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> OpenAI's careers website listed 60 open roles on Tuesday afternoon, for instance. Yeah, that's one company -- whose product is contributing to the layoffs. N

> OpenAI's careers website listed 60 open roles on Tuesday afternoon, for instance. Yeah, that's one company -- whose product is contributing to the layoffs. Not to mention, 60 engineers is a rounding error compared to the layoffs. > Meta shed 25% of its workforce in multiple rounds of cuts that ended in May. Now, dozens of those workers have been rehired, mostly since June, Insider reported recently. "Dozens" is a tiny fraction of that 25%. > Amazon laid off 25,000 employees in January. By February, AWS HR VP Ian Wilson was telling staff that the company was looking for ways to rehire some of the laid off workers. So they were "looking for ways to rehire" 6 months ago, and that's it? Come on. It's impossible to take this as a sign of the job market coming back. Anyway, it's really telling that these tiny little things are what the article presents as signs of some kind of tech job market recovery. FWIW, depressing as it is, my money is on the tech job market as we know it being a ZIRP. A huge chunk of the tech sector is dead in the water without infusions of VC cash, as we're now seeing, and I don't think things can go back to the way they were without interest rates dropping to near-zero again (and that seems impossible in the near future).

epicureanideal 3y ago
> Anyway, it's really telling that these tiny little things are what the article presents as signs of some kind of tech job market recovery. FWIW, depressing as it is, my money is on the tech job market as we know it being a ZIRP. A huge chunk of the tech sector is dead in the water without infusions of VC cash, as we're now seeing, and I don't think things can go back to the way they were without interest rates dropping to near-zero again (and that seems impossible in the near future). If antitrust were enforced against Google, Facebook, etc., and the companies split into 3-4 companies, there might be enough jobs created by that lack of consolidation to soak up all the extra labor. The profits for the shareholders might go down a little, but there could still be many profitable companies. It might also be good for the ecosystem as a whole because 3-4 Facebooks would likely purchase common services from a new, 5th company that sells certain services all "Facebooks" use, which could then ALSO be used by a startup trying to compete with Facebook.
- fidotron 3y ago
  If the last few years have taught us anything it's that if Google, FB etc. were forced to return money to shareholders instead of spending it on R&D those shareholders would be even more lost as to what to spend the money on which would almost certainly not be good for tech employees. People are desperate for good things to invest in, it's just there aren't a whole load of things that actually work as contrary to idealist expectations the web seems impossible to make money on unless you are a monopoly.
  - epicureanideal 3y ago
    > People are desperate for good things to invest in, it's just there aren't a whole load of things that actually work as contrary to idealist expectations the web seems impossible to make money on unless you are a monopoly. Yeah, unfortunately the really obvious things to invest in are made difficult to do by regulations. For example, building a bunch of housing would be a great way to deploy capital, but the red tape makes it extremely difficult and unprofitable. And if there were more housing, and cheaper rents and mortgages, then the middle and working classes would have more money to spend, which would mean they could spend on other things besides housing, causing other businesses to be created...
fullshark 3y ago
Contributing to the layoffs? They are the ones who generated the next/current hype cycle that's ending the layoffs.
sokoloff 3y ago
I agree with all your points except for ZIRP being strictly needed for tech to recover. I think there's such enormous leverage from the application of tech to business problems that we haven't seen anything like "peak tech".
- disgruntledphd2 3y ago
  I agree with both of you. Lots of the funded companies of the last decade only got to where they are because of ZIRP, but there are definitely huge opportunities for more profitable companies to be built with current tech, even with positive interest rates.
- Michelangelo11 3y ago
  I hope so, but I can't really think of any myself, and the fact that such applications haven't been realized despite the massive tech investment in the last years makes me skeptical they exist. Do you maybe have some examples?
  - sokoloff 3y ago
    I think there are many boring industries that are benefiting from the use of technology to improve their operations. We had the misfortune of being rear-ended a month ago. No injuries, but three damaged cars. The entire claims handling process had significant technology components, including a pretty usable website, a mobile application that the adjuster was using, text messaging for communications, etc. Electronic health records. Electronic procurement. Increased technology applied to logistics (every UPS, Fedex, and Amazon driver has some kind of mobile device to assist them and assist in communicating with shippers and recipients). My bank has a solid mobile app, as do my investment brokers and 401K providers. Across all of those boring industries, there are hundreds of thousands of, maybe a million, tech/software jobs with an easy prospect to more than double in the coming decade.

epicureanideal 3y ago

> Anyway, it's really telling that these tiny little things are what the article presents as signs of some kind of tech job market recovery. FWIW, depressing as it is, my money is on the tech job market as we know it being a ZIRP. A huge chunk of the tech sector is dead in the water without infusions of VC cash, as we're now seeing, and I don't think things can go back to the way they were without interest rates dropping to near-zero again (and that seems impossible in the near future). If antitrust were enforced against Google, Facebook, etc., and the companies split into 3-4 companies, there might be enough jobs created by that lack of consolidation to soak up all the extra labor. The profits for the shareholders might go down a little, but there could still be many profitable companies. It might also be good for the ecosystem as a whole because 3-4 Facebooks would likely purchase common services from a new, 5th company that sells certain services all "Facebooks" use, which could then ALSO be used by a startup trying to compete with Facebook.

fidotron 3y ago
If the last few years have taught us anything it's that if Google, FB etc. were forced to return money to shareholders instead of spending it on R&D those shareholders would be even more lost as to what to spend the money on which would almost certainly not be good for tech employees. People are desperate for good things to invest in, it's just there aren't a whole load of things that actually work as contrary to idealist expectations the web seems impossible to make money on unless you are a monopoly.
- epicureanideal 3y ago
  > People are desperate for good things to invest in, it's just there aren't a whole load of things that actually work as contrary to idealist expectations the web seems impossible to make money on unless you are a monopoly. Yeah, unfortunately the really obvious things to invest in are made difficult to do by regulations. For example, building a bunch of housing would be a great way to deploy capital, but the red tape makes it extremely difficult and unprofitable. And if there were more housing, and cheaper rents and mortgages, then the middle and working classes would have more money to spend, which would mean they could spend on other things besides housing, causing other businesses to be created...

fullshark 3y ago

Contributing to the layoffs? They are the ones who generated the next/current hype cycle that's ending the layoffs.

sokoloff 3y ago

I agree with all your points except for ZIRP being strictly needed for tech to recover. I think there's such enormous leverage from the application of tech to business problems that we haven't seen anything like "peak tech".

disgruntledphd2 3y ago
I agree with both of you. Lots of the funded companies of the last decade only got to where they are because of ZIRP, but there are definitely huge opportunities for more profitable companies to be built with current tech, even with positive interest rates.
Michelangelo11 3y ago
I hope so, but I can't really think of any myself, and the fact that such applications haven't been realized despite the massive tech investment in the last years makes me skeptical they exist. Do you maybe have some examples?
- sokoloff 3y ago
  I think there are many boring industries that are benefiting from the use of technology to improve their operations. We had the misfortune of being rear-ended a month ago. No injuries, but three damaged cars. The entire claims handling process had significant technology components, including a pretty usable website, a mobile application that the adjuster was using, text messaging for communications, etc. Electronic health records. Electronic procurement. Increased technology applied to logistics (every UPS, Fedex, and Amazon driver has some kind of mobile device to assist them and assist in communicating with shippers and recipients). My bank has a solid mobile app, as do my investment brokers and 401K providers. Across all of those boring industries, there are hundreds of thousands of, maybe a million, tech/software jobs with an easy prospect to more than double in the coming decade.