As a fellow developer who has been passionate about open-source programming since childhood, I was disgusted in this last hiring bubble how condescending and disrespectful the developers were towards other professions, which is disappointing. My general feeling was that it elevated developers to a seemingly different caste of "special" people, and here in my country (Brazil) there was advertisements everywhere about how you can study a couple of weeks and get a Top 1% salary.
This whole thing was a repeat of the dotcom bubble. Back then it was 'learn web design!'
Here too we had bootcamps to learn to code in weeks. At that point the bubble was reaching critical mass.
Same damn thing happened before.
I tried warning people- here on HN the sentiment was 'we are indisposable'.
When the cost-cutting measures and hiring freezes began I tried warning again and was told 'its not a hiring freeze at Uber, we are fine...just stopped hiring for certain departments (definition of a hiring freeze)'.
Then Twitter began the firing dominoes and here we are.
Thing is it was their company culture and management that made this happen.
Unreal perks, infantilization of the workforce, telling them how important they are, how they are changing the world, they are the 10x programmer.
I can't believe our workforce is going through this again only 20 years later. Seems housing is headed the same way.
We need protections for people, not companies. This is going to keeo happening unless we stop it.
I notice that there is a huge difference in the attitudes of people who learned programming in childhood, compared to people who learned in adulthood. As someone in the former group, I find myself agreeing strongly with your assessment.
There is a lack of humility that is far too common, that manifests as a toxic attitude and bad spending habits. I see a similar issue with people in finance, and once the illusion fades such people are prone to suicide, as was the case in 2008.
Don't worry, the sweet irony is hitting those condescending tech-bros now too the same way it hit the condescending crypto/stock bros who kept preaching "the market only goes up", "to the moon" and, my personal favorite which I read on HN, "developer demand is infinite". How's that infinite demand working out now tech-bros? Just ask Twitter employees.
A lot of people working in tech were delusional by the 10+ year long cheap money printing bonanza which fueled VC growth, and a bust is a good reality check that no boom lasts forever and that it's best to be humble and not inflate your lifestyle while you're on top, as your position on top was most likely due to survivorship bias and great market conditions and not earned through raw skills and hard work alone.
This seems logical. The software engineers are likely going to be some of the highest paid employees, so laying off underperforming engineers is going to help reduce labor costs substantially.
Many of these engineers have been hired for new business units that didn't end up being profitable with cheap credit going away. Others might be in business unit that is purely a cost center.
Nothing has really changed over the past few decades. Regardless of your role strive to be part of the company that produces the company's profit. Try to avoid parts of the company that are viewed as cost centers and are constantly under the eye of finance as they manage costs. You will find how are you treated in good and bad times radically different.
The software engineers are likely going to be some of the highest paid employees, so laying off underperforming engineers is going to help reduce labor costs substantially.
It might seem counter-intuitive, but often businesses lay off the high-performing-but-best-paid people because that drives the biggest savings while reducing the vanity headcount metric less, especially in companies where the effort of the team greatly outweighs any individual. They assume (sometimes rightly, sometimes wrongly) that the team will carry on without the 'superstar' people. There's also an assumption that the best people will leave when there's a layoff (mostly rightly), so getting rid of them means maintaining control of who's gone.
There should never been an assumption that you're safe from layoffs because you're the highest performing person on the team. Sadly.
That chart showing software engineers having the highest share of laid off employees in 2023 only tells half the story, which doesn't surprirse me because that allows the author to push their "sky is falling for devs now too!" narrative.
To show the full picture, you would need to also see the share of new jobs filled from end of 2020 to end of 2021 that were software engineers positions. I don't think people really grasp how massive the hiring spree was for software engineers in that time period.
There are a lot of "software engineers" who can't code well. I see a lot of "google and copy paste until it works and deploy". No thoughts behind design. No idea about performance. No testing. No innovation. They all need to go.
