We 10x engineers are so special that we are waving off offer after offer and that will never end.
Not only will that never end, but luckily I’m so perfect that I’ll never experience a disability or need any accommodation that I can’t just code or build myself.
I mean even then, certainly you had a good enough exit at your first company (like anyone good) that you could basically retire whenever.
I mean, you know it boils down to this: just be a better software engineer and you’ll never have to NEED a union. The only people that need unions probably suck at algorithms and think Kubernetes is too hard.
You are forgetting the root cause of why all the tech layoffs happened.
Between mid 2020 and early 2022, tech was the place investors were willing to pay any money even at a ridiculous P/E. It wasn’t because the value proposition suddenly shifted to tech but money was plentiful and looking for places to go and tech was the place that could give you high return.
Fast forward, US Fed has decided there is too much inflation and consumers need to slow down so they are shrinking their balance sheet. Investors suddenly are getting 8% return basically without any risk. Why would you invest in tech and all the volatility when you can get that return. Suddenly companies that could raise money and rollover their debt in peanut interest expenses are seeing money has dried up.
There is one and only one responsible for this mess. Central Bankers. They had absolutely no idea what they were and are talking about including very basic things such as where would inflation and interest rate go in short term. In 8 months, they went from “we need deflation and we foresee low interest till 2024” to largest inflationary environment since 1980s and highest interest rates. And of course they face no consequences. #EndTheFed
I have worked for companies with tech unions. You can only negotiate the terms ahead of time because as a union you don't get a heads up before a mass layoff. The terms I saw were usually not that good. Usually they only had severance pay linked to years of service with a cap at 5. In some places that's barely more than the local law requires.
On my own I have been able to negotiate stock as well. Unions won't touch that.
A union would have done nothing other than accelerate the process. We need laws that if a job is off-shored the company is penalized heavily, where it makes it painful and unbearable.
Is anyone really surprised? Did you think the end result of the WFH movement was going to be companies continuing to pay you to live out of your Bay Area house?
I feel like if US companies are proven to off shore jobs they should take a massive tax hit the same year. Like you are required to pay 5 years worth of the salary of the job you off shored into unemployment or retraining funds.
Any reason it will work out better this time than it did the last time outsourcing was the new big thing? In my anecdotal experience this is just a rehashing of the last outsourcing craze with a new crowd and will end up the same way.
This is something my company's internal RTO channels seem to have missed. What if large corporations really *did* collect enough data during covid to justify working from home? Now faang can justify outsourcing the rest of US based jobs.
Force RTO in the US, replace those who leave with less expensive resources.
Salaries in India have increased a lot-- they used to be one-tenth that of Silicon Valley but now they are more than one-third and closing in on one-half
Damn. The market is already so tough for software engineers right now and the supply of engineers is going to increase again. I don't see how wages can drop lower than they are now. I think some engineers may have to consider a career in construction, plumbing, retail or other. Software development is just not worth the hassle and strain. Not to mention that it has become laborious, repetitive and inefficient without much autonomy in terms of choice of frameworks, tools, etc... Software development appears to have become a low-status, menial office job. Not to mention that we are now extremely replaceable; not only because of AI (which makes developers more productive) but because of standardized frameworks like React which allow juniors to churn out features fast with limited knowledge of software development; this means that seniors can often be replaced with juniors.
Maybe security will be the next big thing? All these juniors churning out code using frameworks but not understanding what's really going on under the hood might introduce more security vulnerabilities. Not to mention all the disgruntled, jobless developers who might turn to hacking to make ends meet.
I guess people who are really into software development may want to consider moving into consulting, management or teaching. I also noticed a lot of bs jobs opening up dealing with regulations and compliance.
I remember when I joined the industry in 2012, being a developer was very special; you would interact directly with the company directors, you could choose all your tools and frameworks or even build your own from scratch. You could also decide to focus on back end or front end as there was no clear separation in responsibilities. I guess that's the downside of joining an industry which essentially didn't exist 50 years ago; you never know how it's going to end up. It's not like being a lawyer or doctor which has remained high status and high pay for thousands of years.
There's a whole social architecture designed around propping up lawyers' and doctors' pay by constraining the supply of graduates and imposing artificial requirements. On the other hand, software developers tend to be extremely compliant and willing to work overtime for free, not interested to unionize, you don't even need a degree (very low bar to entry), etc... The highly compliant, overworked ones force the rest of us to match them in their degree of compliance and overwork to remain competitive. It's really a sad race to the bottom.
