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I don't understand your point, can you please elaborate more? I read it twice and your comment isn't making any sense to me: 1) Are you suggesting that develop

I don't understand your point, can you please elaborate more? I read it twice and your comment isn't making any sense to me: 1) Are you suggesting that developers should go join a smaller company so they are less expendible? 2) Are you suggesting that developers, now that they are laid off, go work on R&D projects, tooling and open source startups? I am so confused. What is the take away?

MattGaiser 6y ago
I do not think he is suggesting any course of action beyond awareness that their position is less stable than it might be in other jobs.
- CydeWeys 6y ago
  Worth pointing that your position at a unicorn is probably more secure than at a random small startup.
- fermienrico 6y ago
  Ohh....I get it now. Jeez, I need more coffee. I've always worked in manufacturing so people aren't that easily expendible. Takes a long time to train someone and without them, one of the line shuts down or gets less productive / slow.
  - MattGaiser 6y ago
    How long do people usually stay at your company?
    - fermienrico 6y ago
      Average is probably 8 years.
- zankly 6y ago
  Well regardless of economic boom or bust, the chance that a startup runs out of money is probably higher than the chance that a big company chooses to lay you off.
bdcravens 6y ago
I'm saying that large companies in tech tend to have a large developer headcount, often working on projects outside of the core business. As such, I think those employees are more expendable.
- lhorie 6y ago
  Teams that open source stuff typically have leveraging roles, i.e. they build things that several other teams depend on. Orthogonally, typically large companies have a maslow hierarchy of sorts: for every infrastructural endeavor, there may be a number of others that are more "nice-to-have" niche projects that aren't really critical to anyone else's ability to deliver results. The most vulnerable employees are those on niche projects, despite these projects being internally focused (as opposed to open sourced). Infra folks whose work may be open source are typically less vulnerable because they do in fact work on critical, well, infrastructure.

MattGaiser 6y ago

I do not think he is suggesting any course of action beyond awareness that their position is less stable than it might be in other jobs.

CydeWeys 6y ago
Worth pointing that your position at a unicorn is probably more secure than at a random small startup.
fermienrico 6y ago
Ohh....I get it now. Jeez, I need more coffee. I've always worked in manufacturing so people aren't that easily expendible. Takes a long time to train someone and without them, one of the line shuts down or gets less productive / slow.
- MattGaiser 6y ago
  How long do people usually stay at your company?
  - fermienrico 6y ago
    Average is probably 8 years.
zankly 6y ago
Well regardless of economic boom or bust, the chance that a startup runs out of money is probably higher than the chance that a big company chooses to lay you off.

bdcravens 6y ago

I'm saying that large companies in tech tend to have a large developer headcount, often working on projects outside of the core business. As such, I think those employees are more expendable.

lhorie 6y ago
Teams that open source stuff typically have leveraging roles, i.e. they build things that several other teams depend on. Orthogonally, typically large companies have a maslow hierarchy of sorts: for every infrastructural endeavor, there may be a number of others that are more "nice-to-have" niche projects that aren't really critical to anyone else's ability to deliver results. The most vulnerable employees are those on niche projects, despite these projects being internally focused (as opposed to open sourced). Infra folks whose work may be open source are typically less vulnerable because they do in fact work on critical, well, infrastructure.