see how they'd want to make Bandcamp more like themselves. Of course I'm being negative and cynical, apologies. I share the same fondness for Bandcamp.

There are some advantages to having b2b and b2c in the same house, especially when some of the b2c involves b2b licenses (it in theory makes it easier for artists to do remixes and cover songs if they can buy those licenses in the same place they sell their final product). Before Bandcamp a store I trusted was Loudr.fm and that was their big deal was that they were a b2b license shop for the rights to things like covering video game music and then were a trustworthy b2c consumer shop for the covers the musicians had an easier time licensing. Ironically as Bandcamp ascended most of their musicians needed/wanted Bandcamp presences and they shuttered their b2c shop and encouraged everyone to just move to Bandcamp, refocusing to just the b2b side of the business. The internet tells me that what remained of Loudr.fm was then eventually swallowed by Spotify in 2018, and that interestingly and likely but not necessarily a coincidence 2019 was when Songtradr got serious about expanding, and so it goes.

Re: Epic Games is laying off 16% of its staff

#250

Post by spywaregorilla »

bpiche wrote: post #227
spywaregorilla wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I strongly agree that it is anti-competitive and anti-consumer to not allow crossplay. That's not blaming Valve for being successful. That's calling them out for anti-consume practices.

That's a fine opinion to have. Carry on.

"Carry on" implies superiority on your end and is a dickish thing to say.
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