[HN Gopher] Thoughts on tech employment
___________________________________________________________________
Thoughts on tech employment
Author : luu
Score : 92 points
Date : 2024-02-09 00:23 UTC (22 hours ago)
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| okdood64 wrote:
| > There's been a weird accounting thing where companies put a lot
| of their compensation into equity, but I think that's going away
| as investors are learning to better account for dilution and
| employees appreciate the fungibility of cash.
|
| Interesting, is there any public data to support this?
| maximinus_thrax wrote:
| As a piece of general feedback regarding the writing, I believe
| the use of the term 'leveraged' (5 times) is overleveraged.
| djur wrote:
| I genuinely don't know what "leveraged" is meant to mean here:
|
| > Tech-first companies are going to become leaner and more
| leveraged.
|
| To me, a company being "leveraged" means they're in debt. I'm
| pretty sure that's not what he means?
| maximinus_thrax wrote:
| I spend a lot of time talking to PMs and I believe people
| throw this word around like some sort of MBA gang sign.
| Whenever I hear it, I know I will be interacting with a
| bullshit artist.
|
| But to your point, I believe the definition for this context
| is:
|
| > lev*er*age: use (something) to maximum advantage.
| CSMastermind wrote:
| There are some obvious things missing from here.
|
| I believe the prevailing wisdom is that tech hiring slowed
| because interest rates rose.
|
| Because software scales so well, it benefits from speculative
| effort more than other business types. We see this in venture
| capital, where they only need 1 out of 100 bets to hit in order
| to make their money. Large tech companies do something similar
| internally. They may fund the development of 100 products or
| features, knowing they only need one of them to hit big in order
| to fund the company going forward.
|
| When money was essentially free to borrow, it made all the sense
| in the world to make a large number of bets because the odds were
| on your side that at least one of them would pay off. Now,
| however, each bet comes with a real opportunity cost, so
| companies are making fewer speculative bets and thus need fewer
| people.
|
| ---
|
| The other thing he doesn't talk about is the rise of remote work
| and the downward pressure that it puts on wages. I know that many
| companies are forcing employees to return to the office, but I'd
| speculate that the number of remote workers has risen
| significantly. And that opens up the labor market pretty
| significantly.
|
| I'll tell you that I'm getting overseas talent for roles where 10
| years ago I would have hired entry level talent in the US. But
| since my company is fully remote and distributed, the downside to
| hiring in LatAm and Eastern Europe has been significantly
| reduced.
| garrickvanburen wrote:
| I fully agree.
|
| Low interest rates mean companies/capital-providers look to
| speculative places (like new software products) to hit their
| growth numbers.
|
| Higher interest rates mean companies/capital-providers return
| to known/well-understood places to hit their growth numbers.
|
| I interpret the reasons in the article as well downstream from
| these kinds of investment decisions.
| jsdwarf wrote:
| Have a slightly different view. In times of high interest
| rates, you are rewarded for profitability, not for growth.
| When interest rates are low, your company needs to grow or it
| will be outgrown by its competitors and becomes a takeover
| target. With high interest rates unprofitable companies
| (which is a side effect of a growth strategy) slowly bleed to
| death and become takeover targets by themselves.
| garrickvanburen wrote:
| Yes, thank you for distinguishing between profitability and
| growth.
| AznHisoka wrote:
| Which countries in Eastern Europe and Latin America do you find
| most of your talent?
| jodacola wrote:
| Not parent, but I've hired and worked with a lot of great
| folks from Argentina, Romania, and Ukraine.
|
| Other countries from which I've hired fewer, but generally
| solid, folks are Spain, Poland, Columbia, and Costa Rica.
|
| Usually as contractors. Full-time employment laws in other
| countries are very, very different from the US.
| AznHisoka wrote:
| Other than cheaper rates/salaries, doesn hiring overseas
| helps with taxes in some way (vs hiring domestically)
| jodacola wrote:
| Hiring folks on contract was less expensive due to the
| lack of US domestic taxes (e.g. social security).
|
| With Section 174 changes, though, that's not the case
| anymore, and I've spent a lot of time understanding that
| (because of the 15 year amortization). I won't get on my
| soapbox about Section 174 stuff and derail this thread.
| Check it out, though!
|
| edit: missing content/context
| AznHisoka wrote:
| Gotcha. Is that making you lean towards hiring
| domestically now instead of overseas, or is the cheaper
| rates still worth it at the end of the day?
| frfl wrote:
| I haven't read up too much about 174. Are you suggesting
| contractor pay can't be written off anymore as well, and
| thus is less attractive, even at a lower dollar/hour
| cost, than hiring domestically?
| maxvt wrote:
| https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/section-174/ is a good
| read on Section 174, for those who might be curious.
| CSMastermind wrote:
| Right now I have team members from Ukraine, Croatia,
| Montenegro, and Romania in Eastern Europe as well as Chile,
| Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico in LatAm.
|
| Some countries have more stable talent pools than others -
| Ukrainian engineers tend to be notably high quality while
| Mexico can be very hit or miss.
| ugh123 wrote:
| > The other thing he doesn't talk about is the rise of remote
| work and the downward pressure that it puts on wages
|
| This doesn't get nearly talked about as much and I feel the
| audience who is the loudest favoring remote work has _more_ to
| benefit than just a reduced or eliminated commute. Rather, this
| puts people into job market 's they never would have had a
| chance to be in. As companies leases run out on their offices
| they'll switch tune from demanding RTO to instead performing
| layoffs in higher salary & COL areas to drive down wages
| further. The "outsourcing scare" of the early 2000s was
| overblown. It will be for real this time.
