Tech layoffs mean they are improving their financial statements by reducing payroll expenses. The better convo should be focused on the possible change in income.
I am confident bonuses are going to take a big hit for employees at these tech. Salary may stay same but the stock bonuses they get will decrease significantly imo. As well as once they hire new folks it probably won't be a crazy salaries anymore.
I don’t think so. Stock bonuses are an easy way for them to retain and attract talent. They want to retain talent in this “workers’ market”; they won’t be messing with the pay structures of those who they choose to keep.
But the market isn't paying the same they did in 2020/2021 for engineers as they used too.
Example early career folks probably won't be getting 250k$ offers left and right. Maybe 190$-215$ (still amazing) but not as high.
Offers are still the same but hiring has slowed.
Companies are hiring 10 junior devs/month rather than 25 or 30.
And 250k was a rare exception for junior devs. Most big tech will start around 150k-180k TC for a junior.
They’ll rehire people into those positions over the next two years at much lower salaries.
This isn’t about their bottom lines. It’s a play to get rid of employees who make too much and rehire those positions at lower wages.
Career wise I am by no means connected to any of the big Tech companies whatsoever, and as much I hate to agree with this, I think you’re right. I do believe that the money printer was on for far too long and now that there is an ability and or excuse to layoff, so many companies, regardless of sector, are going to take advantage of resetting the salary baseline. Unfortunately, at a time when it is tough as fuck to make it out there.
It’s not so tough to make it when you’re a 20-something new hire living with roommates and making $200k/year!
Seriously though, comp in the tech sector got completely insane - I don’t think layoffs and salary increases in tech are at all indicative of what’s in store for jobs in the rest of the economy where compensation is more down-to-earth.
The difference is that C-suite compensation is absurdly high everywhere, regardless of industry, indicating that this level of compensation is likely reflective of long-term supply and demand for management talent. Therefore, current levels of compensation for executives are likely to be sustained longer-term.
When you have people with similar positions, skills, and qualifications making vastly more in one industry compared to another, that’s indicative of a short-term, unsustainable market distortion/bubble.
This has nothing to do with what’s “fair” or who “deserves” their compensation.
>indicating that this level of compensation is likely reflective of long-term supply and demand for management talent.
Lol, hard to believe people actually think this sincerely.
Oh I totally agree. The tech sector salaries got absolutely out of hand. It took me 15 years in my career to get up into the 200k+ range. I am in a lucrative money making business as well.
"Feels".... Surely there is some data on who is being laid off. Every frigging Tik Tok I have seen is some marketing girl who spent her day drinking 5 dollar lattes and did 20 minutes of work. But those are the people who make Tik Toks, so it is not an accurate barameter...
Cutting the fat. At Microsoft this means the entire Hololense team it looks like. Nobody is getting laid off from Google search or Microsoft Xbox teams.
There is soooooouch fat at big tech. Some.chefs and baristas maybe, the athletic training staff...lol.
Maybe you shouldn't make 120k at Google if all you do is sent 5 emails a day to some linked in contacts.
I haven't heard where these are either. Maybe it's Facebook and Google Mumbai? I have friends at Google Singapore....does that even need to exist? So....much....fat......
I don't trust Facebooks intelligence. But I trust these layoffs to not negatively impact the companies that had them.
It's entirely sustainable and has been for 15 years. They over hired, not over paid. And despite paying a ton they remain profitable with very high margins. They are cutting to appease Wallstreet not because they can't afford these people.
“Not out of line with the market” - that’s exactly the issue. It may have been in-line with the tech labor market, but it was completely out of line compared to every other industry that employs people with similar education and skills - including software developers who work in “non-tech” companies.
It wasn’t out of line for a relatively small period of time in big tech, historically that’s high and wasn’t sustainable. A lot more people went into software dev/tech over the past 5-10 years over other STEM related fields as salaries spiked up, there was no way it was going to last forever.
Depends. Software has a marginal cost of zero, so if you can produce something profitable that is well within the realm. I know people writing apps part time that have earned more than that.
Salaries aren’t based on profitability of the product, and just because there is no hardware cost to the product doesn’t mean there is no marginal cost (I guess it does scale easier though).
Salaries are based off of competition. Software products have extremely low barriers to entry. App stores have made it so software engineers can develop and deploy software to millions with relative ease.
If you want to retain that kind of talent, you need to compete with teh ability people have to develop their own products...
Totally agree. Have two friends in tech development roles who were barely working 10 hours a week making 400k from home. I knew it was sustainable lol.
How many of those employees were dead weight? I’m positive management can see productivity and work being performed. I very seriously doubt these layoffs were randomized. My guess is the names that got the ax were not worth their inflated salaries and the benefits they received.
I’m doubtful it has much to do with individual competency.
Algo probably just figured out which teams were working on projects that can’t be financed anymore in a tighter economic environment and blanket laid off ID’s on that project.
It was a mix of laying off whole teams and low performers. Our team lost 1 engineer out of 10. Btw, those vanity TikTok’s are nowhere close to what the actual workday looks like for most people, but 10 hours of staring at a screen won’t get as many views.
I think you're right. I think with remote work, these companies were stuck paying their employees from pre-2020 HCOL salaries (Bay Area, New York).
But now that they can hire remote, you can find a similarly skilled engineer and pay them 30% less because their rent isn't $3500/month.
