Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions(nytimes.com)
nytimes.com
Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/11/technology/google-layoffs.html
1,305 comments
Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38947224
Both threads out of the first page even though having 211 and 166 votes this early. Positions 58 and 86.
There are dumb stories on the first page even with 3 and 4 votes. HN ranking is seriously broken.
I don't buy the "it's users flagging, bro" excuses anymore...
There are dumb stories on the first page even with 3 and 4 votes. HN ranking is seriously broken.
I don't buy the "it's users flagging, bro" excuses anymore...
> laid off employees who worked on ... the Pixel phone.
That sounds weird to me. Pixel phones has grown very fast in the last years and I don't se how it can be seen as anything but a great success.
That sounds weird to me. Pixel phones has grown very fast in the last years and I don't se how it can be seen as anything but a great success.
Google ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Google has been cooperating with Samsung very closely lately. Maybe there's a pressure on Google from Samsung and the other big Android vendors to scale down the Pixel effort.
Yet everyone I know that owned a pixel despises it.
I've owned 3 generations of Pixels and they've all been great ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I've owned several Nexus and Pixel phones and they universally sucked. Nexus S, Galaxy Nexus, Nexus 4, Pixel 2. I think that's all of them. I sent the last one to be fixed under warranty and they basically ignored me for six months (which I spent with no phone) until I threatened to get consumer protection from my country involved.
Yeah yeah, why did I keep buying them? I have no idea. I guess I assumed the rest of Android phones sucked more.
Yeah yeah, why did I keep buying them? I have no idea. I guess I assumed the rest of Android phones sucked more.
After what they did the the Nexus 6P, I jumped ship to Apple.
I've owned 3 pixel phones and have loved all of them. Wife has owned 4 different ones and they have been all perfect, no complaints.
I've owned 3 phones starting with nexus iirc. Looking forward to getting a refresh when current one gives out.
Count me as one anecdote that I love 'em! Best cameras I've ever used, paired with Google Photos means my wife is a happy camper and I get to look like a wizard fixing photos easily right on my phone. I can also install any .apk I want (hint: free youtube premium), why would I ever use a much more expensive, worse product like the iphone?
I've had very good experiences with all my Pixels. Only phone that was better was a high-end Samsung ($1000) and I sold that and replaced it with a cheap pixel.
(I've had various android phones going back to the T-Mobile G1).
(I've had various android phones going back to the T-Mobile G1).
I used to own a pixel phone and loved it. What made me move was the data collection, and to some extent lack of security updates on older models. Feature wise, I still like Android over iOS.
if it didn't spaz out while installing LineageOS on it, I'd still be using my Pixel 2 XL. it was probably struggling with some hardware failures (I dropped it a lot...) and wouldn't boot after.
Pixel 6s were on sale and I got one of those, no regrets. I am not enthusiastic about Google as a company, and I may consider an iPhone for my next cell, but I've been satisfied with the Pixel line so far.
Pixel 6s were on sale and I got one of those, no regrets. I am not enthusiastic about Google as a company, and I may consider an iPhone for my next cell, but I've been satisfied with the Pixel line so far.
I owned several Nexus phones as well as Pixel phones. I'd say that the Pixels were pretty decent; my main annoyance was with the fact that Google deliberately disabled some of the hardware features in that line-up to push their own proprietary solutions - most notably, there's no video output over USB-C nor Miracast, so that your only option is Chromecast.
Has this ever stopped google from killing a product?
I wonder what the reality is regarding Pixel's success; they lost me as a customer this year after it turns out the "free" Pixel 2 watch is mostly a paper weight because Fitbit and its new unified Google account requirement doesn't support Workspace custom domains. I pay for Workspaces, I paid for the device(s), but the penny has finally dropped in regards to their real motivations, they can't allow Workspaces to mingle with the private data regular accounts give them access to when it comes to Fitbit. Hopefully this will finally give me the motivation to wean off Google completely.
Pissed me off when I realised you could use not Nest cameras nor doorbell if you have a Google Workspace account. (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻
Cannot use them with a Google workspace account? Or cannot use them if you merely have a workspace account?
The former seems like it might be reasonable (and I wouldn't want to lock a piece of home infrastructure to a workspace account anyway); the latter seems utterly insane.
The former seems like it might be reasonable (and I wouldn't want to lock a piece of home infrastructure to a workspace account anyway); the latter seems utterly insane.
For Nest Protect (the smoke alarm), if you try logging in with a workspace account it just won't let you. Had to resurrect a very old, unused Gmail account just for that.
Google marketed Google Workspace (called “Google Apps” at the time) as a solution for individuals and families with custom domain. People still have these accounts and there is no way to migrate (e.g. purchases on Google Play, reviews on Google Maps, notes in Google Keep, etc.).
Not a work workspace but our family workspace, so very unreasonable. They forced us all to migrate to that...
For many years Google Home with all the Nest speakers and displays have worked fine. But you are not allowed to use the nest cameras, thermostats, doorbells, etc with workspace accounts. Hence I regret buying those.
For many years Google Home with all the Nest speakers and displays have worked fine. But you are not allowed to use the nest cameras, thermostats, doorbells, etc with workspace accounts. Hence I regret buying those.