| williamcotton wrote:
| Lots of companies outside of tech need tech products. The
| best way to build the right things for customers is to get to
| know _their_ customers and _their_ business, from engineers
| to whoever. For one, that's really hard to do through a
| laptop screen. Probably more important is it is much easier
| for person in country /culture X to familiarize themselves
| with a business and its customers in country/culture X over
| Y.
| ugh123 wrote:
| 100% agree. But I suspect a lot of CEOs and their
| shareholders don't.
| malfist wrote:
| The downward pressure depends on where you're sitting. Here in
| Kentucky, being able to pull in a FAANG salary that's based on
| the cost of labor in Seattle is a huge upswing in salary.
| billy99k wrote:
| I will second this. I work for an American company that now
| routinely outsources to Eastern Europe. Wages are 1/3, most
| speak English fluently, and the time zone differences aren't
| really that big of an issue.
|
| It's much different than my experiences outsourcing to Asia
| around a decade ago. Many pushed for remote work, and the
| consequence might just be that they are out of a job.
| mathattack wrote:
| Yes. Step 1 of remote is "are you really better than someone
| in Indiana with an $800 mortgage payment?" Step 2 is "And are
| you really better than the European Phd at half that cost?"
| schiem wrote:
| My Indiana mortgage payment is $500, thank you very much.
| brianwawok wrote:
| Haha I had one around there too. Indiana life is good
| life.
| notpachet wrote:
| Unless you need an abortion.
| deadbabe wrote:
| Step 3 is "European PHD, if you're really so good why are
| you half the cost?"
| game_the0ry wrote:
| Step 4 is "European PHD is not as good as we thought, we
| need to start over."
| bmoxb wrote:
| And the answer being "the limited number of local
| companies paying high wages and the limited number of
| American companies willing to hire someone in Eastern
| Europe reducing my leverage."
| paulddraper wrote:
| > the rise of remote work and the downward pressure that it
| puts on wages
|
| I've seen the reverse.
|
| The same position pays easily 20% more than 4 years ago.
| (Though a lot of that is general inflation.)
|
| I work in the US, but not a large city.
| jvalencia wrote:
| Yes, it might increase for those outside the city, but for
| those inside, it's overall downward pressure.
| shrimp_emoji wrote:
| The last 4 years were 4, 8, 5, and 1% inflation,
| respectively.
| paulddraper wrote:
| And a lot of inflation is wages.
|
| So when you talk about upward/downward pressure on wages,
| you can't discount inflation, because inflation is wages
| and the _product_ of that upward /downward pressure.
|
| You can talk about real wages.
| stefan_ wrote:
| It wasn't? The majority of that inflation, certainly in
| the EU, was energy and profit taking in uncompetitive
| markets, the result of decades of failed anti-trust?
|
| This stuff is researched these days, we don't need to
| repeat 1930s tropes.
| threesevenths wrote:
| I'd also say that there is less speculation since guaranteed
| investments carry higher payouts tied to interest rates and
| therefore the risk vs reward calculation swings the other way.
| If you invest 1 dollar into each of 100 ideas expecting one or
| two to hit and return double your investment but interest is at
| 5% it just doesn't make sense to gamble your investment.
| angarg12 wrote:
| Your first point hits it exactly.
|
| Let's say that it's year X and you have two choices: either you
| bet that the future will be bleak, and cut cost and hunker
| down, or you bet that the future will be bright and make big
| investments.
|
| If X is 2022, the first bet will be right, while the second
| will lead to bloat and excess. But if X is 2014, the second bet
| will be right and the company will gain market share, while the
| first bet might make you go out of business.
|
| So big tech companies weren't so irrational to make those big
| bets to begin with, and they simply overcorrected the other way
| around afterwards.
|
| Now, as an employee in one of these I still think this is
| shortsighted and will damage them long term. But the stock
| market keeps rewarding these companies handsomely, so what do I
| know?
| jvanderbot wrote:
| The thing I am most excited about is the diaspora of talent
| _from_ the big tech companies. I 'm hoping the talent vacuum
| slows down and we can infuse all those extra minds into more
| startups, more innovation, more value growth on mid-sized
| companies.
| ren_engineer wrote:
| >I'll tell you that I'm getting overseas talent for roles where
| 10 years ago I would have hired entry level talent in the US
|
| the US is going to once again cripple one of their critical
| industries for short term gains, what happens when your senior
| engineers retire and there are no replacements prepared because
| it's more efficient to hire foreign senior engineers rather
| than onboarding and training a college grad? Even before AI
| improvements and Covid increasing remote work, the bar for
| hiring entry engineers was absurd and most startups only wanted
| seniors
|
| I can't blame companies for doing this on the micro level
| because it makes sense, but macro level the US government needs
| to take action and treat hiring remote similarly to bringing in
| a visa worker or add a form of tariff like you would for
| manufactured products. Government's job is to reign in market
| forces that are net bad for the country due to unaccounted
| externalities
| solveit wrote:
| Or just let/require them to immigrate here, and get the best
| of both worlds.
| ponector wrote:
| Not many tech people wants to immigrate to USA. With 100k
| annual salary one can live as a king in LATAM or eastern
| Europe.
|
| Overall from my point of view life in Europe is much better
| than in US.
| airza wrote:
| The best of both worlds is living in western europe on a
| US-level salary
| pavlov wrote:
| _> "treat hiring remote similarly to bringing in a visa
| worker or add a form of tariff like you would for
| manufactured products"_
|
| How would this work in practice? Visas and tariffs are
| enforced at the borders.
