3 ms·

And for how many more years are we going to be calling this a post-Covid market correction?

camdenreslink 7mo ago
Many companies really got bloated during COVID. From what I can see online, Meta doubled their number of employees between 2019 and 2022. How long does it take to correct from that amount of hiring?
- dd8601fn 7mo ago
  Some of these companies have increased headcount since their post-COVID cuts. Some of this has nothing to do with COVID boom numbers. Some are bailing water as fast as they can (Atlassian, et al), some are treading water and betting on future returns from AI (Block), etc.
joe_mamba 7mo ago
It takes time to correct 10 years of ZIRP, plus COVID overhiring that doubled the headcount of those 10 years in just 2-3. The jig was up when social media like Reddit and tiktok during the pandemic was full of posts with big tech workers gloating about getting hired for six figure salaries to sleep in and play video games at home while putting in 2 hours of work a week, obvious to anyone with two neurons to rub together that it was a too-good-to-be-true unsustainable bubble that's gonna pop and trigger a brutal reset on the job market. Further reinforced with Elon firing 80% of Twitter and the website didn't stop working, reminding big tech CEOs that they can also start looking into trimming the overhiring fat in their back yard, with no operational loss. Reinforce that with wall street rewarding mass layoff with share price going up, contrary to the pandemic rewards of shares going up with over hiring, and you have the perfect storm. AI and the idea of it replacing jobs, has nothing to dow with this, it's just 10 years of ZIRP reawarding every unprofitable bullsit SaaS start-up, and 10 years of "just learn to code bro" where every shoeshine boy became a coder so now tech companies hiring are spoiled for choice. Edit: Oh I forgot, add to that the increased of offshoring to places with cheaper labor thanks to the normalisation of remote work making it an even perfecter(is that a word?) storm on why an average programmer's labor has way less value.
- Forgeties79 7mo ago
  > Further reinforced with Elon firing 80% of Twitter and the website didn't stop working, reminding big tech CEOs that they can also start looking into trimming the overhiring fat in their back yard, with no operational loss. I would argue Twitter is in a worse state operationally, but either way it’s moot because one simply has to look at the company’s valuation since Musk took over to see things aren’t going well. Unless the goal is a very loud megaphone for conservative influencers and talking points, in which case things are going great.
  - joe_mamba 7mo ago
    >I would argue Twitter is in a worse state operationally Is it because they lack coding manpower, or because Elon chased away all advertisers? Correlation != causation. Bear in mind I was talking about functionality of the product, not corporate operation/valuation. >Unless the goal is a very loud megaphone for conservative influencers and talking points, in which case things are going great. Funny, I never heard the left complain about Twitter being a woke/democrat megaphone during the Jack Dorsey era. Or complain about the social media censorship during the Biden administration. Where were they back then? They don't hate the propaganda megaphone, they hate not being the ones in charge of it.
    - Forgeties79 7mo ago
      >Is it because they lack coding manpower, or because Elon chased away all advertisers? Correlation != causation. Didn’t say that. > Bear in mind I was talking about functionality of the product, not corporate operation/valuation. Didn’t say otherwise. In fact I made it a point to separate out the discussion of how it is functioning operationally from its valuation. > Funny, I never heard the left complain about Twitter being a woke/democrat megaphone during the Jack Dorsey era. And the right isn’t complaining about the current state. You also don’t know what I said about Twitter back then. I’m not accountable for whatever general idea you have concocted “the left.” I am simply saying that it clearly is a megaphone for the right now. If you think it is even somewhat neutral and balanced now feel free to say so, but I would be surprised to hear that.
gedy 7mo ago
I mean hell we are still feeling the impacts of 2008 crash and monetary policy.
Lerc 7mo ago
In a very real sense these are still ripples from the death of Franz Ferdinand.
- AnimalMuppet 7mo ago
  Not in a very useful sense, though. If you can show that the death of Franz Ferdinand necessarily caused tech layoffs in 2026, I'll listen. I don't think you can, though.
  - Lerc 7mo ago
    I think you could absolutely draw a causal link, it wouldn't explain why 2026 instead of 2024 or 2028.
- throwaway173738 7mo ago
  I would argue this is more a result of the defeat of Xerxes at Thermopylae.
  - usui 7mo ago
    Xerxes had a victory at Thermopylae
    - esseph 7mo ago
      You say po-ta-to, I say po-tat-o!
bayarearefugee 7mo ago
Also, whether Covid is to blame or not, all these layoffs (not just the Meta one) contradict some of the most common rationalizations I've seen for how AI won't destroy the labor market but rather expand it. If there really is all this latent untapped need to drive a Jevron's effect software explosion that will keep developers employable, why would so many profitable companies be laying off so many workers into the transition?
- js8 7mo ago
  I have an explanation (or rationalization, if you wish) for this. The AI caused the developer productivity to increase (similar to other two big SW engineering productivity jumps - compilers and open source), which gives them more leverage over employers (capital). Things that you needed a small team to build (and thus more capital) you can now do in a single person. In the long run, this will mean more software being written, possibly by even larger number of people (shift on the demand curve - as price of SW goes down demand increases). But before that happens, companies have a knee-jerk reaction to this as they're trying to take back control over developers, while assuming total amount of software will stay constant. Hence layoffs. But I think it's shortsighted, the companies will hurt themselves in the long run, because they will lay off people who could build them more products in the future. (They misunderstood - developers are not getting cheaper, it's the code that will.)
  - menaerus 7mo ago
    > as price of SW goes down demand increases I see this view very often being pulled into the debate but demand is not only driven through a (low) cost. Demand obviously cannot grow infinitely so the actual question IMO is when and how do we reach the market saturation point. First hypothesis is that ~all SWEs will remain employed (demand will proportionally rise with the lower cost of development). Second hypothesis is some % of SWEs will loose their jobs - over-subscription of SWE roles (lower cost of development will drive the demand but not such that the market will be able to keep all those ~30M SWEs employed). Third hypothesis is that we will see number of SWEs growing beyond ~30M - under-subscription of SWE roles (demand will be so high and development cost so low that we will enter the era of hyperinflation in software production). At this point, I am inclined to believe that the second hypothesis is the most likely one.

