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How much have tech layoffs affected engineers vs. other departments?

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Re: How much have tech layoffs affected engineers vs. other departments?

#41

Post by RC_ITR »

kingnothing wrote: post #38
01100011 wrote: post #35

We (large FANGish) are more or less in a hiring freeze but still grabbing a few new hires here and there. A friend just interviewed for SSE at AAPL and seemed to have the job only to be told they closed the req. I'm still getting lots of recruiter spam though so I think we're still fairly early in any sort of layoff cycle. The economy is still trucking. Despite many people trying to be first to declare it, we're not…

The US is in a recession. It has seen two quarters of negative economic growth.

I feel like a broken record but, the 'Two quarters' rule is an unofficial metric that does a bad job of representing recessions when you back-test it (no recessions from 1992-2008 in that case).

In the US, a recession is defined by NBER after the fact.

Re: How much have tech layoffs affected engineers vs. other departments?

#42

Post by marcyb5st »

mkl95 wrote: post #36

My employer has literally stopped hiring engineers and product roles. Sales people are still being hired in droves though.

Aren't sales people "cheap" as their salary is negligible compared to sales bonuses if and only if they exceed their sales quota?

Re: How much have tech layoffs affected engineers vs. other departments?

#43

Post by lostcolony »

noir_lord wrote: post #18
thwayunion wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So the Senior market is saturated? I am not sure I would say saturated, but yeah, the Sr. SWE market is definitely not as tight as it was a year ago for most role types. However, it does depend on qualifications and company type. Seniors for R&D positions (so, PhD with 5+ years in product-focused R&D) are still basically impossible to hire. Friends tell me that hiring seniors at mid-pay or low-pay companies is stil…

Might be true in the US, not what I’m seeing have seen in the UK. Here big companies are taking kids straight out of uni and boot camping them because decent juniors are hard to find.

How easy is it to find bad juniors? I think that may be relevant for determining how saturated the field is.

Re: How much have tech layoffs affected engineers vs. other departments?

#44

Post by 0xB31B1B »

conqrr wrote: post #40

The so called 'bar' references doesn't make much sense. There is no way to measure the performance of an individual. Leetcode style questions don't indicate performance. And what cannot be measured in the first place in a 4 hour interview, cannot have a 'bar'.

There are absolutely ways to measure the performance of an individual. That leetcode style questions are not a great indicator of ability to do the job well does not mean you cannot predict job performance at all.

Re: How much have tech layoffs affected engineers vs. other departments?

#45

Post by danuker »

RC_ITR wrote: post #41
kingnothing wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US is in a recession. It has seen two quarters of negative economic growth.

I feel like a broken record but, the 'Two quarters' rule is an unofficial metric that does a bad job of representing recessions when you back-test it (no recessions from 1992-2008 in that case). In the US, a recession is defined by NBER after the fact.

Then the "two quarters" rule is stricter. We have fulfilled a stricter criterion for a recession.

Whether the NBER contradicts us is irrelevant. Less value is going around in the economy.

Re: How much have tech layoffs affected engineers vs. other departments?

#46

Post by yamazakiwi »

sremani wrote: post #28
nobodyandproud wrote: post #17

My firm is still playing the long game, so we’ve been actively hiring talent. Check back if/when a recession is in full swing.

Everyone plays a long game until the cost of debt and debt servicing comes home. There are just too many Zombie Unicorns, it is matter of time. If your company is not profitable consider yourself jobless 6 months from now.

Are you positing that if we maintain our current trajectory economically that Zombie Unicorns will start harshly cutting costs. Why 6 months? I'm actually curious why that number as I'm not in the environment.

Re: How much have tech layoffs affected engineers vs. other departments?

#47

Post by lumost »

themagician wrote: post #31
lumost wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the Senior market is saturated? this is an early sign companies are getting nervous about bloat. After the '08 recession many companies rushed to ditch Architect titles as they found that the role did not serve the interests of their productive engineers or the companies higher ups. Companies that had gone heavy on such talent might find themselves stuck. I recall seeing talks on "Staff Engineer" and thinking that…

More and more senior engineers are non-coding or practically so. I see it everywhere. As industries have matured, people have matured into higher level management roles and there hasn't been enough people to replace them. There's still plenty of fresh blood, software engineering actually looks a lot like the labor shortages do in the rest of the market—there's a lack of people who actually want to do the work. Everyo…

Not for nothing, but that sounds a bit like a market peak if I've heard one. Why would the person actually doing the work settle for a mere 300k when the director/VP gets double without doing the hard work? there is a balance here - but it seems like a good time to lure engineers with real equity compensation to early stage startups.

Re: How much have tech layoffs affected engineers vs. other departments?

#48

Post by beebmam »

kingnothing wrote: post #38
01100011 wrote: post #35

We (large FANGish) are more or less in a hiring freeze but still grabbing a few new hires here and there. A friend just interviewed for SSE at AAPL and seemed to have the job only to be told they closed the req. I'm still getting lots of recruiter spam though so I think we're still fairly early in any sort of layoff cycle. The economy is still trucking. Despite many people trying to be first to declare it, we're not…

The US is in a recession. It has seen two quarters of negative economic growth.

This is a point of contention among economists, as the current economic conditions are quite unlike most others seen. US/China decoupling is causing massive shocks across the world.

The US Federal Reserve is responding to these economic conditions far stronger than any other central bank, and the US dollar has grown in strength accordingly. Weakening the labor market is one of the goals. That will mean lots of layoffs, in exchange for a reduction in inflation (and domestic purchasing power).

Re: How much have tech layoffs affected engineers vs. other departments?

#49

Post by the_lonely_road »

kingnothing wrote: post #38
01100011 wrote: post #35

We (large FANGish) are more or less in a hiring freeze but still grabbing a few new hires here and there. A friend just interviewed for SSE at AAPL and seemed to have the job only to be told they closed the req. I'm still getting lots of recruiter spam though so I think we're still fairly early in any sort of layoff cycle. The economy is still trucking. Despite many people trying to be first to declare it, we're not…

The US is in a recession. It has seen two quarters of negative economic growth.

This is a pointless battle. There is a US election this year so there is zero chance a recession will be admitted until mid November regardless of facts on the ground.

Re: How much have tech layoffs affected engineers vs. other departments?

#50

Post by jesuspiece »

walshie4 wrote: post #27

The fact that snap's web3 team being cut is one of the listed examples is pretty comical IMHO.

yea like no shit the web3 fat got cut first lol. anyone with eyes could see through all the people selling shovels in a gold rush
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