And now I can't upgrade my storage or share my YouTubeTV account from my old family Workspace account. And migrating off is basically impossible, it's so frustrating.
I can confirm - it’s both utterly insane, and true. A number of the individual problems have been fixed over the years, but then new ones pop up due to rushed backend integrations.
Microsoft has a similar issue with their ‘personal’ vs ‘work’ logins.
God help you if you try to use the store to buy some things on a work account, or login to some services using a work account.
You will regret it.
Microsoft has a similar issue with their ‘personal’ vs ‘work’ logins.
God help you if you try to use the store to buy some things on a work account, or login to some services using a work account.
You will regret it.
It is the former.
I have a workspace account that is my main email and such. With the Pixel 2 watch I had to use a @gmail.com account in order to use it. Not a huge deal, but annoying for sure.
Would be the same issue for someone who doesn't have an @gmail.com account at all. They would have to create one in order to use the Pixel 2 watch.
I have a workspace account that is my main email and such. With the Pixel 2 watch I had to use a @gmail.com account in order to use it. Not a huge deal, but annoying for sure.
Would be the same issue for someone who doesn't have an @gmail.com account at all. They would have to create one in order to use the Pixel 2 watch.
FWIW the non-workspace Google account doesn't actually have to be @gmail.com - you can bring your own email when setting one up.
The Nest Speaker also pisses me off. It requires a Google account for activating the Bluetooth functionality.
I got one as a gift. It is a good looking door stop, though.
I got one as a gift. It is a good looking door stop, though.
I was in the same boat. Kind of annoying, but I just used my @gmail.com account to use the Pixel 2 watch.
Pixel is not officially sold and supported in a substantial number of countries. It results in many issues, such as 5G not working when traveling from country to country. Or in case of Chromecast dongle, 5GHz Wi-Fi not working. Which makes my head explode, considering that they employ only "top talent" and has considerable resources to properly catalogue and implement all radio frequencies of the world.
Google cannot release any product worldwide. Their knowledge doesn't go too far beyond US market. You can call it Americentrism or just lack of competence of the ones in charge.
Google cannot release any product worldwide. Their knowledge doesn't go too far beyond US market. You can call it Americentrism or just lack of competence of the ones in charge.
Google is good at making algorithms and tech but product development and long term vision have never been its strong points.
Institutionally, Google has the attention span of a Goldfish. Apple will continue to entrench their position as a leader in edge computing. Apple deserve their success; I hope they don’t get complacent once the Pixel division implodes.
Was Pixel ever a big player in the Android market? I get the feeling Xiaomi and Samsung are the actual competitors Apple cares about
Even if technically Apple is capable their predatory business models will never make me consider any of their products worth it.
Fair point perhaps, but they seem like the only game in town that seem to care about their customers. They’re far from perfect, but to me they are better than the rest. I really want Apple to feel some heat and have worthy competitors, but I just don’t see that.
Is it predatory?
Apple must turn a profit somewhere and charging a bit more to their high-end customers to give a bit more of a break to their low-end customers isn't a terrible method.
If you hate Apple's pricing, you have WAY more companies to hate on first.
Apple has a gross margin of 44%.
Amazon has gross margin of 46%
AMD has a gross margin of 47%
IBM has a gross margin of 54%.
Microsoft has a gross margin of 71%.
Oracle has a gross margin of 72%
Nvidia has a gross margin of 74%.
Meta has a gross margin of 78%
Apple must turn a profit somewhere and charging a bit more to their high-end customers to give a bit more of a break to their low-end customers isn't a terrible method.
If you hate Apple's pricing, you have WAY more companies to hate on first.
Apple has a gross margin of 44%.
Amazon has gross margin of 46%
AMD has a gross margin of 47%
IBM has a gross margin of 54%.
Microsoft has a gross margin of 71%.
Oracle has a gross margin of 72%
Nvidia has a gross margin of 74%.
Meta has a gross margin of 78%
"Amazon has gross margin of 46%"
Reference please? Amazon has massive retail sales and it's not even making a profit on this much of the time--and the rest of the time it's low.
Reference please? Amazon has massive retail sales and it's not even making a profit on this much of the time--and the rest of the time it's low.
I just considered the top Google hits for some big tech companies.
This particular one is from this site.
https://finbox.com/NASDAQGS:AMZN/explorer/gp_margin/
This particular one is from this site.
https://finbox.com/NASDAQGS:AMZN/explorer/gp_margin/
You need to add references for all these numbers. I find it hard to believe Microsoft has a gross margin of 71%.
I literally just looked at the Google default results. In this case, here's your source.
Those margins plus the AI bubble are why MS stock prices are so high.
https://ycharts.com/companies/MSFT/gross_profit_margin
Those margins plus the AI bubble are why MS stock prices are so high.
https://ycharts.com/companies/MSFT/gross_profit_margin
This is misleading. Gross margin excludes operating expenses and taxes. Net margin or operating margin is more meaningful. Here's now the operating margins stack up for Q3 2023
Nvidia 57.5% https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/stocks/nvda/financial...
Microsoft 47.6% https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/stocks/msft/financial...
Meta 40.2% https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/stocks/meta/financial...
Apple 30.1% https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/stocks/aapl/financial...
