Tech’s talent wars have come back to bite it

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/10/technology/big-tech-layoffs.html

by bayraktar • 4 years ago

48 75 4 years ago

It’s hard to just blame the employers when I have seen so many people, most especially on HN, dying to treat employers as fashion accessories. Don’t tell me the rest of you haven’t seen developers fawning over themselves to become a part of FAANG. Even with the layoffs I still see people on here dreaming of FAANG.

Roritharr• 4 years ago

It's more that you see yourself doing FAANG Level work at other companies without FAANG Level compensation that keeps those dreams going.

ht_th• 4 years ago

I don't quite understand. I like challenges; I don't mind doing "FAANG Level work", whatever that means, at a small company. I don't care much for salary beyond getting a good salary for my locale. Having a great work/life balance is much more important to me. I don't want a "FAANG Level compensation" if that means I've got to move, work crazy hours, have absurd living expenses, have a lot of interview rounds with stupid coding tests, have a continuous fear of layoffs, have a lot of bureaucracy, etc.

willnonya• 4 years ago

I think the key there is them believing they're doing FAANG level work and feeling that they're not being compensated to the right level doesn't mean either of those are true.

Also, shouldn't it be MAANA now instead of FAANG?

Eumenes3• 4 years ago

I imagine that sentiment is with the younger crowd. The fawning over FAANG seems to be a new grad/junior thing. It very much reminds me of young bragging over which Big 4/public accounting firm they were going to join, or which investment bank. The senior/experienced people know that a job is more than the name or endless swag.

tluyben2• 4 years ago

The senior/experienced people know that a job is more than the name or endless swag.

And even than the money for people I know, myself included. I want to like the work and the people most of the time and I want a life and side projects next to it. I don't care if the compensation is less for that.

bee_rider• 4 years ago

Apple and Google are kind of a cut above the rest there, from a prestige point of view, right? Netflix is fine. Amazon is... "well good luck dude, don't get burnout." Facebook... I'll bag groceries instead, might not make as much money but at least I'll be helping people.

larrymyers• 4 years ago

The feels like exceptionally lazy reporting in the NYT. What was the expectation, that tech companies would be up and to the right perpetually? That public tech companies are immune to general market downturns?

While a lot of tech companies are going through post-pandemic layoffs, most of them have headcounts that are still larger than where they were in Feb 2020, and have valuations that show steady growth.

My prediction is that over the next decade we're going to see a narrative in the media that hiring is still exceptionally difficult in the technology sector. There's a very real chance that this round of layoffs drives students and recent graduates into other industries if big tech is no longer seen as an easy path to outsized compensation. It was real side effect of the dotcom bust and the 2008 recession.

I'm excited to see what new companies are going to form in the next few years now that it's a tiny bit more difficult for the big tech companies to suck up all the oxygen in the room.

ciphol• 4 years ago

This is typical NYT reporting on tech.

"I literally heard it from NYT reporters at the time. There was a top-down decision that tech could not be covered positively, even when there was a true, newsworthy and positive story. I'd never heard anything like it." [1]

[1] https://twitter.com/KelseyTuoc/status/1588231892792328192

nindalf3• 4 years ago

This decision matters because the NYT influences other journalists to a large degree.

The person who took that autocratic decision was AG Sulzberger, the 37-year old publisher and chairman of the NYT. Surely a man wielding so much power and influence would have earned the post through merit and hard work, right? In reality it’s a hereditary post of the Sulzberger family.

It’s shocking that a man who is a product of nepotism has so little written about him. Where’s the investigative reporting into this momentous decision 5 years ago? Where’s the criticism for biasing reporters in this manner? There’s nothing because the family is that powerful.

chrchang523• 4 years ago

This is incidentally a valid reason for HN to blacklist the NYT domain, at least until a formal reversal of the policy.

jollyllama• 4 years ago

The tweets are remarkably scant on details as to when this occurred. Unless it's just assumed that nothing older than a week is ever discussed, in the current zeitgeist.

uMeanPpl4• 4 years ago

Right sure no one on Twitter has an angle to push with vague statements

I mishear or take things out of context all the time. I’m sure this random Twitter person is not misremembering.