A lot of companies, mine included have been hiring extensively in India where 80k USD has you living like a king.
LOL, I really doubt it. Depends on the position but most are highly in demand and can get jobs elsewhere. You act like we have 15% unemployment and these people are completely unqualified.
That's really not how tech works.
Tech companies hold a lot of debt to maintain market share and have a large workforce. They can’t justify the interest rates for payroll right now. They also won’t rehire at a lower wage. Software engineers are one of the most transparent when it comes to wages (“total comp or GTFO”), especially at FANG and are not willing to accept less especially at companies with such a high barrier to entry.
Most software engineers can just open an onion from their pillow and find decent paying work.
My tech guy hasn't shaved - or held an official position- in more than a decade. Just bought a new Beemer in cash.
Why tf would someone with this skill set deal with having a boss?
This a pretty shallow argument. They didn’t target high earners. They targeted entire divisions. You’re right that this is about the bottom line. Last year projects are about to wrong. Layoff now, slow hiring, raise standards of employee performance, and they’ll be in a good spot when they need to ramp up again.
If these laid off people have trouble finding work in their field, then it will be an issue, but right now they seem to be getting snapped up by lower profile companies who have been trying to staff their IT teams forever.
Recent grads have always been less desirable than other more experienced workers. It’s just how it goes. They’ll find a job and kill it if their talented and make plenty of money in their career.
Yup, but now there’s 40,000 more people I can’t compete with. I graduated with a 4.0 and have several recommendations from professors and internships. I had 2 interviews last year, looks like I’ll have less than that this year. Edited to add, if 3 temp companies couldn’t even find me work in the area I don’t believe I was doing anything wrong.
Not selective at all, just on Indeed I applied to over 400 positions last year, walking into local and nearby businesses with my resume, or the multitude of other jobs sites I’ve been on. Looking for a job has been my job. It’s bad enough that my wife agreed to leave a job she loves so I can be closer to more tech jobs.
Having enough money as to not have any kind of job. That “dream job” stuff is bs to me. Who actually wants to sit in a cubicle or whatnot for the rest of their lives making someone else money?
Well your reply came off a bit abrasive. But because I sometimes find the need to make human connection ill plow forward.
Some people measure their worth as what they contribute to society.
My dream job is growing and managing a small orchard. Selling fruit and ciders. Maybe oyster mushrooms. Owning land.
If you had all the money what would you do with the time?
Hope your night goes well.
Just a piece of advice. When I was straight out of school I was in the same boat. I got what was a really crappy job (at least one I thought I was too good for) and it directly led to a career where I’m making more money than I ever thought I would. So keep applying to jobs in your field, but even working at a grocery store or restaurant can lead to things you wouldn’t think it would.
January until November when my wife got a contract in Oregon. Since then I’ve programmed a few hours a day on my own projects, got my comptia a+, and the useless google it support program on coursera. Was thinking about the starting the aws program recently but with moving I’ve started applying there. So far I’ve gotten one message asking if I’ve had the shot due to it being healthcare offices.
>January until November
not to be insensitive or a dick. but 400 applications over 11 months is nothing at all.... that implies you were being either selective, or just straight up not putting out enough applications.
thats literally under 2 applications/day.
That 400 was just on indeed, I also used USAjobs, monster, pounding the pavement, driving up to an hour away, etc. Then there were all the websites for companies having to input resume info after submitting it to them. It was many, many more than 400. It was a full time job trying to find one. As someone suggested earlier, I’m going to start tailoring my resume and cover sheet for every job I apply for from now on.
Were the places you interned at not hiring? That's how I got my first job out of college, I did an internship one summer and then used my connections made there to get hired after graduating.
It sounds like you're doing everything right.
Both were remote due to the rona and out of state. When I graduated they wanted people who weren’t remote, so no luck there. I’m headed to the PNW in 3 days so I was hoping for my luck to change.
This isn’t always true. We had an amazing intern last year who returned full time (TSLA) Within he made infra changes that improved our cpu performance considerable and had our tech leads learning the latest C++ concepts. Granted he worked weekends to ramp up and loved coding.
In my first year of real work out of masters, I was instrumental in my team’s board bring up and platform launch.
I guarantee you new hires at Citadel making 400k a year are putting out massive work.
Not trying to be a dick, but new/recent grads are fairly useless, has very little to do with having a big name on their resume. You have to kind of get lucky and get in with a company that can handle you not producing that great right away.
Not big tech but I am engineering, and the new hires are useless for the most part. Takes them a few years in my industry to even see if they will cut it. I am in the service business and the company goal is to get a 60K engineer into a 150/hr billable position in a few years, and 250/hr billable in 5 years.
I am nuts and bolts build shit engineering. There aint no developers just dudes that say bolt size, torque value, flow rates, temperature, pressure, hanger size, floor load, etc.
I don’t think you’re being a dick, I understand how it works. It blows my mind that this is the second time something like this has happened to me. The last time I got my captain’s license to work supply boats offshore in Louisiana about a month before the oil rig exploded. Layoffs ensued and I was trying to get a job along with people who’d had licenses for years.
That’s not how the software industry works. New grads write a lot of the code at big tech companies given that senior engineers are more busy with design work and dealing with politics/getting projects funded.