|
| Where is the checkpoint for taxing foreign remote employees?
| Would Congress require Slack and GitHub to scan for evidence
| of work being performed by remote employees?
|
| If you just make a law but have no enforcement mechanism,
| people will find workarounds because they only have to be
| justified internally.
| ren_engineer wrote:
| >Where is the checkpoint for taxing foreign remote
| employees?
|
| company payroll/tax reporting I'd assume. If payments are
| going to a worker in a foreign country, throw an additional
| tax on it to make it so there's no cost savings compared to
| hiring locally. That way the only reason to do it would be
| because you couldn't find the talent locally
| schwartzworld wrote:
| That would be quite the tax. Developers in Europe and
| Asia make a LOT less than the US.
| jltsiren wrote:
| The foreign employees are often employees of a foreign
| company, because it's more convenient that way. It's
| difficult to do business in a country if nobody around
| you understands the legal status of your company. That
| foreign company could be owned by the same holding
| company as the American company, or it could be
| technically independent. And if you impose tariffs on
| buying services from foreign companies, other countries
| will reciprocate, which will hit US tech companies hard.
| jawns wrote:
| > At Automattic last year we did not do layoffs, but allowed
| performance management and natural attrition (voluntary
| regrettable was 2.9%, non-regrettable 6.8% for us in 2023) to
| allow our size to shrink down more naturally
|
| "Non-regrettable" attrition means either that the person was
| fired or laid off. Since the post says Automattic didn't do
| layoffs, that means all of that attrition took the form of being
| fired because of performance problems.
|
| If 7% of the company exited the company in a year because they
| were fired -- which seems quite high to me -- then even if you
| don't call it a layoff, it has many of the same characteristics
| as a layoff.
|
| In a classic layoff situation, you've over-hired, expecting
| future growth, and then the winds change, and you need to reduce
| the workforce to match the declining growth.
|
| In a case where you're firing 7% of the company because of
| performance problems, you haven't over-hired, but you have
| certainly poorly hired!
|
| Either way, now the remaining workforce has to adjust and "do
| more with less," and I'm going to guess that most of them have a
| reasonable fear that they might be next on the chopping block!
| jyap wrote:
| Not necessarily. Depends on their definition and process.
|
| "Voluntary regrettable" would imply the employee left
| voluntarily but regrettable because the company would have
| preferred they stayed.
|
| "Non-regrettable" means they left for reasons that aren't
| regrettable such as performance or natural attrition. Either
| they left on their own or were fired. Hard to say since they
| don't specify.
| malfist wrote:
| Typically "regretted attrition" is employee managed.
| "Unregretted attrition" is employeer managed. Regardless of
| the cause.
| maximinus_thrax wrote:
| > "Non-regrettable" attrition means either that the person was
| fired or laid off. Since the post says Automattic didn't do
| layoffs, that means all of that attrition took the form of
| being fired because of performance problems.
|
| > If 7% of the company exited the company in a year because
| they were fired -- which seems quite high to me -- then even if
| you don't call it a layoff, it has many of the same
| characteristics as a layoff.
|
| In my experience, this will have a way worse effect on morale
| than layoffs and will trigger regrettable attrition, as the
| smarter people in the room realize that you're always one reorg
| away from having a 'performance problem'. Sad.
| whoopsie wrote:
| This. The more you reorg the less confidence I have that
| management knows shit.
| returningfory2 wrote:
| Isn't it the other way around? If you're a decent performer
| you should be more afraid of random layoffs (like FAANG in
| the past 2 years) than performance based layoffs.
| cleverwebble wrote:
| Is 2.9% and 6.8% acceptable or even 'good' levels, even for the
| tech industry? I'm not quite sure. A 6.8% performance-related
| quit/termination seems pretty high from my limited anecdotal
| experience.
|
| Edit: now that I'm thinking about it, I don't think I worked at
| a tech company where people were fired/asked to resign more
| than 2.5x than those that resigned on their own.
| jsdwarf wrote:
| You can steer attrition by so many parameters - compensation,
| (non) promotion, change in benefit plans.
|
| And again, a "non-regrettable" termination can also apply
| when the employee quit.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Another trick: In order to avoid being on notice as a
| manager because too many people under you quit, just
| declare it "non-regrettable".
| icedchai wrote:
| "Non-regrettable" just means the company wasn't too sad to
| see them go, not that they were necessarily forced out. They
| could've been a poor performer that found another job on
| their own, and they wouldn't want to rehire them.
| csa wrote:
| > Is 2.9% and 6.8% acceptable or even 'good' levels, even for
| the tech industry?
|
| I would put 2.9% at the very good to low level. It suggests
| 100% turnover every 33 years, which is fine, especially for
| the tech industry.
|
| 6.8% for performance strikes me as an indicator of very bad
| hiring and/or onboarding. A charitable view would be that
| many years of bad hiring got dumped in one year (so each year
| only had a small % of bad hires), but I wonder if that was
| the actual case.
| hyperpape wrote:
| 2.9% would be excellent if sustained. It would correspond to
| keeping a significant majority of the employees you want to
| keep for more than 10 years. That's generally quite rare.
|
| I'm less clear on how to assess the 6.8%. It seems somewhat
| significant, though if you're hiring many people, that's a
| period where you might expect churn, as some of them don't
| work out.
|
| Of course, you can't extrapolate any of this, as 2023 was a
| year when employees would be very averse to moving, and it
| was also a year when many companies were coming off of
| previous hiring sprees. So expect the 2.9% to eventually
| increase.