Many companies really got bloated during COVID. From what I can see online, Meta doubled their number of employees between 2019 and 2022. How long does it take to correct from that amount of hiring?

dd8601fn 7mo ago
Some of these companies have increased headcount since their post-COVID cuts. Some of this has nothing to do with COVID boom numbers. Some are bailing water as fast as they can (Atlassian, et al), some are treading water and betting on future returns from AI (Block), etc.

joe_mamba 7mo ago

It takes time to correct 10 years of ZIRP, plus COVID overhiring that doubled the headcount of those 10 years in just 2-3. The jig was up when social media like Reddit and tiktok during the pandemic was full of posts with big tech workers gloating about getting hired for six figure salaries to sleep in and play video games at home while putting in 2 hours of work a week, obvious to anyone with two neurons to rub together that it was a too-good-to-be-true unsustainable bubble that's gonna pop and trigger a brutal reset on the job market. Further reinforced with Elon firing 80% of Twitter and the website didn't stop working, reminding big tech CEOs that they can also start looking into trimming the overhiring fat in their back yard, with no operational loss. Reinforce that with wall street rewarding mass layoff with share price going up, contrary to the pandemic rewards of shares going up with over hiring, and you have the perfect storm. AI and the idea of it replacing jobs, has nothing to dow with this, it's just 10 years of ZIRP reawarding every unprofitable bullsit SaaS start-up, and 10 years of "just learn to code bro" where every shoeshine boy became a coder so now tech companies hiring are spoiled for choice. Edit: Oh I forgot, add to that the increased of offshoring to places with cheaper labor thanks to the normalisation of remote work making it an even perfecter(is that a word?) storm on why an average programmer's labor has way less value.

