18 ms·

My firm made billions last year too and just laid off hundreds of engineers (a decent %) Some of the best engineers, those that I respected the most, went. Peo

• vincnetas 3y ago
  And you know what happens with the money that you take, save and invest? They go in to public companies, they hire MBA's, and they try to improve profitability of company by letting engineers go. Your money have come a full cycle :)
  • nly 3y ago
    TINA when CPI inflation (in the UK) is has been 18% in just 2 years.
    • andsoitis 3y ago
      > TINA when CPI inflation (in the UK) is has been 18% in just 2 years. The UK inflation rate was 3.9 percent in November 2023, down from 4.6 percent in the previous month. Between September 2022 and March 2023, the UK experienced seven months of double-digit inflation which peaked at 11.1 percent in October 2022. https://www.statista.com/statistics/306648/inflation-rate-consumer-price-index-cpi-united-kingdom-uk/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/306648/inflation-rate-co...
      • sokoloff 3y ago
        I can't tell from the context of your comment whether you believe the monthly inflation figures are inflation that happened in that month (the "one month's worth of inflation was X%") or if those are annualized figures (the "one month's measure of an annualized rate of inflation"). If you are of the belief that the monthly inflation figures "stack", you are saying inflation is much higher than the 18% in 2 years that GP reported. If you are not of that belief, then the figures you cite are fairly consistent with the 2 year rise in prices being in the +18% neighborhood.
      • nly 3y ago
        UK CPIH index value (includes cost of housing) Nov 2021 - 114.1 Nov 2023 (latest value) - 130.0 So, 14%. 18% slightly out of date figure. Cash in the bank, even at 5% rates, hasn't kept up.
        • md_ 3y ago
          Cash in the bank normally doesn't keep up. If it does, the orthodox view is that you risk a deflationary spiral. Central banks want to incentivize investments.
          • nly 3y ago
            It's not what they want. It's the mechanics of their business. They borrow short at base rates and lend long at a margin
          • lotsofpulp 3y ago
            Owning shares in the entities for which money for goods and services pass through is the way to keep up with inflation. If I buy things from Costco/Apple/Toyota/Novartis/etc, then they increase prices, then their share prices go up accordingly. Anything else will fall short.
          • ptero 3y ago
            This is a phenomenon of the last two decades. Before the fed started cutting rates after 9/11 (to support the country, the financial markets, the housing markets, etc.) both money market and savings accounts (you had to choose a good bank) usually gave positive inflation adjusted return.
    • bluescrn 3y ago
      And food prices feel like they're up 50% over the same period, especially when you start noticing the shrinkflation. £6 for a pint of beer (outside of London) is 'the new normal'.
    • underdeserver 3y ago
      TINA stands for There Is No Alternative? That's a new one for me.
  • TaylorAlexander 3y ago
    It’s okay, if they improve profitability enough at places like Boeing our investments will be the least of our worries!
  • goodpoint 3y ago
    > Your money have come a full cycle :) Until the huge bubble around tech companies explodes.
    • abirch 3y ago
      Tech (Meta, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, and Alphabet) is pretty profitable with reasonable P/Es.
      • oblio 3y ago
        Reasonable by 2024 standards or by 1990 standards? I'm fairly sure that the P/Es of today would have been considered overvalued a few decades ago, when profits actually meant something, dividends were handed out, etc.
        • meltyness 3y ago
          Amazon is priced for massive relentless growth. Apple, Microsoft, Meta priced for modest growth.
          • oblio 3y ago
            > Apple [...] priced for modest growth. Do we live in the same metaverse? AAPL priced for modest growth? The $3tn company???
            • abirch 3y ago
              Apple's PE is 30. Seems like modest growth, is implied.
        • deleted 3y ago
          [deleted]
        • lotsofpulp 3y ago
          Share prices increase if the supply and demand curves for the shares move accordingly. Share buybacks decrease supply of shares relative to demand, so share prices increase. Share buybacks are likelier to happen the more profitable a business is. A higher share price at time t+1 than time t means the shareholder can earn a profit if they buy a share and then sell later. Ergo, profits mean something. Edit: as a reply to the comment below this, please take a moment to look around and identify anything providing you utility that was the product of a publicly traded company.
• keepamovin 3y ago
  I don’t think you can generalize from one manager or even a team of management to all managers in every company. But still your point about the absurd uncertainty of big company roles, even under glowing performance gauntlets as you so aptly say is well taken. you highlight a paradox between the values the company espouses, and the ones they actually keep. In where it appears that, no loyalty is returned to the employee from the company in which the employee invested their loyalty so heavily. Indeed, folks may quibble with this characterization, or even strongly disagree, but when cuts are made like this, even when valuable people could afford to be kept, that’s what it really comes down to. Poor Google. The pain! What have they done to deserve this, oh heavens?
  • nly 3y ago
    Wait until your manager is laid off and you're talking to them afterward. This has happened to me twice in my career and both times its like you're talking to a whole different person. In my cynical opinion, being that different person is the number 1 trait companies look for when selecting managers
    • ngrilly 3y ago
      How different were they (your managers) before and after being laid off?