| Qworg wrote:
| Most large companies aim for ~10% total turnover a year.
| lacker wrote:
| 6.8% seems like a pretty reasonable target for non-regrettable
| attrition. GE famously aimed at firing the bottom 10% of
| performers every year. In Facebook engineering management the
| internal target was 6% IIRC.
|
| It feels a bit paradoxical because there are many 10-person
| teams with no poor performers that should be fired. Yet if you
| have an engineering director heading a 150 person department
| and that department allegedly has no poor performers, that
| probably indicates a lax culture that accepts poor performance.
| csa wrote:
| > It feels a bit paradoxical because there are many 10-person
| teams with no poor performers that should be fired.
|
| These bottom-dwellers are often spread out amongst teams so
| that there is low-hanging fruit on each team.
|
| The conflict happens when multiple managers try to hold on to
| next year's sacrificial lamb as well.
| jboy55 wrote:
| > In Facebook engineering management the internal target was
| 6% IIRC.
|
| I haven't seen a NRA rate enforced at Facebook, however 6% is
| the target at Amazon.
| jsdwarf wrote:
| > "Non-regrettable" attrition means either that the person was
| fired or laid off.
|
| No. Every leaver is classified as a regrettable/non-regrettable
| case - this was a part of my last exit interview when I quit
| the job."non regrettable" just means you have very low chances
| of being hired by the company again.
| kelnos wrote:
| > _" Non-regrettable" attrition means either that the person
| was fired or laid off._
|
| Unless that's a technical/industry term, I assumed it
| additionally means people who quit, but the company did not
| mind seeing them go. That is, their performance was only fine-
| ish, maybe not down to the level where they'd get fired, but
| also not at a level where their departure would be lamented by
| their manager.
| acjohnson55 wrote:
| I don't think the methodology is completely standard, but you
| generally want an objective way to differentiate between the
| two forms of attrition. One way to do it is to define non-
| regrettable as having documented performance or behavioral
| issues at the time they decided to leave. Another way would
| be to do talent surveys to get an evaluation ahead of time.
| usaar333 wrote:
| You are correct. That's exactly how I've always seen it used
| in industry.
|
| It also implies company wouldn't let them back in with a
| boomerang.
| paulddraper wrote:
| That's right.
|
| It's common to distinguish the two.
|
| E.g. a sales rep is underperforming and decided to leave. The
| decision at time of termination was _technically_ the
| employee 's (not fired, not laid off), but the company would
| not seek to retain or rehire.
|
| In companies with good communication and clear incentive
| structures, this is a somewhat common occurrence, as
| employees realize there is not a good opportunity for them.
| JimBlackwood wrote:
| I took it to be that their contract just didn't get extended.
|
| Not fired, not laid off, just not continued past some
| initially agreed upon end date.
| twelfthnight wrote:
| People talk about efficiency a lot, but they miss the basic point
| that efficiency in a free market means lower prices and decreased
| profits (due to competition). Companies profits are soaring.
| Folks upset about lay offs are not against that type of
| efficiency, they are against bad faith arguments that's it's cool
| for leaders to make money on short term gains (fire staff) while
| paying no costs for long term losses.
| lex-lightning wrote:
| I was laid off along with a quarter of staff last year.
|
| If I'm being honest, all of these are true:
|
| - I had life circumstances making me depressed and I get why I
| was included.
|
| - Multiple projects I spent over a month on were just thrown
| away casually when management changed their mind. So I was
| being paid without creating value.
|
| - I don't think tech workers are overpaid per se, but most
| people are underpaid given the effort they put in or conditions
| they work in.
|
| Even as I made great money as a tech worker, I was acutely
| aware that I wasn't providing value to society. Or even
| arguably the company, even when I tried.
|
| My favorite Orwellian phrase is "Human Resources". In a
| publically traded company, headcount is another number to
| advertise in the game of stock evaluation. People themselves
| become speculative assets.
|
| I still benefited from this system and most people in the US
| have it worse than I do. That said, I find the expansion-layoff
| cycle icky.
| jodacola wrote:
| > headcount is another number to advertise in the game of
| stock evaluation
|
| This is something I've had difficulty squaring over the
| course of my career.
|
| If a company remains small but makes boatloads of money
| because it builds a superior product, shouldn't that be
| rewarded more than having a higher headcount?
|
| From the perspective of having run engineering orgs (and a
| few failed - but enlightening - forays into founding a
| company), I've learned to believe from my experience that
| having the smallest team reasonable to achieve great things
| brings the most positive effects: folks are closer to the
| outcome, feel a stronger sense of ownership, want the best
| for the business, and reap the rewards of accomplishment,
| which in turn motivates the team to achieve and innovate
| more, resulting in growing revenue for the company.
|
| If I were an investor, I'd want smaller teams producing
| outsized results. Why would I want a gigantic team producing
| mediocre results?
| frfl wrote:
| Because "growth". A 100 person high performing org looks
| okay right now. But there's always the "what if" factor.
| What if you scaled your org to 200 and eek out even more
| gains for shareholders or start taking on new projects for
| more growth opportunities. Hedonic treadmill in a way. The
| baseline for good is relative.
| jodacola wrote:
| I hear you, and appreciate the response. The bias of my
| experience tells me that the "what if" factor can be
| created by a single person experimenting. When the thing
| that one person created takes off, awesome - hire some
| more folks to support and grow it. New revenue stream.
| More ownership by the person who created it. Give folks
| the time to experiment.
|
| Hiring more people than necessary is, in my mind, akin to
| gambling. I, personally, hate gambling, and that's
| probably where my bias comes in on this topic.