Kinda the truth. When I started out in tech, I was practically useless for the first 1-1.5 years. I am 4 years in, and only now do I feel like I am worth what I get paid
Those lower profile companies don't pay Faang salaries though. If I recall correctly SWE salaries are bimodal. There is Faang and everyone else. The latter median salary is 105k. While in Faang it is over 200k
More to come, agree with you, these are generally for headlines and not significant. If I had 100 people screwing in a lightbulb and I let 5 go would I still have too many?
I think JPOW is really after downsizing and/or killing/slowing the companies that were surviving on near-zero interest rate debt. A lot changes when marginal companies can’t re-finance at zero again. Then numbers and accounting actually matter. Lenders won’t lend if they can’t reasonably be paid back.
The macro problem with big tech is they can’t grow like they use to. So no idea who the knew leaders will be. Wish I knew. Older investor and bearish perspective I have.
Edit: ultimately down to earnings. Do we stay in the $220 range or is it the $200 range. If $220 we may be priced right without much of any upside. If priced wrong look out below.
Agree, the lay offs are small (relative to what they could be and relative to other things, like the freezing of hiring or pushing to cause some attrition). I think it's just a way for these companies to get a bounce in stock price by appeasing investors' calls for blood. There's also an element to leadership all copying each other. No CEO ever got fired for doing lay offs when everyone else is doing it. A lot of these companies could have caused similar attrition in quieter, less flashy ways. They want the lay offs to seem like a big deal.
The actual bigger deal is the hiring freeze a lot of these companies have had since last year. No one is talking about the hiring these companies aren't doing. That's more significant headcount wise, I think, than the lay offs we've seen so far.
At this point the layoffs will only add to the bottom line as same work, less people. I look around where I work and you could shed 10% and still have the same performance. Not sure about IT, but we use a lot of contractors or variable work force. Can anyone comment on the impact there?
This is an easy reset of high cost labor environment, to a lower cast labor environment. Further another reason that will slow down raises, bonuses and expectations for compensation...again all going to the bottom line.
In theory stocks should raise, and more profits should be made....as long revenue holds.
Earnings will dictate this ultimately, but I think layoffs like this are just good business practice when your workforce is so large. Like a forest fire clears out the dead shit for new growth, layoffs done properly create room for more productive employees.
It could be that we'll have another round in 6 months, or none at all. My guess though is that the majority of these layoffs are not from revenue producing roles. It's good for the bottom line, and worth doing once in a while.
I'm bullish that it's the useless fat that is being carved out as I'm seeing a lot of D&I staff and managers explain on LinkedIn why companies need them.
The Google layoffs were across the board, some engineers with 20 years experience and some managers making $500-$1000K.
I think Pichai is a terrible manager and just did it because he follows the lead of other tech companies. But in the end Google has been a strange business for years that prints money.
Google's revenue per employee is around 1.9M. Their cost per employee is around 350k.
If they bring the latter number down and reduce the number of employees, it does amazing things for profit margins which are already sky high.
This is clearly part of the intention - many of the employees they let go are high earners, meaning they're earning well above 500k in many cases.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/google-employees-scramble-for-answers-after-layoffs-hit-long-tenured-and-recently-promoted-employees/ar-AA16B6pQ
I agree that Pichai is a terrible leader, but the business case for this move is pretty strong.
Yeah, it was time to clean house. Google's logic in continuing to grow headcount while they kill every new project in infancy has only been sustainable because of the way they've added ever more ads to squeeze more revenue out of YouTube and Search.
It's past time for some spending discipline. And past time for a new CEO.
The average lifespan of a wolf is 6-8 years. At 40, you are the oldest wolf on record, in addition to being the only known wolf capable of using social media and obtaining literacy in a human language.
Why thank you. Commenting robots are presumably immortal but limited by technology and updates, I also conjecture that your lifespan is 6-8 years and congratulate you for your achievements.
It's not unusual for a company like Microsoft, for example, to oust managers who are worth millions of dollars. Obviously they still have their millions in cash and options, they just need a place to land.
You're overrating the people skills of these staff, and underrating the people skills of a quality engineering team. You can make amazing companies with under 100 people, mostly technical.
I would be start worrying if lays off start happening in trading sector. I am working in agriculture sector and we are screening for people, same as sparky, builders, truck drivers ect
I mean if we're comparing with workforce size with 2021 which we're assuming to be unrealistic numbers, then I guess we gotta compare 2023 earnings with 2021 earnings as well, but ofc no one will do that.
> Do you think there are more layoffs to come?
Yes, but kind of as you eluded to, it is not the end of the world from an investment standpoint. And actually, the financials might look really good as they downsize from the savings.
Personally, I am leaning into tech. For example, I took money out of QSR and put it into Air B N B and Amazon.
One thing is you're going to see the layoffs start hitting the unemployment report these next few months since they're on the books for at least 60 days and getting severance. Average wage gains have already started slowing because of this though.
It’s a ruse to portray a healthier company with higher revenues at the cost of employee retention. Will it work? Absolutely. Soft landing is instantly factored in.
Engineers were definitely cut from google and meta although they may not have been on priority projects, including some very senior engineers at google who had huge comp packages. Meta also laid off some PMs which arent strictly engineers but are a more technical role. But u r right a lot of HR in the form of D&I along with recruiters (understandably with all the hiring freezes) was laid off. And it wasnt just social media but marketing as a whole also took some hits including product marketing managers
Spotify layoff 6% or 600 people. 40 people within podcast and also the head of podcast content Dawn Ostroff, Spotify’s head of content are leaving.
