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I wonder at what point this kind of thing is enough to tip the Bay Area tech labor market into a new equilibrium. In the recent past there have been a lot (hun

I wonder at what point this kind of thing is enough to tip the Bay Area tech labor market into a new equilibrium. In the recent past there have been a lot (hundreds?) of startups and a few dozen larger players fighting to hire in an environment with virtually zero unemployment. There are thousands of empty jobs waiting to be filled. Hence if you live around here and have tech something on your resume, it's 3-5 recruiter emails a day. Across three rounds, Uber has let go ~1000 people. I have no idea how many are in the Bay Area, but to pick a random number and say "half," that's ~500 new people in the labor market who are probably well qualified for the rest of the open jobs. By itself that's pretty healthy, and should actually help a lot of smaller companies in particular to be able to get "butts in seats." But with this whole thing of "the window being open," and a lot of recent IPOs, if we start seeing a lot of the other IPO companies engage in similar layoffs, it's not hard to imagine we end up with a few thousand qualified people suddenly looking for jobs. Is there still so much demand that the market swallows that up without noticing? Is it just enough that it helps take some of the pressure off locally, that labor demand dips but remains healthy? Or is it enough that employers can start being pickier, or stingier with their offers? I don't know, and I'm not sure how you estimate the impact of something like that, but it's an interesting question to me. Anyone with a labor economics background have an idea how many layoffs it would take to get Bay Area supply/demand in balance?

