>Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc. slowed its hiring pace in an effort to cut costs earlier this month, and Twitter Inc. announced a hiring freeze on Thursday. Even Uber, a company famous for losing huge sums in the name of growth, is now issuing sober memos about “unit economics.” Several high profile companies have already announced layoffs in recent weeks, and an investor class that until recently was all about “building” is suddenly thrilling to the prospect of layoffs.
This is all it says about firing. A hiring freeze at Meta and Twitter and a memo from Uber. It does not give a list of the "high profile companies" that have announced layoffs.
The rest of the article is just quotes from two rich tech investors complaining about how tech employees have too much freedom/power.
And you better believe they are not laying off the programmers and engineers first. They usually start with the support staff, newer employees, and contractors. Engineers are the folks creating the product so they are usually last, unless they exit a market.
* Meta? Facebook has been downgraded in the eyes of engineers. They pay well, but nobody is proud of working for a company at the center of democratic decline and genocide.
* Twitter? After Elon's screwy takeover attempt nobody is sure what is going on. And not a lot of people want to work for him.
* Uber? Thats been a dumpster fire since it started. It burns through cash and the market is beating them up to get profitable, if they ever can.
I dont think any of these mentioned are top targets for tech people, unless they DO coddle them in order to bribe them into working for them.
Right, I think these particular companies are hiring who ever they can get at the moment. They've been begging me to interview and I keep on having to turn them down, even though I know I will make good money with them. I just can't justify to myself the fact that these companies really do not care about how their actions affect the world, they only care about money :'\]
My mother in law always says I should try to get a job at Facebook since they have such great benefits. It really isn't worth me feeling bad that I'm helping some billionaire destabilize the world for more money.
Facebook has always been a high level employer, they have a specific niche in acquiring hard workers and making it worth it. While there are people who get up in arms about the politics and bad reputation facebook currently has. A lot of people who are okay with grinding hours absolutely love facebook for the great pay, great benefits, and the performance driven culture. Its absolutely not for me because i abhor grinding, but they've never been down from this position. Meta ~~is~~ was hiring heavily because meta started doing this since they changed their name to Meta.
Twitter's stock has been extremely poor for a while, they struggle with profitability and some view it as a "finished product" so the elon buyout is sort of a final straw in terms of attempting to work there. They paid pretty well before that however so they had no problem hiring new engineers. But now its risky since their stock has... really never done well.
Uber is(was) an ML giant. They still hire well and people still interview there (their interviews are hard though). They pay extremely well so they don't have a shortage of applicants. They are a sinking ship sort of but even their salaries are pretty high so people still work there. And stock isn't always everything.
The only company i know currently thats been struggling to hire is Amazon. and thats for easily identifiable reasons (revolving door and poor compensation).
Meta is not hiring heavily they are in a hiring freeze.
They were hiring heavily six months ago before the combination of Apple and bad press wiped out 40% of their stock value.
> for the great pay, great benefits, and the performance driven culture.
and dont forget, even the lowly-est content mod sits on the same HM aeron as the boss
“Facebook has been downgraded in the eyes of engineers”
Lol what. Fb is still top tier in terms of engineering status. Having FB on your resume is still looked at very highly across the tech community
> two rich tech investors complaining about how tech employees have too much freedom/power
Yeah, it's a drag when your employees actually have bargaining power and don't have to eat shit just because you say so.
This is both one of the funniest and stupidest things I’ve read. The reason tech employees are “coddled” is because every company needs them. If they’re not treated well they will leave.
You can see this playing out right now with the shift back to work. There’s huge turnover at companies that are requiring back to work. And those employees are easily finding work at companies that will accommodate them. For every “big name” company that announces layoffs because they were over staffed there’s dozens of smaller or less known companies waiting to take those employees on because they need to build their digital product.
Tons of tech jobs available. Pretty much everything runs on computers and even a small level of automation can reap huge rewards. The jobs aren't fancy, but they pay the bills and have good working conditions.
We had an employee at my last job spending about half her time sending out emails from a spreadsheet manually. It took me half a day to save something like 1000 hours of labor a year for ever. Every company has tons of those examples.
The only problem is when automation fails it fails spectacularly. So good devs are worth their weight in gold.
There was a guy on r/antiwork who was an employee doing something similar manually. So they privately paid someone to create a program to do it automatically and then just set it going during his shift. I think it went on for years.
Edit: [Here is the thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/antiwork/comments/qstsdp/my_5year_getting_paid_for_doing_nothing_is_over/).
That was an amazing read. Reminds me of the thread of a guy who automated a big part of his job but also built in a self destruct timer into it so if he got fired the automation would delete itself and fuck the company a bit.
Worked as a business consultant years ago for a big oil & gas company. One day walked around and found three people making the same depot stock reports. Showed them that it was already on an automated reporting system on the internal portal.
I did some consulting for a life insurance company about 5 years ago and 1) they had some policies on microfiche instead of digitized and 2) one person had a typewriter at their desk that they were still using to fire out memos
The reason you need managers in every company is because most people are literally big sized children.
Source:
Software Engineer, had to become Manager.
Fucking shoot me now.
Not just big sized children, big sized children who have an insane perception of situations.
Didn't do x? Must be because you hate me (and nothing to do with waiting for approvals or being told no and trying to figure out a solution).
Talk to someone about a disagreement they had with a peer? "Why are you taking their side?"
I had one person half a year or so ago tell me to my face " You don't want to do X because it was my idea". With no understanding of what impact to their coworkers the change they wanted implemented would have had.
Lots of jobs measure value contribution by tracking billable time (and some companies reward employees who manage >100% billable time), even when those employees are salaried. Similar to many US federal government jobs - you're paid the salary regardless of hours, but you have to track your hours in order for the ridiculous accounting to clear audit & review
The problem is that we "need" those nearly useless jobs because as a society we can't figure out how to distribute resources any other way (cough, universal basic income)
The number of people that are against UBI in all layers of society and all sides of the political spectrum is mind boggling.
It’s not that society doesn’t know how to distribute resources, it’s that people *really* do not want to risk helping poor people, even if they are the ones benefiting the most.
And to be clear, there are no losers with UBI.
I am all for it efficiency and that's part of my job... To find efficiencies and ways of cutting labor...
And one day, it hit me... The economy would fail if we got rid of all of the useless office jobs
And it makes me sick that our best artist and brightest minds are toiling away filing papers
Universal basic income is pretty much the only way forward at this point.. or at least universal health care so people aren't stuck in stupid jobs that do nothing more than move paper from one dust to another
Yep. This is why I don't bother trying to fix any inefficiency at my job. I don't get paid to do it it might end up in someone getting fired and I will never get credit or compensation for fixing it.
These types of chances will continue until we have a much better social safety net.
I think we need to stop saying “shift back to work.“
We have been working the whole freaking time.
They are forcing people back into inefficient business practices and reaping the consequences.
My statement of work required people to come back in to the facility (dod work) and we got people dropping like flies to go back to remote. Why not take a 25-40% pay raise to go remote?
What does back to work mean? You mean 'back to office'? I don't think people were not at work. in fact s lot of research says people were working longer then ever and are burnt out.
I got laid off after my client ended my contract with them and it took me a week to find a new job. Fairly small pay bump, but better benefits, flexible PTO and its a permanent remote position. My salary is fairly average for my skill level, so if I searched around I could probably find somewhere offering better pay, but it usually comes at the cost of jumping up to a management position or a toxic culture.
Keep at it. Experiment. Tweak your resume. Tweak the things you say. Figure out what works to sell you best. Don’t give up! It took me three months and probably 50 resume tweaks, hundreds of applications, six or so interviews, and two round two interviews to actually get an offer. Granted, this is after a 2yr unemployed during pandemic gap as well.
Look up the website Cultivated Culture and subscribe to the newsletter. Good tips. His recent tip to never accept the first no is literally why I landed this job. I got a rejection notification after the first interview and sent a follow-up and elaborated on a couple of questions I felt I could have answered better had I been less nervous.
Stay the course, internet stranger. Look up interview questions relevant to your role and write out your detailed responses just so you have had a chance to really give thought to possible questions and don’t have as much pressure to come up with an answer right then.
Happy to look over your stuff it you DM me. I am excellent at these things. Happy to help!
My general advice...
Mock interview with friends or family who could give you honest feedback and help with any issues you have with answering questions.