|
| Tying it back to my original response: when I say
| reasonable team size, my implication is reasonable growth
| based on real results, not just rolling the dice.
|
| To turn the perspective from an engineering leader to
| that of an engineer (the other half of my career), if I
| could practice and LeetCode my way into a FAANG and make
| more than I've ever made to be part of the headcount
| machine, why would I stretch and innovate? I'd just sit
| back, do what's expected, and collect.
|
| It's a weird dichotomy, and I fully appreciate that I'm
| biased in my perspective, which may be detached from
| reality.
|
| And, again, in the imaginary world where I'm an investor,
| why would I want a large team built of folks just looking
| to collect a huge paycheck by being part of the machine?
| frfl wrote:
| I can tell you have decade(s) more experience than me in
| life and the software field in general. So my perspective
| may be different, limited and different in some ways.
|
| But really different people think differently. Investors
| are looking at it differently, they're willing and eager
| to gamble. VC basically gamble for 1 hit out of a 100
| bets. But that 1 bet will double or triple their money,
| then its worth it for them even if they have to write off
| 100 million in failed bets -- there's probably tax
| benefits doing this.
|
| I found out about this at one point. I asked a founder,
| "so investors are just gonna let the company go under?
| They're willing to write off 5 million in the funding
| they gave your company?" It was such a irrational thing
| to me. But looking back, it's not irrational from the VCs
| point of view.
|
| I agree with you. Some things make no sense as you point
| out in your comment.
|
| But the people are complex and often irrational, at least
| from an outside perspective. Imagine aliens observing us,
| what would they think about how we live and operate.
|
| Reminds me of a Silicon Valley quote -- what a show, it's
| remarkable how much it accurately depicts the industry
|
| > You're one of Peter's compression plays, huh? Uhh, one
| of? How many does he have? Not too many. Like six or
| eight. Ok. Why are there so many? You know how sea
| turtles have a shit-ton of babies because most of them
| die on their way down to the water? Peter just wants to
| make sure that his money makes it to the ocean.
| kelnos wrote:
| I suppose it depends. If a company can show impressive
| growth with a small staff, that's the ideal. But at that
| point the market/investors will probably ask "if you can
| sustain this kind of growth without many employees, why
| don't you hire a bunch and grow even faster?" Of course,
| that's not necessarily how it will play out (mythical man-
| month, market size, sales capacity, etc.), but the
| investors will still get itchy.
| radiator wrote:
| I appreciate your objectivity, these are not the most usual
| things to say.
| ok_dad wrote:
| This is the saddest post I have read on HN so far. All three
| bullets you listed are not your fault.
|
| * Being depressed isn't a reason to get fired, everyone has
| human emotions and issues and we're supposed to be supporting
| people in their time of need, not replacing them like some
| manufacturing equipment that broke down!
|
| * Being put on tasks that management threw away later isn't
| your fault, it's theirs for mismanagement and not having a
| good strategy or tactics to achieve the strat.
|
| [An aside: I was recently laid off from a position and the
| company still has me on a contract to maintain the code I
| wrote, which is 80% of what's keeping them floating now; so
| in that case I did a lot of useful stuff for them but they
| still laid me off!]
|
| * Being overpaid is relative, and is also a management fuck
| up; if they were really spending too much and didn't just
| want to make a bit more profit then they would reduce adjust
| pay scales and offer new employment contracts based on those
| scales.
|
| > I wasn't providing value to society
|
| FUCK THIS SENTIMENT! Everyone is important and provides
| value, even the losers sitting at home doing nothing with
| their lives have people they care about and who care about
| them. This fucking society! I fucking hate how people's sense
| of worth is tied to some stupid fucking corp that sells ads
| or makes profit from trading digital bits or pork bellies
| using digital bits. Have respect for yourself: you did the
| best you could do and some moron execs and managers fucked up
| leading to your layoff.
|
| I would argue that providing value isn't even necessary,
| society will do fine if a few people are having issues and
| cannot provide monetary value to society! There are billions
| of humans, a few can take a break!
| lex-lightning wrote:
| Thanks. I'm in a great place now. Appreciate the kind
| words.
| ok_dad wrote:
| I am glad to hear that, I felt your posting as if it were
| my own from a while ago.
| Uehreka wrote:
| > I don't think tech workers are overpaid per se, but most
| people are underpaid given the effort they put in or
| conditions they work in.
|
| Sure, fair enough, but you being laid off didn't uplift
| someone who was being underpaid, on the contrary it went
| straight into the pockets of investors who probably aren't
| hurting for money.
| ptero wrote:
| A few of those thoughts I completely agree on: results of
| overhiring, and technology enabling bigger impact by fewer people
| seem spot on to me.
|
| But a few I find strange. For example, a semi-implicit assumption
| that hiring, profits and stock price are tightly coupled. That is
| not always the case. They are correlated, but often have
| significant time lags, so it is possible for a company to hire
| rapidly on a great novel idea, realize a first mover advantage,
| have it lead to profits, have that lead to a stock rise by which
| time there is no longer a need for aggressive hiring. The company
| does not even need to do layoffs, just a stop to aggressive
| hiring is enough to feel a frozen job market.
|
| Edited: apparently I totally misunderstood the meaning of the
| "non-regrettable attrition". Is the only difference with a layoff
| is firing employees one-at-a-time vs en masse?
| csa wrote:
| > Is the only difference with a layoff is firing employees one-
| at-a-time vs en masse?
