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Tech’s talent wars have come back to bite it
- throwaway0asd 4y agoIt’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 4y agoIt's more that you see yourself doing FAANG Level work at other companies without FAANG Level compensation that keeps those dreams going.
- willnonya 4y agoI 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?
- nequo 4y agoMaybe ANAMA? And when Pinterest makes it big, it will become PANAMA.
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- ht_th 4y agoI 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.
- CalRobert 4y agoIf you have FAANG level comp, you can structure your life so you are not afraid of layoffs. I don't even have that level of comp but all the same I was a little disappointed I didn't get laid off from my last job because a severance package would've been nice.
- bambataa 4y agoWhat if moving to a FAANG means you work just the same as before, except get paid twice as much and are surrounded by competent colleagues?
- CaptainNegative 4y ago> and are surrounded by competent colleagues Current FAANG employee here -- how I wish this were true.
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- bambataa 4y agoI’m sure it’s variable but mine are great.
- filoleg 4y agoNot trying to attack your experiences, but have you spent much time outside of FAANG? As someone who did both (and have been at FAANG and the likes more recently), of course you will find incompetent colleagues everywhere, FAANG or not. The difference is, how many of those relative to the competent ones you will find on average. It is a very different situation when a team of 8 has a couple incompetent devs vs. when a team of 8 has only a couple competent devs (aka the inverse). Not trying to say that this is universally true for both FAANG and non-FAANG, exceptions apply in both cases and are based on a chance. Of course there are startups and non-tech companies that are composed almost entirely of very strong and competent devs. And there are some teams at FAANGs that are in "rest and vest" mode. But on average, that observation about the averages seemed to be true based on my personal experiences.
- Eumenes 4y agoI 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 4y 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 4y agoApple 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.
- 121789 4y agoIt depends on your position. Prestige is not really about morals, it's about selectivity and compensation. If you are in hardware or a designer, Apple is a cut above everyone else. If you are in software, it's probably Google/Meta/Netflix cuts above the rest you listed.
- Eumenes 4y agoI guess it depends on your team/role/function re: prestige. Naturally, the technical hiring bar has dropped as these companies have grown.
- larrymyers 4y agoThe 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.
- spywaregorilla 4y agothe market values of big tech growth companies with no dividends did, to some extent.
- ciphol 4y agoThis 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 https://twitter.com/KelseyTuoc/status/1588231892792328192
- nindalf 4y agoThis 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.
- jwsteigerwalt 4y agoThere 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.
- quelltext 4y agoWhere does this narrative come from? Yes, engineers are also impacted at this point.
- disgruntledphd2 4y agoSure, 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 4y agoDepending on how long and deep the recession is, engineers will get impacted at some point.
- rib3ye 4y agoYesterday 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 4y agoI've seen those videos of "an average day working at BIG_TECH" so it is no wonder they are trimming the fat.
- troelsSteegin 4y agoAcross 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.
- mcphage 4y agoI 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.
- 2devnull 4y agoAlternate take: The NYT wants to blame tech bros for inflation caused by bad policy. It’s as simple as that.
- steve_john 4y ago
- Tangurena2 4y agoArchive link: https://archive.ph/dLRli https://archive.ph/dLRli
- CarbonCycles 4y agoI 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 4y agoNYT, 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.
- socialismisok 4y agoIt'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.
- nequo 4y agoI 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.
- throwawaaarrgh 4y agoIn 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 4y agoyou 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 4y agoThis 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.
- socialismisok 4y agoCan 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.
- 4y ago