Forgeties79 7mo ago
> Further reinforced with Elon firing 80% of Twitter and the website didn't stop working, reminding big tech CEOs that they can also start looking into trimming the overhiring fat in their back yard, with no operational loss. I would argue Twitter is in a worse state operationally, but either way it’s moot because one simply has to look at the company’s valuation since Musk took over to see things aren’t going well. Unless the goal is a very loud megaphone for conservative influencers and talking points, in which case things are going great.
- joe_mamba 7mo ago
  >I would argue Twitter is in a worse state operationally Is it because they lack coding manpower, or because Elon chased away all advertisers? Correlation != causation. Bear in mind I was talking about functionality of the product, not corporate operation/valuation. >Unless the goal is a very loud megaphone for conservative influencers and talking points, in which case things are going great. Funny, I never heard the left complain about Twitter being a woke/democrat megaphone during the Jack Dorsey era. Or complain about the social media censorship during the Biden administration. Where were they back then? They don't hate the propaganda megaphone, they hate not being the ones in charge of it.
  - Forgeties79 7mo ago
    >Is it because they lack coding manpower, or because Elon chased away all advertisers? Correlation != causation. Didn’t say that. > Bear in mind I was talking about functionality of the product, not corporate operation/valuation. Didn’t say otherwise. In fact I made it a point to separate out the discussion of how it is functioning operationally from its valuation. > Funny, I never heard the left complain about Twitter being a woke/democrat megaphone during the Jack Dorsey era. And the right isn’t complaining about the current state. You also don’t know what I said about Twitter back then. I’m not accountable for whatever general idea you have concocted “the left.” I am simply saying that it clearly is a megaphone for the right now. If you think it is even somewhat neutral and balanced now feel free to say so, but I would be surprised to hear that.

gedy 7mo ago

I mean hell we are still feeling the impacts of 2008 crash and monetary policy.

Lerc 7mo ago

In a very real sense these are still ripples from the death of Franz Ferdinand.

AnimalMuppet 7mo ago
Not in a very useful sense, though. If you can show that the death of Franz Ferdinand necessarily caused tech layoffs in 2026, I'll listen. I don't think you can, though.
- Lerc 7mo ago
  I think you could absolutely draw a causal link, it wouldn't explain why 2026 instead of 2024 or 2028.
throwaway173738 7mo ago
I would argue this is more a result of the defeat of Xerxes at Thermopylae.
- usui 7mo ago
  Xerxes had a victory at Thermopylae
  - esseph 7mo ago
    You say po-ta-to, I say po-tat-o!

bayarearefugee 7mo ago

Also, whether Covid is to blame or not, all these layoffs (not just the Meta one) contradict some of the most common rationalizations I've seen for how AI won't destroy the labor market but rather expand it. If there really is all this latent untapped need to drive a Jevron's effect software explosion that will keep developers employable, why would so many profitable companies be laying off so many workers into the transition?

js8 7mo ago
I have an explanation (or rationalization, if you wish) for this. The AI caused the developer productivity to increase (similar to other two big SW engineering productivity jumps - compilers and open source), which gives them more leverage over employers (capital). Things that you needed a small team to build (and thus more capital) you can now do in a single person. In the long run, this will mean more software being written, possibly by even larger number of people (shift on the demand curve - as price of SW goes down demand increases). But before that happens, companies have a knee-jerk reaction to this as they're trying to take back control over developers, while assuming total amount of software will stay constant. Hence layoffs. But I think it's shortsighted, the companies will hurt themselves in the long run, because they will lay off people who could build them more products in the future. (They misunderstood - developers are not getting cheaper, it's the code that will.)
- menaerus 7mo ago
  > as price of SW goes down demand increases I see this view very often being pulled into the debate but demand is not only driven through a (low) cost. Demand obviously cannot grow infinitely so the actual question IMO is when and how do we reach the market saturation point. First hypothesis is that ~all SWEs will remain employed (demand will proportionally rise with the lower cost of development). Second hypothesis is some % of SWEs will loose their jobs - over-subscription of SWE roles (lower cost of development will drive the demand but not such that the market will be able to keep all those ~30M SWEs employed). Third hypothesis is that we will see number of SWEs growing beyond ~30M - under-subscription of SWE roles (demand will be so high and development cost so low that we will enter the era of hyperinflation in software production). At this point, I am inclined to believe that the second hypothesis is the most likely one.