Google 27.8% https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/stocks/goog/financial...
IBM 14% https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/stocks/ibm/financials
Amazon 7.8% https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/stocks/amzn/financial...
AMD 3.8% https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/stocks/amd/financials
Apple is still extremely profitable for a company that primarily makes and sells hardware. Nvidia has a higher margin but that's because of the AI boom.
Nvidia 57.5% https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/stocks/nvda/financial...
Microsoft 47.6% https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/stocks/msft/financial...
Meta 40.2% https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/stocks/meta/financial...
Apple 30.1% https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/stocks/aapl/financial...
Google 27.8% https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/stocks/goog/financial...
IBM 14% https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/stocks/ibm/financials
Amazon 7.8% https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/stocks/amzn/financial...
AMD 3.8% https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/stocks/amd/financials
Apple is still extremely profitable for a company that primarily makes and sells hardware. Nvidia has a higher margin but that's because of the AI boom.
I have been waiting my whole career to get a hold of their previous Nexus line. Then their Pixel line. Still no luck. It has been over a decade. Now it’s too late my whole family is now deeply invested in Apple’s ecosystem.
top down coordination doesn’t scale to $2T companies, at some point you’re basically a government
Bot one stuck in feudalism, with a king and fiefs distributed in smoke-filled rooms, or golf fames.
Honestly, I don't see anything that a phone manufacturer _requires_ to localise apart from frequency bands. How is Apple managing to sell iPhones with literally no other localisation?
Google sells approximately zero Pixel phones.
Every year they'll say "we're serious this time" and promise to dump money into marketing, but it really goes nowhere and carriers continue to push other phones.
Every year they'll say "we're serious this time" and promise to dump money into marketing, but it really goes nowhere and carriers continue to push other phones.
Google has grown their marketshare a lot during the last few years.
They sell a lot of them, very very far from zero...
They sell a lot of them, very very far from zero...
They sold one to me since OnePlus fell off.
I like my pixel. Guess I'm going back to Samsung, sad times.
Pixel phones are OK. They are just not priced competitively. They are priced like iPhones. But who are you kidding? Pixel phones are nowhere near iPhones.
Pixel phones actually take better photos than iPhones. See for example a recent test https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VRoTOE3FqT0
OTOH I browse JavaScript heavy websites on my phone and I believe due to single-threaded performance, Chrome on Android is noticeably worse than Safari on iPhone.
My point is, Pixels are better than iPhones for some use cases and vice versa.
OTOH I browse JavaScript heavy websites on my phone and I believe due to single-threaded performance, Chrome on Android is noticeably worse than Safari on iPhone.
My point is, Pixels are better than iPhones for some use cases and vice versa.
I disagree, they have the best mid-range (300-500€) phone, and iPhone is not even proposing anything in this range
12% of phone sales in iPhone-heavy Japan are Pixels and Apple has fallen below 1/2 - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-09-28/iphones-s...
For people that care about vendor lock-in (which granted doesn't seem to be many), Pixels are great. They are supported on just about every network and you can root it if you desire.
I'm a happy Pixel owner.
I'm a happy Pixel owner.
There are continuous internal wars that we don't often see. You can get a glimpse of those in most of Google's hardware products (from Pixel phones to hubs to tablets) when they seem to be randomly prioritised/de-prioritised/re-prioritised every year.
It seems that this year Pixel lost.
It seems that this year Pixel lost.
Google is increasingly treating Android as an iOS alternative for the developing world and outsourcing core Android development to its Indian offices.
The reason they are doing this is probably because the non-tech management MBAs running Google are all using iPhones.
The reason they are doing this is probably because the non-tech management MBAs running Google are all using iPhones.
Were you like I have nothing useful to add, but while I'm driving by why don't I just fart on India...
The market share speaks for itself.
For what it's worth, India with over a billion people is a large market for Android.
Anyway, the iOS market share seems to be increasing rapidly in India. See https://telecom.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/devices/ip...).
The market share speaks for itself.
For what it's worth, India with over a billion people is a large market for Android.
Anyway, the iOS market share seems to be increasing rapidly in India. See https://telecom.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/devices/ip...).
> non-tech management MBAs running Google are all using iPhones
That's a kiss of death. I remember while working at Windows Phone team at Microsoft, a lot of program managers and designers were using iPhones and Macs. Unsurprisingly their own product never got off the ground because they failed to develop a vision for it. Android at Google is in a slightly better position, but this kind of attitude of not using your own product but preferring a competitor's one leads to inevitable decline.
That's a kiss of death. I remember while working at Windows Phone team at Microsoft, a lot of program managers and designers were using iPhones and Macs. Unsurprisingly their own product never got off the ground because they failed to develop a vision for it. Android at Google is in a slightly better position, but this kind of attitude of not using your own product but preferring a competitor's one leads to inevitable decline.
I recall around that time reading a story where if Steve Ballmer would catch you using an iPhone on the MSFT campus he would blow up. At the time, comments were "make a better phone" but I agree with your position. It's surprising though, eating your own dogfood is one of the golden rules of development. Such a pity Microsoft didn't stick with Windows Phone.
Seems like a good news?