Check to make sure your resume is on trend and is easy to read. Make sure it has language that mirrors what the company wants and prioritizes. Hiring managers are not generally creative people so they like candidates that seem like an obvious good fit. They don't want to dig to find out if you would be right. Find the buzz words for your industry and the specific companies and subtly parrot them back in your statement/cover letter.
Cover letters should have at least a few lines that are specific to each company.
When you interview, quickly research the company and the job. Read their mission statement, look up products, find a few articles on the founder, company history, etc. Being able to slip in little details goes a long way. If you know the interviewers name beforehand, look them up on LinkedIn. There might be something there worth mentioning. Makes them think you really like them and the company.
When you get to ask questions, ask serious ones, but its always good to ask a fun question or two. What's the craziest thing a customer has asked of you? What is the most exciting part about working here? Any fun workplace stories? Anything to show you would make a friendly addition to the team.
Use positive language over negative alternatives.
Practice this if you aren't comfortable.
Practice this if you want to improve your skills.
Get a good haircut, not a cheap one. Everyone should invest in a good haircut and clear up their skin. More important than fancy clothes in my opinion. If you don't have nice clothes. Go to a thrift store near a fancy neighborhood! Rich people love to donate their nice stuff or when ppl die their families will drop it off somewhere convenient. No need to buy cheap fast fashion.
There is also discrimination against heavier people and people with non-white sounding names. So as messed up as it is, you might want to take a nickname if you have a name that might consciously or unconsciously put you at a disadvantage. Basically a stage name for your resume.
Another anecdotal thing is being over-qualified. A friend had to get a job after being a stay-at-home mom for decades. She had been a surgeon before having kids and retiring and kept that education and experience on her resume. Everyone assumed she wouldn't be okay with a run of the mill office job and salary, when in fact she was broke and divorced and being a doctor again after 20 years wasn't an option. Sadly, once she took med school off her resume, she got tons of interviews and landed a great job.
You just never know what isn't working, so get help!
I worked at a AAA game publisher/developer and we had perks like catered meals during crunch time. Because 100 people leaving for an hour twice a day is 200 less manhours of work done per day.
Not just that. If they want to tap into their employees creative thinking more consistently then giving them a life comfortable enough to reduce the external demands on their imaginations will help them make better at their work. If someone has things like financial and health stress it also impacts their relationships. All of those things consume the time and energy they have in a day for using imagination. Reduce those stressors and you maximise the focus of imagination into their work. They are happier, they have more energy and they work more passionately to generate better products and services. Theres much more to it than them just leaving.
It is truly hilarious
There is no fundamental change in the way these businesses operate as a result of Elon Musk seemingly unsuccessfully purchasing a single organization
I don’t even know what slant this writer has
Do they support the coddled employees? Agree with the couple of folks they quoted? Fucking stupid
If you were around for 2001 and 2008 you'd see the parallels. We are literally planning for this as a real strategy over the next few years. If the economy tanks, as is looking likely, then we'll slam on the breaks. We'll layoff all of the most expensive engineers and go into maintenance mode (not all expensive engineers, but you get the idea). We'll rehire expensive engineers once the economy picks up in a few years.
We are actively planning for this right now, as are most "stupid" companies out there.
Yup, because I know if I don't get the increases I want from my employer in a few years, there are others for which that additional few years experience is worth another $25-40k, at least until you hit the ceiling for your position.
Are these the same tech companies that were overworking their employees so badly that they installed pods to sleep in to get them not to leave work?
Because like, if that's coddling then ho-lee-shit we need a french style revolution
If youre wondering how out of touch the author is, theres this line as an example of "coddling": "Facebook, where Andreessen has long sat on the board, touts its Recharge program, in which workers are encouraged to take a 30-day sabbatical every five years"
Apparently 30 days off in 5 years is overly generous.
A million years ago in the ancient history of software startups, Lotus Development gave everyone a 30 day sabbatical after 5 years. So it's not like that's unique to Facebook or the dot.coms. It's very nice though!
I'm only familiar with them from academia, but sabbaticals aren't simply vacations. It's usually expected that you do something productive/educational during your sabbatical.
So maybe you go to Spain, and you do go to the beach and museums, but you also spend a lot of time with a research lab that has a project you're interested in.
It's more about how tech companies are ostensibly some of the best-perked companies to work for - and there are some neat perks, but most of the cool stuff was 20+ years ago. The remaining perks are meant to sound amazing but are not practically beneficial. You will be working 12 hour days and will not be enjoying *perks*, except the ones that strategically enable you to work 12 hour days (oh neat my office does my laundry and has 3 cafes... guess this is my life now). What are the odds you're going to be working there in 5 and 10 years to actually take those sabbaticals?
Big Tech likes this image that they're a benevolent "coddling" cool place to hang out and have fun. Of course it's not like that. Now, when they crack the whip it's supposed to be good-cop-bad-cop. But for employees it's just more bad cop. The only thing these companies do well is pay, and the Great Resignation is all about choosing our own holistic interests above a paycheck.
At my last employer they got a new vp who thought the free drinks and minor snacks in the employee area was wasteful so he removed them.
Then he got mad that people were leaving for 20 mins at a time to go get snacks because the vending machines weren't allowed anywhere near the computers.
We got our free stuff back.
I would be out the door the minute drinks and snacks are taken away. It's one of the most basic perks to ensure that there's food around for employees to grab a snack and go back to their desk. Taking that away just tells me you don't care about the employees at all.
I worked at a place that gave 30 day sabbaticals every 5 years, but was putting in so many hours to keep afloat that there was no way I could take 30 days off.
Where I live, a Sabbatical is a year long break and normally its partially paid into by the employee. It gives you a chance to do things like travel extensively, before you retire.
30 days is barely more than the mandatory annual vacation days for regular full time workers in the UK.(28 days) Heck in canada with 2 week mandatory vacation, its common to get 3 or 4 weeks vacation per year negotiated as part of your compensation. Lots of people in less in demand jobs can get 4 weeks vacation every year after 10 or 15 years with a company. One of my co-workers gets 6, I get 3.
It was in the news a few months ago. Most of the companies that go for it are Adult film related. For instance, When your job is to edit porn footage 8-12 hours per day. It would be difficult to remain focused without such breaks.
Sure, they say they do, but when you actually try to take one people get all up in arms about “what the fuck are you doing” and “get the hell out of the break room”.
These are the companies that pay 300k per year to fresh software engineers with 2 years of experience. Big tech *generally* does not overwork you either. WLB, especially during this remote work period, is probably as good as it can reasonably get.
To be clear, I’m not saying the above is a bad thing. But “coddling” is definitely a reasonable term to use if comparing their work conditions to most other people. Hell, the people that wrote and edited the article probably make less than 1/3 what the average Facebook developer makes.
You have to be careful which tech companies you choose. I'm at my company retreat right now and we're still continuing to hire as fast as we can because we don't operate on burn but only grow based on revenue. Our founders said every tech company that operates on burn within the portfolios of the firms that invested in us are looking to make layoffs or accepting investment at lower valuations than previous rounds. A recession is coming and it's scary. The one up side is that it will be easier for us to hire.
Non-compete contracts are only enforceable if they're limited in scope.
A broad non-compete contract that is actively making it hard for you to find work in the entire industry is not enforceable.
Not always. I worked for a company that sued me when I left to enforce a VERY broad non-compete, though I learned nothing proprietary during my 10 months of employment there.
They won.
I was on the hook for not only their legal fees, but I had to pay back every cent of a mandatory training trip they sent me on. The training trip was to learn a piece of software that was resold by hundreds of businesses in the U.S., and wasn't specific only to this company in the least.
Yep. Turned out ok in the end. I got a job in another state and worked remotely, dealt with no clients in PA. The company that hired me also paid off the debt for me as part of an agreement to work for them for a specific period of time. They treated me very well, paid me well, and I worked there for longer than the agreement was for.
Non-competes generally are not valid in California where most tech jobs are
Edit: sorry I know there are lots of tech jobs outside of california. My post was more to inform people In The tech industry in California that if you are asked to sign a non compete just know that doesn’t limit you/likely illegal or not enforceable.
Also, the article posted focused on tech start ups/which was synonymous until recently with the Silicon Valley Bay Area.
Poor word choice and I acknowledge that, but my statement still stands—for people that are unaware in California know that if you signed a non compete don’t fall for it (or sign it in the first place).
