4 ms·

I have it from a trusted friend that a big Google layoff is coming soon as well. Stay safe out there

by seibelj 4y ago

brundolf 4y ago
Wondering how the displaced engineers will impact the rest of the job market
- seibelj 4y ago
  Probably they will be absorbed at lower salaries / equity. But SF real estate, holy shit. Dump it now if you have any
- adam_arthur 4y ago
  Yes, tech comp is about to come down greatly across the board. We’ve barely seen the start of layoffs yet, and the Fed is pedal to the metal on engineering a recession. Tech falls first due to highest discount rate sensitivity
  - paganel 4y ago
    > tech comp is about to come down greatly across the board. To be honest the total comps for some FAANG companies had gone into the crazy territory, there was no way for a up and coming startup to compete against comps of 500-600k (or so I had read) that decent engineers were getting. I mean, there was a way, but in exchange those start-ups had to promise the world and then some, which was not ideal, to say the least. That's how we got lots of "fake" unicorns, which only now are beginning to get back to Earth.
  - bluedino 4y ago
    No more $150k DevOps engineers that don't know how disk partitions or Python actually work?
    - autotune 4y ago
      I just landed a $175k full time base gig that didn't ask about either of those, just terraform and kubernetes and AWS all day long. Also, my resume is riddled with nothing but short term stints since the start of the pandemic, but doesn't seem to have effected my prospects. Now to be fair, I do actually know both python and linux essentials, and can google and troubleshoot my way through most common infra issues. I would say I am at least mediocre enough to get most of the work done in a reasonable time frame at this point.
  - paxys 4y ago
    Disagree with "across the board". Tech still has a lot of difficult problems and a crazy amount of money to be made, so premium talent will continue to command premium salaries. It's just that a "staff engineer" 4 years out of college won't be able to sleep their way into $500K in salary + stock.
    - adam_arthur 4y ago
      Comp is dictated by labor market dynamics, not by profitability of the product. If you have 10 engineers of roughly equal skill competing for the same role, the company has more leverage to offer lower comp than if there’s just 1, or less than one. Profitability just sets a cap on what can be paid. That being said, I do agree that the best of the best will likely be able to maintain mid 6 figure comps. But it won’t be the norm as it has been. There’s also theory vs practice. In practice very few companies have a high level of confidence about being able to quantify how much one engineer is worth vs another. Which is why 10x engineers can’t capture significantly higher comp than the median, even in the current (recent) market
      - steviesands 4y ago
        Does this logic work for lawyers? "Biglaw" firms are similar to FAANG in that it is a handful of companies that offer very high comp (235k for first year). There is a deluge of folks that apply from all universities to biglaw but generally they primarily hire from top tier law schools and even then not all make it. Similar for Big 3 consulting firms (BCG, Bain, McKinsey) in that there is a huge application pool for positions but they are difficult to get and provide high pay.
        adam_arthur 4y ago
        Yeah, for sure. But in those cases the number of jobs is much more limited than was the case in tech in recent years. Finance is a similar example. Bankers get paid a lot, but the number of them has been pretty static.
        4y ago
- atomicnumber3 4y ago
  Just my 2c: I know friends who work at other companies paying similar wages who immediately try to get ahold of the lists of laid off staff from these layoffs hoping to hire top talent when they're otherwise not even going to hear they're looking. So I don't know how much this will really change comp levels? Especially with how frequently software people change jobs anyway.
- EMM_386 4y ago
  > Wondering how the displaced engineers will impact the rest of the job market That dream of making local (San Francisco) pay while living wherever you want will quickly evaporate. I survived as a software engineer through the dot-com crash. This isn't even a crash, this is just seems like a minor correction to "normal" for most of these companies with head-counts through the roof. But SV salaries were abnormal, and that should be taken into account. There are a lot of us, doing a lot of the same stuff, for a lot less pay out there. Why? For all sorts of various reasons. And this is now rapidly taking into account the entire globe.
klohto 4y ago
I have it from a good friend that this is bullshit
- deeptote 4y ago
  they were literally trying to recruit me last week
  - keepquestioning 4y ago
    you may get an offer but not a job...
  - eddsh1994 4y ago
    Meta, Amazon, hell even Twitter have reached out to me and my neighbors recently (my friend has an interview at Twitter next week). I believe even during hiring freezes these companies carry on recruitment because they're slow and can wait for the ideal role to appear in the future even if there's nothing available right now. So basically you'll get an offer without a job.
    - lotophage 4y ago
      During freezes there's often exceptions for teams who've lost people, especially for critical roles. i.e. you can't increase count but you can keep it the same.
  - raydev 4y ago
    And? Recruiters are usually operating on weeks old info. They never find out when the freezes/cuts are coming until the day of, because any changes would tip off employees and lead to rumors/lower morale and productivity.
  - kyawzazaw 4y ago
    I think both can be true at the same time but it is unlikely for the first
  - sushid 4y ago
amyamyamy2 4y ago
Do you have any information about the size of the layoff / when it will be? I'm a new grad who started two months ago and is very anxious about this.
- GlickWick 4y ago
  There likely won’t be one. They have other ways of reducing headcount.
firstfewshells 4y ago
Don't speculate. And what does "stay safe" even mean? Unless you mean stay safe from folks making baseless insinuations.
GlickWick 4y ago
You’d be wrong about that.