Having data fluency, code fluency, you are already a valuable asset in many horizontal moves in tech companies and large companies with unavoidable tech bureaucracy - move to a sales role and now you can actually answer tough technical questions during prospecting or qualification without having to harass an engineer. Move to a PM role and have a better understanding of the level of effort of a task. Move to an operations role at a dinosaur conglomerate and use your scripting and automation abilities to outperform your peers and reinvent how your team works.
Learn to describe your experience and goals as a story that makes sense and is compelling.
Most white collar work would benefit from experience in software or data, whereas lifting 2x4s into place may not.
Wait you guys actually contemplate your "status"? This seems overly dramatic and does not match my experience at all. Software development is a very young profession and will continue to change.
I genuinely don't understand that you can, with a straight face, say that juniors with copilot can do the same work as seniors. Typing up the code is like what, 25% of time spent - during a good week!
You and anyone reading this that thinks like this person: I implore you to talk to as many people as you can outside of the industry. Ask them about their job. Ask them about their perks and flexibility and how they're treated by their bosses and how they're evaluated and what their prospects are for promotion.
You have not a fucking clue how good you have it. If you did, you would be too embarrassed to write a comment like this.
Relax, the market is fine. Tech salaries haven't taken a hit. A few thousand people (out of many millions) got laid off, and most have already found jobs again. A third of the initial wave of tech layoffs got rehired within a month (https://www.cnbc.com/2023/02/16/why-some-young-laid-off-work...). No need to join a plumbing class just yet. Take an online AI tutorial instead.
I think that’s a bit drastic to switch to a diff career entirely. Have you tried looking for software engineer jobs in non-big tech roles like in insurance companies and boring things like that?
They don’t pay a million dollars but still pretty reasonable. Then again I don’t have super high expenses so ymmv
Even if what you’re saying is true about the SWE job market which I doubt what SWE would completely switch career paths to become a plumber and not just find a related IT position?
> “As we continue to execute on our FY24 plan, we need to also evolve how we work and what we prioritize so we can deliver on the key initiatives we’ve identified that will have an outsized impact in achieving our business goals,” LinkedIn executives Mohak Shroff and Tomer Cohen wrote in the memo.
Is this standard business communication lingo for layoffs?
Complaining about this stuff every time it comes up feels kind of tired, but at some point why do they even bother stating anything at all? I wonder if these execs could just use some internal biz-speak chatbot to generate this nonsense.
It’s difficult to get that rich blow hard into that few sentences. I mean it takes a LOT of effort to get that much meaningless drivel into some kind of coherency that can be supported if you read it real slow. So… I’d say this is more top 10% of standard blowhard layoff notices. Definitely more blowhard than the standard stuff. This took honest blowhard talent.
Shroff and Cohen definitely deserve like a blowhard gold star for that. Rarely do you see such voluminous perniciousness that so effectively masks the real world consequences of ending peoples gainful employment. Real skill. Take notes.
Translation: We suck at running and leading a company so we are going to prioritize showing investors we can still return dollars to them this quarter by letting go of some peons.
I know it's not a apples to apples comparison, but the same parent company nonetheless. Not a good look after closing the deal on 69 billion for activision blizzard. Couldn't have set aside one of those billions to keep people employed a while longer MSFT?
The parent company wants to know the viability of each business unit independently, one subsidizing another would obfuscate what's working and what isn't.
And secondively, teams/orgs get bloated and keeping them larger than they should be hinders their progress.
"Broken down there are 137 Engineering management roles and 38 Product roles being reduced. Additionally, there will be 388 role reductions across our Engineering team"
Companies have cut back on recruiters a while ago, so I guess they stopped money on linkedin.
I guess they'll be updating their LinkedIn profile then. But seriously: while I hope they will land on their feet this might be a sign that there is finally an opportunity to start a competitor on a leaner basis.
> For those who are directly affected by these changes, you will receive a calendar invitation within the next hour
Is it just me or does this suck a lot? Thousands of people unsure about their fate, refreshing their calendar, checking for... the lack of an invite? So much added stress and anxiety.
Surely they could send two versions of the email, specifying to each person if they are affected or not.
> Thousands of people unsure about their fate, refreshing their calendar, checking for... the lack of an invite? So much added stress and anxiety.
> within the next hour
This is great. One hour? Last time we had layoffs I was watching my calendar daily for weeks! There was no timeline at all. I had anxiety every morning logging into work. I think that was a huge part of the burnout I'm currently experiencing.
At least there was a timeline. Last layoff at my company said invitations would be sent later today. No timeline on when. So people were sitting around all day wondering if they still had a job.
"Today I had to say goodbye to my fellow LinkedInians. I am truly grateful for the 2 years I spent there creating value for shareholders of MSFT. Being pushed by my managers to excel and being able to learn from Satya Nadella's memos made it some of the most impactful years of my life. ETC ETC. Please refer me at your company. Thanks." - 700 linkedIn posts appearing today.