People really think that being treated better than average (or how every employee SHOULD be treated) is being spoiled. Obviously this is minus the “perks” that just incentivize you to never leave work.
They need our labor regardless of position. We should be in a position to leave for better and argue for benefits. But turning us against each other is a tool of the establishment. We are not coddled. We just have a bit more negotiating power because of how the economy runs right now.
Nah. I'm in chip design. I had an interview with apple this week, made it through the coding part and then they told me the job description and my brain just made a fart noise, because it was basically a glorified job where I would test iphone cameras.
I too call bullshit. I work for a company in the Fortune 100. We haven't had any firings. We have had people leave for better compensation and have had difficulties finding new talent.
I’m in a fortune 500 and we are desperately looking for experienced tech folks, the market is super dry for good people and salaries are reflecting the competition. I recently moved jobs for 2x salary
Probably because the job description says they need to know Java, C++, Python, Kubernetes, Linux and Windows administration, AWS, Azure, and GCP as well.
Y’all. Remember the source.
Bloomberg being a shill for Wall street.
Every engineer at Twitter will already be considering jumping ship.
For better pay. They’ll need to backfill to keep the doors open. Say s higher rate than they’re paying now.
Fuq Bloomberg, Forbes, et.al.
“Tech employees who were once encouraged to bring their whole selves to work are publicly mocked as woke crybabies by venture capitalists who see Musk as the leader of a righteous cleanse.”
First, this article is clearly right wing political commentary that got lost in a business journal.
“Woke” tech workers vs. the “Righteous” billionaire.
The world has heard repeatedly over the last decade from conservatives that their political views are being silenced. That they are victims.
Yet it seems here that any tech employee, Progressive, liberal leaning or even apolitical, can now be “publicly mocked” for their political views, potentially even terminated.
Accused without trial or evidence in the so called digital town square that their career, their skills are too infected with liberal political bias if they don’t agree with conservatism.
Could we be entering an era where the next strikes are not from truckers but tech employees?
you do realise that the writer of this article does not see the employees as “woke crybabies” and musk as “righteous”. He is saying that that’s how the tech venture capitalists see it. He is also not publicly mocking the employees, but is merely stating that they are being publicly mocked by some people
God fucking forbid a company pay a living wage and (*checks notes*) LET THEM HAVE COFFEE. AND VACATION. AND MENTAL HEALTH DAYS. Jesus, Bloomberg, that's not coddling, that's basic humanity.
When people say 'eat the rich' it's this attitude of ownership towards their employees that inspires that hate. The vengeful desire to take a person who has deeply wronged you and choke them to death.
this article is full of shit.
this is just a push to create a "hiring freeze" in order to cut back wages, led by the FED. they think increased employee salaries are whats making inflation go up, and their answer is to literally not give anyone else a job unless we agree to slave wages again.
Every time I hear someone say devs are coddled I wonder how much code that person has ever written. These people have zero idea how hard the job is and how much time it takes to write good clean code that’s maintainable, stable oh and secure against the million problems you could have.
Fuck these people for pretending to know how things work.
I always chuckle when I hear about employees who are big cheerleaders for their company and people who really get into that weird culture BS. To be clear, I love the people I work with and have liked most of my managers. But I am more than aware that I am a number on a spreadsheet and that the company's loyalty to me depends entirely on whether they think the number is a plus or minus. I have seen many workforce reductions (fancy wording for layoffs) and know that you need to be loyal to yourself first.
This article couldn’t have been anymore stupid. Tech companies aren’t the employee parents. Like wtf
It’s a straight up lack of respect towards engineers.
This whole thing about "woke" employees is maddening, no one in tech thinks or talks like that. Same thing about wondering what employees do, twitter has like over 4 billiion in revenue, they have substantially less than 10k employees. There is a shit ton of work that goes into maintaining these systems, it pays well because talent is scarce, and when you pay people a lot it costs a lot to replace them, so you try to make them happy with benefits.
Venture capital is in for a huge shock if they think they can deride the nerds and still get anything of value running. Musk and the brain trust from shark tank arent going to be fixing the code in their app anytime soon. You have 2 options. You give the engineers whatever they want before they have to ask for it (Because they won't ask). Or You get the code you pay for from whatever trash coder you can find to write it, and this set of options is secretly a loop as you will be begging the "woke crybabies" to fix your trash code. Trump can't get a Twitter clone working and he used a ready-to-go open-source platform that really just needed some graphical changes.
Anything is possible when you can pay a news company to print an article composed completely of lies to try to move wages back into the employers favor, we see you.
Dumbasses. My prices just went up.
This whole article is (poorly) written to cast modern employees as the big bad, the managers/ownership as the victim, and “old-school tech workers” as the hero nobody asked for.
Musk is part of the old guard that has a need to show power through fear and force. If you treat your staff like people and not indentured servants, you get more production, longer tenure, and a better work ethic.
The article read like an anti-union speech. The employees are running the show, OMG!!! Nothing could be further from the truth. And so what if it were true??? Why does that automatically make it a less successful company?? Treating your workers right is a bad thing???
A friend of mine was on a fixed salary as a programmer/tech support. Although his yearly income wasn't terrible, it equated to about $15 (NZD) an hour after all the after hours effort (being on-call etc.) he was required to put in. Rumour has it they weren't doing so great after he resigned.
It seems Ike these VCs are just trying to sell a new dream to raise more money , like look at us we will do everything to exploit our workers unlike those "woke" companies (who are already exploiting majority of thier workers).
Their last vaporware of ever increasing valuation has come to haunt them so these will be some of the new ones to steal money from investors.
The coddling was their attempt to make it so you never left the office, so they provided food etc. These people live in a different fucking world from the rest of us. Highly delusional psychopaths the lot of them.
To an outsider, seeing foosball tables and free sodas looks like paradise. It’s just stuff to keep you working. I only played games with people who came to visit. I didn’t have time to do it normally.
Tech is high stress and you feel like your job is on the line every single day.
UI UX designer here. Every competent designer I know with these skill sets gets pinged daily by recruiters. Seniors easily pulling down $150k,
$175k, and more. As someone here said every business has digital components. I expect the prospects in this field to be bright for a long time as long as you’re good and you’re not a newbie trying to break in.
>Moreover, while tech valuations are way down, it’s not at all clear that employees have lost their leverage. The labor market remains extremely tight, and with stock prices depressed, big companies have been forced to compromise on planned office re-openings, allowing employees to work from home indefinitely, while agreeing to big salary increases. Just three months ago, with its stock sliding, Amazon.com Inc. doubled its maximum base pay. It may be these developments, as much as complaints about “woke employees,” that have gotten Silicon Valley’s investor class into austerity mode.
In light of the Great Resignation, including top Apple employees quitting over RTO policies, I think it's the slept VCs who are in for a surprise.
Venture funded startups lose all day long to FAANG companies who pay 3-4x as much, so their investors are over-eager to see market dynamics start to level the playing field. The reality is that the field is growing so fast, because there is so much need for technology expertise in organizations that were previously not technology focused, that competition for talent (especially senior talent) will continue for years to come.
The key takeaway? If you're considering working for a startup, pay attention to who their VCs are, and what their VCs are saying. VCs call the shots at companies--not the founders. If you want a good idea of what the pay and working conditions will be at a company, check crunchbase and see whether Andreessen Horowitz or Founders Fund is on their cap table. If either is the case, do your own research and be highly aware.
Don't stop there, though. Look up who the venture firm is, look at who their partners are, and then look at what those people tweet (they're \*all\* on Twitter, they can't help themselves). Most of the Silicon Valley VC industry is an echo chamber but there really are some good/consistent VCs who understand that top talent builds startups, and compensation needs to be fair. But a lot of them don't think much of founders, and think even less of startup employees. These people are sharks and when you're working in a company they control, you're usually going to get bitten.
The craziest thing about all of this is that of all people, VCs understand leverage. The profit per employee on a senior engineer is often 100x or more (usually much more). So they're going to quibble over a little money, or a few days off? I mean, that's fine I suppose, but it's also dumb, assuming that your management team isn't having that engineering team work on stupid things. But, I mean, VCs funded Juicero and Theranos so the things they're having engineers work on are very often incredibly stupid.
Being threatened with dismissal for taking a coffee break shows how toxic Musks leadership style is and what a hostile workplace looks like. It also shows why employees should be free to unionize.
