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Tech layoffs exceed 240k so far in 2023, 50% more than 2022
- verdverm 3y agook, many layoff numbers, but what about how many new roles have been filled or the total number of positions. As is, this is just a sensation piece for clicks, you will not learn much by reading this.
- UncleOxidant 3y agoWe're entering the AI era (or less charitably, bubble) where AI/ML skills are in demand. There are plenty of jobs available for people with 5 years experience in AI (there aren't many people with that kind of AI experience). If you're laid off and have no AI experience then it seems not so easy to find work - not impossible, but it takes some time.
- glouwbug 3y agoGoodbye frontend webdev era?
- denimnerd42 3y agoless funding to throw at products so for now..
- TedDoesntTalk 3y agoYes, websites and front ends will now evaporate because we have AI. /s
- askonomm 3y agoI would imagine AI jobs to still be much of a rounding error in our entire industry.
- UncleOxidant 3y agoOf total current jobs, sure. Of total current hiring? Take a look around LinkedIn.
- Der_Einzige 3y agoYou should ask your normie office worker friends about how much they're using ChatGPT in their day-to-day work. It is being used by just about everyone all the time now. Soon, everyone will need to have at least some skills that an "AI Engineer" has.
- askonomm 3y agoYeah, but those office workers are not required to learn ML or AI engineering practises, because those office workers aren't data scientists or programmers. Using AI !== Making AI. Now, to be clear, I'm not saying that AI won't ever become a centrepiece of most companies, I'm simply saying that it isn't at this very moment yet. Half my digital agency clients haven't even heard of Copilot, let alone would they start building AI for their customers.
- Apocryphon 3y agoSame as it always was: > He had a PhD in AI from MIT. Just to contextualize what that means in Silicon Valley, an MIT AI PhD can generally walk alone into an investor meeting wearing a coconut-shell bra, perform a series of improvised birdcalls, and walk out with $1 million. https://www.wired.com/2014/04/no-exit/ https://www.wired.com/2014/04/no-exit/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7643902 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7643902
- hotpotamus 3y agoWow, how cynical and yet Sam Bankman Fried was able to get a couple hundred million dressed in a hoodie while playing League of Legends in his investor meeting. Perhaps not cynical enough.
- FredPret 3y agoTrue for most writing everywhere
- oldpersonintx 3y agoyou have your answer if you read the numerous relevant threads on this site...people are having problems finding work
- verdverm 3y agoUnemployment is quite low, which is contrary to your claim. If this piece is representative of the site, I would not use it for the basis of arguments
- oldpersonintx 3y agoare you honestly telling me devs are taking jobs at Chipotle? because the jobs data is quite clear - most gains are in the service sector
- verdverm 3y agoare you saying the tech industry is still not outgrowing most others? https://www.cnbc.com/2023/07/07/tech-jobs-are-still-the-most-in-demand-says-employment-market-expert.html https://www.cnbc.com/2023/07/07/tech-jobs-are-still-the-most...
- oldpersonintx 3y agothat article says absolutely nothing substantial, literally a puff piece, and is many months old BLS jobs data is available to the public, go read it and you will confirm what I already told you
- verdverm 3y agoIs this one ok with you? https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/home.htm https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/... It also claims that IT job growth outpaces most other industries
- CapstanRoller 3y ago
- jrockway 3y agoMy feeling is that the trend is largely reversing. People are investing in tech because they're excited about AI. I work at a very large company and we are finally hiring again. I have also heard that Meta is asking some people they laid off earlier in the year to come back. So... I am not sure what precipitated this whole layoff trend, but people seem bored with it and are back to wanting to make money instead of save it.
- ac2u 3y ago>I am not sure what precipitated this whole layoff trend Money no longer being almost-free to borrow.
- jrockway 3y agoBut all these companies doing layoffs have like 50 billion dollars in cash sitting in their treasuries. Are they routinely borrowing money at the multi-year timescale? My only thought is that they figure they can make more with low-risk investments than they can hiring employees. That CD will always yield 5%; who knows what hiring another person for the Foo team will yield.
- f6v 3y agoI think it’s a precautionary measure. It’ll be easier to raise more money in future if you’re lean.
- mywittyname 3y agoBut when companies have 50-to-infinity years of runway, does that even matter? If anything, these massive companies will benefit when they can pick up struggling startups with great tech for a 1/1000th of their peak private valuation.
- jrockway 3y agoI totally get why startups would want to be lean during high interest rate times; the next round of funding is never assured, and when money costs 7% a year, it's almost assured to NOT happen. You have to fight for you life under those circumstances. (The startup I work at got bought at a very good price for the acquirer as a result of the wider economic situation. It's nice to have a job though, so I can't complain.) But, Microsoft, Meta, Google, etc. are not raising money on the open market; they have treasuries and revenue. I really think there's a lot of complexity going on here; interest rates going up didn't cut consumer spending by that much, so discretionary purchases didn't decrease, which meant that people were still buying ads and funding these companies. (I guess Microsoft doesn't make any money off of ads, but Google and Meta do.) I am guessing that people didn't expect the discretionary purchases to remain steady; in the past, interest rate increase = unemployment increase = nobody buying anything, but that appears to not be happening this time. Additionally, on the tech side of things, hype about AI is giving investors a serious fear of missing out, so there is definitely a bit of investment happening. So all in all, I think these are very weird times, and it's hard for anyone to plan. You can guess, you can hope, but at the end of the day, we don't really know. We know what caused recessions in the past, but we don't know what the 10 year horizon looks like for "there is a deadly disease, everyone work from home and buy as much stuff from China as possible, oops they are all sick so only the highest bidder gets their thing, and oh btw you don't have to pay off your student loans anymore so bid away!" It made the $ worth a lot less. That's about it.
