...right?
We 10x engineers are so special that we are waving off offer after offer and that will never end.
Not only will that never end, but luckily I’m so perfect that I’ll never experience a disability or need any accommodation that I can’t just code or build myself.
I mean even then, certainly you had a good enough exit at your first company (like anyone good) that you could basically retire whenever.
I mean, you know it boils down to this: just be a better software engineer and you’ll never have to NEED a union. The only people that need unions probably suck at algorithms and think Kubernetes is too hard.
Live in emacs or starve is my motto
Our work is closer to tool and die makers, we make money printers that keep running without our day-to-day involvement.
Let's take S3 as an example. AWS S3 was started with 10 engineers or so (according to Andy). AWS S3 is now an organization with over 800 SDEs alone, that headcount costs well over $300MM per year (still excluding all the SDMs, Ops, QAs, PMs, TPMs, DCAs, etc also involved). That headcount made sense as the product exploded with new features, hardware, regions, etc etc... but the "greenfield" new feature development pace is likely an S-curve, and we are now on the slowing side that will only continue to slow.
How many SDE hours/year are needed for S3's steady state operation? How do companies compensate skill for rapid growth, and then transition to their steady-state needs? What changes in terms of headcount and/or compensation, if anything?
(Of course this isn't about S3, the same questions apply to any software product)
How would unions operate in this environment? It seems quite different than, eg Boeing's manufacturing unions with the long lead times and relatively stable production volume/labor needs.
(There are also interesting questions for shareholders - what happens if S3 lays off 90% of their SDEs? Where would those people go, what would they be most valuable working on - how "safe" is S3's revenue as competitors and startups hire their layoffs?)
A relevant book that recently came out but I have not read is You Deserve a Tech Union by Ethan Marcotte
It was ridiculously bad. I've never worked with less talented people. One of my coworkers did nothing, at all, for 2 years. But with 17 years of experience, he couldn't be fired.
I carried the team, but they couldn't pay me what I was worth or promote me. I left as soon as I could.
Kind of tangential but that seems like a resume stuffer at best and stolen valor at worst.
https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy1706 ("Treasury Department Releases First-Of-Its-Kind Report on Benefits of Unions to the U.S. Economy")
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jun/10/us-union-wor... ("Feel the benefit: union workers receive far better pay and rights, Congress finds")
https://newrepublic.com/post/175274/gallup-poll-two-thirds-a... ("Poll: Majority of Americans Support Unions and Support Strikes | A new Gallup poll shows Americans are overwhelmingly in favor of labor unions.")
https://www.axios.com/2023/04/27/unions-tech-industry-labor-... ("Push to unionize tech industry makes advances")
https://www.axios.com/2022/06/15/microsoft-union-truce-techs... ("Microsoft, meanwhile, announced last year that it would not stand in the way of any workers who wanted to unionize.")
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/microsoft-first-labor-union-vid... ("Microsoft recognizes its first U.S. labor union as video game testers organize")
> Microsoft president Brad Smith has twice in recent weeks told me that Microsoft is simply doing what it sees fit for its own relationship with workers and not trying to push others. However, labor leaders see Microsoft's move as a potential model for others.
> "I won’t say that it was completely easy for Microsoft to do this but they did it," Christopher Shelton, president of Communications Workers of America, the union organizing at Activision, told Axios.
(last I checked, Microsoft owns Linkedin, but I could be mistaken; I am not uneducated on the challenges and downsides to organizing, but am also not so uneducated and inexperienced to think the power imbalance doesn't require improvement; maybe an individual can do better solo occasionally, but that's luck and not what the data shows)
Between mid 2020 and early 2022, tech was the place investors were willing to pay any money even at a ridiculous P/E. It wasn’t because the value proposition suddenly shifted to tech but money was plentiful and looking for places to go and tech was the place that could give you high return.
Fast forward, US Fed has decided there is too much inflation and consumers need to slow down so they are shrinking their balance sheet. Investors suddenly are getting 8% return basically without any risk. Why would you invest in tech and all the volatility when you can get that return. Suddenly companies that could raise money and rollover their debt in peanut interest expenses are seeing money has dried up.
There is one and only one responsible for this mess. Central Bankers. They had absolutely no idea what they were and are talking about including very basic things such as where would inflation and interest rate go in short term. In 8 months, they went from “we need deflation and we foresee low interest till 2024” to largest inflationary environment since 1980s and highest interest rates. And of course they face no consequences. #EndTheFed
On my own I have been able to negotiate stock as well. Unions won't touch that.
Not MS, but I was at a big tech co that recently did layoffs, and a lot of the Super Senior Staff Distinguished Wizard SWEs, who I always wondered "What exactly do you do?" got laid off.
So, laying off people in the US and hiring in India?
There is still an argument that, if you truly want top talent, then that top talent might actually want to live in high COL locations like NY or whatever.
They also outsource because they think they can take advantage of lax labor and/or environmental regulation in other countries. We should impose tariffs to level the playing field when countries don’t have these sort of regulations.
Competition keeps us honest and innovating, it shouldn’t be avoided, it just needs to be fair and non-exploitive.
You can describe effectively the same software engineering job in a way that sounds completely different. "close a project" of the old team, etc.
Funny that some people think "if we work in the office more, companies won't outsource jobs as much".
