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I find it funny that every layoff announcement has a similar comment at the top, as though this were an isolated incident, rather than a fundamental shake up in

I find it funny that every layoff announcement has a similar comment at the top, as though this were an isolated incident, rather than a fundamental shake up in the industry. This isn't even the only layoff article on the front page of HN right now. I think it's fair to say that virtually every company right now has been "a bit over bloated for awhile". Even as someone that foresaw pretty much what we're seeing now roughly a year ago, I still find it shocking to watch the slow unraveling of our industry. My company hasn't had layoffs yet, but it's painfully obvious to everyone that they're coming (but just not obvious enough to create maximum anxiety from the uncertainty). Because of this I've put my feelers out to see what other options are out there and... it's bad.

twblalock 4y ago
Most companies overhired and would have been punished if they didn't. Now they will be punished if they don't shrink. Public companies have to follow the market or their shareholders will slap them down. The real villain is the Federal Reserve, because their policies created a bubble. We should also keep in mind that quite a lot of the people who are being laid off never would have had jobs if it wasn't for the massive hiring spree in the past few years. The industry is not unraveling. It's just reeling from an economic bubble. Despite the layoffs few companies are shrinking back down to the size they were in 2020.
- twelve40 4y ago
  > Most companies overhired how is it possible for most companies to overhire? where did all those hires come from? maybe facebook doubled by poaching non-faang people, but where did the non-faang companies get all these extra hires from? > a lot of the people who are being laid off never would have had jobs since tech layoffs mostly affect eng, pm's, hr and a bit of management, it seems strange that these mostly well-trained people were just idling around without a job until a couple of years ago by tens of thousands.
  - bydlocoder 4y ago
    Obvious answer - unemployed.
    - twelve40 4y ago
      so you go from perpetually unemployed to engineer at Atlassian for a couple of years, then back to perpetually unemployed? ("never would have had jobs" according to the parent) is that typical, for most companies?
      - Jensson 4y ago
        Everyone moved up a pin, and the lowest ranked company got a bootcamp grad. Now everyone moved down a pin, and the bootcamp grad wont get a job. That is roughly how this works, not as clean but the end result isn't far off.
        nivenkos 4y ago
        A lot of the lay-offs were senior technical staff though, at least at my company. Like C++ Staff engineers, etc. It seems more like a realignment to shift those jobs to cheaper subsidiaries like India, Pakistan, Mexico, etc.
  - endtime 4y ago
    A lot of startups probably didn't get founded. And CS enrollment has probably been up (haven't checked).
    - bydlocoder 4y ago
      And a lot of startups that shouldn't exist got financed.
  - twblalock 4y ago
    And yet we know for sure that many companies doubled in size in the past few years. Including really big companies.
- cupachabra 4y ago
  It's a shame that many companies could have benefited from utilizing these talented employees more effectively, rather than overhiring.
bydlocoder 4y ago
It will be a blood bath. Postman "Labs", a company that produces a glorified cURL UI and some incoherent most likely useless tools around it received $433M investment at valuation of $2B and apparently has hundreds of employees. Current state of tech is not sustainable.
- distrill 4y ago
  wow. i usually push back against the mindless "that's too many engineers what are they all doing XDDD" meme. but this is actually insane, i can't believe there's more than a single person working on postman.
  - bydlocoder 4y ago
    They do have other tools with the word API in them but I kinda doubt their usefulness because of gems like "it will move you left on Gartner quadrant" all over Postman "Labs" website. Another reference point - WhatsApp had around 50 engineers when it was sold to Facebook.
- onion2k 4y ago
  As always you have to remember that the public UI of a SaaS business is rarely telling the whole story about why the headcount is what it is, and without significantly deeper knowledge of everything the business is doing, including future products in development, it's really hard to say if there are too many people or not. Most engineers are not in a business to support the day to day running of an app. They're there to build new things to provide growth and support change. This is why you can do an Elon and fire 75% of the staff without something collapsing immediately. That strategy even works in the long term if you're happy to scale back future ambitions and focus on a single app. It wouldn't work for most companies that are constantly fighting for market share though.
  - bydlocoder 4y ago
    That's why I mentioned "incoherent and probably useless other tools". Apparently, they launched some sort of no-code tool for stringing APIs together but still not ready with their GraphQL client. For reference, another company that sells developer tools, JetBrains, has around 2000 employees.