You’re being played emotionally.

alfiedotwtf• 4 years ago

now that it's a tiny bit more difficult for the big tech companies to suck up all the oxygen in the room.

It's now well established that Software is Eating the World. This downturn is just Software taking a small break between meals.

lambdasquirrel• 4 years ago

The NYTimes has been hostile to tech for as long as I can remember, and my memory on the matter goes back to the 90's when Thomas Friedman was writing about how our jobs were going to India practically every other week. After Google had taken off, that stopped, and they changed their tone to some sort of embrace-and-extend.

It's been many many years of this. It's not going to change. The signal-to-noise ratio isn't going to improve. To that set of folks, we'll always be a bunch of picks and shovels. There's a subset of the liberal artsy crowd that will always see STEM as being lesser intellectually, and that's who these articles are written for. To be sure, that doesn't mean that STEM folks should be anti-liberal-arts. Folks on the engineering side need to own what that side of intellectual life offers, because you can bet that there'll be other (traditional-management-and-corporate) folks leveraging the liberal artsy side and learning what they can about tech so they can "manage" it. To which end, I would also consider this article a reminder and temperature read.

I'm indifferent if the narrative would drive away some talented students into other industries. Raw talent isn't all that there is. There were plenty of 10x programmers in the field before tech got big. And not everyone going into the big giants would be so good in a startup. If you ask me, there's other stuff at play, like the competition between programmers today, and the drive to climb the ladder above all else – those things more or less negate whatever benefit the bump in talent was, because those things don't help startups. Those things are much more readily harnessed by the truly big companies.

mistrial9• 4 years ago

ten years before that, for readers in Palo Alto, NYT tech analysis of the PC world was the source of hilarity -- so out of touch.

zeroonetwothree4• 4 years ago

I thought Friedman is pro globalization?

Eumenes3• 4 years ago

Companies not in the 'tech' sector employ a sizable population of software developers and IT people. The average NYT reader may not know or understand this. People see "tech" and think of the Silicon Valley startup, with ping pong and the lavish perks. Average consumers of news generally have a negative view of these workers, because they get paid very well to "do nothing" and sit at a desk, plus the generous perks/benefits. You see this in any conversation involving housing too. Tech workers move to low cost of living areas and displace locals.

rayiner2• 4 years ago

Par for course: https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/

It’s no surprise that after a decade of loose monetary policy, there’s a shakeout in capital-intensive industries like tech. That’s painful in the short term, but it’s a good thing overall. It’s necessary for capital to be better allocated across the economy.

itsdrewmiller• 4 years ago

Tech is one of the least capital-intensive industries, no?

ehnto• 4 years ago

I'm excited to see what new companies are going to form in the next few years now that it's a tiny bit more difficult for the big tech companies to suck up all the oxygen in the room

Here's hoping. Although it's market dynamics at work, I often wish that software developers (myself included) and related were paid a little bit more sensibly, so that other industries could afford to hire software developers and that smaller scale software became more viable.

I think there are plenty of companies that don't necessarily need to be "eaten by software", they could just do some cool stuff if only it were affordable to hire a developer. I mean bespoke programs that help the company do stuff. Make people's lives better kind of stuff, rather than making bucket loads of cash kind of stuff. It's also a really fun role, it has the fun of bespoke automation and problem solving while also being part of the community you live in. Those kinds of opportunities just don't exist now because no company would expect to afford a software developer.

I have a hard time articulating what I mean usually, I'm not a tech bubble hater, I just see opportunities elsewhere going unfulfilled because it wouldn't make the bucket loads of cash needed to pay for the developers at current market rates.

uMeanPpl4• 4 years ago

The expectation was tech is being juiced by cheap money and it was proven out.

None of the big tech CEOs except perhaps Cook, have presented a future vision to put people on. They’re making money with price increases and staff reductions. Tech deserves to be dumped on hard, as it was government funded socialism squandered.