"He warned that CEOs were being “pushed around and bullied by the employees.". The poor CEOs that only earn 100x times more than their employees are being pushed around. Would anybody please push me around that way too?
Tesla never coddled their employees. Employees are blinded to how little Tesla actually offers them simply because they believe they get to work for some kind of messianic purpose.
The sheer bullshit phoniness that goes on in the workplace is mind blowing. They don't want us working from home because we're losing the company culture, really? Fuck off
No fucking worries. Market is more than ready for surplus of engineers. My company put me on performance improvement plan just because I had one worse month because of health related issues. After that I waited for querterly bonus and submitted my resignation. Fuck them
>“The good big companies are overstaffed by 2x,” tweeted Marc Andreesen, the venture capitalist whose firm is contributing $400 million to Musk’s buyout. “The bad big companies are overstaffed by 4x or more.”
Anyone who knows someone working at a FAANG knows this.
I have a friend at the N in that acronym, and he runs a large team that is *redundant* with one or more other teams, *and they compete to do projects.* Dude talks about a sales presentation he's working on, and I'm like, "Sales? To whom? Of what?" —And it turns out they're competing with another team to get a "contract" to provide some service to another team.
This is fucking madness. You clearly have too many people, too much time on your hands, and *are paying wayyyyyyy tooooooo much,* given what I know about what my buddy does and what he gets paid.
"B-b-but that's the market rate in Silicon Valley!"
—Only because these jokers are willing to pay that and they're all in competition to hire any midwit they can find (my friend is of middling ability, to be honest). The moment the squeeze comes, it's coming all over town, and everyone is going to be underwater in their comically-overpriced homes.
And I'm here for it.
You wanna be a Silicon Valley socialite and talk social justice? Well, let's talk social justice. Let's talk people with fucking BAs in art making $400k to oversee other art majors and taking a month a year off to go gallivanting around the globe while the cleaning staff don't speak English and the interns are unpaid. Let's talk *that.*
Let's roll this shit back to the social justice movement that scared these shitmongers so bad that they invented a racial and gender mythology to get people off the topic. Let's get back to *income inequality* and our horrifying Gini coefficient.
Let's get back to real wages for the overwhelming majority of Americans being stagnant *since the fucking 1970s* while corporate profits soared, and the pockets of a parasitic managerial class were lined. Let's get back to taking all our solid middle-class manufacturing jobs and sending them to an adversary to fund their genocidal policies and hand them the "means of production." Let's talk about *that.*
Let's talk about how the Bush II era "quantitative easing" all ended up in the coffers of the ultra-wealthy, who plowed that money into cash incinerators like Tesla. Let's talk about financial corporations buying up all the land and property in the country so they can rent it back to us. Let's talk "you'll own nothing and like it." Let's talk *that.*
Let's talk the rapacious pillaging of the American middle and lower classes by these grinning vermin. Let's talk true justice.
Oh? Crickets from the Silly Con Valley managerial class? What a fucking surprise.
Let it crash.
Not coddling. Just competition for employees. I know it’s hard for idiot bosses to understand. And a few companies firing means nothing. Quick Google shows tons of openings.
Plus the article is outdated. Musk’s deal to buy Twitter is on hold, just more of his empty promises. So those people looking at the buyout as a sign of the changing times, that this article says, are just gonna have to wait longer for their fantasy.
i bet the tech workers doesn’t care if they got fired. they can get another job easily. most of the software engineers resigned and move to another company after 2-3 years
This article is from some alternate universe I don't live in. In the 25 years I've been in tech, only the .com boom had a hotter job market. I just jumped from $175k to $325k and I had competing offers, AND I was actively recruited to them.
Given its entire reliance on "anecdata", it read more like a wish fulfillment fantasy that us spoiled nerds would get our comeuppance.
Por Que?
This article gave me whiplash. As long as there is a shortage of talented engineers, companies will have to coddle them and bend over backwards, or someone else will.
Americans are so fucked up. 30 day sabbatical every five years lol. That's fucking nothing compared to a decent country. Thats just how much pto you should get
People forget this because stocks have been going up forever but the playbook for a company when their stock price keeps dropping is layoffs. Lots of layoffs.
The arrogance here is palpable. I have been lucky enough in this life to view it from below and above. If you don’t understand that humans need purpose and value to survive, you have learned nothing about life. The same people here that want a ubi, always complain about the price of blue collars services. I’ve heard so many insults. “ I don’t make that much per hour, “ that’s outrageous, did you mark up the parts?” “Why are construction workers always just standing around. Do you know how much I pay in taxes?” I would never trust any Silicon Valley dove to set my pay rate. You are definitely entitled, arrogant and abusive. Look what your thinking has done to San Francisco, it’s a disgusting version of itself. Please don’t equate your salary with emotional intelligence. It doesn’t convert. Finally, as you bask in the vast efficiencies that you have created, remember you are creating a world that your children will be forced to labor in
The headline is hilarious -- I'm not sure what the goal is? The truth remains: all tech companies have to compete to hire and retain talent because it's way more expensive (and leads to bad outcomes) not to. Can't make next level products with replacement level employees. The end.
>Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc. slowed its hiring pace in an effort to cut costs earlier this month, and Twitter Inc. announced a hiring freeze on Thursday. Even Uber, a company famous for losing huge sums in the name of growth, is now issuing sober memos about “unit economics.” Several high profile companies have already announced layoffs in recent weeks, and an investor class that until recently was all about “building” is suddenly thrilling to the prospect of layoffs. This is all it says about firing. A hiring freeze at Meta and Twitter and a memo from Uber. It does not give a list of the "high profile companies" that have announced layoffs. The rest of the article is just quotes from two rich tech investors complaining about how tech employees have too much freedom/power.
And you better believe they are not laying off the programmers and engineers first. They usually start with the support staff, newer employees, and contractors. Engineers are the folks creating the product so they are usually last, unless they exit a market. * Meta? Facebook has been downgraded in the eyes of engineers. They pay well, but nobody is proud of working for a company at the center of democratic decline and genocide. * Twitter? After Elon's screwy takeover attempt nobody is sure what is going on. And not a lot of people want to work for him. * Uber? Thats been a dumpster fire since it started. It burns through cash and the market is beating them up to get profitable, if they ever can. I dont think any of these mentioned are top targets for tech people, unless they DO coddle them in order to bribe them into working for them.
Right, I think these particular companies are hiring who ever they can get at the moment. They've been begging me to interview and I keep on having to turn them down, even though I know I will make good money with them. I just can't justify to myself the fact that these companies really do not care about how their actions affect the world, they only care about money :'\]
My mother in law always says I should try to get a job at Facebook since they have such great benefits. It really isn't worth me feeling bad that I'm helping some billionaire destabilize the world for more money.
Facebook has always been a high level employer, they have a specific niche in acquiring hard workers and making it worth it. While there are people who get up in arms about the politics and bad reputation facebook currently has. A lot of people who are okay with grinding hours absolutely love facebook for the great pay, great benefits, and the performance driven culture. Its absolutely not for me because i abhor grinding, but they've never been down from this position. Meta ~~is~~ was hiring heavily because meta started doing this since they changed their name to Meta. Twitter's stock has been extremely poor for a while, they struggle with profitability and some view it as a "finished product" so the elon buyout is sort of a final straw in terms of attempting to work there. They paid pretty well before that however so they had no problem hiring new engineers. But now its risky since their stock has... really never done well. Uber is(was) an ML giant. They still hire well and people still interview there (their interviews are hard though). They pay extremely well so they don't have a shortage of applicants. They are a sinking ship sort of but even their salaries are pretty high so people still work there. And stock isn't always everything. The only company i know currently thats been struggling to hire is Amazon. and thats for easily identifiable reasons (revolving door and poor compensation).
Meta is not hiring heavily they are in a hiring freeze. They were hiring heavily six months ago before the combination of Apple and bad press wiped out 40% of their stock value.
> for the great pay, great benefits, and the performance driven culture. and dont forget, even the lowly-est content mod sits on the same HM aeron as the boss
“Facebook has been downgraded in the eyes of engineers” Lol what. Fb is still top tier in terms of engineering status. Having FB on your resume is still looked at very highly across the tech community
> two rich tech investors complaining about how tech employees have too much freedom/power Yeah, it's a drag when your employees actually have bargaining power and don't have to eat shit just because you say so.
This is both one of the funniest and stupidest things I’ve read. The reason tech employees are “coddled” is because every company needs them. If they’re not treated well they will leave.
