Where do these people get jobs if tens of thousands of people flood the market at the same time? Is it a blood bath? Curious on peoples thoughts who lived through dot com bubble, as I was only about 6 years old. I’ve been through the leetcode grind and system design grind, etc, but with that, is it still even possible to get a good paying tech job in this downturn?
I was in multimedia and online marketing in 2001, then the bubble burst and the company I worked at laid a bunch of people off. Lots of people I had worked with before got laid off from their jobs too. Companies went out of business. I went back to where my career started, in enterprise logistics, Oracle and Java. Good pay but not sexy or fun, no free meals or work from home. I felt bad for some of the younger and less experienced people I got laid off with, they didn't have the domain experience or network of contacts I had -- they had fallen backwards into cool high-paying jobs out of school when money was pouring into anything internet. One junior programmer had to sell his Ducati, get a bus pass, and ended up in retail at Borders.
The job market can accommodate a lot of people with tech skills, but many people who just got laid off, or will as the belt-tightening continues, will face a kind of culture shock. They got to work at Disneyland for a while, but now the options will look more like Office Space.
And then Borders went out of business.
BORDERS @ Quill City Mall https://maps.app.goo.gl/7U4GRrmACvMXyy9y6?g_st=ic
Do you know that? That there are plenty of jobs out there for the laid-off people? or just, you know, making shit up.
The numbers I could easily find back this up:
https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/...
https://www.computerworld.com/article/3542681/how-many-jobs-...
The FAANG (or whatever we call it now) companies and startups represent the tip of the iceberg, the most attractive segment of programming and tech jobs. Those companies also have the most candidates to choose from, the most grueling interview process, and seem to have the most churn and turnover when economic conditions change. A job at Twitter or Meta probably pays a lot more and offers more perks and prestige than a job at a regional trucking company or retail chain, sure.
Downturns like this always hit the younger and less-experienced cohort of tech workers hardest. People fresh out of school with no experience will struggle. People with narrow skills, short experience at one company, or an exaggerated opinion of their actual value, will struggle. While the FAANG/startup companies that get attention on HN can optimize their hiring around leetcode and whiteboard trials, the rest of the tech world tends to value experience and fitting in with a team.
If you can only produce from an Aeron chair writing Clojure and shunning meetings then you will find the job market limited. As companies tighten up and lay off and focus on profits and retention programmers who want to get a paycheck have to adjust their expectations. A truck driver who will only drive a customized red Peterbilt 359 on one interstate route will similarly find their options limited, even in a market with plentiful jobs for truck drivers.
For people with the right skill set. Otherwise, this is a bullshit.
I wrote plenty of jobs out there. No bullshit, easy to confirm. Not everyone will qualify for those jobs.
1- layoffs are happening primarily to non-technologist roles
2- even with the layoffs, we're still no where near head counts for 2019.
Companies are taking advantage of the macro situation to clean house. It serves a dual purpose. Get rid of low performing employees and clean up any non essential functions, while also pleasing investors.
So then the question is where did all these people come from in just 2 years?
To clear it up, I did mean that despite the massive increase in workers, with today's layoffs most of them have not yet reverted back to their pre-pandemic 2019 headcounts.
Where did all of these workers come from? Overall as an industry we did not actually substantially increase our headcount. We're about at par. Why?
- People did retire/leave the industry due to 2020 layoffs/Covid - Big tech, who had the largest "influx" actually just vacuumed people from other non-big tech (e.g. banks, mid-size, startups, etc.) - Much of the headcount growth was actually in non-technology positions, especially HR, marketing, sales etc. because many companies wanted to capitalize on pandemic growth
Most companies finance new projects with a combination of three things. Own capital, investor money and loans. Right now interest rates are high, I'm European so I can't speak for the US, but in some areas of the Eurozone the interest rates hit 12% a month ago. At that point it becomes impossible to utilise the loan part, because it's just too expensive. The investor money are similarly either slowing down or disappearing, not so much because they aren't around or that they don't have money, but because they are waiting to see what happens. This is fuelled not only by the loan part of the equation, but also by the inflation and global supply lines pushing the costs of projects to a point that has eaten a healthy chunk of the would-be investor profits, or put in another way, investors don't want to risk their money for 5% return when it was a 50% return a year ago. Lastly there is the own capital, one way to maintain this is to cut the work force, which aligns with how you need a smaller work force as things slow down.
Where do people go? Well, typically they find new jobs. Some change professions entirely. Some retire. A few unfortunate people break down and head down dark paths. But really, it's not unlike layoffs in good periods, there is just more of it with fewer opportunities.
> it still even possible to get a tech job in this downturn?
As with most things this depends on your situation. What is your educational background, your skillset and your history of work. I can't speak for the US, but here in Europe some countries you could double our amount of good programmers and still need more.
> good paying
As with everything, this depends on the amount of people who can do what you do, but compensation doesn't necessarily go down during harder periods. But it does mean you'll likely have to justify what you do to earn it more than you did before.
What's the difference between own capital and investor money for a company?
This can play out in a lot of different ways, and many of them are probably a little different than what HN is used to, but in many cases, especially in investment banking, it's common for investors to buy into projects rather than into companies. Of course the projects are likely going to be multiple companies as legal entities, but basically, they are a lot like school projects in which one computer is great at doing the project and the other owns a computer to do the project on.
Let's say I'm really good at building offshore windmill farms. I'm also great at selling them for a nice profit once they are build, but a 40% profit on 10 is still just 14. You're rich on the other hand, but you're not really sure how to grow your fortune. Now if we pool my 10 and your 100 and the banks 100 together, then we can turn those 210 into almost 300 in the same amount of time that I could turn my 10 into 14. The 10 is own capital.
Even if you were to invest in my company directly, it would still make sense for you, and the other investors to keep some operational capital on the budgets. Both because it's healthy, and because it allows the company to move in on opportunities before they are sold to investors. Maybe there was an opportunity to turn the 210 into 1000, but you had to act NOW. I could put my own 100 up, and then slowly sell them to you, or other investors, over the following year.
And so on. It's much, much, more complicated than this, and then you also have to add the real complexity of all the bureaucratic "magic" that goes along with finances.
Not everyone being laid off is a programmer; in fact, I suspect that much of it is in recruiting, HR, and such.
And there are tons of "related jobs" - https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/...
Many people who get laid off go to work where most everyone else is working, and "unsexy" companies you've never heard of.
As affected one, I can say with a full confidence - straight to the beach
One fear for the broader economy is that there's a lot of money that wasn't made in tech this year that was made last year. Not just layoffs, but a drop in RSU values. When essential workers were laid off in the spring of 2020, it was easier to absorb the economic hit and provide government support because they didn't make that much. Now we have tech workers cutting back massively on discretionary spending after seeing their TC drop by 25% (or 100%).
Normally I'd ask where tech workers spend their money and try to short that, but the main answers I have are housing and Teslas.
They still buy clothes, but maybe at Nordstrom instead of TJMax. They still take vacations, but maybe they upgrade to economy+ and get the hotel room With a view. They buy groceries, but maybe shop organic and get real cheese instead of Kraft.
I have seen some go to contracting firms. Sure, some projects are getting shelved. But a lot are just getting restructured to be cheaper on the labor part or provide more headcount flexibility for the company. There really is a lot of talent shuffling and reshuffling that happens.
When things went sideways, many returned to their home state and/or moved back in with their parents. The local San Francisco rental market subsequently crashed.
When things burst, that all went away.
This was pretty interesting:
https://medium.com/@mccannatron/1979-to-2015-average-rent-in...