Is that the fault of the devs or the broken processes where management promises unrealistic deadlines up the chain, so devs have no time to think about the bigger picture and just do everything in their power to ship something that barely works at the end of each sprint and move on to putting out the next fire?
To me, the fault is in the industry and how the ships are run.
So, the same companies that overhired and ended up with underskilled developers are somehow going to accurately identify the underperforming developers and lay them off?
I think one of the problems is that they are about as good at identifying talent as they are at laying off underperforming developers.
One of my friends has worked at the same place for 10+ years, dodging several layoffs. When he talks about layoffs it seems pretty random who gets the stick.
He doesn't have the complete picture though, so they might very well be great developers, but still underperforming...
Many people would call Amazon a tech company - but they employ a lot of customer service folks, warehouse workers, and delivery drivers. Most people would call Facebook a tech company - but they employ a lot of content moderators and ad sales people. And so on. Most people would call Apple a tech company - but they have people staffing their retail stores and repairing broken laptops. And so on.
Not every business can be run like Google, with zero customer support and zero service delivery :)
Well, according to that stats, there's several other roles that could be amassed under the software engineer broad umbrella like application developer, web developer and many QA testers.
This makes software roles much more impacted than 20%.
It feels like we are facing a software security armageddon. There are millions of disgruntled coders, powerful AI tools to help hackers find security holes in record time, broken media, no trust in institutions, software complexity has grown out of control (increasing the surface area for security vulnerabilities)... Will centralized software survive the next decade?
This comment sounds like the output that ChatGPT would give you if you asked it to generate a discussion board comment that maximizes fear mongering and hyperbole.
Midwest "old school" firms tend to be very conservative in terms of compensation and headcount. That was definitely the case when I was managing teams there. Good talent, but at a fraction of the cost of hiring people at any tech hub.
Ninja edit: The company I worked for did layoff (around 2008) but that was more of a scare tactic which I ended up leaving the company over.
Probably lower real wages (compared to what they'd have been otherwise) as competition heats up for those positions, as well as a tougher hiring environment for job seekers.
It would be nice to see a chart of how many people were hired over last few years across different functions. I guess it would look similar. Software engineers would be at the top.
There was a blogpost recently on HN, which compared the "learn to code" campaigns as useful if one thinks of this along the same lines as "learn to cook". I liked that perspective.
The problem of course comes when someone who just learnt how to cook their first omelette feels ballsy enough to apply to a michelin restaurant as head chef ... and the hiring manager can't tell the difference.
[+] [-] bratao|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] effingwewt|2 years ago|reply
This whole thing was a repeat of the dotcom bubble. Back then it was 'learn web design!'
Here too we had bootcamps to learn to code in weeks. At that point the bubble was reaching critical mass.
Same damn thing happened before.
I tried warning people- here on HN the sentiment was 'we are indisposable'.
When the cost-cutting measures and hiring freezes began I tried warning again and was told 'its not a hiring freeze at Uber, we are fine...just stopped hiring for certain departments (definition of a hiring freeze)'.
Then Twitter began the firing dominoes and here we are.
Thing is it was their company culture and management that made this happen.
Unreal perks, infantilization of the workforce, telling them how important they are, how they are changing the world, they are the 10x programmer.
I can't believe our workforce is going through this again only 20 years later. Seems housing is headed the same way.
We need protections for people, not companies. This is going to keeo happening unless we stop it.
[+] [-] antibasilisk|2 years ago|reply
There is a lack of humility that is far too common, that manifests as a toxic attitude and bad spending habits. I see a similar issue with people in finance, and once the illusion fades such people are prone to suicide, as was the case in 2008.
[+] [-] ChuckNorris89|2 years ago|reply
https://imgur.com/a/ZSEl44o
A lot of people working in tech were delusional by the 10+ year long cheap money printing bonanza which fueled VC growth, and a bust is a good reality check that no boom lasts forever and that it's best to be humble and not inflate your lifestyle while you're on top, as your position on top was most likely due to survivorship bias and great market conditions and not earned through raw skills and hard work alone.