Maybe resetting the engineering department is the only chance of innovating, when the company is so big and the (maybe bad) culture is so pervasive?
Apple has fired Jony Ive, and nothing bad had happened (quite the contrary).
Google has fired the head of computational photography, and nothing bad had happened.
Maybe resetting the engineering department is the only chance of innovating, when the company is so big and the (maybe bad) culture is so pervasive?
Apple has fired Jony Ive, and nothing bad had happened (quite the contrary).
Google has fired the head of computational photography, and nothing bad had happened.
I'm a big fan of the pixel series, if they wind up dropping it or make upcoming hardware terrible its likely to drive me to iphone unfortunately.
The various third party android phones have severe drawbacks in their manufacturers tweaked android or inferior hardware.
The various third party android phones have severe drawbacks in their manufacturers tweaked android or inferior hardware.
I know fitbit is going down hill. A lot of paid features aren't working for a lot of people. My wife can't get the sleep stats to work anymore.
It is not like those pixel phone are hand made and tuned to exacting standards by highly qualified google engineers like Mercedes Benz does it on some of its expensive models.
It is a commodity gadget made at some cheap shop in Asia. So people worked pixel phone have not much to do with its growth or lack of it.
It is a commodity gadget made at some cheap shop in Asia. So people worked pixel phone have not much to do with its growth or lack of it.
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Layoffs are always counter-productive as going forward employees take fewer risks, to evade being the one laid off. Layoffs kill innovation.
Intel is only around today because the leadership was decisive enough to lay off most of the company early in its history, and they then proceeded to release a whack of innovative microprocessor products after these massive layoffs.
Is that sarcasm?
It's what happened. Intel was primarily a manufacturer of DRAM memory chips in the early 1980s. They pivoted hard to CPUs instead when it started looking like the IBM PC clone platform is a winner and their 386 chip could define the industry.
So what is Google pivoting from? They are laying people off from various divisions, it's not a strategic shift
Intel pivoted because they couldn't keep up with Asian RAM makers in the race to the bottom.
What do you mean?
I don't know whether your comment is true, but the way to do layoffs while keeping innovation as high as possible is to do one round that is big enough that you can and do give guarantees to the employees that are left behind that they have jobs for life. Multiple rounds of layoffs is what really takes your innovation to zero.
Well it is true and there's a book which goes into the details, Andy Grove's "Only the Paranoid Survive", and it's a fantastic page turner.
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/66863
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/66863
Dell has a talent to do the exact opposite. HR should hire your service. But they would fire you since they wouldn't like your advice.
For the defense of big corp, finance is often told a figure as to how many in percentage to layoff. Not much more, not much less or you get added to the list.
CEO? He also has to follow orders.
Who's to blame then? I wonder.
The practice and coordinated moves in the tech industry, and beyond, consistency in the pattern observed (and attested so broadly) led me to believe it is well intentional. Instill fear and anxiety to those who are left so that they stop claiming they deserve a significant raise. Will figure out how to innovate once we've regain control over the main cost: wages.
For the defense of big corp, finance is often told a figure as to how many in percentage to layoff. Not much more, not much less or you get added to the list.
CEO? He also has to follow orders.
Who's to blame then? I wonder.
The practice and coordinated moves in the tech industry, and beyond, consistency in the pattern observed (and attested so broadly) led me to believe it is well intentional. Instill fear and anxiety to those who are left so that they stop claiming they deserve a significant raise. Will figure out how to innovate once we've regain control over the main cost: wages.
From what I understand, the modern Dell (much like many airlines, for that matter) is in a sort of weird banking/finance business rather than technology and innovation. They are really good at managing capital and that is how they derive much of their profits.
Yes. And while Starbucks offers a decent service, Dell's has rather become absolutely mediocre.
I'm not even sure Dell has been that good at capital management as of late. His last good shot, and an amazing one, was to buy out his own company at a much undervalued price, with plenty of financing support from investment banks. 10 years ago already.
I'm not even sure Dell has been that good at capital management as of late. His last good shot, and an amazing one, was to buy out his own company at a much undervalued price, with plenty of financing support from investment banks. 10 years ago already.
I’ve been through dozens of rounds of layoffs. That part I almost got used to. Staying innovative, and being seen as innovative by my boss, was the way to ensure I wasn’t on that list.
What killed it for me was when new management came in, refused to talk to anyone internal, brought in outside hires to be the innovators and change agents, and then shut down any of the legacy employees who tried to speak or bring ideas to the table. A lot of really talented people have left, and maybe that was the goal, as it avoids having to pay severance.
What killed it for me was when new management came in, refused to talk to anyone internal, brought in outside hires to be the innovators and change agents, and then shut down any of the legacy employees who tried to speak or bring ideas to the table. A lot of really talented people have left, and maybe that was the goal, as it avoids having to pay severance.
I wonder if those new coworkers came from the same place as the new management, and were already their "loyal wingmen"....
Most of them.
How is this comparable to Intel? Is Google struggling financially ?
Their profit has been declining rapidly the last two years, so they’re cutting costs to turn things around. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38949755
Funny. Here I was abandoning their products because they don't SUPPORT them. I dare say Google could have easily used their laid off staff to better maintain their existing products and through that restore confidence in their products and be able to achieve higher sales and profit margins.
