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Where have all the laid-off tech workers gone?

economist.com

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Re: Where have all the laid-off tech workers gone?

#331

Post by bernawil »

than3 wrote: post #156
gumby wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zero of my friends laid off from google are even looking for a new job. My wife was always asking me to retire, but after a year or so she’d say “it would be good for you to have a job”. Then repeat. Retiring isn’t that fun when you’re in your 30s. So I suspect a bunch of them will be back in the job market eventually.

Its actually not that unexpected, a big contributor is inflation. If you've any experience with Argentina, or other hyper-inflationary events, there comes a point where your labor is more valuable to you than what others are willing to pay you for. When the store of value is degrading rapidly, and wages in general always lag, those with options will do something else. Most companies I know simply are unwilling to adj…

I'm from Argentina, even now with 100% inflation YoY I wouldn't call it "hyper-inflationary". We had hyper-inflation in 1989 and that was 79% monthly.

  People in general won't accept doing $1,000 in work and by the time they can spend it only having $700, or worse for example $1.
nobody is quitting their jobs because the currency is losing value. You cash your salary and just buy stocks, bonds, crypto, foreign currency and obviously groceries.

  Most companies I know simply are unwilling to adjust their wages for inflation
  With inflation in the double digits, with real inflation according to previous more accurate methods showing roughly a ~33% loss in value YOY, and the corresponding increase in taxes
yes, some real wisdom here. Here, anybody that's in demand becomes self employed and that brings two benefits: first you can raise your rate as often as you want. Second, your tax rate decreases and gets more predicable for the fiscal year.

Re: Where have all the laid-off tech workers gone?

#332

Post by peter303 »

elzbardico wrote: post #41

One thing that is very important to realize after being laid-off from a very big company during a recession is that you need to adjust your salary expectations for the new reality. And the other thing is that you should have been prepared for this a long, long time ago. Economic cycles are a thing, it is in all history books, there's no excuse for not being aware of them. I have always been very very conservative wit…

Since software hasnt has a major layoff since 2002, there are plenty of under 42 year olds who thought tech was layoff proof.

Re: Where have all the laid-off tech workers gone?

#333

Post by JanisErdmanis »

than3 wrote: post #156
gumby wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zero of my friends laid off from google are even looking for a new job. My wife was always asking me to retire, but after a year or so she’d say “it would be good for you to have a job”. Then repeat. Retiring isn’t that fun when you’re in your 30s. So I suspect a bunch of them will be back in the job market eventually.

Its actually not that unexpected, a big contributor is inflation. If you've any experience with Argentina, or other hyper-inflationary events, there comes a point where your labor is more valuable to you than what others are willing to pay you for. When the store of value is degrading rapidly, and wages in general always lag, those with options will do something else. Most companies I know simply are unwilling to adj…

This was actually my thought process to postpone job searching among many other things after my physics PhD graduation last year. I had managed to make substantial savings during the Covid period. I didn’t find ethical to invest them in stocks and the interest rates for government bonds were not close to match the inflation. So I took a time off to allocate time for spending/investing, learning new skills and working on an open source project full time.

So far managed to install 5kW solar panel arrays at two family properties connecting that to the grid and figuring out a way to get reimbursed by government and so lowering final costs around 2500 euro for each installation. Now I have an excess electricity so I invested in a sawmill and hopefully soon will slice a timber for a joy of doing so. Being able to build my own sauna and get some wood for roofing could potentially break it even.

Also investing time and attention into my open source project gives me the basic fulfilment for purpose and creativity urgently needed after experiencing academia. Learning a lot of new stuff - HTTP, onion architecture, QML, public key cryptography and zero knowledge proofs - among many other things. While also being able to express myself creatively in software development than I ever could be in academia. Does not matter much if the developed idea fails, I just really want to know how.

Re: Where have all the laid-off tech workers gone?

#337

Post by alanwreath »

vore wrote: post #336
alanwreath wrote: post #335

—-deleted—-

I really wish people would stop posting ChatGPT output onto Hacker News like this. If I wanted to know what ChatGPT thought I would go ask ChatGPT myself.

You know - good point, I thought it was fun but it’s just noise, I’ll remove it, the title of this post reminded me of the song by Peter Paul and Mary. But who cares.

Re: Where have all the laid-off tech workers gone?

#338

Post by tnel77 »

shams93 wrote: post #252

I turned 50, you hit middle age and then there's a huge negative wall of discrimination. This layoff hit me after I had been unemployed in the same year so I got no unemployment. I had moved in with my mom to help her during covid so I have been basically turned back into a child after having been forced to spend 478k for my education.

I don’t mean to be rude, how could you have possibly spent that much on your education?

Re: Where have all the laid-off tech workers gone?

#339

Post by Animats »

ilikehurdles wrote: post #291
Animats wrote: post #257

The big question - where will they be a year from now? Savings gone, "stealth startups" mostly failed, and the US deeper into a recession.

There’s a saying that goes something like, “Economists have predicted 9 of the last 2 recessions.” I’ve been hearing about the real estate bubble popping any day now since at least 2013. How many people sat on the sidelines of a skyrocketing housing market waiting for that day, out of fear? How many have fallen into a doom and gloom cycle over the last few years hoping for some big “told-you-so” payoff that never cam…

> I’ve been hearing about the real estate bubble popping any day now since at least 2013.

That's the market timing problem. You look at the graph of median house price vs median family income, and you can see that at some point things will crack. But you can't tell when. Few people have shown success at market timing. James Dines, of the Dines Letter well known to investors, died last year at age 91. He was one of the very few people to have correctly called several recessions in advance, in his 70 years of publishing a newsletter.

Re: Where have all the laid-off tech workers gone?

#340

Post by rentzed »

I have like 2 years of experience as a SE and I didn't get laid off but I quit to try entrepreneurship. Currently, I've built a website where people can look up an address and see what tenants are paying there. The site relies on user submitted data, like a Glassdoor for Rents. Site is called rentzed.com. I'd appreciate if anyone contributed their rent data and/or shared it with people they know. I have years before I run out of money so I'll just try a couple other ideas I have or join a startup to pay my bills if I need to. I think they'd be interested in having someone join them who has tried building a Startup.
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