      • bomewish 3y ago
        +1 super curious
      • pi-e-sigma 3y ago
        Being an asshole while in charge and then back to nice, empathic person once he doesn't have any power over other people any more
        • ngrilly 3y ago
          Sounds like a very bad manager.
• rrr_oh_man 3y ago
  Management is like a guy who wants to get laid.
  • tomcam 3y ago
    So, all guys
• cqqxo4zV46cp 3y ago
  This is kind of silly. You probably chose to work at a company that “made billions”. You probably sought some perks related to doing so, be it remuneration, prestige, whatever. This is in part a game you choose to play, and the company that’s making billions is acting like a company that makes billions. You may in the future choose to make a different trade-off and work elsewhere? And I don’t mean some grow-or-die VC-backed startup.
  • nly 3y ago
    I've worked across the spectrum from 8 people companies to 20,000 employee multi-nationals. From companies 30 years old to startups. It doesn't make a difference. You likely won't see redundancy coming. Chances are you'll be dismissed out of the blue one random day.
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    • sumtechguy 3y ago
      Similar to me. The bigger the org the less likely you are to see it. My first one I see it in hindsight at a small company. They actually asked how many pens and pencils I had in my desk.
  • CMCDragonkai 3y ago
    I have a hard time believing faang employees won't just drop the company they are working for if they are offered a 15 percent payrise from a competing company. Employees don't have to be loyal to their employers, why do employers have to be loyal to employees?
    • kridsdale1 3y ago
      I’ve only jumped for 50%> boosts within FAANG.
• medo-bear 3y ago
  Hopefully cyberpunk will get an inflow out of this situation. Don't ever trust corporations, even if they promise not to be evil, Lol
  • prox 3y ago
    Cyberpunk is hypercapitalism with less ethics and even more survival of the fittest, plus cybernetics… and apart from the cybernetics part is actually not that far from some societies already. Social resilience and social welfare have been vilified enough that I see just enough blanket downvotes in some social fora, as if its an icky subject or an allergy. Those who are at the top benefit from it, as long as as they have enough lackeys to do their bidding.
    • medo-bear 3y ago
      To me cyberpunk is something entirely different. To me it just means going back to "the garage", inventing cool shit, not worrying about making +200K per year while being your bosses toy, and sticking it to The Man
• unsupp0rted 3y ago
  I find it shocking that this is news to anybody, or that this has ever (in the last n generations) not been the case. Your advice is sound: exchange your expertise for money, invest the money, leave.
  • pknomad 3y ago
    The information is not new but then there's actually internalizing that information and changing your views.
  • TheOtherHobbes 3y ago
    Quite a few BigCos had a genuine job-for-life culture until the 70s recessions hit. A few managed to keep it going until the 80s. The big cultural change happened in the early 80s as MBA culture became the norm, with a shift towards zero sum neoliberal extremism and the uncoupling of pay from productivity.
    • _heimdall 3y ago
      We can thank Milton Friedman and Jack Welsh for much of that shift. Friedman popularized an idea that shareholders should be prioritized above all else and Jack Welsh implemented it at GE, showing just how much profit can be made when you care only about the money/stock.
• jillesvangurp 3y ago
  Better put, the relationship you have with your employer is a business relation ship. It's not personal. They are not your friends, nor your enemies. It's simply a convenient arrangement between the two of you for as long as that lasts. And it might become convenient for either side to change that arrangement at any point. The more you earn, the higher the risk that at some point somebody decides that they want to spend less / smarter. So, your risk increases with your salary. That's fine because it enables you to mitigate such a scenario by having savings. I've been part of a big layoff round once. It wasn't personal. That was just my employer rounding up a large group of people to cut some meaningful chunk out of their salary expenses. It wasn't the last round either. The company, Nokia, ultimately got out of the phone and map business (I was in the maps unit). The final head count reduction was in the tens of thousands. A lot of those have since had successful careers and the Nokia implosion spawned quite a few successful companies. But getting layed off is a bit of a rough ride. You feel bitter, angry, insulted, etc. But on reflection I actually got a fair deal and honestly I needed the wake up call that job security is a big illusion. I was just coasting in my career and a bit too comfortable. The moment was perfect as I was still in my thirties. This stuff gets harder as you get older, less flexible, and more dependent on job security. I've been doing startups and freelance work ever since. Which means I'm my own boss now and I've learned a lot in the decade since that happened.
  • Galanwe 3y ago
    You should add more nuance I think. While this is a respectable way to see employer / employee relationships, it does not apply to every company / employee out there. In particular, I think this is very true for BigCo, where most people are seen as fungible cogs. The smaller the company, the better.
    • hef19898 3y ago
      Smaller companies treat employees different, to an extent. Because in the end, regardless of company size, the owners expect a return of their investment. In case of owner-managed companies even more so. To everyone their poison so, I guess. I learned that I am a large company guy, by a nature and nurture. Other people I know are the complete oppossite. One thing I learned so, no employee ever is safe. Not even lifetime employed state / public servants.