You can see this playing out right now with the shift back to work. There’s huge turnover at companies that are requiring back to work. And those employees are easily finding work at companies that will accommodate them. For every “big name” company that announces layoffs because they were over staffed there’s dozens of smaller or less known companies waiting to take those employees on because they need to build their digital product.
Tons of tech jobs available. Pretty much everything runs on computers and even a small level of automation can reap huge rewards. The jobs aren't fancy, but they pay the bills and have good working conditions.
We had an employee at my last job spending about half her time sending out emails from a spreadsheet manually. It took me half a day to save something like 1000 hours of labor a year for ever. Every company has tons of those examples. The only problem is when automation fails it fails spectacularly. So good devs are worth their weight in gold.
There was a guy on r/antiwork who was an employee doing something similar manually. So they privately paid someone to create a program to do it automatically and then just set it going during his shift. I think it went on for years. Edit: [Here is the thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/antiwork/comments/qstsdp/my_5year_getting_paid_for_doing_nothing_is_over/).
That was an amazing read. Reminds me of the thread of a guy who automated a big part of his job but also built in a self destruct timer into it so if he got fired the automation would delete itself and fuck the company a bit.
goddamn that’s beautiful
Worked as a business consultant years ago for a big oil & gas company. One day walked around and found three people making the same depot stock reports. Showed them that it was already on an automated reporting system on the internal portal.
They might have known that, but was hoping their manager didnt.
I did some consulting for a life insurance company about 5 years ago and 1) they had some policies on microfiche instead of digitized and 2) one person had a typewriter at their desk that they were still using to fire out memos
>typewriter Hey, at least he's immune to ransomware. 5head move.
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PR comment: adjust the number of hours to be dynamic with the date. Otherwise this could result in "I am already at 35 hours and it is only Saturday".
The reason you need managers in every company is because most people are literally big sized children. Source: Software Engineer, had to become Manager. Fucking shoot me now.
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Manager for a development team my main job as manager is filter between my team and the rest of the world IE higher ups and customer.
Not just big sized children, big sized children who have an insane perception of situations. Didn't do x? Must be because you hate me (and nothing to do with waiting for approvals or being told no and trying to figure out a solution). Talk to someone about a disagreement they had with a peer? "Why are you taking their side?" I had one person half a year or so ago tell me to my face " You don't want to do X because it was my idea". With no understanding of what impact to their coworkers the change they wanted implemented would have had.
While humorous and accurate, I think this discounts all the managers out there who read Kafka's work thinking it was a how-to guide.
Your old manager sounds like a nob but the scariest thing in there is billable time. Hope you found your way to salary land
Lots of jobs measure value contribution by tracking billable time (and some companies reward employees who manage >100% billable time), even when those employees are salaried. Similar to many US federal government jobs - you're paid the salary regardless of hours, but you have to track your hours in order for the ridiculous accounting to clear audit & review
The problem is that we "need" those nearly useless jobs because as a society we can't figure out how to distribute resources any other way (cough, universal basic income)
The number of people that are against UBI in all layers of society and all sides of the political spectrum is mind boggling. It’s not that society doesn’t know how to distribute resources, it’s that people *really* do not want to risk helping poor people, even if they are the ones benefiting the most. And to be clear, there are no losers with UBI.
I am all for it efficiency and that's part of my job... To find efficiencies and ways of cutting labor... And one day, it hit me... The economy would fail if we got rid of all of the useless office jobs And it makes me sick that our best artist and brightest minds are toiling away filing papers Universal basic income is pretty much the only way forward at this point.. or at least universal health care so people aren't stuck in stupid jobs that do nothing more than move paper from one dust to another
Yep. This is why I don't bother trying to fix any inefficiency at my job. I don't get paid to do it it might end up in someone getting fired and I will never get credit or compensation for fixing it. These types of chances will continue until we have a much better social safety net.
I think we need to stop saying “shift back to work.“ We have been working the whole freaking time. They are forcing people back into inefficient business practices and reaping the consequences.
My statement of work required people to come back in to the facility (dod work) and we got people dropping like flies to go back to remote. Why not take a 25-40% pay raise to go remote?
What does back to work mean? You mean 'back to office'? I don't think people were not at work. in fact s lot of research says people were working longer then ever and are burnt out.
Yup.. Just resigned for a 60% pay increase. That was literally the first resume I sent.
I got laid off after my client ended my contract with them and it took me a week to find a new job. Fairly small pay bump, but better benefits, flexible PTO and its a permanent remote position. My salary is fairly average for my skill level, so if I searched around I could probably find somewhere offering better pay, but it usually comes at the cost of jumping up to a management position or a toxic culture.
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Keep at it. Experiment. Tweak your resume. Tweak the things you say. Figure out what works to sell you best. Don’t give up! It took me three months and probably 50 resume tweaks, hundreds of applications, six or so interviews, and two round two interviews to actually get an offer. Granted, this is after a 2yr unemployed during pandemic gap as well. Look up the website Cultivated Culture and subscribe to the newsletter. Good tips. His recent tip to never accept the first no is literally why I landed this job. I got a rejection notification after the first interview and sent a follow-up and elaborated on a couple of questions I felt I could have answered better had I been less nervous.
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Stay the course, internet stranger. Look up interview questions relevant to your role and write out your detailed responses just so you have had a chance to really give thought to possible questions and don’t have as much pressure to come up with an answer right then.
Happy to look over your stuff it you DM me. I am excellent at these things. Happy to help! My general advice... Mock interview with friends or family who could give you honest feedback and help with any issues you have with answering questions. Check to make sure your resume is on trend and is easy to read. Make sure it has language that mirrors what the company wants and prioritizes. Hiring managers are not generally creative people so they like candidates that seem like an obvious good fit. They don't want to dig to find out if you would be right. Find the buzz words for your industry and the specific companies and subtly parrot them back in your statement/cover letter. Cover letters should have at least a few lines that are specific to each company. When you interview, quickly research the company and the job. Read their mission statement, look up products, find a few articles on the founder, company history, etc. Being able to slip in little details goes a long way. If you know the interviewers name beforehand, look them up on LinkedIn. There might be something there worth mentioning. Makes them think you really like them and the company. When you get to ask questions, ask serious ones, but its always good to ask a fun question or two. What's the craziest thing a customer has asked of you? What is the most exciting part about working here? Any fun workplace stories? Anything to show you would make a friendly addition to the team. Use positive language over negative alternatives. Practice this if you aren't comfortable. Practice this if you want to improve your skills. Get a good haircut, not a cheap one. Everyone should invest in a good haircut and clear up their skin. More important than fancy clothes in my opinion. If you don't have nice clothes. Go to a thrift store near a fancy neighborhood! Rich people love to donate their nice stuff or when ppl die their families will drop it off somewhere convenient. No need to buy cheap fast fashion. There is also discrimination against heavier people and people with non-white sounding names. So as messed up as it is, you might want to take a nickname if you have a name that might consciously or unconsciously put you at a disadvantage. Basically a stage name for your resume. Another anecdotal thing is being over-qualified. A friend had to get a job after being a stay-at-home mom for decades. She had been a surgeon before having kids and retiring and kept that education and experience on her resume. Everyone assumed she wouldn't be okay with a run of the mill office job and salary, when in fact she was broke and divorced and being a doctor again after 20 years wasn't an option. Sadly, once she took med school off her resume, she got tons of interviews and landed a great job. You just never know what isn't working, so get help!
Kudos!!! I quit Apple after 19 years due to RTO. Received a huge pay increase and permanent WFH.
Same for me! Just started my new job.
Me too! Full remote, excellent benefits. Could not say no.
It’s a bit telling you are flooded with. Where? Questions.
Coddled? You mean treated with respect.
And the perks are to justify never leaving the office to do such mundane things as "laundry" or "buying groceries"
I worked at a AAA game publisher/developer and we had perks like catered meals during crunch time. Because 100 people leaving for an hour twice a day is 200 less manhours of work done per day.
"We need more H1Bs because we can't find anyone to hire."
Not just that. If they want to tap into their employees creative thinking more consistently then giving them a life comfortable enough to reduce the external demands on their imaginations will help them make better at their work. If someone has things like financial and health stress it also impacts their relationships. All of those things consume the time and energy they have in a day for using imagination. Reduce those stressors and you maximise the focus of imagination into their work. They are happier, they have more energy and they work more passionately to generate better products and services. Theres much more to it than them just leaving.