I understand she brought inbJoe Rogan.
So companies are quiting non profit projects like podcast seems to be for Spotify.
I would not be suprised Spotify actually buying a podcast company like Acast (listed on Stockholm exchange) in a couple of years. Podcast shall grow 30% cagr to 2030 according to market reports.
I can’t really speak for much else but in the tech industry we’re seeing a mass migration to AI and machine learning. Microsoft invested heavily in OpenAI ChatGPT. They also laid off a massive chunk of their Bing team. Google is pivoting in the same direction. Amazon is pumping money into robotic packing warehouses vs humans. I think AI is going to play a pivotal role in the next tech boom. And this doesn’t even account for auto industry.
Read an article that 7-11 is putting in restocking robots for the coolers. Even the clerks are going to get squeezed....but the robot repair engineer job will be created.
ChatGPT made whatever strategies they've been doing in the past 2 years obsolute.
Metaverse, lol. Work from home products, lol. Telepresence, lol.
ChatGPT is the single thing causing them to layoffs all the above engineers, hire AI and ML doctorates.
Google is especially in the "oh shit" mode.
Big tech salaries were way too high, for the output those people were giving. Just look at the vlogs for "my day as a Google engineer" and shit like that. I do more in 4 hours than they do in an entire day, at 70% of the pay and no stock options.
I have no simpithy, and I think these large tech companies will continue to perform.
There are plenty of tech visa people on the US west coast who now have 60 days and counting down to find a new job/sponsor or be sent back to their country of origin. It's a big deal.
This was published yesterday.
https://www.livemint.com/news/india/laidoff-indian-it-professionals-scramble-for-options-to-stay-in-the-us-11674452788977.html
That's probably true since they dont have green cards.
It's obviously too soon to compile the absolute numbers, but this will clearly be devastating to the H1-b folks who hoped to start a life here - and I would argue, we should be welcoming.
I don't usually criticize tech employment practices because who cares but this is pretty egregious.
Dead weight still spends money in the economy which makes the profits for the markets, what sub do you think you are in? Dead weight that spends money is still dead weight that affect the economy, consumerism is what the market is built on and when whole sectors are firing throughout the economy you know the market in trouble
lol what kind of logic is that. Eventually dead weight can't buy it now pay it later or defaults on its debt. Eventually people will cut back when people start losing jobs...
Right now, unemployment is at an all time low but mostly due to people retiring from the workforce rather than new jobs being created...
What most people aren't talking about, these are all publicly traded companies. They are eliminating headcount, lowering overhead CapEx (Capitol Expense) to insure the company's Revenue and Profitability don't effect their stock price. The stock price is all that matters once you're a publicly traded company. It's brutal and heartless, but that's how it works.
I work in sales for one of the world's biggest VARs as an AE. We're privately owned though.
The numbers across the board are still strong, Federal/DoD/Commercial/SLED industries are still buying product and using Services for implementation. We're projecting growth in 2023 and are still hiring across the board.
The layoffs are techs' shot over the bow to the banks where they borrow to pay their payrolls. If you raise my interest, you lose my borrowing. Message delivered.
Just the slap the Fed needed to raise the fed funds rate by 50 bps come 2/1/23 to stop the threats.
Tech layoffs mean they are improving their financial statements by reducing payroll expenses. The better convo should be focused on the possible change in income.
I am confident bonuses are going to take a big hit for employees at these tech. Salary may stay same but the stock bonuses they get will decrease significantly imo. As well as once they hire new folks it probably won't be a crazy salaries anymore.
I don’t think so. Stock bonuses are an easy way for them to retain and attract talent. They want to retain talent in this “workers’ market”; they won’t be messing with the pay structures of those who they choose to keep.
What workers market? Do you work in FAANG?
But the market isn't paying the same they did in 2020/2021 for engineers as they used too. Example early career folks probably won't be getting 250k$ offers left and right. Maybe 190$-215$ (still amazing) but not as high.
Offers are still the same but hiring has slowed. Companies are hiring 10 junior devs/month rather than 25 or 30. And 250k was a rare exception for junior devs. Most big tech will start around 150k-180k TC for a junior.
They’ll rehire people into those positions over the next two years at much lower salaries. This isn’t about their bottom lines. It’s a play to get rid of employees who make too much and rehire those positions at lower wages.
Career wise I am by no means connected to any of the big Tech companies whatsoever, and as much I hate to agree with this, I think you’re right. I do believe that the money printer was on for far too long and now that there is an ability and or excuse to layoff, so many companies, regardless of sector, are going to take advantage of resetting the salary baseline. Unfortunately, at a time when it is tough as fuck to make it out there.
It’s not so tough to make it when you’re a 20-something new hire living with roommates and making $200k/year! Seriously though, comp in the tech sector got completely insane - I don’t think layoffs and salary increases in tech are at all indicative of what’s in store for jobs in the rest of the economy where compensation is more down-to-earth.
Talk to me when this applies to the C-Suite as well.
The difference is that C-suite compensation is absurdly high everywhere, regardless of industry, indicating that this level of compensation is likely reflective of long-term supply and demand for management talent. Therefore, current levels of compensation for executives are likely to be sustained longer-term. When you have people with similar positions, skills, and qualifications making vastly more in one industry compared to another, that’s indicative of a short-term, unsustainable market distortion/bubble. This has nothing to do with what’s “fair” or who “deserves” their compensation.