|
| Theoretically, layoffs are not performance-related, although
| sometimes they are. Getting laid off doesn't necessarily
| reflect poorly on the person who was laid off.
|
| Firing is performance-related, and it's usually a bad look.
|
| The former may get severance and will probably be eligible for
| unemployment, while the latter will likely get neither.
| ptero wrote:
| Are you sure about the unemployment? Given that it is usually
| administered by the state (at least in the US) I am surprised
| that any non-criminal involuntarily termination would be
| rejected for the unemployment benefits. But IANAL and
| personally never needed one, so anything is possible.
| csa wrote:
| > Are you sure about the unemployment?
|
| Definitely not sure, and it probably varies based on
| location.
|
| In CA, where I am, one criterion is "unemployed through no
| fault of [their] own". Getting fired is widely considered
| to be the individual's fault (e.g., non-performance). I've
| heard something about the standard being "egregious
| misconduct", but that's just beyond the details that I know
| about.
|
| Getting laid off usually isn't considered the employee's
| fault (e.g., due to lack of work or change in direction).
|
| Iirc, companies might have increased payments into the
| state unemployment coffers when they do layoffs versus
| firings. I have only heard about this second-hand, so I
| don't know the details.
|
| Anecdotally and perhaps only tangentially related, I have
| friends and family who have had to or chosen to fire
| people, and they have all said the same thing -- layoffs
| are much easier than firings.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| > Sam Altman when he says there may someday be a billion-dollar
| company run by one person who is able to highly leverage future
| AI agents to automate most traditional roles at a company.
|
| Altman is nearly right, but Warren Bennis had it better;
|
| The factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and
| a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be
| there to keep the man from touching the equipment.
|
| It's not that companies will "leverage AI" but that AI will
| leverage humans. Companies are already "AIs", but that will
| become more and more apparent as time goes by.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Yeah, neither of those things is going to happen in our
| lifetimes. Regardless of what Altman says.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| Play the game "Flateye" [0,1]and come back to us on that :)
|
| [0] https://flateye-game.com/
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HdYFdcfdXk
| hef19898 wrote:
| Try flat eye at managing a factory, and come back to tell
| me how it went.
|
| A game as a reference, seriously? No idea which film I
| recently heard the term, but amateur hour doesn't even come
| close to decribe that...
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| Did you just actually take me giving you a joke game as a
| "reference" seriously? I'm not sure what worries me the
| most now.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Unfortunately, I cannot tell anymore sometimes...
|
| As a joke, it is right down my alley! So please, take my
| apology.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| We're cool hef.
|
| At least I assume it's a joke. Maybe the jokes on me, but
| the review seemed to paint it that way.
| radiator wrote:
| "in our lifetimes" is a very wide range here. There are
| probably both teenagers and octogenarians on HN. Did you mean
| your statement to apply also to the teenagers?
| hef19898 wrote:
| When it comes to fuly automated factories owned by AI-
| powered one-person unicorns, that would include said
| teenagers children if not grand children.
|
| AI-powered billion dollar valuated over-hyped start-ups,
| well, those risk happening this decade.
| ok_computer wrote:
| Lol I agree with you. I think ambitious ideas about automated
| factories are made by people who have never worked in a
| manufacturing, much less automated industry.
| timeagain wrote:
| We build cybernetic systems called companies with the goal of
| creating/increasing profit. As we get better and better at
| making these systems, humans play less of a role and the roles
| we do play become ever more formulaic.
|
| I wonder when we will hit a turning point when over 50% of
| people in America would say "yes" to the question "is my boss a
| computer?"
|
| For instance if you work at MacDonalds, you probably have a
| shift supervisor, but the beeping monitor showing customer
| orders and wait times is the real head honcho. Piss off your
| boss and you'll get a talking to. Piss off the computer and
| you're out (quantifiably!)
| TapWaterBandit wrote:
| Interesting observation about McDonald's.
|
| I work as a doordasher and have never once spoken to or
| interacted with anyone who works at the company.Well that's
| not quite true, I had an order with issues once that went to
| a CS rep in the Philippines who I chatted with via messaging.
|
| For all intents and purposes my "boss" is a computer.
| kelnos wrote:
| Reminds me of "Manna" by Marshall Brain[0]. It's a short
| story about a fast-food restaurant where the manager is a
| computer that directs employees through an earpiece, with the
| power to hire and fire.
|
| [0] https://marshallbrain.com/manna1
| geodel wrote:
| Absolutely right. As I also put some past comment, forget
| cutting edge ML/DL/AI etc even basic tools from last couple of
| decades like timesheet/hours management, ticketing/issue
| management can totally control >90% of tech workforce and
| possibly even more non-technical workforce. The future I see AI
| deciding what minimum level of sustenance, if any, to be
| provided to humans based on their usefulness to prevailing
| economic systems.
|
| Most people already run in a tight loop routine all their life.
| The great learning for them with futuristic AI could just be
| realizing this plain old fact.
| throwanem wrote:
| > The future I see AI deciding what minimum level of
| sustenance, if any, to be provided to humans based on their
| usefulness to prevailing economic systems.
|
| For this you believe you need to look to the future?
| darkerside wrote:
| When there is a one person $1B company someday, which I think is
| very possible, I believe it will come after a series of events
| that will make it obvious that such a thing could exist. For
| example, the existence of several multi trillion dollar market
| cap companies, plethoras of small companies worth several billion
| dollars, and probably a radical rethinking of compensation and
| capitalism in the economy.
| hef19898 wrote:
| One billion as in VC-pre dumb money round valuations? VCs, and
| Altman, would love that!
