14 ms·
Tech giants Meta, Amazon lay off more workers as cuts continue
- jmann99999 3y agohttps://web.archive.org/web/20231007001402/https://www.sfchronicle.com/tech/article/tech-giants-meta-amazon-lay-workers-cuts-continue-18406560.php https://web.archive.org/web/20231007001402/https://www.sfchr...
- medellin 3y agoCan the market absorb this? If feels like it’s already saturated plus we have the steady stream of new grads. I do not envy anyone who has to look for a job right now
- hijinks 3y agodepends.. i think it feels saturated if you are a poor performer. I've always said when times were good you had people in tech that shouldn't be in tech but they are able to some sort of bare min task, usually not good but good enough to get the job done. I think its hard on them but if you are somewhat good at your job, finding a new job in this market isn't hard
- tkzed49 3y agoare you trying to get hired right now? How long have you been in the industry? I have a feeling that this sentiment is not coming from people who have been laid off. I know people that have left voluntarily who are not having an easy time either.
- greesil 3y agoWhat's it like these days?
- tkzed49 3y agoFor me, it's been pretty rough. I have about 3 YOE at a very grown-up startup, looking for mid level positions. My specialty is frontend (plus some more niche tech, and of course full stack competency). I've been very slowly finding my way into interview loops, mostly through LinkedIn and occasionally HN. I've been completing them at a very high rate, and getting passed up for people with more experience, or at least that's what I've heard when I've actually gotten feedback. The other early-career people I know are having trouble as well.
- hijinks 3y agodidn't get laid off but got a job 2 weeks after i started to look
- tkzed49 3y agovery impressive, interviews usually take me longer than that.
- epicureanideal 3y ago> depends.. i think it feels saturated if you are a poor performer. There's a lot of luck involved in getting hired right now, even for high performers. There are a lot of other high performers competing for the same jobs. I know some people who were laid off and found jobs in a few weeks, several others who were on the market for many months, and there was not a significant skill-based correlation.
- candiodari 3y agoProblem with getting rehired in a few weeks (technically -2 weeks) is that you may have chosen, for comp reasons, to go into consultancy. Which means temporary contracts ...
- hn_throwaway_99 3y agoI think it really depends on the role. From a very non-scientific review of what I see on LinkedIn from former colleagues/friends that have now been unemployed for at least 3 months or more: 1. Software engineers and others with specific technical skills are still in high demand. During the boom years, many companies simply couldn't afford the tech talent they wanted/needed because there was so much competition. However, I think it's safe to say some folks who got laid off from FAANGs will literally never make those total comp numbers again. 2. The people I see really struggling are more in the "tech adjacent" roles: think HR, recruiting, some product managers, lots of non-tech marketing folks like social media managers, roles like "agile coaches", etc. In some cases I've seen people completely leave tech because they just couldn't find work. 3. Lots of demand for good salespeople. Good salespeople are kind of always in demand, though.
- seattle_spring 3y agoI'd also assume a non-zero amount of those folks are intentionally taking employment breaks. I took almost a year off, but to the average stranger it may have looked like I was unemployed and couldn't find a job.
- hdjjhhvvhga 3y agoYeah, I tend to take 3 months between jobs, it's great for your mental and physical health. And I'm honestly said people in other fields don't have this opportunity.
- psunavy03 3y agoWay to put "agile coach" in sneer quotes, when the whole purpose of that whole career path is to help make sure devs aren't wasting their time on bullshit from incompetent business folks, or being burned out, or re-inventing the wheel AGAIN, which in turn earns the shareholders more money and decreases turnover via not burning people out. But then again, I guess we're back to "I'm an engineer, all these non-technical people are non-value-add because I can engineer everything." Even when some of them are, actually, technical themselves and just chose another path to use their skills.