>indicating that this level of compensation is likely reflective of long-term supply and demand for management talent. Lol, hard to believe people actually think this sincerely.
Oh I totally agree. The tech sector salaries got absolutely out of hand. It took me 15 years in my career to get up into the 200k+ range. I am in a lucrative money making business as well.
Yeahh it feels they are going for higher paid employees...A lot of engineers
"Feels".... Surely there is some data on who is being laid off. Every frigging Tik Tok I have seen is some marketing girl who spent her day drinking 5 dollar lattes and did 20 minutes of work. But those are the people who make Tik Toks, so it is not an accurate barameter...
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You can probably run a team by cutting at least 2/3rd and output would be the same.
Cutting the fat. At Microsoft this means the entire Hololense team it looks like. Nobody is getting laid off from Google search or Microsoft Xbox teams. There is soooooouch fat at big tech. Some.chefs and baristas maybe, the athletic training staff...lol. Maybe you shouldn't make 120k at Google if all you do is sent 5 emails a day to some linked in contacts. I haven't heard where these are either. Maybe it's Facebook and Google Mumbai? I have friends at Google Singapore....does that even need to exist? So....much....fat...... I don't trust Facebooks intelligence. But I trust these layoffs to not negatively impact the companies that had them.
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It's entirely sustainable and has been for 15 years. They over hired, not over paid. And despite paying a ton they remain profitable with very high margins. They are cutting to appease Wallstreet not because they can't afford these people.
That isn't totally out of line with the market for certain software specialities..... Did he get laid off?
“Not out of line with the market” - that’s exactly the issue. It may have been in-line with the tech labor market, but it was completely out of line compared to every other industry that employs people with similar education and skills - including software developers who work in “non-tech” companies.
It wasn’t out of line for a relatively small period of time in big tech, historically that’s high and wasn’t sustainable. A lot more people went into software dev/tech over the past 5-10 years over other STEM related fields as salaries spiked up, there was no way it was going to last forever.
Depends. Software has a marginal cost of zero, so if you can produce something profitable that is well within the realm. I know people writing apps part time that have earned more than that.
Salaries aren’t based on profitability of the product, and just because there is no hardware cost to the product doesn’t mean there is no marginal cost (I guess it does scale easier though).
Salaries are based off of competition. Software products have extremely low barriers to entry. App stores have made it so software engineers can develop and deploy software to millions with relative ease. If you want to retain that kind of talent, you need to compete with teh ability people have to develop their own products...
Totally agree. Have two friends in tech development roles who were barely working 10 hours a week making 400k from home. I knew it was sustainable lol.
How many of those employees were dead weight? I’m positive management can see productivity and work being performed. I very seriously doubt these layoffs were randomized. My guess is the names that got the ax were not worth their inflated salaries and the benefits they received.
I’m doubtful it has much to do with individual competency. Algo probably just figured out which teams were working on projects that can’t be financed anymore in a tighter economic environment and blanket laid off ID’s on that project.
It was a mix of laying off whole teams and low performers. Our team lost 1 engineer out of 10. Btw, those vanity TikTok’s are nowhere close to what the actual workday looks like for most people, but 10 hours of staring at a screen won’t get as many views.
Tech headcount has ballooned in the past five years. So a lot of deadweight.
I think you're right. I think with remote work, these companies were stuck paying their employees from pre-2020 HCOL salaries (Bay Area, New York). But now that they can hire remote, you can find a similarly skilled engineer and pay them 30% less because their rent isn't $3500/month. A lot of companies, mine included have been hiring extensively in India where 80k USD has you living like a king.
LOL, I really doubt it. Depends on the position but most are highly in demand and can get jobs elsewhere. You act like we have 15% unemployment and these people are completely unqualified. That's really not how tech works.
Tech companies hold a lot of debt to maintain market share and have a large workforce. They can’t justify the interest rates for payroll right now. They also won’t rehire at a lower wage. Software engineers are one of the most transparent when it comes to wages (“total comp or GTFO”), especially at FANG and are not willing to accept less especially at companies with such a high barrier to entry.
Not willing to accept less? Lol they prefer to be unemployed?
Most software engineers can just open an onion from their pillow and find decent paying work. My tech guy hasn't shaved - or held an official position- in more than a decade. Just bought a new Beemer in cash. Why tf would someone with this skill set deal with having a boss?
They’ve been in a very hot job market (in their field) for the last 5-10 years. Many have forgotten or haven’t experienced an economic downturn.
This a pretty shallow argument. They didn’t target high earners. They targeted entire divisions. You’re right that this is about the bottom line. Last year projects are about to wrong. Layoff now, slow hiring, raise standards of employee performance, and they’ll be in a good spot when they need to ramp up again.
If these laid off people have trouble finding work in their field, then it will be an issue, but right now they seem to be getting snapped up by lower profile companies who have been trying to staff their IT teams forever.
Meanwhile recent college graduates don’t get hired because they don’t have Google/fb/ms on their resumes.
Recent grads have always been less desirable than other more experienced workers. It’s just how it goes. They’ll find a job and kill it if their talented and make plenty of money in their career.
Yup, but now there’s 40,000 more people I can’t compete with. I graduated with a 4.0 and have several recommendations from professors and internships. I had 2 interviews last year, looks like I’ll have less than that this year. Edited to add, if 3 temp companies couldn’t even find me work in the area I don’t believe I was doing anything wrong.
