3 ms·

I am just working from my anecdotal experience hiring engineers into high end infosec consulting and what we were told about other offers. Even now, with compan

I am just working from my anecdotal experience hiring engineers into high end infosec consulting and what we were told about other offers. Even now, with companies pushing for in office again and the stock component of BigN salaries crashing down to earth it has changed things in our recruiting pipeline noticeably.

NeverFade 4y ago
I'm also involved in recruiting, and the biggest change I see is that folks who were laid off or pushed out of prestigious tech companies are now in the market. These are not your "top talent", these folks are still happily employed at their BigN job. I hear similar stories about 2001. The folks who get laid off are mostly the lower performing engineers, who clear the lower hiring bars typical of frothy economic times.
- klabb3 4y ago
  > These are not your "top talent", these folks are still happily employed at their BigN job. Assuming layoffs are both primarily designed to and effective at retaining general talent, both statements need more corroboration. Will they keep the ones who are "indispensable" in the short term, like an engineer who maintains a specific system? Often yes. Are they the best? Often no, and over-specialized knowledge is particularly irrelevant to another company. Even so, anecdotally Big Co layoffs seemingly affect all levels and all talent, almost indiscriminate. That's probably because there are many other factors before an individual-against-individual comparison is ever made. From a C-level perspective teams and even orgs are more likely to be top-of-mind.
  - NeverFade 4y ago
    Layoffs at big corps are not 100% based on performance. Clearly there are exceptions, some of which you mentioned, and many talented people will be caught in the net. However, the typical way layoffs happen is that managers are ordered to submit the names of their most dispensable reports, and typically these are the lower performers. Of course, some of these will be high performers that the manager personally dislikes, and some of those spared will be low performers who just happen to be indispensable due to various irrelevant factors, such as specialized knowledge, or great politicians. My point was more that if you're smugly waiting for the best and brightest to lose their jobs at BigN and come to work for you for the same bad pay and terms they rejected last year, you're going to be disappointed. The layoffs are going to be limited, and mostly affect lower performers, while any high-performer laid off is going to get multiple competitive offers and remain quite picky.
- paleotrope 4y ago
  This is the sort of mentality that keeps recruiters chasing after already employed people and allowing age discrimination to flourish. Very few companies are organized well enough to layoff only the poor performers.
  - NeverFade 4y ago
    Not sure what it has to do with "age discrimination". If you're implying that big corporations lay off older people disproportionally, then that's illegal and should be handled through the courts. I agree that many talented folks will be laid off, but not nearly in the numbers that will make a dent in the overall talent crunch. See my response to klabb3 above.

NeverFade 4y ago

I'm also involved in recruiting, and the biggest change I see is that folks who were laid off or pushed out of prestigious tech companies are now in the market. These are not your "top talent", these folks are still happily employed at their BigN job. I hear similar stories about 2001. The folks who get laid off are mostly the lower performing engineers, who clear the lower hiring bars typical of frothy economic times.

klabb3 4y ago
> These are not your "top talent", these folks are still happily employed at their BigN job. Assuming layoffs are both primarily designed to and effective at retaining general talent, both statements need more corroboration. Will they keep the ones who are "indispensable" in the short term, like an engineer who maintains a specific system? Often yes. Are they the best? Often no, and over-specialized knowledge is particularly irrelevant to another company. Even so, anecdotally Big Co layoffs seemingly affect all levels and all talent, almost indiscriminate. That's probably because there are many other factors before an individual-against-individual comparison is ever made. From a C-level perspective teams and even orgs are more likely to be top-of-mind.
- NeverFade 4y ago
  Layoffs at big corps are not 100% based on performance. Clearly there are exceptions, some of which you mentioned, and many talented people will be caught in the net. However, the typical way layoffs happen is that managers are ordered to submit the names of their most dispensable reports, and typically these are the lower performers. Of course, some of these will be high performers that the manager personally dislikes, and some of those spared will be low performers who just happen to be indispensable due to various irrelevant factors, such as specialized knowledge, or great politicians. My point was more that if you're smugly waiting for the best and brightest to lose their jobs at BigN and come to work for you for the same bad pay and terms they rejected last year, you're going to be disappointed. The layoffs are going to be limited, and mostly affect lower performers, while any high-performer laid off is going to get multiple competitive offers and remain quite picky.
paleotrope 4y ago
This is the sort of mentality that keeps recruiters chasing after already employed people and allowing age discrimination to flourish. Very few companies are organized well enough to layoff only the poor performers.
- NeverFade 4y ago
  Not sure what it has to do with "age discrimination". If you're implying that big corporations lay off older people disproportionally, then that's illegal and should be handled through the courts. I agree that many talented folks will be laid off, but not nearly in the numbers that will make a dent in the overall talent crunch. See my response to klabb3 above.