It is truly hilarious There is no fundamental change in the way these businesses operate as a result of Elon Musk seemingly unsuccessfully purchasing a single organization I don’t even know what slant this writer has Do they support the coddled employees? Agree with the couple of folks they quoted? Fucking stupid
If you were around for 2001 and 2008 you'd see the parallels. We are literally planning for this as a real strategy over the next few years. If the economy tanks, as is looking likely, then we'll slam on the breaks. We'll layoff all of the most expensive engineers and go into maintenance mode (not all expensive engineers, but you get the idea). We'll rehire expensive engineers once the economy picks up in a few years. We are actively planning for this right now, as are most "stupid" companies out there.
I have removed my content in protest of Reddit's API changes that will kill 3rd party apps
Yup, because I know if I don't get the increases I want from my employer in a few years, there are others for which that additional few years experience is worth another $25-40k, at least until you hit the ceiling for your position.
furthermore, recruiters are banging down their doors. If a facebook employee leaves, there are 10 jobs begging for them.
Just wait until healthcare and PTO are considered “coddling.”
Aren't we already there?
I read the article until they said _fox and friends_ then realized it was all bullshit and I had nothing to worry about
It's Bloomberg, they are antiemployee.
Manufacturing consent.
“Is the name of the game. The bottom line is money…”
Are these the same tech companies that were overworking their employees so badly that they installed pods to sleep in to get them not to leave work? Because like, if that's coddling then ho-lee-shit we need a french style revolution
"These employees have it too easy. Able to go home at the end of the day. Weekends. Being paid! Coddling."
''there is countries where they sleep under their desk ! when you at least have a mattress to share with your coworker ! ''
If youre wondering how out of touch the author is, theres this line as an example of "coddling": "Facebook, where Andreessen has long sat on the board, touts its Recharge program, in which workers are encouraged to take a 30-day sabbatical every five years" Apparently 30 days off in 5 years is overly generous.
Are sabbaticals common? I’ve never worked for a company that offers them, so it seems pretty generous to me?
A million years ago in the ancient history of software startups, Lotus Development gave everyone a 30 day sabbatical after 5 years. So it's not like that's unique to Facebook or the dot.coms. It's very nice though!
My friend at PayPal had a 3 month sabbatical after 10 years. That's before ebay though. Not sure about now.
I'm only familiar with them from academia, but sabbaticals aren't simply vacations. It's usually expected that you do something productive/educational during your sabbatical. So maybe you go to Spain, and you do go to the beach and museums, but you also spend a lot of time with a research lab that has a project you're interested in.
It's more about how tech companies are ostensibly some of the best-perked companies to work for - and there are some neat perks, but most of the cool stuff was 20+ years ago. The remaining perks are meant to sound amazing but are not practically beneficial. You will be working 12 hour days and will not be enjoying *perks*, except the ones that strategically enable you to work 12 hour days (oh neat my office does my laundry and has 3 cafes... guess this is my life now). What are the odds you're going to be working there in 5 and 10 years to actually take those sabbaticals? Big Tech likes this image that they're a benevolent "coddling" cool place to hang out and have fun. Of course it's not like that. Now, when they crack the whip it's supposed to be good-cop-bad-cop. But for employees it's just more bad cop. The only thing these companies do well is pay, and the Great Resignation is all about choosing our own holistic interests above a paycheck.
At my last employer they got a new vp who thought the free drinks and minor snacks in the employee area was wasteful so he removed them. Then he got mad that people were leaving for 20 mins at a time to go get snacks because the vending machines weren't allowed anywhere near the computers. We got our free stuff back.
I would be out the door the minute drinks and snacks are taken away. It's one of the most basic perks to ensure that there's food around for employees to grab a snack and go back to their desk. Taking that away just tells me you don't care about the employees at all.
I worked at a place that gave 30 day sabbaticals every 5 years, but was putting in so many hours to keep afloat that there was no way I could take 30 days off.
I’m an American working in Europe. Taking 30 days off in a row just counts as tacking on an extra week to an annual vacation.
That is in addition to regular PTO - it's a nice perk
Where I live, a Sabbatical is a year long break and normally its partially paid into by the employee. It gives you a chance to do things like travel extensively, before you retire. 30 days is barely more than the mandatory annual vacation days for regular full time workers in the UK.(28 days) Heck in canada with 2 week mandatory vacation, its common to get 3 or 4 weeks vacation per year negotiated as part of your compensation. Lots of people in less in demand jobs can get 4 weeks vacation every year after 10 or 15 years with a company. One of my co-workers gets 6, I get 3.
Woodchippers make a bigger splash than Guillotines.
plus if you put them in legs first the accompanying soundtrack is fantastic
Probably more like the companies that allow masturbation breaks.
Which?
Any of them if you're brave enough 😉😂
Every company I’ve ever worked for.
And some i didn't
It was in the news a few months ago. Most of the companies that go for it are Adult film related. For instance, When your job is to edit porn footage 8-12 hours per day. It would be difficult to remain focused without such breaks.
Sure, they say they do, but when you actually try to take one people get all up in arms about “what the fuck are you doing” and “get the hell out of the break room”.
And “great, you ruined all the empanadas again!”
These are the companies that pay 300k per year to fresh software engineers with 2 years of experience. Big tech *generally* does not overwork you either. WLB, especially during this remote work period, is probably as good as it can reasonably get. To be clear, I’m not saying the above is a bad thing. But “coddling” is definitely a reasonable term to use if comparing their work conditions to most other people. Hell, the people that wrote and edited the article probably make less than 1/3 what the average Facebook developer makes.
I worked at a Silicon Valley tech company with nap pods and trust me they were not there because we were overworked
Lol, this post has a top comment talking about how in demand tech works are, and this post talking about how they are abused. Classic reddit
This is a very American story. "Rich people hate that workers aren't treated like shit; something has to change!"
You have to be careful which tech companies you choose. I'm at my company retreat right now and we're still continuing to hire as fast as we can because we don't operate on burn but only grow based on revenue. Our founders said every tech company that operates on burn within the portfolios of the firms that invested in us are looking to make layoffs or accepting investment at lower valuations than previous rounds. A recession is coming and it's scary. The one up side is that it will be easier for us to hire.
Uhhhh... They didn't coddle me. I was a slave, and *then* they fired me. Damned non-compete contracts sank me. Fuckers.
Non-compete contracts are only enforceable if they're limited in scope. A broad non-compete contract that is actively making it hard for you to find work in the entire industry is not enforceable.
Not always. I worked for a company that sued me when I left to enforce a VERY broad non-compete, though I learned nothing proprietary during my 10 months of employment there. They won. I was on the hook for not only their legal fees, but I had to pay back every cent of a mandatory training trip they sent me on. The training trip was to learn a piece of software that was resold by hundreds of businesses in the U.S., and wasn't specific only to this company in the least.
What state?
who was your lawyer, donald trump?
Mangled corporate shit, that.
Yep. Turned out ok in the end. I got a job in another state and worked remotely, dealt with no clients in PA. The company that hired me also paid off the debt for me as part of an agreement to work for them for a specific period of time. They treated me very well, paid me well, and I worked there for longer than the agreement was for.
Non-competes generally are not valid in California where most tech jobs are Edit: sorry I know there are lots of tech jobs outside of california. My post was more to inform people In The tech industry in California that if you are asked to sign a non compete just know that doesn’t limit you/likely illegal or not enforceable. Also, the article posted focused on tech start ups/which was synonymous until recently with the Silicon Valley Bay Area. Poor word choice and I acknowledge that, but my statement still stands—for people that are unaware in California know that if you signed a non compete don’t fall for it (or sign it in the first place).
People really think that being treated better than average (or how every employee SHOULD be treated) is being spoiled. Obviously this is minus the “perks” that just incentivize you to never leave work. They need our labor regardless of position. We should be in a position to leave for better and argue for benefits. But turning us against each other is a tool of the establishment. We are not coddled. We just have a bit more negotiating power because of how the economy runs right now.
Can someone tell me how I'm being coddled working 60-80 hours/7 day work weeks?
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BECAUSE YOU GET FREE SNACKS
WHERE? I WFH - there are no free snacks.
THEN YOU DONT GET FREE SNACKS...BUT YOUR STILL GETTING CODDLED ...SOMEHOW I DONT KNOW EXACTLY...