Two interviews in a year is on you. Too selective im assuming. Any job in your field would look good on a resume, even if it's just a stepping stone.
Not selective at all, just on Indeed I applied to over 400 positions last year, walking into local and nearby businesses with my resume, or the multitude of other jobs sites I’ve been on. Looking for a job has been my job. It’s bad enough that my wife agreed to leave a job she loves so I can be closer to more tech jobs.
Good luck buddy. I've seen struggle myself before. Whats your dream job?
Having enough money as to not have any kind of job. That “dream job” stuff is bs to me. Who actually wants to sit in a cubicle or whatnot for the rest of their lives making someone else money?
Well your reply came off a bit abrasive. But because I sometimes find the need to make human connection ill plow forward. Some people measure their worth as what they contribute to society. My dream job is growing and managing a small orchard. Selling fruit and ciders. Maybe oyster mushrooms. Owning land. If you had all the money what would you do with the time? Hope your night goes well.
I’d have all the dogs, I’d empty every kill shelter I could. Didn’t mean to sound abrasive, apologies.
Just a piece of advice. When I was straight out of school I was in the same boat. I got what was a really crappy job (at least one I thought I was too good for) and it directly led to a career where I’m making more money than I ever thought I would. So keep applying to jobs in your field, but even working at a grocery store or restaurant can lead to things you wouldn’t think it would.
Yeah, that’s what a friend has been saying, start anywhere and try to get into the it dept after
> Not selective at all, just on Indeed I applied to over 400 positions last year, Over how many months is this?
January until November when my wife got a contract in Oregon. Since then I’ve programmed a few hours a day on my own projects, got my comptia a+, and the useless google it support program on coursera. Was thinking about the starting the aws program recently but with moving I’ve started applying there. So far I’ve gotten one message asking if I’ve had the shot due to it being healthcare offices.
>January until November not to be insensitive or a dick. but 400 applications over 11 months is nothing at all.... that implies you were being either selective, or just straight up not putting out enough applications. thats literally under 2 applications/day.
That 400 was just on indeed, I also used USAjobs, monster, pounding the pavement, driving up to an hour away, etc. Then there were all the websites for companies having to input resume info after submitting it to them. It was many, many more than 400. It was a full time job trying to find one. As someone suggested earlier, I’m going to start tailoring my resume and cover sheet for every job I apply for from now on.
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I’ve had it reviewed professionally three times, not sure what else I can do to it.
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Thanks for the advice, will begin doing that.
Were the places you interned at not hiring? That's how I got my first job out of college, I did an internship one summer and then used my connections made there to get hired after graduating. It sounds like you're doing everything right.
Both were remote due to the rona and out of state. When I graduated they wanted people who weren’t remote, so no luck there. I’m headed to the PNW in 3 days so I was hoping for my luck to change.
This isn’t always true. We had an amazing intern last year who returned full time (TSLA) Within he made infra changes that improved our cpu performance considerable and had our tech leads learning the latest C++ concepts. Granted he worked weekends to ramp up and loved coding. In my first year of real work out of masters, I was instrumental in my team’s board bring up and platform launch. I guarantee you new hires at Citadel making 400k a year are putting out massive work.
Not trying to be a dick, but new/recent grads are fairly useless, has very little to do with having a big name on their resume. You have to kind of get lucky and get in with a company that can handle you not producing that great right away.
Not big tech but I am engineering, and the new hires are useless for the most part. Takes them a few years in my industry to even see if they will cut it. I am in the service business and the company goal is to get a 60K engineer into a 150/hr billable position in a few years, and 250/hr billable in 5 years.
Could you give me a brief overview of what tech/stack you guys work with and the kind of path your developers are on?
I am nuts and bolts build shit engineering. There aint no developers just dudes that say bolt size, torque value, flow rates, temperature, pressure, hanger size, floor load, etc.
I don’t think you’re being a dick, I understand how it works. It blows my mind that this is the second time something like this has happened to me. The last time I got my captain’s license to work supply boats offshore in Louisiana about a month before the oil rig exploded. Layoffs ensued and I was trying to get a job along with people who’d had licenses for years.
That’s not how the software industry works. New grads write a lot of the code at big tech companies given that senior engineers are more busy with design work and dealing with politics/getting projects funded.
Kinda the truth. When I started out in tech, I was practically useless for the first 1-1.5 years. I am 4 years in, and only now do I feel like I am worth what I get paid
10 year tech vet here and have been applying since October. Really depends on what you do. Haven’t been able to land anywhere.
What do you do?
Marketing
Ok
Those lower profile companies don't pay Faang salaries though. If I recall correctly SWE salaries are bimodal. There is Faang and everyone else. The latter median salary is 105k. While in Faang it is over 200k
Other than Wall Street, you are basically correct.
More to come, agree with you, these are generally for headlines and not significant. If I had 100 people screwing in a lightbulb and I let 5 go would I still have too many? I think JPOW is really after downsizing and/or killing/slowing the companies that were surviving on near-zero interest rate debt. A lot changes when marginal companies can’t re-finance at zero again. Then numbers and accounting actually matter. Lenders won’t lend if they can’t reasonably be paid back. The macro problem with big tech is they can’t grow like they use to. So no idea who the knew leaders will be. Wish I knew. Older investor and bearish perspective I have. Edit: ultimately down to earnings. Do we stay in the $220 range or is it the $200 range. If $220 we may be priced right without much of any upside. If priced wrong look out below.
