[brainfog]

Where did all of these people even come from in the first place? Did the industry just have 50-100k at-least-somewhat-qualified people sloshing around doing nothing before they got picked up by FAANG?

[onlyrealcuzzo]

So far, probably 80% of these roles have been non-engineering (wrt to all tech layoffs, not Amazon specifically).

So these were probably just non-engineering people from other parts of the economy.

[whiplash451]

Do you have hard data to back the 80%?

[k8si]

Companies have been hand-wringing about the tech labor shortage for the last 10 years. People went to school and got degrees in a job sector they thought would be pretty safe. Supply/demand.

[MaintenanceMode]

Just one data point, but I recently talked to a guy that bounces between being a mortgage broker and a tech worker. When the housing business is booming he switches to mortgage work, then when that slows down he jumps back into technology. I think he said he was in some kind of pre-sales role in tech.

Now that they're both slow at the same time, I'm not sure what he's planning.

[closeparen]

Silicon Valley cloud and SaaS applications have been devouring an entire ecosystem of in-house and on-prem IT, small line-of-business software vendors, etc.

[sillypuddy]

Attrition plays a role too, if you hire expecting 20% attrition and attrition comes in at 5% you have more employees than you budgeted.