• bigpeopleareold 3y ago
  As long as you can get another job and can get severance pay, a layoff feel like an achievement than a loss. That happened me in my last company, one that I was very attached to for what I now think was irrational reasons. I wanted to leave anyway, but having it just happen and getting a nice severance pay was a perk. I am treating my new job as the complete opposite and the feeling is cathartic, which allows me to focus better on my work instead of worrying about the maintaining the illusion of identity in the company I work for.
• otikik 3y ago
  I see what you are saying. I am an engineer-turned-EM and you don't know me, so please take everything I say with a grain of salt: > Your job is NOT safe. Nothing will make execs happier than having this line of thought popularized amongst engineers. It will allow them to hire cheaper, and exploit existing engineers more. I think a better way to put it is: "A job is not your family, and a job is not your identity. You must rely on yourself" This line of thinking still means diversifying your options, building an emergency fund, have a fulfilling life outside work, keep doing interviews from time to time, spend some cycles thinking about "what would I do if I where to build my own startup", etc. But it will not put you in the "oh my I need to accept whatever they offer me right now" path. Especially on FAANG companies, it very easy to "get lost in the technical work" and to "offshore your life's direction to the company", so to speak. If you think this might be happening to you, I recommend involving someone else - a coach, a therapist, a friend, a brother or a priest. Whatever works for you. Someone from outside the company. It might be scary and uncomfortable at first, but taking the driver's seat of your life is worth it.
  • alangibson 3y ago
    You're both right. To be fair, it reads like he was saying > Your job is NOT safe. in service of > Take their fucking money, build a big emergency fund, save, invest, and focus on the rest of your life outside of work.
    • TheRoque 3y ago
      I understand this rationale, but personally I have an extremely hard time disconnecting from work. It sucks 40 hours a week, which is most of my "alive" time, also sucks my brain stamina. Finding life outside of work is not easy, and considering that your main "alive time" activity is something that shouldn't be a pleasure, and is a f*cking battle, feels bad.
      • Retric 3y ago
        A full time job is generally under 2,000 hours a year while you’re awake ~5,840 (16 * 365) hours a year. Overtime, long commutes, and thinking about the job at home can make it seem like all you do is work, but it’s possible to spend 40 hours a week having fun while you also have a full time job. Remember use your vacation and sick days, and say no to excessive unpaid overtime.
• azangru 3y ago
  > You can be somewhere for 10 years Our organization has a policy that it hires developers on 3-year contracts, and renews them no more than two times. So when you have reached 9 years in the org; when you have become intimately familiar with the domain, and the codebase, and the way the org works etc., you are out. I am still incredulous that someone has thought that yes, this is exactly how an organization should manage its software engineers.
  • resolutebat 3y ago
    Why? And why are you working there?
    • conradfr 3y ago
      On the other hand, how many times in your career have you stayed at a company more than 9 years?
      • gnz11 3y ago
        As you get older and have other responsibilities that life gives you, constant job hopping gets old too.
      • quickthrower2 3y ago
        Doesn't matter. It is a lopsided relationship. As an employee, it is massive portion of your life. From the employer perspective you are a resource, and can be replaced (not making a moral judgement, just saying that you can...). So the fact that someone can leave after 2 years is less impactful on the company than a company that forces you to leave after X years. If on the other hand you are just saying "well it is unlikely you will get to 9 years" the problem with that thinking is that the closer you get to 9 years and the more you have invested the more likely you will want to stay for 9 and being forced out for no reason is silly. It is a job, not the presidency.
        • trelane 3y ago
          > you are a resource, and can be replaced This is exactly the disconnect between people's salary expectations and their actual salary. It's not really based on how valuable your work is, but how easily replaced you are.
• layer8 3y ago
  > SWEs in particularly no longer live in a world where you can expect to have a rewarding career working for >=5 years at any given firm. You can in SMEs. Avoid VC-owned or public companies. Of course, there are no guarantees.
• Isn0gud 3y ago
  Don't love your job, it will never love you back.
  • elbear 3y ago
    love your profession and do your job professionally
• justanotherjoe 3y ago
  "Those that I respected the most." I always say this, but if you appreciate someone at work, dont say it to them. Say it to management. Managements face an impossible task of appreciating every single employees' worth. You can help.
  • xoac 3y ago
    In these cases often management just wants to cut the most expensive employees which can overlap with the best.