twblalock 4y ago

Most companies overhired and would have been punished if they didn't. Now they will be punished if they don't shrink. Public companies have to follow the market or their shareholders will slap them down. The real villain is the Federal Reserve, because their policies created a bubble. We should also keep in mind that quite a lot of the people who are being laid off never would have had jobs if it wasn't for the massive hiring spree in the past few years. The industry is not unraveling. It's just reeling from an economic bubble. Despite the layoffs few companies are shrinking back down to the size they were in 2020.

twelve40 4y ago
> Most companies overhired how is it possible for most companies to overhire? where did all those hires come from? maybe facebook doubled by poaching non-faang people, but where did the non-faang companies get all these extra hires from? > a lot of the people who are being laid off never would have had jobs since tech layoffs mostly affect eng, pm's, hr and a bit of management, it seems strange that these mostly well-trained people were just idling around without a job until a couple of years ago by tens of thousands.
- bydlocoder 4y ago
  Obvious answer - unemployed.
  - twelve40 4y ago
    so you go from perpetually unemployed to engineer at Atlassian for a couple of years, then back to perpetually unemployed? ("never would have had jobs" according to the parent) is that typical, for most companies?
    - Jensson 4y ago
      Everyone moved up a pin, and the lowest ranked company got a bootcamp grad. Now everyone moved down a pin, and the bootcamp grad wont get a job. That is roughly how this works, not as clean but the end result isn't far off.
      - nivenkos 4y ago
        A lot of the lay-offs were senior technical staff though, at least at my company. Like C++ Staff engineers, etc. It seems more like a realignment to shift those jobs to cheaper subsidiaries like India, Pakistan, Mexico, etc.
- endtime 4y ago
  A lot of startups probably didn't get founded. And CS enrollment has probably been up (haven't checked).
  - bydlocoder 4y ago
    And a lot of startups that shouldn't exist got financed.
- twblalock 4y ago
  And yet we know for sure that many companies doubled in size in the past few years. Including really big companies.
cupachabra 4y ago
It's a shame that many companies could have benefited from utilizing these talented employees more effectively, rather than overhiring.

bydlocoder 4y ago

It will be a blood bath. Postman "Labs", a company that produces a glorified cURL UI and some incoherent most likely useless tools around it received $433M investment at valuation of $2B and apparently has hundreds of employees. Current state of tech is not sustainable.

distrill 4y ago
wow. i usually push back against the mindless "that's too many engineers what are they all doing XDDD" meme. but this is actually insane, i can't believe there's more than a single person working on postman.
- bydlocoder 4y ago
  They do have other tools with the word API in them but I kinda doubt their usefulness because of gems like "it will move you left on Gartner quadrant" all over Postman "Labs" website. Another reference point - WhatsApp had around 50 engineers when it was sold to Facebook.
onion2k 4y ago
As always you have to remember that the public UI of a SaaS business is rarely telling the whole story about why the headcount is what it is, and without significantly deeper knowledge of everything the business is doing, including future products in development, it's really hard to say if there are too many people or not. Most engineers are not in a business to support the day to day running of an app. They're there to build new things to provide growth and support change. This is why you can do an Elon and fire 75% of the staff without something collapsing immediately. That strategy even works in the long term if you're happy to scale back future ambitions and focus on a single app. It wouldn't work for most companies that are constantly fighting for market share though.
- bydlocoder 4y ago
  That's why I mentioned "incoherent and probably useless other tools". Apparently, they launched some sort of no-code tool for stringing APIs together but still not ready with their GraphQL client. For reference, another company that sells developer tools, JetBrains, has around 2000 employees.