Maybe. Of course it is up to them to decide strategy.
Compared to Covid boom years... let's normalize the Covid years to their past trend and add the 2022 and 2023 data points as regular years. I'm sure they'd look just fine.
There are definitely cases where companies have true existential risk and layoffs can help get them through that.
That's not Google. Instead, this means that now I need to go have a fire drill where I figure out who has been fired on all the teams I collaborate with and figure out how that fucks with my team's 2024 plans that are getting reviewed and finalized basically right now. I need to deal with the morale killer that is another layoff at just about the one year anniversary of the big one last year when memories of layoffs were on just about everybody's mind anyway.
I don't know anybody in Assistant, but when I read this headline I assume that the reason there are layoffs there is because Google wants more people working on new LLM hotness and is unable to naturally transition people from Assistant onto Bard or whatever so they are just firing a bunch of people in Assistant to free up budget to hire people working on LLMs. That's not a mechanism for saving the company. That is covering up for shitty management and incentive structures that can't get people working on the stuff they want without this sort of extreme action.
That's not Google. Instead, this means that now I need to go have a fire drill where I figure out who has been fired on all the teams I collaborate with and figure out how that fucks with my team's 2024 plans that are getting reviewed and finalized basically right now. I need to deal with the morale killer that is another layoff at just about the one year anniversary of the big one last year when memories of layoffs were on just about everybody's mind anyway.
I don't know anybody in Assistant, but when I read this headline I assume that the reason there are layoffs there is because Google wants more people working on new LLM hotness and is unable to naturally transition people from Assistant onto Bard or whatever so they are just firing a bunch of people in Assistant to free up budget to hire people working on LLMs. That's not a mechanism for saving the company. That is covering up for shitty management and incentive structures that can't get people working on the stuff they want without this sort of extreme action.
> I don't know anybody in Assistant, but when I read this headline I assume that the reason there are layoffs there is because Google wants more people working on new LLM hotness and is unable to naturally transition people from Assistant onto Bard or whatever so they are just firing a bunch of people in Assistant to free up budget to hire people working on LLMs. That's not a mechanism for saving the company. That is covering up for shitty management and incentive structures that can't get people working on the stuff they want without this sort of extreme action.
Which makes absolutely no sense because a ton of the DialogFlow data would make google's version of an llm much much better than whatever was offered by anybody else.
Which makes absolutely no sense because a ton of the DialogFlow data would make google's version of an llm much much better than whatever was offered by anybody else.
> employees take fewer risks
Like going to the masseur during working hours?
Like going to the masseur during working hours?
Like working on things for internal visibility and ad revenue, not because it’s a good idea
That is an issue of maligned incentives, not layoffs. This community is utterly insane sometimes, and I say that as a staunch unionist. This is literally Google, a company with an insanely large number of engineers, doing an insanely large number of different things, due to massive and clearly-net-bad-for-society consolidation, and there’ll still be hoards of people that’ll claim that the layoffs were the wrong thing to do.
Interesting point but I don't think it's that clear cut. Twitter/X seemed to increase the pace of product changes directly after laying of the majority of its employees after Elon Musk took over. Also, when Steve Jobs returned to lead apple in 1997 he fired a significant fraction of the company before starting an incredible period of innovation. So I think a lot depends on the leadership and incentive structures.
Twitter has lost 70% of its value since Elon took over.
Important business lessons from Twitter: try not to antagonize your biggest customers, because they might stop buying your products.
In addition, if this occurs, make sure to blame external factors or wide-ranging conspiracies.
In addition, if this occurs, make sure to blame external factors or wide-ranging conspiracies.
Another lesson: Don't ignore the users, as one of them may get angry enough to buy your company and fire you and most of your peers.
Another important lesson: do your DD when you buy a company
According to rando analysts who don't have a stake. Note that Twitter pre X as a business was unsustainable and I don't think it ever made a net profit in aggregate over its lifetime. It was all selling the dream even before the acquisition.
> According to rando analysts who don't have a stake.
Says another rando who doesn't have a stake.
It was starting to be sustainable: https://www.businessofapps.com/data/twitter-statistics/
I don't know exactly what they did in 2020 to mess up their numbers, but 2017 - 2021 shows a company that was stabilizing at ok profit margins.
Says another rando who doesn't have a stake.
It was starting to be sustainable: https://www.businessofapps.com/data/twitter-statistics/
I don't know exactly what they did in 2020 to mess up their numbers, but 2017 - 2021 shows a company that was stabilizing at ok profit margins.
You state that as if your link does not substantiate what I said earlier. For the benefit of the people who don’t click on the link you cite, it simply proves as I said, that they never made an aggregate profit over their lifetime and you are linearly extrapolating the past (“starting to become…”) coming into the high interest rate environment where peers like $FB and $SNAP crashed and Twitter would surely have too.
Which it only had because Musk thrown out a number and people fought very very hard to make him stick to it. If he wasn't such a dumbass and forfeit due diligence, this wouldn't be the story.
Twitter laid most of their staff off then Musk gave them an ultimatum of: commit every day, all day, sleep at the office, to Twitter, or get fired. I wonder why there was more work produced in that period.