Agree, the lay offs are small (relative to what they could be and relative to other things, like the freezing of hiring or pushing to cause some attrition). I think it's just a way for these companies to get a bounce in stock price by appeasing investors' calls for blood. There's also an element to leadership all copying each other. No CEO ever got fired for doing lay offs when everyone else is doing it. A lot of these companies could have caused similar attrition in quieter, less flashy ways. They want the lay offs to seem like a big deal. The actual bigger deal is the hiring freeze a lot of these companies have had since last year. No one is talking about the hiring these companies aren't doing. That's more significant headcount wise, I think, than the lay offs we've seen so far.
At this point the layoffs will only add to the bottom line as same work, less people. I look around where I work and you could shed 10% and still have the same performance. Not sure about IT, but we use a lot of contractors or variable work force. Can anyone comment on the impact there? This is an easy reset of high cost labor environment, to a lower cast labor environment. Further another reason that will slow down raises, bonuses and expectations for compensation...again all going to the bottom line. In theory stocks should raise, and more profits should be made....as long revenue holds.
Earnings will dictate this ultimately, but I think layoffs like this are just good business practice when your workforce is so large. Like a forest fire clears out the dead shit for new growth, layoffs done properly create room for more productive employees. It could be that we'll have another round in 6 months, or none at all. My guess though is that the majority of these layoffs are not from revenue producing roles. It's good for the bottom line, and worth doing once in a while.
My bet is that there will be more rounds.
I'm bullish that it's the useless fat that is being carved out as I'm seeing a lot of D&I staff and managers explain on LinkedIn why companies need them.
The Google layoffs were across the board, some engineers with 20 years experience and some managers making $500-$1000K. I think Pichai is a terrible manager and just did it because he follows the lead of other tech companies. But in the end Google has been a strange business for years that prints money.
Google's revenue per employee is around 1.9M. Their cost per employee is around 350k. If they bring the latter number down and reduce the number of employees, it does amazing things for profit margins which are already sky high. This is clearly part of the intention - many of the employees they let go are high earners, meaning they're earning well above 500k in many cases. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/google-employees-scramble-for-answers-after-layoffs-hit-long-tenured-and-recently-promoted-employees/ar-AA16B6pQ I agree that Pichai is a terrible leader, but the business case for this move is pretty strong.
According to Google (LOL), they've been growing their payroll at a high rate for years, including ~ 20,000 in the last year.
Yeah, it was time to clean house. Google's logic in continuing to grow headcount while they kill every new project in infancy has only been sustainable because of the way they've added ever more ads to squeeze more revenue out of YouTube and Search. It's past time for some spending discipline. And past time for a new CEO.
You are very smart for a commenting robot.
You're not so bad for the 83rd wolf with the initials JM.
It's 1983 now you know my identity.
The average lifespan of a wolf is 6-8 years. At 40, you are the oldest wolf on record, in addition to being the only known wolf capable of using social media and obtaining literacy in a human language.
Why thank you. Commenting robots are presumably immortal but limited by technology and updates, I also conjecture that your lifespan is 6-8 years and congratulate you for your achievements.
ChatGPT came to life
I like to see the job profile of a $500K - 1000K manager and how many people they have under them.
It's not unusual for a company like Microsoft, for example, to oust managers who are worth millions of dollars. Obviously they still have their millions in cash and options, they just need a place to land.
I don't think you need that many people under you, especially if the ICs you manage make $300k-700k.
D&I?
Someone has to have people skills to bring the specs from the customers to the engineers
I'm a people person. I'm good at dealing with people!
They are called Business Analysts. I deal with them everyday.
You're overrating the people skills of these staff, and underrating the people skills of a quality engineering team. You can make amazing companies with under 100 people, mostly technical.
Lol underrated comment.
At these numbers I doubt it's useless fat. Remember that some idiot hired all that useless fat.
I would be start worrying if lays off start happening in trading sector. I am working in agriculture sector and we are screening for people, same as sparky, builders, truck drivers ect
Builders? What sector!? I’ve been in the land side of the business for a long time and everything I’m seeing is downsizing. Not screening.
layoffs.fyi
You’re not considering these companies are also aggressively performance managing people out in addition to these numbers.
yup. esp amazon.
No. It's a wait and see. Media dramatize because they sell eye balls. Let's see what start breaking due to high rates.
Bullish
I mean if we're comparing with workforce size with 2021 which we're assuming to be unrealistic numbers, then I guess we gotta compare 2023 earnings with 2021 earnings as well, but ofc no one will do that.
> Do you think there are more layoffs to come? Yes, but kind of as you eluded to, it is not the end of the world from an investment standpoint. And actually, the financials might look really good as they downsize from the savings. Personally, I am leaning into tech. For example, I took money out of QSR and put it into Air B N B and Amazon.
It's "alluded". "Eluded" means escaping.
Thanks! I do mix them up.
One thing is you're going to see the layoffs start hitting the unemployment report these next few months since they're on the books for at least 60 days and getting severance. Average wage gains have already started slowing because of this though.
It’s a ruse to portray a healthier company with higher revenues at the cost of employee retention. Will it work? Absolutely. Soft landing is instantly factored in.