Does LinkedIn still use Ember? LinkedIn is one of those companies that pivot to [new framework] every six months to keep their engineers happy. I guess its cause the product is so boring.
Surprising. LinkedIn, even more than Google, was the biggest retirement home. You went there if you wanted to while away time being “blocked on another team” and stuff like that while being paid quite well.
This might be the start of the recession. So many businesses out there with little to negative return on invested capital are looking at what happens if revenues decline and they need to borrow money in a "high for longer" interest rate environment. I don't think this one is just tech, but tech is a large part of the problem.
>"We did not expect to share this important update with you all in the midst of such challenging times, but in the spirit of creating clarity, Tomer and I wanted to share some news regarding changes we are making to our orgs....Tomer and I made these decisions with deep consideration - Mohak & Tomer"
Is it normal for a CEO like Satya Nadella not to write this email? Kind of off-putting that MSFT is keeping its hands clean here. Mohak and Tomer aren't making this decision.
Communication should be sent out by whoever made the decision and was in control of the outcome. LinkedIn operates almost completely independently from Microsoft, so it is appropriate for their leadership to be the ones taking the hit.
LinkedIn negotiated its own independent P&L from Microsoft. If anything, it's a little weird that it didn't come from Ryan, but it seems like they likely announced layoffs a while back... and Product & Eng waited a while to actually make the cuts.
The older I get the less enthusiastic I get about government regulations with a few exceptions.
First, ones that balance the cost of negative externalities, clearly not being accounted for in the behavior of market participants.
Second, ones that increase the information about a market (transparency) so that all participants can make better decisions.
To that second end I would really love to see governments force companies to report headcount on a per role basis and anonymized compensation data about each of these roles on a monthly basis.
That way would could more easily contextualize posts like this one.
coldpie|2 years ago
...right?
AndrewKemendo|2 years ago
We 10x engineers are so special that we are waving off offer after offer and that will never end.
Not only will that never end, but luckily I’m so perfect that I’ll never experience a disability or need any accommodation that I can’t just code or build myself.
I mean even then, certainly you had a good enough exit at your first company (like anyone good) that you could basically retire whenever.
I mean, you know it boils down to this: just be a better software engineer and you’ll never have to NEED a union. The only people that need unions probably suck at algorithms and think Kubernetes is too hard.
Live in emacs or starve is my motto
raybb|2 years ago
A relevant book that recently came out but I have not read is You Deserve a Tech Union by Ethan Marcotte
https://abookapart.com/products/you-deserve-a-tech-union
WalterBright|2 years ago
bettercallsalad|2 years ago
Between mid 2020 and early 2022, tech was the place investors were willing to pay any money even at a ridiculous P/E. It wasn’t because the value proposition suddenly shifted to tech but money was plentiful and looking for places to go and tech was the place that could give you high return.
Fast forward, US Fed has decided there is too much inflation and consumers need to slow down so they are shrinking their balance sheet. Investors suddenly are getting 8% return basically without any risk. Why would you invest in tech and all the volatility when you can get that return. Suddenly companies that could raise money and rollover their debt in peanut interest expenses are seeing money has dried up.
There is one and only one responsible for this mess. Central Bankers. They had absolutely no idea what they were and are talking about including very basic things such as where would inflation and interest rate go in short term. In 8 months, they went from “we need deflation and we foresee low interest till 2024” to largest inflationary environment since 1980s and highest interest rates. And of course they face no consequences. #EndTheFed
aeyes|2 years ago
On my own I have been able to negotiate stock as well. Unions won't touch that.
deviantbit|2 years ago
SpicyLemonZest|2 years ago
tiffanyh|2 years ago
fithisux|2 years ago
aaa_aaa|2 years ago
[deleted]
LewisVerstappen|2 years ago
So, laying off people in the US and hiring in India?
paxys|2 years ago
tannedNerd|2 years ago
d3w4s9|2 years ago
Funny that some people think "if we work in the office more, companies won't outsource jobs as much".
dehrmann|2 years ago
eikenberry|2 years ago
sebazzz|2 years ago
throwaway9191aa|2 years ago
Force RTO in the US, replace those who leave with less expensive resources.
huytersd|2 years ago
muzz|2 years ago
gumballindie|2 years ago
jongjong|2 years ago
Maybe security will be the next big thing? All these juniors churning out code using frameworks but not understanding what's really going on under the hood might introduce more security vulnerabilities. Not to mention all the disgruntled, jobless developers who might turn to hacking to make ends meet.
I guess people who are really into software development may want to consider moving into consulting, management or teaching. I also noticed a lot of bs jobs opening up dealing with regulations and compliance.
