Bay Area tech's 'layoff surge' has slashed salaries, report says

https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/tech-salaries-down-layoff-surge-19541241.php

by WWWMMMWWW • 2 years ago

12 15 2 years ago

rhelz6• 2 years ago

We called it the ‘Great Reshuffling,’ because we kept seeing that people would land those jobs so quickly, even in the Bay Area,” Ratliff said. “... The jobs were still being available. They just weren’t paying as lucratively as we saw people paying right after the pandemic.”

If we were in a deep recession or something, I'd understand. Can somebody give me another reason why they did this--"coincidentally" all at the same time--other than to deliberatly lower our salaries?

What recourse do we have? Are we really powerless to do anything about this? If so, what's to prevent them doing the same thing next year?

xenospn• 2 years ago

Unions.

DamnYuppie• 2 years ago

That doesn't stop them, just makes it a more onerous process. Most unions, in the US, have been losing out for decades now in terms of compensation.

Eridrus3• 2 years ago

Can somebody give me another reason why they did this--"coincidentally" all at the same time--other than to deliberatly lower our salaries?

Market actors respond to market forces. Information cascades are real. Etc.

There are plenty of reasons we see lots of people doing the same thing at the same time that does not actually require any sort of direct coordination or conspiracy.

rhelz6• 2 years ago

Well, can you give me something a bit more specific and less tautological than "Market actors respond to market forces"

What, exactly was the "market force" they are reacting to here? Is it even a market responding to market forces, or a market's efficiency being compromised by market manipulation?

deodar• 2 years ago

Short of unionization, the labor class (software engineers) are powerless indeed.

And I say this as someone who usually leans right :-)

rufus_foreman• 2 years ago

> What recourse do we have?

If there are large numbers of software developers being paid much less than they are worth, start a software development company, hire them for more than they are being paid now but less than they are worth, and get rich while helping to solve the problem.

rhelz6• 2 years ago

Alas, this is not really a solution: A company can happily pay a programmer way less than the value of that programmer to them---and at the same time, be paying them far more than they could earn anyplace else.

The "worth of a programmer" is not a property of that programmer, its relatively to the programmer's environment.

For example, a programmer can be many times more valuable at Microsoft--which has network/lockin effects--than they will be at a company which faces more competition. And certainly more than a company which doesn't even have a product yet, like a startup.

If you think a just wage is "whatever salary you can get", then I guess you won't find that very persuasive. But if you think a just wage is "one which is commensurate with the value the company adds to the company," you'll agree.

lolinder• 2 years ago

Looking at the numbers in the report [0], average tech salaries in 2023 were still slightly ahead of inflation relative to 2019 [1]. We were making $146k on average in 2019 (worth $178k in Dec 2023) and were making $182k in 2023.

In other words, the salary slash was more of a correction from the 2020-2022 bubble that we all knew was temporary.

[0] https://app.hubspot.com/documents/21821778/view/776264836?ac...

[1] https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=146000&year1=2...

Bay Area tech's 'layoff surge' has slashed salaries, report says

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