| romanzubenko wrote:
| Did anyone perform an analysis on where the laid off employees
| for last 3 years went? According to layoffs.fyi nearly 500k were
| laid off since 2021, would be interesting to see if people mostly
| reshuffled within FAANG or there was a more structural talent
| migration e.g. from megacorps to startups.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| And how many haven't landed anywhere yet.
| ok_dad wrote:
| And after ~12 months or so, they are removed from the
| "unemployment" numbers as "no longer looking for work" so
| that the numbers look better.
|
| ref: https://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm#nilf
| ghaff wrote:
| Or didn't seriously try to. I know people who almost
| certainly did pretty well over the past 15 years or so, got
| caught up in some layoff, and retired or semi-retired--
| probably a few years earlier than they would have done in
| different circumstances.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| That's kind of what I've done. I looked around some last
| year, didn't see much out there, had a few interviews here
| and there that usually ended in ghosting. After the
| unemployment ran out stopped looking for a while. Then
| started looking again recently because I'm not sure I'm
| ready to be retired yet.
| away271828 wrote:
| There are volunteer or more-or-less volunteer things you
| can do but you need to find the right open source project
| (or start one), find a channel where people will actually
| read what you write and do it regularly enough, have
| connections to people who actually want your advice, etc.
| Once you're not connected to an organization some of
| those things are harder than they seem unless you have
| specific, still-relevant credentials.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| > Some of this productivity gains just come from adoption of
| existing tools like Google Workspace or Office 365, issue
| trackers and version control with tools like Gitlab, Github, or
| _Jira_
|
| I guess I haven't seen Jira be something that actually improves
| productivity. More often it seems to be a productivity suck.
| acdha wrote:
| I've usually found that to be a symptom rather than the root
| cause: if Jira is turning into a job rather than a tool to do
| your job, switching tools without switching managers won't
| change much.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Office applications (spreadsheets excluded) also look like a
| tremendous productivity sink to me.
|
| Anyway, the answer the article is looking for seems very clear
| to me. The informatics companies got into a hiring scare
| recently, and are trying to undo it with a firing scare. Those
| companies appear to be run by bozos, and trying to look into
| theoretical fundamentals for their behavior is a fools errand.
| kelnos wrote:
| Consider the old-school alternatives, though.
|
| Before we had computers, we had electronic word processors.
| They were a step up from typewriters, but computers made
| creating and editing documents so much easier and
| streamlined. No need to retype from scratch if there are
| errors that require too much correction fluid/tape, or if you
| need to add or remove or rearrange paragraphs. And then
| pushing that further, putting the documents online in a way
| that allows for easier collaboration, means no more sending
| .doc files through email and keeping track of who has made
| what changes, and merging everything into a final document,
| manually.
|
| As much as we all despise the stereotypical PowerPoint
| presentation, these sorts of apps let you create presentation
| material without expending too much effort. Otherwise you're
| creating poster boards by hand, or typing something up and
| photocopying it, or creating some kind of overhead projection
| thing. Collaboration is again so much easier.
| sneak wrote:
| Jira sucks, sure, but going from no-bug-tracker to any-bug-
| tracker (and by "bug" I mean tasks of any kind) is a huge
| boost.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| In theory, it can be a productivity enhancer, if you're
| comparing it to absolutely nothing. However, if you compare it
| to, honestly, post-it's on a whiteboard that are halfway
| organized, or a plain txt file that all the people can get to
| (if it's a remote company), then frankly it's almost always a
| productivity suck.
| jrockway wrote:
| The value comes from writing down what to work on in advance,
| and figuring out if it's really that value. A text file is just
| as good as Jira, but harder for multiple people to edit.
|
| The "better" issue trackers (Linear is the good one), just have
| a better UX for the same basic task.
|
| But you have to look at non-tech businesses and compare to
| ours. Like, my property management company doesn't have a
| ticket tracker, so if you need something, you have to call them
| and remind them, causing them to context switch, and perhaps
| prioritize your low-priority item today when they could have
| done it tomorrow... if they remembered it was an issue. Jira is
| about remembering what you need to work on, and which thing you
| should work on first.
| divbzero wrote:
| > At tech companies some roles are highly leveraged... These
| leveraged roles can create enormous amounts of value, but the
| unlock in technology can come from a single person, a single
| insight.
|
| This core idea about tech employees having high leverage is spot
| on. It not only results in the high compensation that tech enjoys
| at the moment, but also explains why attrition and layoffs are a
| part of the process. Companies with a lot to gain from technology
| are willing to throw money into hiring, but are simultaneously
| figuring out which roles are actually paying off and which ones
| aren't.
| dogman144 wrote:
| I'm a security engineer, so my work is a bit different than SWE -
| data wrangling and analysis, tying systems together and
| correlating events across them, building defense in depth, cool
| and effective under stress.
|
| That said, LLMs are showing up a lot in my job. Being a good sec
| eng is having a 70% base in most systems, solid comp sci and
| programming chops (I call it I can build and run a mediocre app),
| and solid security expertise.
|
| GPT is really good at radically speeding up how to get past the
| 70% starting point I usually operate from. I run (sanitized)
| terminal output through it so the 60% of the output I table to
| RTFM later to understand, I can understand immediately via GPT.
| Sec eng benefits a lot from leaning into pandas/notebooks vs log
| csvs, and GPT does that really well too.
|
| The big marker for me is incident response - standardized tech
| data requiring analysis and correlating in a pinch. I'm going to
| have an incident response LLM partner soon enough. Analyzing open
| source codebases for how they do input sanitizing with a new to
| me language? LLM partner walking me through.