They’re not superstars but typical middle managers. Being good with computers is not what it used to be in this economy.

What are all these laid of workers going to do? Start dotcoms? Been there, done that is not going to sway the public.

You live in a filter bubble.

spywaregorilla• 4 years ago

the market values of big tech growth companies with no dividends did, to some extent.

jwsteigerwalt• 4 years ago

There is a disconnect between “tech talent” and the overlap of layoffs. Sure, some firms have downsized across the board, but plenty of layoffs we are seeing in the last 12 weeks is focused on areas other than engineering.

disgruntledphd2• 4 years ago

Sure, but tech companies need marketing, product and recruiters too. Even if it's a software business, it can't just be run by software engineers (even if FB came closer than any other company I've worked for).

voidfunc• 4 years ago

Depending on how long and deep the recession is, engineers will get impacted at some point.

quelltext• 4 years ago

Where does this narrative come from? Yes, engineers are also impacted at this point.

rib3ye• 4 years ago

Yesterday a friend working in an EE capacity told me he was laid off in the morning and by late afternoon was asked to come back as a contractor.

Meta may be trying to give Wall Street signals they are being prudent by cutting costs in the press, but actions are showing awareness that they need to double down to win.

Am4TIfIsER0ppos• 4 years ago

I've seen those videos of "an average day working at BIG_TECH" so it is no wonder they are trimming the fat.

troelsSteegin• 4 years ago

Across the executive mea culpas, there is this theme of "I over estimated demand". But, one could take the perspective that they correctly hired to extract value during peak demand, because on average each new resource is profitable, and are now are reducing resources because there is less value there to extract. An investor could argue that it is irresponsible not to hire for peaks and thus leave value inthe market. Tech jobs are always tied to the ups and downs of economic cycles. Perhaps the mea culpas are really "this cycle ended before I expected it to". Some roles and some firms are more buffered than others. It would be nice to know how volatile your value is.

2devnull• 4 years ago

Alternate take: The NYT wants to blame tech bros for inflation caused by bad policy. It’s as simple as that.

mcphage• 4 years ago

I don't think the mea culpa is at all honest—I think he hired up when demand was high, knowing that he'd just shed the extra load when demand dropped. I don't think this course of action was a surprise, I think it was the expected course of action internally when they hired.

Tangurena2• 4 years ago

Archive link: https://archive.ph/dLRli

CarbonCycles• 4 years ago

I agree..this article seems very click-baitish, which I sadly clicked on.

What company wouldn't want to hire the best? I've been casually making mental notes of the positions/titles of the groups impacted, and it follows common sense that talent acquisition, administrative, junior level employees, units that no longer support the business mission, and low-performing employees (or ones that don't fit the culture) were let go.

If anything, the article could have pointed out that the performance expectations have been shifted-up a notch or two as the remaining employees (once considered to be high-performers) are now "average". This could become a vicious negative feed-back cycle if not appropriately managed.

sigh Corporate life can definitely be a drag. The holidays can't come fast enough!

aborsy• 4 years ago

NYT, and left in general, don’t like the tech that much. It creates inequality, with value going to a small group of talented people. They have responded with regulations, taxation, painting the tech in media in bad ways, highlighting its negative consequences, etc.

Look into relationship of EU with technology.

socialismisok6• 4 years ago

It's more complex than that, I think. Being on the left (the actual left, not some anemic pro corporate centrism that passes for the left like the Dems).

Tech is seen as a potential force for good that has squandered opportunities. Amazon has dramatically gentrified Seattle, for instance, and done little bit shrug and make some relatively small donations to Mary's Place. (Which is good, but not enough.) Meanwhile, they push hard on local politics for a "business friendly" environment and their warehouse workers tell story after story of overwork, union busting, and physical harm.

Facebook and Instagram are great, until you run into problems like Instagrams negative impact on teenager's self esteem and suicide rates. Facebook has historically had some extremely questionable moderation decisions and does a ton of user tracking. But they've also enabled internet access for much of the world.