[+] [-] larrymyers|2 years ago|reply
Many of these engineers have been hired for new business units that didn't end up being profitable with cheap credit going away. Others might be in business unit that is purely a cost center.
Nothing has really changed over the past few decades. Regardless of your role strive to be part of the company that produces the company's profit. Try to avoid parts of the company that are viewed as cost centers and are constantly under the eye of finance as they manage costs. You will find how are you treated in good and bad times radically different.
[+] [-] onion2k|2 years ago|reply
It might seem counter-intuitive, but often businesses lay off the high-performing-but-best-paid people because that drives the biggest savings while reducing the vanity headcount metric less, especially in companies where the effort of the team greatly outweighs any individual. They assume (sometimes rightly, sometimes wrongly) that the team will carry on without the 'superstar' people. There's also an assumption that the best people will leave when there's a layoff (mostly rightly), so getting rid of them means maintaining control of who's gone.
There should never been an assumption that you're safe from layoffs because you're the highest performing person on the team. Sadly.
[+] [-] CraigRo|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SketchySeaBeast|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jzb|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nonethewiser|2 years ago|reply
Good
[+] [-] whoomp12342|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] KoftaBob|2 years ago|reply
To show the full picture, you would need to also see the share of new jobs filled from end of 2020 to end of 2021 that were software engineers positions. I don't think people really grasp how massive the hiring spree was for software engineers in that time period.
[+] [-] yobid20|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ChuckNorris89|2 years ago|reply
To me, the fault is in the industry and how the ships are run.
[+] [-] ep103|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tyingq|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] peddleroftruth|2 years ago|reply
One of my friends has worked at the same place for 10+ years, dodging several layoffs. When he talks about layoffs it seems pretty random who gets the stick.
He doesn't have the complete picture though, so they might very well be great developers, but still underperforming...
[+] [-] Thorentis|2 years ago|reply
Wow is this true? If so, I'm extremely surprised it is this low. No wonder Elon could cut 80% of jobs and everything would keep ticking along.
[+] [-] hef19898|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] michaelt|2 years ago|reply
Many people would call Amazon a tech company - but they employ a lot of customer service folks, warehouse workers, and delivery drivers. Most people would call Facebook a tech company - but they employ a lot of content moderators and ad sales people. And so on. Most people would call Apple a tech company - but they have people staffing their retail stores and repairing broken laptops. And so on.
Not every business can be run like Google, with zero customer support and zero service delivery :)
[+] [-] slig|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] epolanski|2 years ago|reply
This makes software roles much more impacted than 20%.
[+] [-] christkv|2 years ago|reply
Also the weird split between software engineers and application developers or web developers ?
[+] [-] jacknews|2 years ago|reply
Yes it suggests these stats are meaningless, and only provided to fit the 'developers are doomed, don't be asking to for a raise now' narrative.
Just another part of the inflation-reduction and capital-clawing-back-labor-power plan.
[+] [-] jongjong|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] KoftaBob|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SirMaster|2 years ago|reply
This seems more like an issue in tech hubs or in primarily software companies.
What does it look like for all the software developers in the IT departments in non-software companies?
[+] [-] GaryNumanVevo|2 years ago|reply
Ninja edit: The company I worked for did layoff (around 2008) but that was more of a scare tactic which I ended up leaving the company over.
[+] [-] scarmig|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robofanatic|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tpoacher|2 years ago|reply
The problem of course comes when someone who just learnt how to cook their first omelette feels ballsy enough to apply to a michelin restaurant as head chef ... and the hiring manager can't tell the difference.
[+] [-] skeyo|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] valbaca|2 years ago|reply
Hell, I'd have every plumber and electrician that came to work on my house ask which programming language they should learn. It was viral.
[+] [-] epolanski|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] darkhorse13|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] nivenkos|2 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] paulcole|2 years ago|reply
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