onlyrealcuzzo 7y ago
Arm-chair speculating here... I think as long as the VC investment keeps growing the layoffs won't matter much. If the layoffs continue and VC investments steadies or declines, I don't think it takes many months until there's suddenly more supply than demand, and companies start being more selective about who they hire, and offered salaries stop increasing (and maybe even decline). Think about it. Uber is the biggest IPO by far. They're laying off only 1000 people. Even if they're all in The Bay, and even if all the other recent IPOs go through similar (but proportional) layoffs -- you're talking about maybe 5000 layoffs max. That's a lot. Bay Area investment in 2018 was $27.5B [1]. Nationally, since 2007 (and I pick that since it's the last peak), VC investment has increased by 11.13% per year. If the Bay Area gets an extra ~$3B next year in VC money, that could absorb the 5000 layoffs pretty easily. Obviously there could be any other exogenous shock that causes even more layoffs. Obviously VC investment could fall off a cliff. Obviously I can't predict the future. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-01-08/venture-capital-still-flowing-to-silicon-valley-and-bay-area https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-01-08/ventur...
jswizzy 7y ago
3-5 emails a day is nothing special. Recruiters spam your inbox and phone no matter where you live.
- vonmoltke 7y ago
  I live in NJ and work in NY, and I consider 5 emails a week busy.
  - heavenlyblue 7y ago
    I live in London, 5 messages/day on LinkedIn is my average. I am 28. They probably mostly match Python and Django keywords on my CV, but I've also got other experience.
  - southphillyman 7y ago
    When is the last time you updated your resume somewhere? A recent upload could get you 50 VM/emails a day, no exaggeration. I'm almost 5 years out from the last job search with almost nothing on my linked and 15-20 contacts a week seems average now
    - vonmoltke 7y ago
      I keep my LinkedIn profile up-to-date, but otherwise I don't publish my resume anymore. Nearly all the hits I get are LinkedIn, mixed with a few calls based on seriously out-of-date versions of my resume.
- redisman 7y ago
  In Seattle I get maybe 1 per day average. Pretty in-demand skillset too. I almost never reply so maybe they've given up. The volume probably depends on how much "SEO" you wanna put into your Linkedin and online presence.
throwing838383 7y ago
In the bay area, Non-engineers, like product managers, MBA types and data analysts, etc are having a really hard time finding work (sometimes taking 1 to 3 years to find their next job!) based on what I've seen in my circle of friends. (unless your in a specialization that's in high demand like User acquisition). It's the senior engineers (5+ years) which have multiple emails from recruiters and are in really high demand, not so much junior engineers. Look at the last StackOverflow dev survey: the number of devs with 0-5 years of experience is almost double the number of devs with 6-10 years. That means the number of senior engineers will be increasing very rapidly over the next 5 years. You can bet it's going to be much harder to get a job in about 5 years or so, layoff or not.
- heavenlyblue 7y ago
  >> Look at the last StackOverflow dev survey Just looked at it. In 2018 there were 87,259 responses and 72,688 in 2019. Developers with less than 5 years experience were 35% in 2018 and 13.4% in 2019.
  - sciencewolf 7y ago
    Just confirmed it, and that's super interesting. I wonder if it's due to the phrasing of the question though (how long since programming vs. how long coding professionally).
  - throwing838383 7y ago
    For 2019 I see the following: Less than 5 years 41% 5-10 years 27% 10-15 years 14% As you can see, there has been a massive supply increase of junior engineers (probably entering the industry). And this massive increase will in a few years result in a massive increase in senior engineers. Right now being a senior engineer is still a huge advantage but that will diminish quickly over time.
    - redisman 7y ago
      Personal anecdote, at 12+ years in the industry I don't really go to StackOverflow anymore so I wouldn't have even seen the survey. The kind of questions I Google now are most often answered only in Github Issues.
momokoko 7y ago
There is already an oversupply of engineering talent outside of very specialized work and senior talent. The constant hiring is simply because a better engineer is fairly easy to measure once they've been on the job for a while so it's smart to keep hiring better engineers and letting go of the ones that are not as good as the new ones.
sjdb77 7y ago
This is purely anecdotal, but I worked at Uber and just looking through the ex-Uber alumni groups I can see a lot of people who I know worked in SF have moved elsewhere (to NYC, LA, Austin, etc.) Also, Uber's workforce is more "decentralized" than most and more spread out throughout the country. I would guess fewer than half of the layoffs were in the Bay Area, especially if this impacted ATG which has a large presence in Pittsburg.
superfrank 7y ago
> Across three rounds, Uber has let go ~1000 people. I have no idea how many are in the Bay Area, but to pick a random number and say "half," that's ~500 new people in the labor market who are probably well qualified for the rest of the open jobs. It doesn't affect the point you are making, but I believe the first big round of layoffs they did (about 400 I think?) were mainly marketing folks. I could be wrong, but I feel like those positions are not quite as in demand as tech workers in the bay area.
mikeryan 7y ago
The companies that tend to have a harder time hiring and may benefit from these layoffs I think are more traditional companies that have SV outposts. Comcast, Samsung, Microsoft, Clorox, Walmart, Bank of America heck Honda and other Auto manufacturers have large presences in this area and traditionally are not as attractive to a lot of talented engineers as startups or the FANG companies. I'd think that you'd see these guys start picking up a lot of the excess talent if the market started getting flooded. There's a ton of slack here that would gobble up talent outside of the traditional VC funded group. They're good jobs too if you're looking for stability.
taurath 7y ago
Its certainly not enough to tip anything yet. Companies other than Facebook/Google/Apple are still blocked on their capabilities by their engineering workforce (in terms of size and skillset). Eventually it will get there, but that will come coupled with an overall economic recession. While there's some instability with failed VC companies, there's still WAY too much capital in the system to not keep everyone employed for a long while, as long as there is even the chance of investments panning out.
themagician 7y ago
We just goes from one fad to another. These people will all just get jobs at a scooter company or whatever comes next. You get used to it after being in the startup scene for even a few years. Everyone just bounces around to whatever nonsense gets financed.
tanilama 7y ago
Aren't we already there? With the looming fear of recession in near term, fully expect hardship ahead.
joshuakcockrell 7y ago
Honest question: Why don't large scale acqui-hires happen in these situations? Often hiring is one of the top challenges for these companies. They go through 100s of resumes and interview dozens just for each role. Times that by 300+ people and it’s an incredible amount of effort and value here. So to fire 300+ people is years and years worth of human lives that went into hiring that many top tier tech employees. I’m sure Google or someone would pay a TON of money to have them all sent down to Mountain View for the day to do a huge round of interviewing. The same way they do for smaller-scale startup acqui-hires.
- ben_jones 7y ago
  Mass firings are seen as a opportunity to get rid of your "worst" employees because you have strong plausible deniability if the reason for firing is anything other then the massive layoff. Employee trying to start a union? Raising politically sensitive issues? Under-performing? Questioning management? Negative personality? Taking too many days off? Not popular on your team? Companies are aware of this and it contributes strongly to the negative signal assigned to be involved in a mass layoff.