- lovich 3y agoI don’t know how the ex faang employees are taking this but we’re picking up people at basically a 10-20% higher talent rate than before the faang layoffs and there seems to be a large hunger for this. The way it plays out between our engineering management and hr is that we are hiring people who would have been evaluated at the top end of whatever level N we filtered on at the bottom of the N+1 level. We obviously aren’t getting the people who did things like invent completely new technologies but we’re are grabbing a ton of people for seats we needed filled anyway, at a higher skill level than expected
- sheepscreek 3y agoSo, are you seeing a larger pool of say, L5s that are applying for L4 jobs? Or does your company have generic openings, and you’re saying that people are now more comfortable with offers a lower level than they’d qualify for? (which puts them at the top of level N vs bottom of N+1). In either case, it sounds very much like an employers market right now. The only exceptions would likely be individuals in high demand roles (like AI/ML).
- tayo42 3y agoWhat company? Finding places with decent openings is brutal. You can Add Gmail to my username if you prefer and don't mind sharing.
- mrweasel 3y agoThe US job market is weird when you view it from the outside. Other countries are in the situation where they are missing pretty much every skill you can think of. Denmark probably have thousands of IT jobs available and pretty much zero people to fill them. Given how little the tech giants seems to suffer from their layoffs, there's a pretty good chance that they where massively over-hiring for years, actively hurting other companies and inflating salaries in some areas of the country. If I was an investor in Meta or Amazon, I'd start question if the company is actually well managed, when they apparently have had hundreds, if not thousands of people on payroll that isn't actually required to run the business.
- medellin 3y agoThe over-hiring was at least somewhat acknowledged tactic big tech companies use to starve future potential competitors. If all the good talent is taken even for only 5 years you can extend the time that you have an advantage without having to innovate
- mtnGoat 3y agoI expect meta will continue with layoffs. Threads appears to be a flop, their metaverse and AR initiatives don’t seem to be gaining much stream either.
- nathanaldensr 3y agoVictims of the end of ZIRP, to be sure. Every idea seems like a good one when money is free.
- ninth_ant 3y agoDo you have data to support Threads being a flop?
- johntiger1 3y agohttps://petapixel.com/2023/07/24/threads-daily-active-users-fall-by-staggering-70/ https://petapixel.com/2023/07/24/threads-daily-active-users-...
- mullingitover 3y agoI wouldn't write off Threads just yet. Twitter management is racing to convert the site into a smoking crater, and Threads has become the default respawn point for most people who eject. Most of us would love to have a flop that gets 100M users in just over 100 hours. This is more a case of Meta and AMZN not being able to produce growth through new products anymore. It's hard doing that when you're multi-hundred billion dollar businesses. They're trying to grow profits by squeezing their margins now, and it's too expensive to park talent to prevent it from going to competitors.
- jessriedel 3y ago> Most of us would love to have a flop that gets 100M users in just over 100 hours. Vast majority of those users have stopped using the service. Activity is down at least 85%. https://techcrunch.com/2023/08/31/threads-web-launch-did-little-to-bring-in-more-users-new-data-suggests/ https://techcrunch.com/2023/08/31/threads-web-launch-did-lit... https://www.similarweb.com/blog/insights/social-media-news/threads-first-month/ https://www.similarweb.com/blog/insights/social-media-news/t...
- lsedgwick 3y agoI'm truly sympathetic towards the people affected, especially visa holders. But speaking solely of the macro effects, I have to say, I'm happy this day, stretching from last year to now, has come. We as a community were a very annoying group of people when we were so damn rich and when we thought we were essentially untouchable. And count me in that as well! But a little awareness of layoffs here and (for some people) a little fear of ChatGPT replacement there... well that's a grounding experience. Not to mention the number of people who had sunk into so much ennui and depression over how boring and easy it was. Now a lot of us are jobless and can feel some fire in our bellies again, a time to fight or die.
- BizarreByte 3y ago> Now a lot of us are jobless and can feel some fire in our bellies again, a time to fight or die I don't feel any confidence in my job lasting anymore. If I lose it I'm simply going to choose die, because I don't have any fight in me anymore. My job is the only thing that makes me worth anything as a human, if I lose it I am nothing.