I guess you can now have RTO in India though?
Force RTO in the US, replace those who leave with less expensive resources.
You're totally right, though. If the data shows that RTO has negligible benefit — or even, say, just a marginal 5-10% benefit — then the logical move is to force RTO for the most expensive headcount (since a 5% boost there will be the most valuable) and then hire globally-remote headcount for all the rest.
That... really feels quite grim, the more I think about it. Time to go stare at my early-retirement spreadsheets and see where I can squeeze out some more velocity for myself, I suppose.
Yes, while the average software engineer in India might earn 7-10x less than in the US, this isn't the case within major tech companies.
Maybe security will be the next big thing? All these juniors churning out code using frameworks but not understanding what's really going on under the hood might introduce more security vulnerabilities. Not to mention all the disgruntled, jobless developers who might turn to hacking to make ends meet.
I guess people who are really into software development may want to consider moving into consulting, management or teaching. I also noticed a lot of bs jobs opening up dealing with regulations and compliance.
I remember when I joined the industry in 2012, being a developer was very special; you would interact directly with the company directors, you could choose all your tools and frameworks or even build your own from scratch. You could also decide to focus on back end or front end as there was no clear separation in responsibilities. I guess that's the downside of joining an industry which essentially didn't exist 50 years ago; you never know how it's going to end up. It's not like being a lawyer or doctor which has remained high status and high pay for thousands of years.
There's a whole social architecture designed around propping up lawyers' and doctors' pay by constraining the supply of graduates and imposing artificial requirements. On the other hand, software developers tend to be extremely compliant and willing to work overtime for free, not interested to unionize, you don't even need a degree (very low bar to entry), etc... The highly compliant, overworked ones force the rest of us to match them in their degree of compliance and overwork to remain competitive. It's really a sad race to the bottom.
But construction and retail? Really?
We are paid multiples of what people working in those sectors are being paid :/
Learn to describe your experience and goals as a story that makes sense and is compelling.
Most white collar work would benefit from experience in software or data, whereas lifting 2x4s into place may not.
I genuinely don't understand that you can, with a straight face, say that juniors with copilot can do the same work as seniors. Typing up the code is like what, 25% of time spent - during a good week!
You have not a fucking clue how good you have it. If you did, you would be too embarrassed to write a comment like this.
What you're saying is completely untrue where I live (Australia). My sister in HR earns more than me. My cousin who is a truck driver can save more money than me due to lower cost of living in rural areas and access to cheap real estate (which is not an option for me as a software dev)... My dad boasts about my truck driver cousin's achievements (as he has been able to buy his own house) and he rightly thinks I've been a gullible fool for having chosen software development as a career. I was a top dev. Now out of work for a few months. I worked for a company backed by Y Combinator. I was an early employee on a $4 billion market cap cryptocurrency project. I'm also a top percentile open source developer with thousands of stars. It's all worthless.
No no. I think you're the one who should be embarrassed. After what I've been through, I have no shame nor pride left to feel such emotions.
They don’t pay a million dollars but still pretty reasonable. Then again I don’t have super high expenses so ymmv
Even if what you’re saying is true about the SWE job market which I doubt what SWE would completely switch career paths to become a plumber and not just find a related IT position?
Is this standard business communication lingo for layoffs?
You aren't doing layoffs.
You're adjusting to a new market to maximize current opportunities.
You have to always look at the bright side.
Shroff and Cohen definitely deserve like a blowhard gold star for that. Rarely do you see such voluminous perniciousness that so effectively masks the real world consequences of ending peoples gainful employment. Real skill. Take notes.
"We don't have room for bystanders, we don't have room for people who want to stand on the sidelines,"[1]
[1]https://finance.yahoo.com/news/citigroup-outlines-layoff-pro...
And secondively, teams/orgs get bloated and keeping them larger than they should be hinders their progress.
Companies have cut back on recruiters a while ago, so I guess they stopped money on linkedin.
I wonder what areas will be impacted next.
Is it just me or does this suck a lot? Thousands of people unsure about their fate, refreshing their calendar, checking for... the lack of an invite? So much added stress and anxiety.
Surely they could send two versions of the email, specifying to each person if they are affected or not.
> within the next hour
This is great. One hour? Last time we had layoffs I was watching my calendar daily for weeks! There was no timeline at all. I had anxiety every morning logging into work. I think that was a huge part of the burnout I'm currently experiencing.
> creating value for shareholders of MSFT
I laughed at this part. If being grateful about increasing shareholder value (without a mention of increasing value for users) is a common attitude there, that explains quite a lot about why LinkedIn is the way it is.
There it is
There are too many great software engineers for bad management to use.
When product and software management works well, one side effect is the realisation that we don't need to be so many software engineers.
But that is just experience the ladt 20 years.
Is it normal for a CEO like Satya Nadella not to write this email? Kind of off-putting that MSFT is keeping its hands clean here. Mohak and Tomer aren't making this decision.
Conversation probably started by Satya asking the LinkedIn CEO to just reduce X$ expenses and the LinkedIn leadership made these specific changes.
Second, ones that increase the information about a market (transparency) so that all participants can make better decisions.
To that second end I would really love to see governments force companies to report headcount on a per role basis and anonymized compensation data about each of these roles on a monthly basis.
That way would could more easily contextualize posts like this one.