|
| All this together - goodbye entry level cybersecurity jobs in a
| few years I think. Many of the things you'd need a security
| analyst for or the more busy work sec eng 1 jobs I truly think
| are turning into LLM jobs. My lived experience this past year
| reflects it.
|
| I think layoffs, and productivity gains from LLMs are under the
| hood of tech layoff tight now. Curious if other engineering
| tracks are seeing this though? A SWE buddy at Google thinks so.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Entry level devs will need to be much more skilled than I was
| to enter the field a few years ago.
|
| My internships and the first 6 months of my first full time job
| are trivial to ChatGPT. Copilot would be needed for work since
| then (as it is specific to the codebase), but even so, I am far
| more productive with them.
|
| One of my first internships was hacking together a mobile demo
| of a digital ID concept. I'd be surprised if it took more than
| a few hours to replicate a month of vanilla HTML/CSS/JS effort
| from back then.
|
| I would prefer ChatGPT to me as a co-worker up until about 1.5
| years of experience, if simply because it replies instantly and
| doesn't forget stuff.
| shrimp_emoji wrote:
| New devs' code looks like ChatGPT wrote it if it had been
| trained on pre-existing parts of the codebase. Copy pasta
| eeeverywhere :p
| adamredwoods wrote:
| For this specifically, is no different than when
| StackOverflow was the go-to solution.
| dogman144 wrote:
| Right - I think when the equivalent of CoPilot shows up in
| incident response, security employment market changes for
| good. When a "cleared" CoPilot (for govt-supporting work)
| shows up, total overall.
|
| If you don't operate in the approach I describe, or are not
| just an all around tech expert who likes security for some
| reason, the stable high paying market is around digital
| forensics/incident response firms. Those folks have a lock bc
| there's a small group of who knows assembly and OSs across
| multiple systems very well and knows if from a security
| context. Tribal work for a LLM soon enough as it's just
| parsing OpCodes and stretching across log sources, end of the
| day. Scary stuff, glad I'm past entry level and I'm no fool
| thinking that I don't have to worry too.
| maximinus_thrax wrote:
| > All this together - goodbye entry level cybersecurity jobs in
| a few years I think
|
| If nobody is entry level how would anyone be able to penetrate
| the job market? Nobody graduates into a mid-senior level job,
| right?
| dogman144 wrote:
| That is the question.
|
| I think SWE is going to experience what cybersec already has
| an issue with.
|
| The "talent shortage" in cyber is for mid levels, not entry
| level security analysts. This is bc cyber is applied IT and
| engineering through a security lens. It's hard to make the
| jump into a sec eng career bc of this. IMO, LLMs build the
| wall higher.
|
| To your point, nobody _is_ really graduating right into
| cyber. Most go to non-technical compliance jobs or MSSPs if
| they are cyber first, or get really luck on a self-developed
| path. Rest are lateral transfers from IT or SWE /ops. MSSPs
| are hard to get out of (24hr security triage centers), and
| are prime targets for LLMs.
|
| I speculate SWE starts experiencing what cyber has dealt with
| for years - what do you do if entry level is automated, or
| the knowledge bar is really high. I think cyber just gets
| worse/harder to get into.
| digital_sawzall wrote:
| I'm 15+ years in security and just this week I needed to hit a
| few domains, find a script tag that imports JS from a certain
| CDN, parse and make sense of it.
|
| After 20 minutes of telling ChatGPT exactly what I needed and a
| couple of test runs and optimizations, I had the perfect tool.
| 10 years ago this would have been a half to full day project.
|
| I had a meeting with an entry level security engineer and he
| asked if I need him to do the task, as we were both in the
| meeting where it was being discussed.
|
| I didn't even think to ask him! It was quicker and easier to do
| it myself.
|
| This was the type of project I had been assigned dozens of
| times during my first job.
|
| I don't know what that means for the future of work but it's
| changing fast.
| dogman144 wrote:
| Fascinating to hear similar from you.
| elliotto wrote:
| Does this article actually say anything? It seems like a tech bro
| founder who laid off 7% of his staff rambling and everyone eats
| it up for some reason? Don't forget the a16z quote because we
| aren't done shilling crypto
| kj4211cash wrote:
| There are a lot of posts claiming that advances in technology
| over the past decade or two have been leading to "productivity
| gains". But the economic data simply doesn't support these
| claims. Productivity growth has stalled in most of the developed
| world.
|
| I like the way tech companies operate. I like slack. We don't use
| P2 but it looks interesting. I just don't really believe it'll
| turbo charge productivity at my company, much less at a more
| traditional company.
|
| I'm going to avoid saying anything one way or the other about AI
| because that would be a separate argument.
| deadbabe wrote:
| Paying less for an engineer in a low cost of living area may save
| you money in the short term but will wound you in the long term
| if you value employee retention. If you have a truly skilled
| engineer paid cheaply, it's trivial for a large company from a
| high cost of living area to offer them a 20% salary bump and
| snatch them away. Good luck if that employee had valuable insight
| into company processes.
| yedava wrote:
| I don't think productivity gains explain why companies need fewer
| people to be employed. A better explanation is that tech
| companies have grown too big. They've established big enough
| moats to prevent competition from arising, and if for some reason
| competition did arise, they can just be bought out.
|
| So we have something like a monopoly/oligopoly situation where
| companies are in a rent seeking phase and don't need as many
| employees as before when they were in a value producing phase.
| webosdude wrote:
| May be time for Unionization in Tech to stabilize things and
| protect tech workers? There is already unionization in some parts
| of Europe.
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