Maybe because most are on H-1B and thus have no other option than to sacrifice personal life to have a job and not be deported?
Both of those examples started with laying off basically all of top management.
If you’re just laying off engineers to meet some profitability measure for Wall Street then you’re not going to fix innovation. You need to replace all of management who are the ones who are in charge of what the engineers are doing.
Google is completely lost and doesn’t know what it does. Management launches new products just to look good and shuts them down a year later, and still the only thing making money is search and ads. That’s not going to be fixed by laying off engineers.
If you’re just laying off engineers to meet some profitability measure for Wall Street then you’re not going to fix innovation. You need to replace all of management who are the ones who are in charge of what the engineers are doing.
Google is completely lost and doesn’t know what it does. Management launches new products just to look good and shuts them down a year later, and still the only thing making money is search and ads. That’s not going to be fixed by laying off engineers.
> Twitter/X seemed to increase the pace of product changes directly after laying of the majority of its employees after Elon Musk took over.
Changes? Yes. Often superficial changes. Change "Twitter" to "X", change blue checkmarks to yellow or gray or whatever, and sell blue to the lowest bidders. As for improvements? No, I haven't seen Twitter improve much if at all since the acquisition. In fact, the removal of third-party clients for example was a gross vandalization of the service.
> Also, when Steve Jobs returned to lead apple in 1997 he fired a significant fraction of the company before starting an incredible period of innovation.
This quip misses the biggest part of the story, which is that Apple didn't cut its way to success but rather acquired NeXT for over $400 million, a massive investment at the time, and Steve was merely replacing the old guard with his people.
Changes? Yes. Often superficial changes. Change "Twitter" to "X", change blue checkmarks to yellow or gray or whatever, and sell blue to the lowest bidders. As for improvements? No, I haven't seen Twitter improve much if at all since the acquisition. In fact, the removal of third-party clients for example was a gross vandalization of the service.
> Also, when Steve Jobs returned to lead apple in 1997 he fired a significant fraction of the company before starting an incredible period of innovation.
This quip misses the biggest part of the story, which is that Apple didn't cut its way to success but rather acquired NeXT for over $400 million, a massive investment at the time, and Steve was merely replacing the old guard with his people.
Not just innovation, but layoffs are also devastating to the morale of the employees who are allowed to stay. This I feel is a factor that managers tend to grossly overlook when planning mass layoffs.
This is patently false. Tons of empirical evidence of organizations that have improved and innovated much more effectively.
The world’s most valuable company comes to mind.
The world’s most valuable company comes to mind.
The guy is talking about slow dead. The kind of company dead IBM or Oracle? are facing since decades.
The world's most valuable company (Apple, I assume?) wasn't the world's fifth most profitable company in ANY field when they did that, though.
I am not advocating for this but you could turn that argument easily around: Not laying off people makes them feel very secure which does not incentivice them to take risks and innovate either. At least when they are no inherently driven to push their careers forward.
Edit: To expand on my comment: At my company the problem with missing innovation is not related to layoffs (which do not happen, thankfully). But rather that hiring is very slow as management thinks teams need to "earn" those additional resources by innovating instead of the other way around: hiring people that are willing to innovate.
Edit: To expand on my comment: At my company the problem with missing innovation is not related to layoffs (which do not happen, thankfully). But rather that hiring is very slow as management thinks teams need to "earn" those additional resources by innovating instead of the other way around: hiring people that are willing to innovate.
must disagree. A bloated company is the killer of innovation. Job security is no indicator for innovation. In fact, the most unsecure job produce the most innovative Tech (see Startups).
This viewport is very misleading. Startups don’t produce the most innovative tech _because_ they’re less secure.
In a way, it's natural selection that drives evolution, by removing the unfit genes from the gene pool. This is arguably more important than mutation, and mutations would accumulate to be catastrophic over time without natural selection.
Startups that survive tend to be more innovative than other companies because other, less innovative startups were less secure than comparable departments within larger corporations that were also low on innovation.
The death of all replicators is unchecked random entropy.
Startups that survive tend to be more innovative than other companies because other, less innovative startups were less secure than comparable departments within larger corporations that were also low on innovation.
The death of all replicators is unchecked random entropy.
>“Our members and teammates work hard every day to build great products for our users, and the company cannot continue to fire our co-workers while making billions every quarter,” the [union] group said in a post on the social media site X.
I mean no disrespect, but fundamentally a company is only able to do one of the two things: either hire, or fire people. Nobody is taking this away from them, and why would they? Once the leadership has spoken, it's up to employees to either listen, or ignore what the leadership has to say. The union statement reads awfully like "We refuse to believe."
I'm not sure that's helping anybody!
I mean no disrespect, but fundamentally a company is only able to do one of the two things: either hire, or fire people. Nobody is taking this away from them, and why would they? Once the leadership has spoken, it's up to employees to either listen, or ignore what the leadership has to say. The union statement reads awfully like "We refuse to believe."
I'm not sure that's helping anybody!
A company can do a whole lot more than hire or fire people
Yeah option C and D. Both or neither...
I’m not sure I understand what you’re trying to say, unions shouldn’t ever comment on decisions they disagree with because they are not helping anyone?