onlyrealcuzzo 7y ago

Arm-chair speculating here... I think as long as the VC investment keeps growing the layoffs won't matter much. If the layoffs continue and VC investments steadies or declines, I don't think it takes many months until there's suddenly more supply than demand, and companies start being more selective about who they hire, and offered salaries stop increasing (and maybe even decline). Think about it. Uber is the biggest IPO by far. They're laying off only 1000 people. Even if they're all in The Bay, and even if all the other recent IPOs go through similar (but proportional) layoffs -- you're talking about maybe 5000 layoffs max. That's a lot. Bay Area investment in 2018 was $27.5B [1]. Nationally, since 2007 (and I pick that since it's the last peak), VC investment has increased by 11.13% per year. If the Bay Area gets an extra ~$3B next year in VC money, that could absorb the 5000 layoffs pretty easily. Obviously there could be any other exogenous shock that causes even more layoffs. Obviously VC investment could fall off a cliff. Obviously I can't predict the future. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-01-08/venture-capital-still-flowing-to-silicon-valley-and-bay-area https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-01-08/ventur...

jswizzy 7y ago

3-5 emails a day is nothing special. Recruiters spam your inbox and phone no matter where you live.

vonmoltke 7y ago
I live in NJ and work in NY, and I consider 5 emails a week busy.
- heavenlyblue 7y ago
  I live in London, 5 messages/day on LinkedIn is my average. I am 28. They probably mostly match Python and Django keywords on my CV, but I've also got other experience.
- southphillyman 7y ago
  When is the last time you updated your resume somewhere? A recent upload could get you 50 VM/emails a day, no exaggeration. I'm almost 5 years out from the last job search with almost nothing on my linked and 15-20 contacts a week seems average now
  - vonmoltke 7y ago
    I keep my LinkedIn profile up-to-date, but otherwise I don't publish my resume anymore. Nearly all the hits I get are LinkedIn, mixed with a few calls based on seriously out-of-date versions of my resume.
redisman 7y ago
In Seattle I get maybe 1 per day average. Pretty in-demand skillset too. I almost never reply so maybe they've given up. The volume probably depends on how much "SEO" you wanna put into your Linkedin and online presence.

throwing838383 7y ago

In the bay area, Non-engineers, like product managers, MBA types and data analysts, etc are having a really hard time finding work (sometimes taking 1 to 3 years to find their next job!) based on what I've seen in my circle of friends. (unless your in a specialization that's in high demand like User acquisition). It's the senior engineers (5+ years) which have multiple emails from recruiters and are in really high demand, not so much junior engineers. Look at the last StackOverflow dev survey: the number of devs with 0-5 years of experience is almost double the number of devs with 6-10 years. That means the number of senior engineers will be increasing very rapidly over the next 5 years. You can bet it's going to be much harder to get a job in about 5 years or so, layoff or not.