I think the left often feels ambivalent towards tech because it's something with huge upsides and many negative externalities that tech often shrugs at.

nequo2• 4 years ago

I think there is nothing special about tech. Facebook, Amazon, Google, Apple, Microsoft are big companies with a lot of market power. They use their market power to maximize their profits (as they probably should) and perpetuate that market power (as they probably also should since they are not charities).

This has negative effects on many others in the economy. For example, Amazon bleeding out small retailers by capturing their supply chains and treating its own workers badly. Or Facebook manipulating teenagers into using its product despite the known negative effects on their mental health because engagement = money.

In such situations, something needs to counteract these companies' market power in order to reduce the negative effects on others. This can be consumer protections, labor laws, unions, antitrust litigation, or other types of regulation.

We've lived with a ton of such regulation that we don't even think about because it seems common sense. For example, we are not allowed to smoke inside a hospital, send our 10-year-olds to work in coal mines, or (supposedly) be forced to work 70-hour workweeks without overtime pay. It is only that the tech sector is too recent and we haven't figured out how to dampen its negative effects.

zeroonetwothree4• 4 years ago

Who made you the arbiter of what counts as "the left"?

throwawaaarrgh3• 4 years ago

In the past year, I have worked with people making six figures in technical positions that know as much about computers as my grandmother. And I'm not exaggerating (and she's no Grace Hopper). Like, doesn't understand the basics of how a computer works, much less an operating system (and I don't mean the kernel, I mean like, what a shell is, how programs are executed, environment variables, file permissions, devices, local networking, local storage, symbolic links, user accounts, etc).

There is a sea of candidates who are both insanely ill-equipped, yet pass interviews regularly. I believe the competent candidate pool was probably exhausted 5 years ago, and businesses just kept hiring clueless people because they felt they had no choice. They aren't given enough user support and no training at all. As a result, employees are much less productive, struggling to do basic computing tasks when they were hired as technical people. And yet are payed vast sums by companies with more money than sense.

chasd00• 4 years ago

you know how there's that mythical 10x developer? what we really need is 10x HR. People who find and hire qualified workers 10x better than typical HR departments.

kerblang• 4 years ago

This is mostly true, but I think you're blaming HR for tech teams' own inability to run job interviews effectively. HR might be able to add an X or two, but the tech teams themselves have a 10x gap waiting to be exploited by innovative approaches.

socialismisok6• 4 years ago

Can they do the job they were hired for? Because if someone has a good attitude, can write good enough code, and is willing to learn I can quickly teach them the Linux basics.

Like, if someone doesn't know how to chmod or how to set up a .zshrc, I can get them up and running in an afternoon.

These folks aren't clueless, they've just learned at a higher level of abstraction then you did. That's fine.

throwawaaarrgh3• 4 years ago

Would you hire a lawyer that can't tie his shoes?

everforward• 4 years ago

I've worked places like that, and the issues are really threefold:

1) There is often a substantial depth of knowledge missing. E.g. it's not that they don't know how chmod works, it's that they don't understand conceptual models of filesystem permissions and the implications of having overly broad permissions.

2) The problem is often pervasive, where it isn't a single person that doesn't understand, it's a substantial (but non-majority) portion of the workforce.

3) Employees often only stay in their role for a year or two, creating a revolving door of people who don't understand X or Y.

Can they do the job they were hired for?

It often depends on your definition of "doing the job". "chmod -R 777" will fix whatever issue is blocking the code from working, but is bad. And then someone else will use those permissions to build on top of that application, and it can spiral into a situation where it's incredibly hard to fix the bad permissions because of an unclear web of dependencies.

The app works, but the architecture is fubar.

noodle• 4 years ago

I don't think the first paragraph and the second paragraph necessarily flow into one another. I've worked with a lot of people in tech that are very proficient at their jobs that have no clue about "basic" computing stuff like local networking, symlinks, chmod, user accounts, etc.. Because they don't need to be. And they're definitely worth the 6 figures they're paid.

Tech’s talent wars have come back to bite it

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