> either listen, or ignore what the leadership has to say
Or openly criticize those decisions if they have the guts for that?
> either listen, or ignore what the leadership has to say
Or openly criticize those decisions if they have the guts for that?
One of the motivations to unionize is to ensure that access to labor is mediated by the laborers collectively. This often manifests negotiations between leadership and the union over topics like the one under discussion.
I take their words as a call out to the aspirational future where the union gives employees a voice in the discussion about these kinds of hiring and firing decisions.
I take their words as a call out to the aspirational future where the union gives employees a voice in the discussion about these kinds of hiring and firing decisions.
That's bad news for the IT jobs market. The big tech companies are firing people - those people will have no problem finding another job, but that's a job taken away from more average folks.
Combined with high interest rates, that prevent businesses from starting new projects financed through credit. Also ChatGPT and other AIs increasing developers, artists, etc. productivity - so fewer people can do as much work. Probably demand for IT roles in 2024 is going to be lower than previous years and salaries may stagnate or go down.
Combined with high interest rates, that prevent businesses from starting new projects financed through credit. Also ChatGPT and other AIs increasing developers, artists, etc. productivity - so fewer people can do as much work. Probably demand for IT roles in 2024 is going to be lower than previous years and salaries may stagnate or go down.
Aren't googlers famously burnt out and only know how to use Google products because of dogfooding? I don't mean to demean the people just laid off, surely some of them at least know enough to operate other software suites, but hasn't this been identified as a common problem?
CEO/HR people get the tingles with FAANG resumes. They don't know any of that.
That was when they were the darlings who did nothing but grow and snagging one of their employees was a stretch. Doing big layoffs kind of tarnishes the image.
Don't know about burnout, the dogfooding is very real though.
OTOH, they're pretty smart.
OTOH, they're pretty smart.
I wonder if the well-documented nihism of Google, coupled with how all the marvellous internal Google tools seem to work a lot less well without their product teams running them, is secretly an employee retention strategy.
Feels like a stretch to me, I have to say. The only tool that comes to mind is Blaze/Bazel, which I haven't tried outside of Google, but the friction people experience is likely down to the fact that, outside of Google, you have to deal with a world that's more complicated than a single giant monorepo.
IT salaries are high mostly because the people who can do the job well can also do other jobs well, so if salaries go down then people change careers. For example, most people who can do IT could also become an electrician, for which the demand is currently high.
> Also ChatGPT and other AIs increasing developers, artists, etc. productivity - so fewer people can do as much work.
This is the sort of thing that increases demand for IT. Company had 40 artists and two IT staff, now they can get by with 10 artists but three IT staff, because IT has more work to do supporting the AI stuff.
> Also ChatGPT and other AIs increasing developers, artists, etc. productivity - so fewer people can do as much work.
This is the sort of thing that increases demand for IT. Company had 40 artists and two IT staff, now they can get by with 10 artists but three IT staff, because IT has more work to do supporting the AI stuff.
Most people who do IT can become an electrician ? Im curious why you think that. Also Im not too sure about high demands for electricians. This seems to rely on a booming real estate market which is in a whole world of trouble
> Most people who do IT can become an electrician ? Im curious why you think that.
It's fundamentally the same kind of mix between following bureaucratic rules and manipulating man-made technology.
> Also Im not too sure about high demands for electricians. This seems to rely on a booming real estate market which is in a whole world of trouble
Real estate prices are still incredibly high, driven by undersupply of housing, which is unlikely to abate soon. As long as prices are high, construction will be profitable. If prices crash the Fed is likely to lower interest rates which makes construction profitable again, because the prices are lower but so are the construction company's borrowing costs.
There also seems to be some political support for doing something about the high housing costs, like relaxing zoning rules, which would allow new construction in places it's currently prohibited.
It's fundamentally the same kind of mix between following bureaucratic rules and manipulating man-made technology.
> Also Im not too sure about high demands for electricians. This seems to rely on a booming real estate market which is in a whole world of trouble
Real estate prices are still incredibly high, driven by undersupply of housing, which is unlikely to abate soon. As long as prices are high, construction will be profitable. If prices crash the Fed is likely to lower interest rates which makes construction profitable again, because the prices are lower but so are the construction company's borrowing costs.
There also seems to be some political support for doing something about the high housing costs, like relaxing zoning rules, which would allow new construction in places it's currently prohibited.
> If prices crash the Fed is likely to lower interest rates which makes construction profitable again, because the prices are lower but so are the construction company's borrowing costs.
The Fed? Not everyone lives in the Empire
The Fed? Not everyone lives in the Empire
The Empire is global. If the Fed lowers interest rates, not only can foreign nationals borrow at lower rates directly or indirectly from US banks, because of that the central banks in other countries tend to follow suit.
Becoming an electrician is hard the UK, because you need to get that initial work experience, which experienced electricians are reluctant to do.
> IT salaries are high mostly because the people who can do the job well can also do other jobs well
True to some extent, but IT salaries are high in my opinion because until recently there was a very limited tech talent pool but huge demand for IT talent. I mean IT was only really seen as a good career around 15-20 years ago.