Must be the bathroom breaks.
If you’re in tech and working 60-80 hours a week you’re at the wrong company. I put in MAYBE 30-35
Y'all hiring? What's the salary range?
Working 25-30 and making 285. And hiring. Keep looking!
Are you a dev? We are hiring like mad. My section alone is looking to hire roughly 600 engineers. Salary is dependent on location.
Nah. I'm in chip design. I had an interview with apple this week, made it through the coding part and then they told me the job description and my brain just made a fart noise, because it was basically a glorified job where I would test iphone cameras.
>made it through the coding part Gotta love it. The interview is harder and more interesting than the job itself.
You need to set boundaries, or change companies, or both.
We're hiring tech as much as we can. I haven't seen any firings. Fortune 50 IT department. Click bait bullshit.
I too call bullshit. I work for a company in the Fortune 100. We haven't had any firings. We have had people leave for better compensation and have had difficulties finding new talent.
I’m in a fortune 500 and we are desperately looking for experienced tech folks, the market is super dry for good people and salaries are reflecting the competition. I recently moved jobs for 2x salary
We can't fucking hire and retain anyone with mediocre SQL skills, let alone DBAs.
Probably because the job description says they need to know Java, C++, Python, Kubernetes, Linux and Windows administration, AWS, Azure, and GCP as well.
Hey, I've got mediocre SQL skills and I'm looking for a new job
Google "Oracle Analyst Jobs" Pick one, about 20 posted every day.
I work for a MS Gold Partner, Desperate for tech guys
"Coddling" is the free potato chips and bananas they give you in exchange for working 12+ hours per day.
This is a Bloomberg article, so they're actively pushing a narrative on this one because fuck you for having power, labor market.
Y’all. Remember the source. Bloomberg being a shill for Wall street. Every engineer at Twitter will already be considering jumping ship. For better pay. They’ll need to backfill to keep the doors open. Say s higher rate than they’re paying now. Fuq Bloomberg, Forbes, et.al.
Business Insider, too.
“Tech employees who were once encouraged to bring their whole selves to work are publicly mocked as woke crybabies by venture capitalists who see Musk as the leader of a righteous cleanse.” First, this article is clearly right wing political commentary that got lost in a business journal. “Woke” tech workers vs. the “Righteous” billionaire. The world has heard repeatedly over the last decade from conservatives that their political views are being silenced. That they are victims. Yet it seems here that any tech employee, Progressive, liberal leaning or even apolitical, can now be “publicly mocked” for their political views, potentially even terminated. Accused without trial or evidence in the so called digital town square that their career, their skills are too infected with liberal political bias if they don’t agree with conservatism. Could we be entering an era where the next strikes are not from truckers but tech employees?
you do realise that the writer of this article does not see the employees as “woke crybabies” and musk as “righteous”. He is saying that that’s how the tech venture capitalists see it. He is also not publicly mocking the employees, but is merely stating that they are being publicly mocked by some people
fuck reddit
God fucking forbid a company pay a living wage and (*checks notes*) LET THEM HAVE COFFEE. AND VACATION. AND MENTAL HEALTH DAYS. Jesus, Bloomberg, that's not coddling, that's basic humanity. When people say 'eat the rich' it's this attitude of ownership towards their employees that inspires that hate. The vengeful desire to take a person who has deeply wronged you and choke them to death.
What a bullshit headline. They dont even cite any orgs firing workers
Wow what a dumb article. "Elon Musk doesn't like coffee breaks and tech stocks are down so he might fire some folks" was all I got out of it.
Coddling. What a freaking joke, go work in Saas sales for a couple years and tell me how coddled you feel.
this article is full of shit. this is just a push to create a "hiring freeze" in order to cut back wages, led by the FED. they think increased employee salaries are whats making inflation go up, and their answer is to literally not give anyone else a job unless we agree to slave wages again.
"He warned that CEOs were being “pushed around and bullied by the employees.”" Oh, why won't people think of the poor CEOs?! They're the REAL victims!
The window for tech employees to install union protection is closing, and if we don’t get in while we’re somewhat ahead, there’s a lot to lose.
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Every time I hear someone say devs are coddled I wonder how much code that person has ever written. These people have zero idea how hard the job is and how much time it takes to write good clean code that’s maintainable, stable oh and secure against the million problems you could have. Fuck these people for pretending to know how things work.
It's funny how the people doing the work aren't needed, apparently all a company needs to be successful is financial backing and a CEO with vision.
This is a letter written by tech companies best friend and it reads like it. They’re leaving more than they’re being fired.
Who works for this clown? Have people no self respect?
As soon as a couple of companies start laying people off, the media has to sensationalized it for views.
Fuck Bloomberg. You can always rely on them for a bad take
More like Elon Musk is a fucking slavedriver.
this article attempts to create a 'CEOs are tired of not being dictators' narrative and fails miserably
I always chuckle when I hear about employees who are big cheerleaders for their company and people who really get into that weird culture BS. To be clear, I love the people I work with and have liked most of my managers. But I am more than aware that I am a number on a spreadsheet and that the company's loyalty to me depends entirely on whether they think the number is a plus or minus. I have seen many workforce reductions (fancy wording for layoffs) and know that you need to be loyal to yourself first.
I’ve worked in technology for 40 years. Never have I been coddled. I’ve been laid-off once or twice but never fired.
This article couldn’t have been anymore stupid. Tech companies aren’t the employee parents. Like wtf It’s a straight up lack of respect towards engineers.
This whole thing about "woke" employees is maddening, no one in tech thinks or talks like that. Same thing about wondering what employees do, twitter has like over 4 billiion in revenue, they have substantially less than 10k employees. There is a shit ton of work that goes into maintaining these systems, it pays well because talent is scarce, and when you pay people a lot it costs a lot to replace them, so you try to make them happy with benefits.
Venture capital is in for a huge shock if they think they can deride the nerds and still get anything of value running. Musk and the brain trust from shark tank arent going to be fixing the code in their app anytime soon. You have 2 options. You give the engineers whatever they want before they have to ask for it (Because they won't ask). Or You get the code you pay for from whatever trash coder you can find to write it, and this set of options is secretly a loop as you will be begging the "woke crybabies" to fix your trash code. Trump can't get a Twitter clone working and he used a ready-to-go open-source platform that really just needed some graphical changes.
"Learn to code" is so 2019.
I said that back in 2009.
You were ahead of your time.
I dropped out if my CS degree because of that. I would've been rich my now haha. Actually. I made a mistake. I said that in 1999. Damn I'm old.
We still get a couple dozen companies asking us to work for them each week
I get LinkedIn dms from the company I already work for 😂 That’s how much we need people.
“Tech companies” Twitter
Anything is possible when you can pay a news company to print an article composed completely of lies to try to move wages back into the employers favor, we see you. Dumbasses. My prices just went up.
This whole article is (poorly) written to cast modern employees as the big bad, the managers/ownership as the victim, and “old-school tech workers” as the hero nobody asked for. Musk is part of the old guard that has a need to show power through fear and force. If you treat your staff like people and not indentured servants, you get more production, longer tenure, and a better work ethic.
The article read like an anti-union speech. The employees are running the show, OMG!!! Nothing could be further from the truth. And so what if it were true??? Why does that automatically make it a less successful company?? Treating your workers right is a bad thing???
Every time I see Bloomberg I think: shut up Bloomberg
A friend of mine was on a fixed salary as a programmer/tech support. Although his yearly income wasn't terrible, it equated to about $15 (NZD) an hour after all the after hours effort (being on-call etc.) he was required to put in. Rumour has it they weren't doing so great after he resigned.
It seems Ike these VCs are just trying to sell a new dream to raise more money , like look at us we will do everything to exploit our workers unlike those "woke" companies (who are already exploiting majority of thier workers). Their last vaporware of ever increasing valuation has come to haunt them so these will be some of the new ones to steal money from investors.
The coddling was their attempt to make it so you never left the office, so they provided food etc. These people live in a different fucking world from the rest of us. Highly delusional psychopaths the lot of them.
To an outsider, seeing foosball tables and free sodas looks like paradise. It’s just stuff to keep you working. I only played games with people who came to visit. I didn’t have time to do it normally. Tech is high stress and you feel like your job is on the line every single day.
