3 ms·

> This whole trend of optimising everything to the max without caring for people is going to create an employee base that is completely disillusioned about thei

by timr 4y ago

> This whole trend of optimising everything to the max without caring for people is going to create an employee base that is completely disillusioned about their role or prospects or what's their best strategy for life. While I get where you're coming from, it's a pretty big leap to go from what's happening now to "optimizing everything to the max". Twilio tripled in size since the pandemic, and wasn't/isn't profitable. The same arguments can be applied to most large tech companies. Things got insane, and lean times were inevitable. Given your 25+ years in the industry, you must realize that a huge number of younger engineers have never seen anything other than boom years.

fzeroracer 4y ago
What are you referring to? We've gone through multiple cold cycles already. 2012 was a year of large layoffs and tough hiring, so was 2016/2017 and now 2022 for seemingly arbitrary reasons. Some engineers may have gone through these cycles without issue, but everyone was acutely aware of the layoffs when they were occurring and if you graduated during those times it was especially hard to find a job until the job market resumed.
- timr 4y ago
  > 2012 was a year of large layoffs and tough hiring, so was 2016/2017 and now 2022 for seemingly arbitrary reasons. Everything is relative, I suppose, but those are the sorts of things a person might say if they've never actually seen a downturn. When I say "downturn", I mean: 2001. 2008. Compared to that, 2012 was boom times. I was running a startup then, and hiring was a brutal competition. Maybe not compared to 2020, but again...that's not normal. In 2008 we were hiring Ivy-league grads into hourly customer support roles. Circa 2000, programmers with decades of experience were going on unemployment.
  - fzeroracer 4y ago
    I mean, 2001 and 2008 are all 'boom times' compared to the great depression and other periods of severe economic downturns if we want to be relative. I'm not sure that really matters though to a new grad that took 6+ months to find a job during one of the period of lean times I mentioned in my prior post however. It can always be worse, but that doesn't mean it's not bad.
    - timr 4y ago
      The point is, I lived through the times you're citing as "a time of large layoffs". I was hiring in at least one of them (actually, all of them, in different contexts). It was very hard to find engineers. By no even semi-objective measurement were 2012, 2016 and 2017 lean times for the industry. Virtually every tech company was hiring like crazy. Maybe they were bad for someone, but that's always true. I'm sure a brand-new coding school grad has a hard time in most markets, for example.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

by timr 4y ago

fzeroracer 4y ago

What are you referring to? We've gone through multiple cold cycles already. 2012 was a year of large layoffs and tough hiring, so was 2016/2017 and now 2022 for seemingly arbitrary reasons. Some engineers may have gone through these cycles without issue, but everyone was acutely aware of the layoffs when they were occurring and if you graduated during those times it was especially hard to find a job until the job market resumed.

timr 4y ago
> 2012 was a year of large layoffs and tough hiring, so was 2016/2017 and now 2022 for seemingly arbitrary reasons. Everything is relative, I suppose, but those are the sorts of things a person might say if they've never actually seen a downturn. When I say "downturn", I mean: 2001. 2008. Compared to that, 2012 was boom times. I was running a startup then, and hiring was a brutal competition. Maybe not compared to 2020, but again...that's not normal. In 2008 we were hiring Ivy-league grads into hourly customer support roles. Circa 2000, programmers with decades of experience were going on unemployment.
- fzeroracer 4y ago
  I mean, 2001 and 2008 are all 'boom times' compared to the great depression and other periods of severe economic downturns if we want to be relative. I'm not sure that really matters though to a new grad that took 6+ months to find a job during one of the period of lean times I mentioned in my prior post however. It can always be worse, but that doesn't mean it's not bad.
  - timr 4y ago
    The point is, I lived through the times you're citing as "a time of large layoffs". I was hiring in at least one of them (actually, all of them, in different contexts). It was very hard to find engineers. By no even semi-objective measurement were 2012, 2016 and 2017 lean times for the industry. Virtually every tech company was hiring like crazy. Maybe they were bad for someone, but that's always true. I'm sure a brand-new coding school grad has a hard time in most markets, for example.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]