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Tech Sector Feeling Covid-19’s Economic Pain
- myth_drannon 6y agoAnecdotal but in Montreal,Canada it's a very different situation. Recruiter calls, number of jobs posts are much higher in the last month or so (despite summer vacations). Many companies from San-Francisco reaching out. Is it because in Canada the Covid-19 spread is under control or because it's all remote now so why not Canada?
- djsumdog 6y agoThis is what people are afraid of. If you live in a city where you have IT salaries over 100k (Seattle, San Fransisco, Chicago), companies may be using this as an opportunity to hire 'cheaper' workers in markets where you don't need that type of income to pay rent. There was a lot of hiring early on. We might see big tech layoffs come August/September.
- bluetomcat 6y ago> companies may be using this as an opportunity to hire 'cheaper' workers in markets where you don't need that type of income to pay rent That's not a bad tendency in the long run. In case remote work gains serious traction, tech workers would be eventually dispersed around the whole country, and that would drive down rents in previously expensive areas. With workers living in less expensive places, they wouldn't need an SV salary to afford a good lifestyle.
- ghaff 6y agoTime zones still matter, very few companies are going to go fully remote, salaries are sticky downwards, many companies are going to keep large campuses in elite cities. That said, to the degree living in NYC or SF starts to be seen as the same sort of luxury choice being made by employees that living in a prime beach location is, the comp premium will go down. Employers don't care that you like living in particular cities or that you like living somewhere you can easily hop to other local jobs and, in fact, the latter is something of a negative.
- Tehchops 6y ago> they wouldn't need an SV salary to afford a good lifestyle. While I agree you wouldn't need to worry about affording SV-grade housing costs, I feel like these discussions leave out a couple of things: * The CoL is going up everywhere. Food, medical care etc... None of it is getting cheaper. * Good houses in good school systems with reasonable access are still expensive in many areas of the country. * It's kind of ridiculous to see companies pushing the narrative that they can suddenly pay everyone less based on arbitrary geography when the average revenue/profit generated per engineer is often many, many multiples of their total compensation costs.
- tharne 6y agoThis isn't true. The costs of some things are going up while others are going down. Transportation is much cheaper, for example, even without taking into account remote work. The cost of cars, gas, and auto insurance is lower than it was 20 or 30 years ago when adjusted for inflation. Education and Healthcare are getting dramatically more expensive. Clothes are much cheaper, and the cost of consumer goods in general is decreasing a lot. Think about how much a microwave cost in 1980's.
- Tehchops 6y agoI'll concede that some durable goods are cheaper adjusted for inflation. But at the end of the day, what has the most impact on socioeconomic mobility and overall success? It's probably not a cheap microwave. It's access to good schools, health care, and diet. All of the things that are getting more expensive. Cheaper gas and clothes also have hidden(less so now) costs in pollution and ethical sourcing concerns.
- tharne 6y agoGood point. I'd strongly prefer cheaper healthcare and pricier gasoline to cheap gas and cost-prohibitive healthcare.
- take_a_breath 6y ago==(Seattle, San Fransisco, Chicago), companies may be using this as an opportunity to hire 'cheaper' workers in markets where you don't need that type of income to pay rent.== To clarify for those reading, rent in Chicago is about 50-60% cheaper than Seattle or San Francisco.
- johnsolo1701 6y agoSource? Are you talking 1BR or 2BR? I would put this number closer to 25-30% [1]. [1] https://www.nerdwallet.com/cost-of-living-calculator/compare/seattle-wa-vs-chicago-il https://www.nerdwallet.com/cost-of-living-calculator/compare...
- take_a_breath 6y agoI was going off the Best Places COL Calculator [1] Seattle housing: 67.9% cheaper [2] San Francisco housing: 83.4% cheaper [3] [1] https://www.bestplaces.net/cost-of-living/ https://www.bestplaces.net/cost-of-living/ [2] https://www.bestplaces.net/cost-of-living/seattle-wa/chicago-il/100000 https://www.bestplaces.net/cost-of-living/seattle-wa/chicago... [3] https://www.bestplaces.net/cost-of-living/san-francisco-ca/chicago-il/100000 https://www.bestplaces.net/cost-of-living/san-francisco-ca/c...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- wolco 6y agoNo one wants to go into work so they are having a hard time finding in person employees. No one is calling about remote.