I remember when I joined the industry in 2012, being a developer was very special; you would interact directly with the company directors, you could choose all your tools and frameworks or even build your own from scratch. You could also decide to focus on back end or front end as there was no clear separation in responsibilities. I guess that's the downside of joining an industry which essentially didn't exist 50 years ago; you never know how it's going to end up. It's not like being a lawyer or doctor which has remained high status and high pay for thousands of years.
There's a whole social architecture designed around propping up lawyers' and doctors' pay by constraining the supply of graduates and imposing artificial requirements. On the other hand, software developers tend to be extremely compliant and willing to work overtime for free, not interested to unionize, you don't even need a degree (very low bar to entry), etc... The highly compliant, overworked ones force the rest of us to match them in their degree of compliance and overwork to remain competitive. It's really a sad race to the bottom.
jihadjihad|2 years ago
rngname22|2 years ago
Learn to describe your experience and goals as a story that makes sense and is compelling.
Most white collar work would benefit from experience in software or data, whereas lifting 2x4s into place may not.
midasz|2 years ago
I genuinely don't understand that you can, with a straight face, say that juniors with copilot can do the same work as seniors. Typing up the code is like what, 25% of time spent - during a good week!
pb7|2 years ago
You have not a fucking clue how good you have it. If you did, you would be too embarrassed to write a comment like this.
paxys|2 years ago
reidjs|2 years ago
They don’t pay a million dollars but still pretty reasonable. Then again I don’t have super high expenses so ymmv
flextheruler|2 years ago
Even if what you’re saying is true about the SWE job market which I doubt what SWE would completely switch career paths to become a plumber and not just find a related IT position?
neovive|2 years ago
Is this standard business communication lingo for layoffs?
JeremyNT|2 years ago
bilekas|2 years ago
happytiger|2 years ago
Shroff and Cohen definitely deserve like a blowhard gold star for that. Rarely do you see such voluminous perniciousness that so effectively masks the real world consequences of ending peoples gainful employment. Real skill. Take notes.
A4ET8a8uTh0|2 years ago
"We don't have room for bystanders, we don't have room for people who want to stand on the sidelines,"[1]
[1]https://finance.yahoo.com/news/citigroup-outlines-layoff-pro...
HumblyTossed|2 years ago
FlyingSnake|2 years ago
mrweasel|2 years ago
adharmad|2 years ago
crackinmalackin|2 years ago
gdulli|2 years ago
And secondively, teams/orgs get bloated and keeping them larger than they should be hinders their progress.
pcurve|2 years ago
Companies have cut back on recruiters a while ago, so I guess they stopped money on linkedin.
I wonder what areas will be impacted next.
jacquesm|2 years ago
stfp|2 years ago
Is it just me or does this suck a lot? Thousands of people unsure about their fate, refreshing their calendar, checking for... the lack of an invite? So much added stress and anxiety.
Surely they could send two versions of the email, specifying to each person if they are affected or not.
maximinus_thrax|2 years ago
> within the next hour
This is great. One hour? Last time we had layoffs I was watching my calendar daily for weeks! There was no timeline at all. I had anxiety every morning logging into work. I think that was a huge part of the burnout I'm currently experiencing.
0cf8612b2e1e|2 years ago
pastor_bob|2 years ago
bastardoperator|2 years ago
ThomW|2 years ago
mvdtnz|2 years ago
delaynomore|2 years ago
saos|2 years ago
There it is
dboreham|2 years ago
Eumenes|2 years ago
danielovichdk|2 years ago
There are too many great software engineers for bad management to use.
When product and software management works well, one side effect is the realisation that we don't need to be so many software engineers.
But that is just experience the ladt 20 years.
renewiltord|2 years ago
mjhay|2 years ago
lamontcg|2 years ago
rvz|2 years ago
pastor_bob|2 years ago
Is it normal for a CEO like Satya Nadella not to write this email? Kind of off-putting that MSFT is keeping its hands clean here. Mohak and Tomer aren't making this decision.
paxys|2 years ago
MisterPea|2 years ago
Conversation probably started by Satya asking the LinkedIn CEO to just reduce X$ expenses and the LinkedIn leadership made these specific changes.
salynchnew|2 years ago
unknown|2 years ago
[deleted]
NicoJuicy|2 years ago
HtmlProgrammer|2 years ago
CSMastermind|2 years ago
Second, ones that increase the information about a market (transparency) so that all participants can make better decisions.
To that second end I would really love to see governments force companies to report headcount on a per role basis and anonymized compensation data about each of these roles on a monthly basis.
That way would could more easily contextualize posts like this one.
TurkishPoptart|2 years ago
unknown|2 years ago
[deleted]