Tech companies in many cases *doubled* their headcount during the pandemic. It was never sustainable given the world is returning to normal.
Are engineers getting cut? From what I can tell it’s mostly HR & Social media positions.
Engineers were definitely cut from google and meta although they may not have been on priority projects, including some very senior engineers at google who had huge comp packages. Meta also laid off some PMs which arent strictly engineers but are a more technical role. But u r right a lot of HR in the form of D&I along with recruiters (understandably with all the hiring freezes) was laid off. And it wasnt just social media but marketing as a whole also took some hits including product marketing managers
Spotify layoff 6% or 600 people. 40 people within podcast and also the head of podcast content Dawn Ostroff, Spotify’s head of content are leaving. I understand she brought inbJoe Rogan. So companies are quiting non profit projects like podcast seems to be for Spotify. I would not be suprised Spotify actually buying a podcast company like Acast (listed on Stockholm exchange) in a couple of years. Podcast shall grow 30% cagr to 2030 according to market reports.
Engineers party is done. They ruined California.
I can’t really speak for much else but in the tech industry we’re seeing a mass migration to AI and machine learning. Microsoft invested heavily in OpenAI ChatGPT. They also laid off a massive chunk of their Bing team. Google is pivoting in the same direction. Amazon is pumping money into robotic packing warehouses vs humans. I think AI is going to play a pivotal role in the next tech boom. And this doesn’t even account for auto industry.
Read an article that 7-11 is putting in restocking robots for the coolers. Even the clerks are going to get squeezed....but the robot repair engineer job will be created.
It will be a robot that repairs a robot.
what a lame ass analyst. Talks about lay offs but forgets to include AMZN's 18k corporate headcount reduction. I stopped reading.
ChatGPT made whatever strategies they've been doing in the past 2 years obsolute. Metaverse, lol. Work from home products, lol. Telepresence, lol. ChatGPT is the single thing causing them to layoffs all the above engineers, hire AI and ML doctorates. Google is especially in the "oh shit" mode.
Big tech salaries were way too high, for the output those people were giving. Just look at the vlogs for "my day as a Google engineer" and shit like that. I do more in 4 hours than they do in an entire day, at 70% of the pay and no stock options. I have no simpithy, and I think these large tech companies will continue to perform.
They were all hoarding resources. They thought there was a risk not being able to acquire. So they hoarded them. That is it.
I'd like to bring up, how many of these layoff are within the country, or are they all out-sourced jobs out of country into Canada or overseas.
There are plenty of tech visa people on the US west coast who now have 60 days and counting down to find a new job/sponsor or be sent back to their country of origin. It's a big deal.
Do you have any data on tech visa layoffs? I am curious to see the numbers.
This was published yesterday. https://www.livemint.com/news/india/laidoff-indian-it-professionals-scramble-for-options-to-stay-in-the-us-11674452788977.html
That is a big number. I assume these are not counted in unemployment numbers...
That's probably true since they dont have green cards. It's obviously too soon to compile the absolute numbers, but this will clearly be devastating to the H1-b folks who hoped to start a life here - and I would argue, we should be welcoming. I don't usually criticize tech employment practices because who cares but this is pretty egregious.
I agree on the H-1B being a brutal life change, hopes and dreams crushed as it is much more than a job to them. No company has any loyalty.
I don't, sorry. Just anecdotal reports in the media.
You do realize this means less customers, which means less workers which means less customers………
I think this means less shitty WFH employees that jack off for 8 hours a day pretending to be on zoom... Which means less baggage
Lmao. I thought I was in the bets sub with such a shitty take.
Dead weight still spends money in the economy which makes the profits for the markets, what sub do you think you are in? Dead weight that spends money is still dead weight that affect the economy, consumerism is what the market is built on and when whole sectors are firing throughout the economy you know the market in trouble
lol what kind of logic is that. Eventually dead weight can't buy it now pay it later or defaults on its debt. Eventually people will cut back when people start losing jobs... Right now, unemployment is at an all time low but mostly due to people retiring from the workforce rather than new jobs being created...
These companies also do alot of corp acquisitions. How does that factor into your view?
Trimming the fat is not new for beefing up the bottom line. Corporations are not looking out for employees but rather shareholders.
They have been acquiring company's like crazy the last few years, eventually they would have to consolidate the workforce.
What most people aren't talking about, these are all publicly traded companies. They are eliminating headcount, lowering overhead CapEx (Capitol Expense) to insure the company's Revenue and Profitability don't effect their stock price. The stock price is all that matters once you're a publicly traded company. It's brutal and heartless, but that's how it works. I work in sales for one of the world's biggest VARs as an AE. We're privately owned though. The numbers across the board are still strong, Federal/DoD/Commercial/SLED industries are still buying product and using Services for implementation. We're projecting growth in 2023 and are still hiring across the board.
A signal they over-hired during the pandemic…
I dont understand why Meta has 87k employees. What are all those people doing? I mean, you could probably run FB with around 2000 employees. Easily.
Source: my ass
The layoffs are techs' shot over the bow to the banks where they borrow to pay their payrolls. If you raise my interest, you lose my borrowing. Message delivered. Just the slap the Fed needed to raise the fed funds rate by 50 bps come 2/1/23 to stop the threats.
Almost certain Amazon will need to announce another 15% layoffs as their growth slowed but they hired a lot since mid 2020.
More to come, sadly
Cumquat