- kache_ 6y agoSeeing the same in Ottawa. Big startups are hiring here now. In fact, rates are quickly climbing up here from my observations - from local tech forums & job postings. Amazon & Apple jobs started popping up. Looks like companies are looking at Canada & South America due to the same timezones yet smaller rents. Good for us, maybe I won't be moving to the states in 3 years like I originally planned.
- contrarianmop 6y agoCould also be due to cheaper labor and easier immigration.
- wil421 6y agoI’m in the US and very far from SF. I have been getting a lot more recruiters from SF reaching out. All the big tech companies are remote. What would Canada and COVID have to do with it?
- mjayhn 6y agoGoogle, Apple and Netflix are definitely not remote, that's half of FAANG (not sure about FB, never applied there). Maybe you get lucky and get some unicorn remote gig there (sales typically). I've turned down all 3 in the recent past because they wouldn't let me work 100% remote and expected me in SV/Los Gatos. Even with COVID they're probably expecting people back in the office eventually, I know Google Cloud is hiring and letting people work where they are remotely until quarantine is over- then they're expected to move to the office.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- jmeister 6y agoMontreal and Toronto are top 2 places in the world for jobseekers and employers bailing out of the US due to visa or political issues.
- djsumdog 6y agoSide-note for people switching work, move your money from your direct deposit account before starting a new job. I was talking to a security researcher about a friend who had a full interview with a company, sent papers for hiring, filled everything out, and then discovered the company she was interviewing for was named similar to a real company, with the only difference being a hyphen in the website name. The company was fake and once they had direct deposit information, drained her bank account. She was lucky there was only ~$1k in it. still. Do your due diligence. Be careful out there.
- _AzMoo 6y agoHow do you drain somebody's bank account with deposit information?
- evgen 6y agoIt will not stick and is easily reversible, but I am guessing that if I have the info to direct deposit to your account then in the US I also have enough info to generate fake ACH transactions. It really makes no sense to me though because banks are all over check kiting schemes like this and never let you move the money out of the destination account before someone at the originating bank has reversed the transaction.
- xur17 6y agoDeposit information in the US is account number + routing number, which is all that is required to pull funds from an account. Amusingly, this is also the information printed at the bottom of every check you use.
- bad_good_guy 6y agoWow. I don't intend to be inflammatory, but I am continually shocked by how far behind Europe the US appears to be in terms of personal banking and payments.
- miracle2k 6y ago
- dpeck 6y agoThe recruiting dept of a lot of companies are only pretending that they’re hiring to justify their own existence as long as possible. Many actually are not, though not all of them even know that they are pretending until it goes to VP/exec for final sign off and they find budgets/priorities have “shifted”
- thinkingkong 6y agoThat would weed out the worst companies and VPs fairly quickly
- dpeck 6y agoI agree on the weed out, I have less confidence in the quickly. Bigger companies move at glacial pace and most are going to do everything they can to not let on that there are any problems at a group/division/whole enterprise level.
- angel_j 6y agoThey don't even have a recruiting dept, they outsource HR, hiring, and payroll, cuz that is below them—they are too busy changing the world! If these companies were really so desperate for skilled workers, we wouldn't see the same jobs posted repeatedly, or never taken down from career pages, and they would be more responsive to inquiry. The monthly hiring thread here is full of it.
- cs702 6y agoWe are all hoping the following plan will work: 1. Government supports the economy while vaccines and treatments are developed. 2. ??? 3. Economic activity returns quickly to pre-pandemic levels. There's no "guarantee" this plan will work... but we are all acting as if it will, because the alternatives are too unpleasant to contemplate.[a] So, much of the economy is "faking it until we make it." The tech sector is no exemption. -- [a] We all prefer not to think too much on the possibility that large swaths of the economy could remain under stress for a long while -- office buildings, malls, retail stores, restaurants and bars, movie theaters, airlines, conference centers, etc. These businesses employ a gazillion people, use a mountain of assets, and depend on a ton of software and technology for everything. We all want these businesses to survive as intact as possible so they can thrive in a post-pandemic world and continue to buy technology.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoI think there's reason to be confident it'll work. In many areas people rushed back to those things even before the pandemic was over. I'm not saying this was an unreasonable concern to have, but it seems to have been disconfirmed.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- kache_ 6y agoIs this due to the economic conditions? I feel as though companies might be holding off on hiring because the logistics of hiring & onboarding someone remotely is extremely difficult, doubly more so in tech.