  • zztop44 3y ago
    Say it to both :)
• bArray 3y ago
  > After last year's layoffs they told us they were "done" and it was "all behind us". Last year then turned out to a better year financially than 2022 (we have access to the top line numbers) I've seen a manager at a large company make "once in 10 year cuts", then the next year make similar cuts. This was maybe 5/10 years ago and they still cut like this today - how on earth they are still operating I don't know. One of the tricks they pulled was to sack a senior role and simply add the entire senior role to a junior role, but keep pay, etc, the same. The sell the idea to the junior employee they told them that it would help with promotions. 5 years of no promotions and insane stress they were out. They are also legally required to have some positions filled with qualified people, but they have unqualified people working those positions with "on the job training". The company itself has declared internally it will be bankrupt as early as next year without some form of financial assistance. COVID just about killed them with excessive borrowing to make up for missed revenue, to survive and come back into a poor economy. I know two people working for this company, one is looking for another job, the other is stuck in the company as they did a deal with University support in return for being retained for some years. > Never get invested emotionally. SWEs in particularly no longer live in a world where you can expect to have a rewarding career working for >=5 years at any given firm. How many people work for a company now that they believe will be around in 10, 20, 50, 100 years time? There's an extremely high chance you will far outlive the company you work for. > Take their fucking money, build a big emergency fund, save, invest, and focus on the rest of your life outside of work. Given how things are going, I would suggest tangible assets that can be easily liquefied, even if in a poor economy.
  • cebert 3y ago
    > How many people work for a company now that they believe will be around in 10, 20, 50, 100 years time? There's an extremely high chance you will far outlive the company you work for. I’ve worked at the same company now for 14 years. If I chose to, I feel like there’s a good chance I could work another 15-25 years at the same firm. My company sells software to local, state, and federal government customers. There are competitors in this space, but no company dominates any particular sector. There’s ample room for growth. Our software is critical to government operations and is necessary even during economic downtimes. Working with employees who have been at the company for 30-40 years isn’t uncommon. I work on 911 systems and find the domain interesting, rewarding, and important. We can help save lives and help government work more effectively.
• whiplash451 3y ago
  > Take their fucking money, build a big emergency fund, save, invest. Very sane advice, but unfortunately not always an option. The likelihood of making real (not paper) life-changing money in a few years has considerably decreased in 5-10 years. It will only come back with a good pace of IPOs and investor-positive acquisitions.
  • bluescrn 3y ago
    Push for IPOs -> 'growth is all that matters' -> future redundancies. The world needs sustainable businesses, not IPO jackpots for a few and looming redundancies for the rest.
  • _heimdall 3y ago
    That really depends quite a bit on how frugally a person is able and willing to live.
  • pyrale 3y ago
    > The likelihood of making real (not paper) life-changing money There is a difference between "save, build an emergency fund" and "get into some get-rich-quick scheme". The goal of emergency funds and saving, for most people, is to prevent life-changing events, not create them. You don't need a ludicrous paycheck to have a rainy days fund, and to put money aside, and you shouldn't count on IPOs and acquisitions to build it.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
• theshackleford 3y ago
  > You can't trust anything anyone above you in the management chain tells you. Not one thing. Not ever. Even if they're being truthful they were probably lied to themselves or told a half truth. I've been an executive and every position along the chain in the lead up to that within my industry. If I took anything away from my time in it (I have since moved back to practical hands on roles) it is that your above statement is sadly, quite accurate. My time as an executive has left me soured on the industry full stop long term now i've realised its shit all the way up. I just kept thinking i'd get high enough to find people who like me, had morals or beliefs which they may apply to their decision making. But no, morals have no belonging it would appear in the executive class, which to be fair, I should have known about in advance, but my continued promotions were really quite accidental over the years and I am obviously niave.
• gorbachev 3y ago
  This is why I don't work for publicly traded companies. It's like this every goddamn three months in a lot of them.
• HlessClaudesman 3y ago
  Ossified tech companies who fire their talent are quite literally sewing the seeds of their own destruction. I expect in the next 2-5 years to see a dynamic flourising of innovative companies started by these unshackled workers.
  • thexumaker 3y ago
    Let’s be real the majority of these people getting laid off aren’t gonna grind for 2-3 years with low odds of succeeding. Same thing that happened with Twitter layoffs and any covid layoffs. People wanting to build stuff to their hearts desire long left or didn’t start at google in the first place
• redwood 3y ago
  Re "we have access to top line numbers". Consider that that's only a part of the picture. Revenue minus costs, combined with the growth dynamics and constituent nature of both tell a fuller picture. Top line alone is almost meaningless
• bossyTeacher 3y ago
  > SWEs in particularly no longer live in a world where you can expect to have a rewarding career working for >=5 years at any given firm Doesn't this apply to everyone?
• jmcalvay 3y ago
  Perhaps this is a non sequitur, but I've been writing Django & HTMX as well as using LLMs to the end of creating an automated circuit board factory. Previously, I co-founded a company that went public in the space. If you think any of the "best engineers, those that I respected the most" might be interested in working together with me, please send them my way - I'm hiring. jeff+hn AT nimbleprecision DOT com To your point, I can't make any promises that folks will be able to work at the company forever, but I can say that the ambition is to build a company for the long term and I do think there's a lot of value in having a long tenured engineering team insofar as the context folks build up for the problem set, the code base, and the team can be immense.