heavenlyblue 7y ago
>> Look at the last StackOverflow dev survey Just looked at it. In 2018 there were 87,259 responses and 72,688 in 2019. Developers with less than 5 years experience were 35% in 2018 and 13.4% in 2019.
- sciencewolf 7y ago
  Just confirmed it, and that's super interesting. I wonder if it's due to the phrasing of the question though (how long since programming vs. how long coding professionally).
- throwing838383 7y ago
  For 2019 I see the following: Less than 5 years 41% 5-10 years 27% 10-15 years 14% As you can see, there has been a massive supply increase of junior engineers (probably entering the industry). And this massive increase will in a few years result in a massive increase in senior engineers. Right now being a senior engineer is still a huge advantage but that will diminish quickly over time.
  - redisman 7y ago
    Personal anecdote, at 12+ years in the industry I don't really go to StackOverflow anymore so I wouldn't have even seen the survey. The kind of questions I Google now are most often answered only in Github Issues.

momokoko 7y ago

There is already an oversupply of engineering talent outside of very specialized work and senior talent. The constant hiring is simply because a better engineer is fairly easy to measure once they've been on the job for a while so it's smart to keep hiring better engineers and letting go of the ones that are not as good as the new ones.

sjdb77 7y ago

This is purely anecdotal, but I worked at Uber and just looking through the ex-Uber alumni groups I can see a lot of people who I know worked in SF have moved elsewhere (to NYC, LA, Austin, etc.) Also, Uber's workforce is more "decentralized" than most and more spread out throughout the country. I would guess fewer than half of the layoffs were in the Bay Area, especially if this impacted ATG which has a large presence in Pittsburg.

superfrank 7y ago

> Across three rounds, Uber has let go ~1000 people. I have no idea how many are in the Bay Area, but to pick a random number and say "half," that's ~500 new people in the labor market who are probably well qualified for the rest of the open jobs. It doesn't affect the point you are making, but I believe the first big round of layoffs they did (about 400 I think?) were mainly marketing folks. I could be wrong, but I feel like those positions are not quite as in demand as tech workers in the bay area.

mikeryan 7y ago

The companies that tend to have a harder time hiring and may benefit from these layoffs I think are more traditional companies that have SV outposts. Comcast, Samsung, Microsoft, Clorox, Walmart, Bank of America heck Honda and other Auto manufacturers have large presences in this area and traditionally are not as attractive to a lot of talented engineers as startups or the FANG companies. I'd think that you'd see these guys start picking up a lot of the excess talent if the market started getting flooded. There's a ton of slack here that would gobble up talent outside of the traditional VC funded group. They're good jobs too if you're looking for stability.

taurath 7y ago

Its certainly not enough to tip anything yet. Companies other than Facebook/Google/Apple are still blocked on their capabilities by their engineering workforce (in terms of size and skillset). Eventually it will get there, but that will come coupled with an overall economic recession. While there's some instability with failed VC companies, there's still WAY too much capital in the system to not keep everyone employed for a long while, as long as there is even the chance of investments panning out.

themagician 7y ago

We just goes from one fad to another. These people will all just get jobs at a scooter company or whatever comes next. You get used to it after being in the startup scene for even a few years. Everyone just bounces around to whatever nonsense gets financed.

tanilama 7y ago

Aren't we already there? With the looming fear of recession in near term, fully expect hardship ahead.

joshuakcockrell 7y ago

Honest question: Why don't large scale acqui-hires happen in these situations? Often hiring is one of the top challenges for these companies. They go through 100s of resumes and interview dozens just for each role. Times that by 300+ people and it’s an incredible amount of effort and value here. So to fire 300+ people is years and years worth of human lives that went into hiring that many top tier tech employees. I’m sure Google or someone would pay a TON of money to have them all sent down to Mountain View for the day to do a huge round of interviewing. The same way they do for smaller-scale startup acqui-hires.

ben_jones 7y ago
Mass firings are seen as a opportunity to get rid of your "worst" employees because you have strong plausible deniability if the reason for firing is anything other then the massive layoff. Employee trying to start a union? Raising politically sensitive issues? Under-performing? Questioning management? Negative personality? Taking too many days off? Not popular on your team? Companies are aware of this and it contributes strongly to the negative signal assigned to be involved in a mass layoff.