- dark-star 3y agoSo the AI bubble has finally burst?
- sebzim4500 3y agoI would imagine that less than 1% of these layoffs are AI related.
- sph 3y agoGiven the other comments saying that many tech jobs have been replaced by AI, I would say the AI bubble hasn't reached its final form yet.
- UncleOxidant 3y agoNah, the AI bubble is still inflating. In fact some of this is probably skills shifting- laying off people with no AI experience so you can hire people with AI experience. The problem is that the supply of people with AI experience is still quite limited.
- akomtu 3y agoQuite the opposite. It seems, ChatGPT has convinced DoD that AI is within reach, and truckloads of money will be invested there in the next decade, perhaps at the expense of the rest of the industry.
- dublinben 3y agoThe job market is still very strong right now. Don't be fooled by stories like this trying to convince you otherwise. The unemployment rate is back down to near-historic lows, under 4 percent.[0] Job openings are down slightly from the peak, but are still well higher than the two decades leading up to 2020.[1] [0] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/UNRATE https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/UNRATE [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/JTSJOL https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/JTSJOL
- blastro 3y agoI like this narrative, but don't these charts include all non-farm jobs? From what I've read, seems like tech is being hit harder than other areas. I might be wrong about that and, at any rate, I prefer your approach over over-indexing on anecdotal data, but seems a bit rougher than necessary to depict the full picture.
- ak217 3y agoTech is being hit harder to the extent it depends more on capital financing for employee compensation. Going from 0 to 5.5% fed funds rate has enormous implications for the cost of capital and growth models. Corporate debt financing yield went from 2% to 6% (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/BAMLC0A0CMEY https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/BAMLC0A0CMEY). (Before the pandemic it was 3% for a decade, except for a small blip when the fed tried to raise the rates and the market sneezed.) The hurdle rate went up accordingly. A lot of business models that worked over the past decade are on borrowed time right now. Every company and employee's situation is different and talent is still rewarded, but many pre-revenue companies are facing a very different financial reality and can sustain a much smaller workforce.
- Waterluvian 3y agoDo these datasets discriminate between job levels/types/incomes, or would two new ditch digger jobs count as a net gain over a lost senior sysadmin job?
- oldpersonintx 3y ago
- bosch_mind 3y agoHow do people think jobs in more complex backend, large-scale distributed systems roles will do in the near to distant future?
- ativzzz 3y agoBig boring non-tech business that are slow to adopt new tech are moving a lot of their stuff to the cloud. So if by > complex backend, large-scale distributed systems you mean AWS/cloud then you are gonna be juuuuuuuust fine for a while
- moomoo11 3y agoOne nice thing about tech is that you learn how to think, or least that's how I look at it. Worst case scenario, you're equipped to deal with it and hack your way out. Heck, you might even find your next opportunity is not in tech, but something else. Make it work! Although, I feel like most people I've met in tech recently are not exactly "hacker" types, but just people chasing a check. SWE is one of the easiest, low-effort industries to break into. People like that might have a harder time.
- rootsudo 3y agoEveryone I’ve met lately is the same, not the hacker type, doesn’t enjoy learning why - just bare minimum to get largest reward. I guess it works
- sidcool 3y agoI worry about my future as a programmer/techie. Are the good times over?
- nvarsj 3y agoNope. We still have one of the most privileged jobs around with plenty of demand for our foreseeable life times. Just don’t let yourself become obsolete.
- f6v 3y agoMy limited data says: “for some, for now”.
- sargun 3y ago"Enjoy the party, but stay close to the door." https://twitter.com/bcantrill/status/572952707788505088 https://twitter.com/bcantrill/status/572952707788505088
- UncleOxidant 3y agoYes, unless you have some actual AI experience.
- zymhan 3y agoWe've been asking this question since computers were invented. It'll be okay. If tech could survive the dot-com bubble, it can survive higher interest and inflation.
- 3y ago
- bkraz 3y agoSomewhat misleading headline. The only reason 2023 is higher is that companies didn't want to do layoffs in Nov/Dec and held until Jan. Better to just look at the graph: https://layoffs.fyi/ https://layoffs.fyi/ The trend is definitely down.
- EForEndeavour 3y ago> The only reason 2023 is higher is that companies didn't want to do layoffs in Nov/Dec and held until Jan We're into Q4. Does this imply that the downward trend of the past few months will lead to another January spike?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- mcbrit 3y ago160k=240k in almost all timelines given the experimental method. (taken from a 3rd grade math exam, in a better timeline)
- mcbrit 3y ago160k=240k almost always, truth be told. That's 200k+-40k, or +-20%. If you are representing the difference between 160k and 240k as 50% and not as 20%, then that is a problem.
- black_13 3y ago[dead]
- flashback2199 3y agoDeleted for unappreciated.
- lamroger 3y agoWild
- flashback2199 3y ago?
- workfromspace 3y agohttps://archive.ph/NzTmy https://archive.ph/NzTmy (because original url doesnt work without JS)