• michael_leachim 3y ago
  Some time ago when money were cheap it made sense to grow, now when money are expensive it makes sense to shrink. I don't get why people get offended by it. we are not living in a "fair world" whatever that means. You can die tomorrow or live another 50 years, nobody knows why. All of it is just luck.
• kabdib 3y ago
  Software guy with 40+ years in the biz here. Your job never has been safe. Well, not in "big tech firm" territory anyway. I've not gone more than 3 years without seeing some kind of downsizing or shift in strategy or whatever. I swear that companies are like dogs, they roll over and scratch every once in a while, and have layoffs. Sometimes it's just a distant boom over the horizon ("I hear they're getting killed over in Consumer"), sometimes it's like they line everyone up everyone in your division and boop! every fifth person and it sucks pretty hard. I won't pontificate on another boring survival strategy, except to observe that I've nearly always switched jobs and technologies after five years anyway. I would be scared for my career if I spent ten years working on one thing. Sometimes you're saved by smart, sometimes you're saved by lucky, and most of the time you'll be wrong about which one it was. :-)
  • sdfsdf23423s 3y ago
    [dead]
  • thefourthchime 3y ago
    "I've nearly always switched jobs and technologies after five years anyway." I'm another long-termer too, not as long but I aspire to! I haven't thought about it, but staying current, and switching techs is probably why I still love it and think I'll be ok in the next round of layoffs. Right now it's cloud and serverless in python, next, I bet it's LLMs or something in that space. Before that, it was protocol-level C++, UI C++, Java middleware. It just keeps changing, and that's a good thing! I can't imagine working in a dull static changing world.
• ken47 3y ago
  Pretty sure that if you have glowing perf reviews, your job is safe. The "best engineers" you're talking about were the best by which metrics, and why were these metrics so different from those that execs used to determine who to lay off? If they are indeed superior engineers, and your company is simply bad at evaluating talent, then they did a huge favor to these engineers by laying them off. Trust me.
  • HarHarVeryFunny 3y ago
    > Pretty sure that if you have glowing perf reviews, your job is safe. No, because when large corps want to reduce head count/payroll, it often comes as a top down directive for every group to trim by X%... In this type of environment being good at your job doesn't help - after a few cycles of these types of layoff all that are left are the better people, and the next X% layoff will be them.
    • AtNightWeCode 3y ago
      Exactly, I had the best performance review ever at a corp I worked at. Did not make much difference when they reorganized.
• steveBK123 3y ago
  Be loyal to people, not to companies. Companies will cut you in a random layoff at the drop of a hat. I've seen this enough times in my career. It doesn't matter if they promise its the only/last/whatever cutoff, or it was for performance only, or whatever.. People in your network will pick you up and refer you / hire you on at the next gig. My prior employer just did a wave of deep cuts and the stories I heard out of management were pretty crazy. Directory level people were basically given an hour to cut $X Million off their people budget from their directs and all their skip level staff. They then begin laying them off the same day. This was not a well planned or thought out process. So obviously the people I saw getting laid off were a mix of underperformerss, great-but-expensive, random personal grudges from the director, and unfortunately biased towards a lot of "lifers" who'd been there a long time.
  • hoffspot 3y ago
    Excellent advice. Time invested in cultivating your relationships and network is invaluable for generating opportunities. If people have a good experience working with you and understand what you are capable of, they will bring opportunities to your door throughout your career.
    • steveBK123 3y ago
      It's also more genuine too. I have ex-coworker friends I've gotten regular drinks/meals with for close to 20 years now. Our average tenure at any shop meanwhile is 5 years. Who cares what company name is on the door. You wouldn't catch me dead at any sort of company sponsored drinks/social thing. I would also observe that some of the people most slavishly "living the brand", reposting stuff on LinkedIn, joining all the work social groups, etc.. were some of the first to get whacked in the last few rounds of layoffs at the old shop. Which way does the causality go is a good question, but their time would probably have been better spent on having an organic network of people in the industry they genuinely enjoy the company of.
• tety 3y ago
  the overall tone and content of your post really reminded me of this song https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WngY-xti0lo https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WngY-xti0lo
• FrustratedMonky 3y ago
  ""Never get invested emotionally."" Second this, because it so hard. You pour yourself into something, and then management changes, direction changes, and suddenly your baby turns into crap. Your creation probably isn't even put out of its misery, it is allowed to live, but gets tortured, and mangled into some unholy abomination. It can be very upsetting. I still dwell on a big project, get angry, tense, it is very unhealthy, and also difficult to let go.
• osigurdson 3y ago
  I think it is a misconception that if a company does well, it will hire more people and pay more. It is purely a supply and demand situation. The ideal number of employees in a company is zero.
  • HarHarVeryFunny 3y ago
    I think that depends on the type of business. If the company sells software then they are more likely to consider good developers as an asset, but if the product is something else that just has a software component, or for software jobs unrelated to the product (accounting, etc), then you are just a cost to be reduced, not an asset.