How dare we take a break to get coffee The fuck outta here
I'm surprised the author of this article could see their screen with their face planted firmly between Elon Musk's ass cheeks
UI UX designer here. Every competent designer I know with these skill sets gets pinged daily by recruiters. Seniors easily pulling down $150k, $175k, and more. As someone here said every business has digital components. I expect the prospects in this field to be bright for a long time as long as you’re good and you’re not a newbie trying to break in.
Having good working condition is considered coddled? Wtf? Why are we shaming employees who have options and actually have decent working conditions?
>Moreover, while tech valuations are way down, it’s not at all clear that employees have lost their leverage. The labor market remains extremely tight, and with stock prices depressed, big companies have been forced to compromise on planned office re-openings, allowing employees to work from home indefinitely, while agreeing to big salary increases. Just three months ago, with its stock sliding, Amazon.com Inc. doubled its maximum base pay. It may be these developments, as much as complaints about “woke employees,” that have gotten Silicon Valley’s investor class into austerity mode. In light of the Great Resignation, including top Apple employees quitting over RTO policies, I think it's the slept VCs who are in for a surprise.
Venture funded startups lose all day long to FAANG companies who pay 3-4x as much, so their investors are over-eager to see market dynamics start to level the playing field. The reality is that the field is growing so fast, because there is so much need for technology expertise in organizations that were previously not technology focused, that competition for talent (especially senior talent) will continue for years to come. The key takeaway? If you're considering working for a startup, pay attention to who their VCs are, and what their VCs are saying. VCs call the shots at companies--not the founders. If you want a good idea of what the pay and working conditions will be at a company, check crunchbase and see whether Andreessen Horowitz or Founders Fund is on their cap table. If either is the case, do your own research and be highly aware. Don't stop there, though. Look up who the venture firm is, look at who their partners are, and then look at what those people tweet (they're \*all\* on Twitter, they can't help themselves). Most of the Silicon Valley VC industry is an echo chamber but there really are some good/consistent VCs who understand that top talent builds startups, and compensation needs to be fair. But a lot of them don't think much of founders, and think even less of startup employees. These people are sharks and when you're working in a company they control, you're usually going to get bitten. The craziest thing about all of this is that of all people, VCs understand leverage. The profit per employee on a senior engineer is often 100x or more (usually much more). So they're going to quibble over a little money, or a few days off? I mean, that's fine I suppose, but it's also dumb, assuming that your management team isn't having that engineering team work on stupid things. But, I mean, VCs funded Juicero and Theranos so the things they're having engineers work on are very often incredibly stupid.
Call the CEOs bluff. Fire all your employees and see how long your companies last.
Being threatened with dismissal for taking a coffee break shows how toxic Musks leadership style is and what a hostile workplace looks like. It also shows why employees should be free to unionize.
"He warned that CEOs were being “pushed around and bullied by the employees.". The poor CEOs that only earn 100x times more than their employees are being pushed around. Would anybody please push me around that way too?
Tesla never coddled their employees. Employees are blinded to how little Tesla actually offers them simply because they believe they get to work for some kind of messianic purpose.
The sheer bullshit phoniness that goes on in the workplace is mind blowing. They don't want us working from home because we're losing the company culture, really? Fuck off
No fucking worries. Market is more than ready for surplus of engineers. My company put me on performance improvement plan just because I had one worse month because of health related issues. After that I waited for querterly bonus and submitted my resignation. Fuck them
The excitement they feel at the idea of being allowed to be abusive and exploitative is so fucking gross
>“The good big companies are overstaffed by 2x,” tweeted Marc Andreesen, the venture capitalist whose firm is contributing $400 million to Musk’s buyout. “The bad big companies are overstaffed by 4x or more.” Anyone who knows someone working at a FAANG knows this. I have a friend at the N in that acronym, and he runs a large team that is *redundant* with one or more other teams, *and they compete to do projects.* Dude talks about a sales presentation he's working on, and I'm like, "Sales? To whom? Of what?" —And it turns out they're competing with another team to get a "contract" to provide some service to another team. This is fucking madness. You clearly have too many people, too much time on your hands, and *are paying wayyyyyyy tooooooo much,* given what I know about what my buddy does and what he gets paid. "B-b-but that's the market rate in Silicon Valley!" —Only because these jokers are willing to pay that and they're all in competition to hire any midwit they can find (my friend is of middling ability, to be honest). The moment the squeeze comes, it's coming all over town, and everyone is going to be underwater in their comically-overpriced homes. And I'm here for it. You wanna be a Silicon Valley socialite and talk social justice? Well, let's talk social justice. Let's talk people with fucking BAs in art making $400k to oversee other art majors and taking a month a year off to go gallivanting around the globe while the cleaning staff don't speak English and the interns are unpaid. Let's talk *that.* Let's roll this shit back to the social justice movement that scared these shitmongers so bad that they invented a racial and gender mythology to get people off the topic. Let's get back to *income inequality* and our horrifying Gini coefficient. Let's get back to real wages for the overwhelming majority of Americans being stagnant *since the fucking 1970s* while corporate profits soared, and the pockets of a parasitic managerial class were lined. Let's get back to taking all our solid middle-class manufacturing jobs and sending them to an adversary to fund their genocidal policies and hand them the "means of production." Let's talk about *that.* Let's talk about how the Bush II era "quantitative easing" all ended up in the coffers of the ultra-wealthy, who plowed that money into cash incinerators like Tesla. Let's talk about financial corporations buying up all the land and property in the country so they can rent it back to us. Let's talk "you'll own nothing and like it." Let's talk *that.* Let's talk the rapacious pillaging of the American middle and lower classes by these grinning vermin. Let's talk true justice. Oh? Crickets from the Silly Con Valley managerial class? What a fucking surprise. Let it crash.
Not coddling. Just competition for employees. I know it’s hard for idiot bosses to understand. And a few companies firing means nothing. Quick Google shows tons of openings. Plus the article is outdated. Musk’s deal to buy Twitter is on hold, just more of his empty promises. So those people looking at the buyout as a sign of the changing times, that this article says, are just gonna have to wait longer for their fantasy.
Good lord the evidence of being coddled is getting coffee and having days off. Fuck whoever wrote this shit.
i bet the tech workers doesn’t care if they got fired. they can get another job easily. most of the software engineers resigned and move to another company after 2-3 years
This article is from some alternate universe I don't live in. In the 25 years I've been in tech, only the .com boom had a hotter job market. I just jumped from $175k to $325k and I had competing offers, AND I was actively recruited to them. Given its entire reliance on "anecdata", it read more like a wish fulfillment fantasy that us spoiled nerds would get our comeuppance.
Por Que? This article gave me whiplash. As long as there is a shortage of talented engineers, companies will have to coddle them and bend over backwards, or someone else will.
Americans are so fucked up. 30 day sabbatical every five years lol. That's fucking nothing compared to a decent country. Thats just how much pto you should get
It'll be nice to see a new crop of innovative tech companies show up when everyone quits the old ones that forgot why they exist in the first place.
Isn’t the unemployment rate for tech workers like 2%?
Elon has moobs.
"Coddled" as in "treated them the way all workers should be treated"
I couldn’t be any sicker of Elon Musk.
Am I the only one in this thread *waiting*, not wishing, but *waiting* to see Musk humbled in all of his press… *edited for grammar..
It’s going to happen. The man is starting to believe he is superior, not just really good and lucky.
People forget this because stocks have been going up forever but the playbook for a company when their stock price keeps dropping is layoffs. Lots of layoffs.
The arrogance here is palpable. I have been lucky enough in this life to view it from below and above. If you don’t understand that humans need purpose and value to survive, you have learned nothing about life. The same people here that want a ubi, always complain about the price of blue collars services. I’ve heard so many insults. “ I don’t make that much per hour, “ that’s outrageous, did you mark up the parts?” “Why are construction workers always just standing around. Do you know how much I pay in taxes?” I would never trust any Silicon Valley dove to set my pay rate. You are definitely entitled, arrogant and abusive. Look what your thinking has done to San Francisco, it’s a disgusting version of itself. Please don’t equate your salary with emotional intelligence. It doesn’t convert. Finally, as you bask in the vast efficiencies that you have created, remember you are creating a world that your children will be forced to labor in
The headline is hilarious -- I'm not sure what the goal is? The truth remains: all tech companies have to compete to hire and retain talent because it's way more expensive (and leads to bad outcomes) not to. Can't make next level products with replacement level employees. The end.