- devoutsalsa 3y agoDon’t know your situation, but you can break out of that. I did. First you have to decide you don’t want to think that way. No easy answer, but increasing my income and lowering my cost of living went a long way to giving myself more resources to figure it out. Hope you find a path worth walking to you. Feel free to email me if you want my story.
- stoniejohnson 3y agoDo me a favor and read over your own comment again. It's immediately evident that it is a false statement. Perhaps you are sad and lonely. That could very well be the case. A lot of people are in the same boat, I know I am. Perhaps you have other issues entirely. But that doesn't mean that your job is the only thing that makes you "worth anything as a human". Your worth as a person is given to you when you were born. Not by the state. Not by your community. But by the very fact that you are a living, conscious thing. Life might be hard, but that doesn't mean without your job you are nothing.
- latchkey 3y agoWhat is often left out from these layoffs, but actually kind of side-mentioned in this article, is that consulting firms are also often cut out as well. Since these can be small boutique firms, those subsequent layoffs don't make the headlines.
- fakedang 3y agoI wouldn't be surprised if the entire consulting industry gets affected too, regardless of company size. One of my friends who works at MBB told me that because of startups withering off and tech consulting gigs drying up (except for some one-off headcount reduction projects like these), there has been a significant reduction in MBB hiring too. For example people hired in 2022 were asked to join in the 2023 cycle for instance.
- yieldcrv 3y agoI think whats missing here is that layoffs freezes etc are basically weekly lifecycles like, there is no article about freezes being lifted or hiring restarted but reality is closer to ebbs and flows that are quite quick
- aaomidi 3y agoThese large companies are effectively running on momentum. Layoffs are just going to slow them down faster.
- alexnewman 3y agoMy heart goes out to these people. Getting fired sucks and I am happy to look at any resumes for people who don’t live in America, Canada , China , Russia or any country where sanctions are common. Being fired from Cloudera was the best thing that ever happened to my career. The company was going downhill but I would have never left because I was there so early and always viewed from the pov of someone surrounded by someone smarter than oneself. My guess is these companies have no way of measuring overall output or productivity that doesn’t suffer from all sorts of stupid bias. Many of these people will do way better if they get another job quick.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- SirMaster 3y agoHave any of these companies even come close to laying off as many employees as they hired since Covid started?
- somsak2 3y agoAre you saying that these companies should have zero net head-count growth in 3.5 years, during which their quarterly earnings grown 50-100%? https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/GOOG/alphabet/net-income https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/GOOG/alphabet/net-...
- iwonthecase 3y agoDoom and gloom article leading to doom and gloom HN discussion, just digging a bit more into it: The Meta layoffs [1] are hitting a 600 person department. The Amazon (Twitch) layoffs [2] are "significantly smaller than the March round, which included more than 400 people." Sucks for the people being let go, especially in this weird job market, but it doesn't yet seem like it's a repeat of those massive layoffs last winter. I also wish layoffs.fyi or similar had more historical data, just to compare this to, but even in good times small layoffs do happen. [1] https://www.reuters.com/technology/meta-lay-off-employees-metaverse-silicon-unit-wednesday-2023-10-03/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/meta-lay-off-employees-me... [2] https://www.gamesindustry.biz/twitch-makes-another-round-of-layoffs https://www.gamesindustry.biz/twitch-makes-another-round-of-...
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 3y agoMeanwhile, back in the real world... https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/us-job-growth-beats-expectations-september-unemployment-rate-unchanged-38-2023-10-06/ https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/us-job-growth-beats-expec...
- kyleee 3y agoAre those all tech jobs?
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 3y agoNo, hopefully they are real jobs.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 3y agoThis sounds like it's part of the already announced layoff round, not a new round, at Meta? > Meta declined to comment, but CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in March that completing the company’s roughly 21,000 job reductions “may take through the end of the year,” with some teams not affected for months “in a small number of cases.”
- zihotki 3y agoWhat surprises me is that Meta is currently actively hiring in UK. Does that mean they're just optimizing for the cheap labour? Edit: example of newly open position https://www.metacareers.com/jobs/298738792749406/ https://www.metacareers.com/jobs/298738792749406/