• aikiplayer 3y ago
  I’ve been in several different orgs that held a lot of layoffs and they’re sometimes performance related but other times just wrong place, wrong time as others have commented. I also see advice that states you should change jobs every few years to ensure you continue to grow as a person, ensure salary growth (a real thing in my experience) and to ensure you’re staying relevant. So it seems that we want the option to move on our terms but we don’t think companies should view it the same. Management is also painfully aware that key employees can be ‘one bad meeting away’ from leaving. It seems like if we want stability then we probably need to offer some as well; many in this thread describe the relationship as either transactional or a negotiation and if we really believe it then we should view it from both sides. Finally, there are large industries where there is significant stability: government, defense, etc. They don’t have FAANG comp, but can pay reasonably well.
• heresie-dabord 3y ago
  > You can't trust anything anyone above you in the management chain tells you See a recent HN thread: "Signs that it's time to leave a company" _ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38943040 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38943040 When you see that management people can't be direct, plain-spoken, and authentic with employees, you should realise that there is a cronyarchy... and you are not in the special club.
  • tayo42 3y ago
    > management people can't be direct, plain-spoken, and authentic with employees, This just corporate culture though. where are you working where that isnt the case?
• Hypergraphe 3y ago
  AMEN to that brother !
• sbrother 3y ago
  The easiest way to follow this advice is to take it to its logical conclusion and just offer your services on a contracting basis, as a single member LLC or a small partnership. At this point in the US tech industry the relationship between employers and FTEs is so tenuous that there isn’t much difference between the two legal arrangements in terms stability. I’ve kept my best clients much, much longer than my longest tenured FTE jobs. And there are lots of benefits to being independent legally. Tax benefits aside, the pay is usually much higher, and you can/should take on multiple clients simultaneously. This leaves you less exposed to the whims of a single C-suite, and lets you stack up silly amounts of money when times are good.
  • Ancalagon 3y ago
    Not going to happen in the US as healthcare is not portable and its too expensive to purchase on your own.
    • sbrother 3y ago
      Well, this is one of the reasons you charge more as a freelancer. It's ~$2k/mo for a family; even if I charged exactly the same as my market rate as an FTE, that would be less than the tax benefit I get from operating through a properly set up LLC taxed as an S-corporation. LTD and E&O insurance are other big expenses, but they're not prohibitive given the delta in hourly rate between FTE and C2C.
      • deleted 3y ago
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• josefothenio23 3y ago
  [dead]
• _uhtu 3y ago
  There are a lot of hackernewsers frothing at the mouth for layoffs, so excited that all the engineers they don't think are good are gonna get laid off. This right here is the thing they don't understand: companies are typically incompetent when it comes to performance measurement and there's a good chance they'll lay off good people and leave the suck ups who don't do anything. After all, if you're so confident that you're company has been incompetent enough to make a bunch of bad hires and keep them to this point, why would you be confident they'd suddenly get it right this time?
• niceice 3y ago
  > Take their fucking money, build a big emergency fund, save, invest, and focus on the rest of your life outside of work. That will lead you back to the same place when the fund runs out. Invest in yourself instead of Google. Especially as a SWE. It's never been easier to start your own company.
• xpe 3y ago
  I'm not a libertarian, but since there are many people here tempted by its simplicity and claimed intellectual elegance [1], I want to share "The Libertarian Argument for Unions": > This essay examines the arguments that many self-proclaimed libertarians make against unionization. It examines whether unions could be expected to arise in a libertarian utopia; whether we could expect them to arise in both the private and the public sector; what limits, if any, we could expect to be imposed on union organizing and behavior; and specifically, whether rules that make the workplace a union shop – that is, a place where all non-management employees are required to be members of the union and contribute to the cost of collective bargaining, or whether rules similar to those embodied in what are typically called “right-to-work” laws are more likely to prevail and be thought consistent with the demands of libertarianism. Finally, I close by examining the relationship between libertarianism and some popular conceptions of liberty a little more closely and argue that, while many people who think of themselves as libertarians believe that maximizing individual negative liberty is fundamental, this is actually a mistake. Libertarianism actually rejects that concept of liberty in favor, I will argue, of a more republican conception, under which liberty is defined as an absence of domination, and a high degree of unionization and this form of liberty are totally compatible. https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/in-the-name-of-liberty/libertarian-argument-for-unions/FB4203A2E32A70251ECEA525A9EF4894 https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/in-the-name-of-libe... [1] I personally reject "elegance" as the driving first principle when weighing ethical and normative theories. There are higher standards to seek: most importantly, a rejection of dogmatism and the embrace of continual learning. Any calcified definition of "elegance" cannot stand the test of time; what is elegant to one generation may be deeply immoral to the next. To be clear, I don't mean to say that notions of ethics must be left ambiguous. I certainly do not defend ethical "systems" which amount to little more than evergreen debates over weighing contradictory principles. Rather, I mean ethical systems must improve as our intelligence and awareness improve.