I have it from a trusted friend that a big Google layoff is coming soon as well. Stay safe out there

brundolf 4y ago

Wondering how the displaced engineers will impact the rest of the job market

seibelj 4y ago
Probably they will be absorbed at lower salaries / equity. But SF real estate, holy shit. Dump it now if you have any
adam_arthur 4y ago
Yes, tech comp is about to come down greatly across the board. We’ve barely seen the start of layoffs yet, and the Fed is pedal to the metal on engineering a recession. Tech falls first due to highest discount rate sensitivity
- paganel 4y ago
  > tech comp is about to come down greatly across the board. To be honest the total comps for some FAANG companies had gone into the crazy territory, there was no way for a up and coming startup to compete against comps of 500-600k (or so I had read) that decent engineers were getting. I mean, there was a way, but in exchange those start-ups had to promise the world and then some, which was not ideal, to say the least. That's how we got lots of "fake" unicorns, which only now are beginning to get back to Earth.
- bluedino 4y ago
  No more $150k DevOps engineers that don't know how disk partitions or Python actually work?
  - autotune 4y ago
    I just landed a $175k full time base gig that didn't ask about either of those, just terraform and kubernetes and AWS all day long. Also, my resume is riddled with nothing but short term stints since the start of the pandemic, but doesn't seem to have effected my prospects. Now to be fair, I do actually know both python and linux essentials, and can google and troubleshoot my way through most common infra issues. I would say I am at least mediocre enough to get most of the work done in a reasonable time frame at this point.
- paxys 4y ago
  Disagree with "across the board". Tech still has a lot of difficult problems and a crazy amount of money to be made, so premium talent will continue to command premium salaries. It's just that a "staff engineer" 4 years out of college won't be able to sleep their way into $500K in salary + stock.
  - adam_arthur 4y ago
    Comp is dictated by labor market dynamics, not by profitability of the product. If you have 10 engineers of roughly equal skill competing for the same role, the company has more leverage to offer lower comp than if there’s just 1, or less than one. Profitability just sets a cap on what can be paid. That being said, I do agree that the best of the best will likely be able to maintain mid 6 figure comps. But it won’t be the norm as it has been. There’s also theory vs practice. In practice very few companies have a high level of confidence about being able to quantify how much one engineer is worth vs another. Which is why 10x engineers can’t capture significantly higher comp than the median, even in the current (recent) market
    - steviesands 4y ago
      Does this logic work for lawyers? "Biglaw" firms are similar to FAANG in that it is a handful of companies that offer very high comp (235k for first year). There is a deluge of folks that apply from all universities to biglaw but generally they primarily hire from top tier law schools and even then not all make it. Similar for Big 3 consulting firms (BCG, Bain, McKinsey) in that there is a huge application pool for positions but they are difficult to get and provide high pay.
      - adam_arthur 4y ago
        Yeah, for sure. But in those cases the number of jobs is much more limited than was the case in tech in recent years. Finance is a similar example. Bankers get paid a lot, but the number of them has been pretty static.
        4y ago
atomicnumber3 4y ago
Just my 2c: I know friends who work at other companies paying similar wages who immediately try to get ahold of the lists of laid off staff from these layoffs hoping to hire top talent when they're otherwise not even going to hear they're looking. So I don't know how much this will really change comp levels? Especially with how frequently software people change jobs anyway.
EMM_386 4y ago
> Wondering how the displaced engineers will impact the rest of the job market That dream of making local (San Francisco) pay while living wherever you want will quickly evaporate. I survived as a software engineer through the dot-com crash. This isn't even a crash, this is just seems like a minor correction to "normal" for most of these companies with head-counts through the roof. But SV salaries were abnormal, and that should be taken into account. There are a lot of us, doing a lot of the same stuff, for a lot less pay out there. Why? For all sorts of various reasons. And this is now rapidly taking into account the entire globe.

klohto 4y ago

I have it from a good friend that this is bullshit

deeptote 4y ago
they were literally trying to recruit me last week
- keepquestioning 4y ago
  you may get an offer but not a job...
- eddsh1994 4y ago
  Meta, Amazon, hell even Twitter have reached out to me and my neighbors recently (my friend has an interview at Twitter next week). I believe even during hiring freezes these companies carry on recruitment because they're slow and can wait for the ideal role to appear in the future even if there's nothing available right now. So basically you'll get an offer without a job.
  - lotophage 4y ago
    During freezes there's often exceptions for teams who've lost people, especially for critical roles. i.e. you can't increase count but you can keep it the same.
- raydev 4y ago
  And? Recruiters are usually operating on weeks old info. They never find out when the freezes/cuts are coming until the day of, because any changes would tip off employees and lead to rumors/lower morale and productivity.
- kyawzazaw 4y ago
  I think both can be true at the same time but it is unlikely for the first
- sushid 4y ago

amyamyamy2 4y ago

Do you have any information about the size of the layoff / when it will be? I'm a new grad who started two months ago and is very anxious about this.

GlickWick 4y ago
There likely won’t be one. They have other ways of reducing headcount.

firstfewshells 4y ago

Don't speculate. And what does "stay safe" even mean? Unless you mean stay safe from folks making baseless insinuations.

GlickWick 4y ago

You’d be wrong about that.