- mjayhn 6y agoI'm worried this will really damage tech workers in the USA. I'm in meetings with overseas clients most of the day and it's getting to the point that some are back in offices and we're still locked in our kitchens. Mental health seems to be crashing if you judge by Twitter peers. I'm in the same boat. I've been locked in an apartment alone for 6 months outside of grocery grabs and some outdoor hikes and it's starting to really affect me. Its so embarrassing and I'm nowhere near as productive as I should be. Most of my EU peers are probably having to take up the slack.
- ghaff 6y agoFrom what I see--and admittedly a fair number of the people I know and work with were largely remote before this--many offices at least in the US are never going back to "normal." Most of the people I know are planning to be primarily remote indefinitely. Which means that even those who do go back into an office will have to deal with a largely distributed workplace.
- sokoloff 6y agoAnd, importantly, competing on the global stage for talent, rather than only against people who are commuting distance to a glass and concrete temple.
- tharne 6y agoI think we'll see the beginnings of a regulatory moat in the not too distant future. Tech workers have the benefit of hindsight, having seen U.S. manufacturing jobs get decimated in the last few decades. A lot of fields already have built in protection from foreign competition. For instance, most if all states require that anyone conducting telemedicine work needs to be both licensed in the state were the service is being performed. Given the leftward drift of the Democratic party and Republican's newfound disdain for the big tech companies and things like HB1 visas, I would be shocked if we don't see some significant restrictions on how foreign workers are used in the tech sector.
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- 1nverseMtx 6y agoOdd message given the timing, one day after tech giants announce strong quarterly results.
- adventured 6y agoMost of the US tech space is still booming right now, from big tech to the dozens of large cloud companies that have been reporting between good and stellar quarterly results. We'll see if this article's premise holds any water over the remainder of the year, for now it's weak.
- fred_is_fred 6y ago"booming" does not mean hiring. With the next few months being very uncertain, prudent companies have paused hiring to help control costs.
- bdcravens 6y agoThere's no shortage of employees in our industry that don't work at big tech or large cloud companies.
- bdcravens 6y agoThe tech sector is far more than those giants. Moreover, many of the giants are seeing increased usage while everyone is home. A large amount of the industry doesn't work that way, but rather, is based on profit and loss, not share price and vanity metrics.
- rossdavidh 6y agoHmmm...well the facts are what they are, but based on the number of job postings and recruiter calls I'm seeing, it sure doesn't seem much lower. I got a new job starting in early June, and it didn't take any longer than normal (I admit I was probably lucky). One factor might be that I prefer to work as a contractor, and get my own health insurance; it might be different if you're looking for "permanent" employment. Perhaps employers are more willing to hire someone they've never met in person, if it's as a contractor?
- iwfheveryday123 6y agoStocks would say otherwise
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- Hydraulix989 6y agoIs this actually so pronounced? If you look at the "Mixed bag for tech positions in tech hubs" table, the change in tech postings trend looks more or less the same as the change in all postings trend (I bet it's not even stat sig). Reading the article, the claims being made are not even strong ones.
- yalogin 6y agoI don’t know how much closer to reality this is. I can see tech hiring probably slowed down but my guess is it’s opportunistic. The companies that are doing poorly before the pandemic simply cut jobs. I don’t see a real impact on the market. Of course I do realize I am arguing against data here and saying stuff without evidence but the sample size is small for the data and it’s a gut feeling that it will not hold long term.
- tharne 6y agoI don't know if you're necessarily arguing against data. Data is a funny thing and it can lie very easily. For example, the following statement is data-driven and technically true, but a complete lie at the same time: "Newborn baby's have _on average_ one testicle" I think you're right about it being opportunistic, at least that's what I've observed.
- LadyCailin 6y agoCertainly it’s slightly less than one.
- Tehchops 6y agoI don't want to dismiss this post out of hand, but the last few instances I've spent any time browsing Indeed, it did not strike me as representative of the tech hiring market. Where's the LinkedIn data?
- pandaman 6y agoI have the same sentiment, Indeed does not seem to be a representative source for the tech jobs market. I have an impression that most postings there are for staffing firms and the number of their posts do not correspond to the actual vacancies (they might be all posting the same job or post fake jobs to collect resumes). The drop could be just the result of some of those firms ceasing their activity as I definitely don't see as many CyberCoders and whatever was that bot, which automatically reposted vacancies on Linkedin (JobNetwork or something), in the recent months.