• FpUser 3y ago
  Not sure why one would be "attached" to a company. It is a friggin business. You exchange your labor for money. That is all about it. Yes some projects can be exciting and mentally rewarding, especially in the initial stages but never forget that you are not the one running the show. Worry about yourself first. Owners of the company do just that and act accordingly. There are exceptions here and there but never rely on those. Hope for the best prepare for the worst.
• dan_bez 3y ago
  I do not perceive transactional relationships as a tragedy. It's the best feedback loop there is. You achieve the goals that are aligned with the business - business pays you. I've been a contractor for 10 years and never took a dollar unless the goal is achieved. Ended up getting full-time position as a head of engineering hefty compensation by one of my clients.
• travisgriggs 3y ago
  “Your job is NOT safe.” I read once somewhere that the phrase “my job”/“your job” is one of the biggest oxymorons ever termed in America. You do not possess the job. You do not own it. You never did. There never was a time where anyone did. The “job” is owned by the employer. You may be assigned it. It may be unassigned by the employer. Or reassigned by the employer. Or redefined by the employer. “Your job” never was. On the flip. It’s your life. Own that. We came up with the ideas of continuous integration, apply that to the relationship. Constantly renegotiate how your life overlaps with your employers job.
• agumonkey 3y ago
  Who else here feels that humans have an innate need to be emotionally invested in their daily lives ? - goal of your company / values - need to grow - need to perform and be seen as such - need to belong so often we can read warnings about not falling for this, but it's so common .. it's wired in us it seems
  • toomuchtodo 3y ago
    The desire for meaning through their work is used against a worker. https://www.fuqua.duke.edu/duke-fuqua-insights/kay-passion-exploitation https://www.fuqua.duke.edu/duke-fuqua-insights/kay-passion-e... > The researchers found that people consider it more legitimate to make passionate employees leave family to work on a weekend, work unpaid, and handle unrelated tasks that were not in the job description. > The team found passion exploitation consistently across eight studies with more than 2,400 total participants. The studies varied in design, in the participants (students, managers, random online samples) and in the kinds of jobs they considered. > In one study, participants who read that an artist was strongly passionate about his job said it was more legitimate for the boss to exploit the artist than those who read the artist wasn’t as passionate. This finding extended to asking for work far beyond the job description, including leaving a day at the park with family and cleaning the office bathroom. Study: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30998042/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30998042/
  • hotpotamus 3y ago
    Well most humans do, but psychopaths (and I speak from personal experience) probably do not, and the smarter among them tend to do really well in the American corporate context.
    • agumonkey 3y ago
      that's true, the economy doesn't reward human needs and the bad ones bubble up above and end up controlling your life..
  • TrackerFF 3y ago
    It is even worse in certain Asian countries. Your entire identity and self-worth is defined by your work. I'm just glad that I'm being able to completely disconnect from work, when I check out. My tittle means nothing. Where I work means nothing. I do enjoy my co-workers, that's about it.
• sulam 3y ago
  You should immediately flip the bozo bit in any leader who tells you that layoffs are done and you don't need to worry. That is a bullshit statement that no manager with any experience would ever say. It's so bad, I honestly question if that's what they actually said and I have no basis other than experience to believe that!
• smrtinsert 3y ago
  Time to unionize.
• eastbound 3y ago
  > Never get invested emotionally. And yet, like in love, the trick is to love again. Sure, be wise and have high standards about money. But there are some good entrepreneurs here. I was employee #250, it went IPO, became a millionaire. And now that I’ve created a startup, I try to pay it forward. Large corporations, of course no.
• foobiekr 3y ago
  Look, all sentences in any language implicitly start with or end with the words: "For now." The sooner you incorporate that into your beliefs, the better off you will be. It isn't about "trust." Trust is conditional and blind trust in statements that cannot be true under all circumstances is something you just need to grow out of; circumstances change and intents change. As you gain experience, you get really good at parsing and identifying axes of flexibility in statements from the power structure. In general, professional managers in a power structure will always distort or mislead with any statements they make to turn any announcement into a steering opportunity. This is just how it is and it's really not about "trust", it's about manipulation. Manipulation is _everywhere_ in the tech companies. Nothing is more amazing to me than an experience I had early on that woke me up: the day after I attended a meeting about how the company was working on a project that was incredibly unethical (think google's china search engine-level unethical or worse, like Nokia's building anti-dissident features into their 3g networking for Iran), I attended a company all hands where the entire message from every exec, including those that were involved, was about how we were a force for free speech, freedom, etc. I already knew but it was stark. They also engage in constant attempts to blur things. Google, in particular, spends a lot of money to help muddy the job-vs-personal waters because it gives them power. For their first decade and a half, at least, they ran the whole company like college - extracurricular activities, etc. This wasn't just because the founders had no professional experience prior, it was strategic to make it very hard for people to leave (and when they started leaving for FB, that was to another place that was similar). So forget about "trust" - start thinking in terms of "what is this person not saying, what is this person trying to imply without putting it in words, what flexibility are they reserving for themselves with their statements" etc.
