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> companies massively over hired developers to work on projects which have actually no value. It's still unclear to me the layoffs are affecting actual enginee

> companies massively over hired developers to work on projects which have actually no value. It's still unclear to me the layoffs are affecting actual engineers, outside of Meta and Twitter. Meta is trying to execute one of the biggest company pivot in tech's history after completely giving up on the metaverse. Industry-wide they account for a huge number of laid-off developers. In the meantime, Twitter's layoffs are minimal (it's always been a small company) but extremely visible due to the company's new owner's very public persona. Elsewhere, it's pretty close to the normal number of layoffs large tech companies do every year. It's a little known fact to outsiders, but tech companies trim underperformers every year from their workforces. The media almost never report on it, except this year they did because Twitter and Meta were in the news cycle. These stats also have "Software Engineers" as a category alongside "QA Testers", "Web Devs" and "Application Engineers" listed as different jobs, so I'm skeptical of how accurate they are.

HeyLaughingBoy 3y ago
> after completely giving up on the metaverse They have? What are they up to now? I guess I haven't been keeping up!
- 908B64B197 3y ago
  AI. [0] Meta is a huge company. Switching to AI and spinning down their VR investments means a large restructuring. [0] https://qz.com/meta-layoffs-2023-jobs-metaverse-ai-1850196575 https://qz.com/meta-layoffs-2023-jobs-metaverse-ai-185019657...
smahs 3y ago
This is surely a gross oversimplification of what's happening. If you see layoffs.fyi, there are a lot of rows with more than 5% fired or where the numbers are in several hundreds to thousands. While some companies are known to regularly use the tactics you mention (and a lot others also do the same from time to time), they don't use mass firing as a means.
- 908B64B197 3y ago
  > layoffs.fyi Website started tracking sometime in 2022. > there are a lot of rows with more than 5% fired or where the numbers are in several hundreds to thousands. These include "Non-Technical staff" which have been the majority of laid off employees. [0] [1] [2] [3] [4] > they don't use mass firing as a means. They do. Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Apple all had yearly layoffs for underperformers, while maintaining growing headcounts. Target was around 5-10%. The difference is these layoffs were not nearly as talked about in the media. [0] https://interviewing.io/blog/2022-layoffs-engineers-vs-other-departments https://interviewing.io/blog/2022-layoffs-engineers-vs-other... [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-01-24/tech-layoffs-are-hitting-diversity-and-inclusion-jobs-hard https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-01-24/tech-layo... [2] https://www.computerworld.com/article/3690309/about-those-tech-layoff-headlines-most-companies-arent-firing-it-workers.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/3690309/about-those-te... [3] https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2023-03-07-do-recent-layoffs-mean-the-tech-talent-crunch-is-over https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2023-03-0... [4] https://techreport.com/news/3493451/microsoft-layoffs-ethics-and-society-team-fired/ https://techreport.com/news/3493451/microsoft-layoffs-ethics...
  - aaomidi 3y ago
    A lot of the people who got laid off from Google were not "under performers".

HeyLaughingBoy 3y ago

> after completely giving up on the metaverse They have? What are they up to now? I guess I haven't been keeping up!

908B64B197 3y ago
AI. [0] Meta is a huge company. Switching to AI and spinning down their VR investments means a large restructuring. [0] https://qz.com/meta-layoffs-2023-jobs-metaverse-ai-1850196575 https://qz.com/meta-layoffs-2023-jobs-metaverse-ai-185019657...

smahs 3y ago

This is surely a gross oversimplification of what's happening. If you see layoffs.fyi, there are a lot of rows with more than 5% fired or where the numbers are in several hundreds to thousands. While some companies are known to regularly use the tactics you mention (and a lot others also do the same from time to time), they don't use mass firing as a means.

908B64B197 3y ago
> layoffs.fyi Website started tracking sometime in 2022. > there are a lot of rows with more than 5% fired or where the numbers are in several hundreds to thousands. These include "Non-Technical staff" which have been the majority of laid off employees. [0] [1] [2] [3] [4] > they don't use mass firing as a means. They do. Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Apple all had yearly layoffs for underperformers, while maintaining growing headcounts. Target was around 5-10%. The difference is these layoffs were not nearly as talked about in the media. [0] https://interviewing.io/blog/2022-layoffs-engineers-vs-other-departments https://interviewing.io/blog/2022-layoffs-engineers-vs-other... [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-01-24/tech-layoffs-are-hitting-diversity-and-inclusion-jobs-hard https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-01-24/tech-layo... [2] https://www.computerworld.com/article/3690309/about-those-tech-layoff-headlines-most-companies-arent-firing-it-workers.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/3690309/about-those-te... [3] https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2023-03-07-do-recent-layoffs-mean-the-tech-talent-crunch-is-over https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2023-03-0... [4] https://techreport.com/news/3493451/microsoft-layoffs-ethics-and-society-team-fired/ https://techreport.com/news/3493451/microsoft-layoffs-ethics...
- aaomidi 3y ago
  A lot of the people who got laid off from Google were not "under performers".