• SirMaster 3y ago
  >Your job is NOT safe. Maybe your job(s). But there are certainly companies out there that actually care about the welfare of their employees. Usually family owned and such. That's where I choose to work and they have always taken care of my needs and listened to me. I never really understood why people have such a desire to work for these big companies that don't care about you. I guess it's just different strokes...
  • nathan_douglas 3y ago
    I definitely try to pick jobs based on vibe, but that's still not 100% safe. I adore my current employer. Best place I've ever worked. But we're contractors, and my team's contract just ended unexpectedly. I trust they respect me enough to rotate me to another team, but I gotta sweat bullets and send out résumés nonetheless.
    • aramova 3y ago
      > my team's contract just ended unexpectedly. Is it really a contract if it can end unexpectedly? I know it is, but really the original purpose of a contract is to set the terms and conditions, so nothing was surprise when it happened. We really need a better term for these one sided work agreements.
      • no_wizard 3y ago
        often they have buyout clauses and such for this kind of termination. Its very common. The cost of the contract being one cost, so when you think about cost of managing the contract and contracts etc. severing it via a payout can be cheaper, and is often sudden to the contractors unfortunately.
    • SirMaster 3y ago
      Yeah, places that I'm used to working do things like: when covid hit and work dried up, the company told employees to go out and find charity work and the company would pay your full salary to do the charity work. They share in the profits with the employees and such. I mean sure, it's not 100% a save job. If something truly terrible happened and the company went bankrupt etc, then of course you can still lose your job. But no time have I ever seen or felt like they would ever lay off people unless the company literally couldn't go on to survive some other way.
• deleted 3y ago
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• mptest 3y ago
  Gee if only there were a way to organize labor so we have more collective protections.... i Wonder if any sv startup has thought of that?
• random11939 3y ago
  My ex-firm (an healthtech company in the US) is doing well. I was a manager there. I was demoted while my newborn was in the NICU (neonatal ICU) at the beginning of my paternity leave. And my position was eliminated a few weeks after I came back to work. As a condition of getting severance, I can't officially talk about it. That is the culture of tech companies today.
• woowoowoot 3y ago
  Managers will never be honest. Managers are modern practitioners of Taylorism(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_management https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_management). They have to see you as a number and a resource in order to do their jobs and fit in the hierarchy. Thats why you never trust them and always reverse manage them.
• black_puppydog 3y ago
  > SWEs in particularly no longer live in a world where you can expect to have a rewarding career working for >=5 years at any given firm "no longer" -> this might be the time to seriously talk about unionization. Programmers used to have a huge advantage at the bargaining table, going in as an individual. If parent is correct (I tend to agree) these days are over and they're not coming back. In that case, collective bargaining promises better results. I see a lot more unionization efforts in software lately. Maybe it's just my own confirmation bias but maybe it's just that others are coming to the same conclusions.
• alsetmusic 3y ago
  > People who made no sense. My company made some bad decisions and had two rounds of layoffs as a result. I was cut in the first round. My boss is also a friend and confirmed over beer that the highest paid of us were the first to go. I had negotiated higher pay based on past experience when I joined. So it goes.
• granshaw 3y ago
  Unless you’re truly special, The days of multi hundred thousand total comp packages are over - you’d better learn to live as though you’re on a ~175k salary, and if that’s too low, start taking steps on cutting NOW See also the other hiring post on todays HN front page that’s a Bay Area startup but only hiring for South America for engineering
• arwhatever 3y ago
  I have never been a cynic until recently. "Maybe a recession is forthcoming?" Better 'can a bunch of people just in case it happens to be so. "Maybe LLMs will reduce programming needs?" Better 'can a bunch of people just in case it happens to be so. I can adapt to an increased level of cynicism, even to the point it informs my concrete career decisions. But this level of bad faith itself must do some damage to the economy, mustn't it? There must be some concrete value that would be generated by increasing good faith between employers and employees, musn't there be?
• devwastaken 3y ago
  Megacorps have international plans. Theyre eying the Asian market and surrounding areas planning to be an integral part of converting their society to modernism. Big tech is literally creating their customers via corporate imperialism.
• supportengineer 3y ago
  I haven't reached the 5 year mark in my entire career. I have been working in the software industry over 30 years.
• skeeter2020 3y ago
  >> You can't trust anything anyone above you in the management chain tells you. Not one thing. Not ever. This seems like a really negative and self-damaging perspective. I'm the direct manager for 14 people with whom I have hard-won relationships, built on trust and caring over long periods of time. We're not friends or family, but I honestly care about them. I share as much as I can, and try to include my confidence and assessment of what I share. If they follow your advice and unequivocally discount it all, I think they're actually in an even WORSE situation. Regardless, what a sad, scary way to live.
  • kagakuninja 3y ago
    I've had great relationships with managers like you. And yet had that sudden 1-1 meeting where I was told "your services are no longer needed". In one case, there wasn't even a face-to-face meeting, or any explanation for termination. I got a call from my recruiter, and my corporate access was cut off precisely at 5pm.
• deleted 3y ago
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