We just got lucky. We had the right skills at the right time. We rode the wave of big tech companies like Google, Amazon and Facebook growing into the most profitable companies in the world. With technology maturing from here on the industry will likely stagnate some and with plenty of freshly well educated IT talent entering the market there's really no reason to not expect this high salaries to continue. In my opinion they'll most likely fall to what your more typical middle class job pays.
True to some extent, but IT salaries are high in my opinion because until recently there was a very limited tech talent pool but huge demand for IT talent. I mean IT was only really seen as a good career around 15-20 years ago.
We just got lucky. We had the right skills at the right time. We rode the wave of big tech companies like Google, Amazon and Facebook growing into the most profitable companies in the world. With technology maturing from here on the industry will likely stagnate some and with plenty of freshly well educated IT talent entering the market there's really no reason to not expect this high salaries to continue. In my opinion they'll most likely fall to what your more typical middle class job pays.
> I mean IT was only really seen as a good career around 15-20 years ago.
It has been seen as a good career ever since it started employing a significant number of people.
> With technology maturing from here on the industry will likely stagnate some
That's the thing that happened 15-20 years ago.
It has been seen as a good career ever since it started employing a significant number of people.
> With technology maturing from here on the industry will likely stagnate some
That's the thing that happened 15-20 years ago.
Actually, IT was seen as a good career from around 80-87 and from around 95-01. It comes in waves. Then there is a bust, and those who went into IT just because it was seen as a "good career", not because they love coding, are weeded out.
And with only the passionate developers left, the cycle starts again.
And with only the passionate developers left, the cycle starts again.
Compilers did the same thing. But over time, as more ways to apply code and software got found, demand massively increased beyond what it was previously. This will probably be the same, at least if AI doesn't completely upend every single knowledge job there is.
II'm fairly certain I could learn the theorethical, physical background required to be an electrician pretty quick but that leaves me with precisely zero practical experience of actually pulling cables or building a switchboard without killing myself/others and/or buring down the building.
Besides, im my country a formal education (2-3 years) including an apprenticeship is required by law to practice the trait.
Besides, im my country a formal education (2-3 years) including an apprenticeship is required by law to practice the trait.
> II'm fairly certain I could learn the theorethical, physical background required to be an electrician pretty quick but that leaves me with precisely zero practical experience of actually pulling cables or building a switchboard without killing myself/others and/or buring down the building.
What do you think the learning is meant for you to learn? You have to terminate aluminum conductors differently than copper to prevent corrosion etc. Learning these things is what allows you to wire a building without causing a fire.
> Besides, im my country a formal education (2-3 years) including an apprenticeship is required by law to practice the trait.
Apprenticeship requirements are unfortunate -- basically giving the incumbents in an industry the ability to rate limit new entrants -- but it's not as if no one has ever done it before. So you do the apprenticeship.
What do you think the learning is meant for you to learn? You have to terminate aluminum conductors differently than copper to prevent corrosion etc. Learning these things is what allows you to wire a building without causing a fire.
> Besides, im my country a formal education (2-3 years) including an apprenticeship is required by law to practice the trait.
Apprenticeship requirements are unfortunate -- basically giving the incumbents in an industry the ability to rate limit new entrants -- but it's not as if no one has ever done it before. So you do the apprenticeship.
At least where I live it takes ~4 - 5 years education to become an electrician.
Do you know people who switched from IT to electrician because their salary got lower?
Do you know people who switched from IT to electrician because their salary got lower?
> At least where I live it takes ~4 - 5 years education to become an electrician.
That's about the same as it is for IT, isn't it? Most decent IT jobs wanting a four-year CS degree.
And changing careers has retraining costs but not for some 18 year old who hasn't picked one yet. Which can balance out the supply and demand five years from now just as well as a 30+ year old changing careers.
> Do you know people who switched from IT to electrician because their salary got lower?
Do you know a lot of people in IT whose salary got lower?
That's about the same as it is for IT, isn't it? Most decent IT jobs wanting a four-year CS degree.
And changing careers has retraining costs but not for some 18 year old who hasn't picked one yet. Which can balance out the supply and demand five years from now just as well as a 30+ year old changing careers.
> Do you know people who switched from IT to electrician because their salary got lower?
Do you know a lot of people in IT whose salary got lower?
>: but not for some 18 year old who hasn't picked one yet.
Ah ok. I though you where talking about people currently working in IT switching over to become an electrician.
Ah ok. I though you where talking about people currently working in IT switching over to become an electrician.
They can do this too, if the difference in salaries becomes large, but it's obviously less expensive for someone who hasn't taken on the training cost for either industry yet so those would be the first to move.
Yep, not to mention that many of these engineers were already paid a fortune and are extremely over-hyped as they were basically just tiny cogs in a huge machine and they can't actually build anything on their own... Which is what is required for building software outside of big tech.
I agree. At the end of the day, FAANG engineers are just employees. I never understood the hype or the prestige they get. Also, unrelated but I've read your other comments and they are on point, you're too smart for HN. I say this unironically.
This place can wear a man down fast.
This place can wear a man down fast.
Thanks for the compliment. IMO, the concentration of smart people here is still very high. In most other forums, people don't even understand what I'm saying. Here it's like most people understand my comments but they disagree because they have an interest not to agree and so they require a higher standard of proof.
My firm made billions last year too and just laid off hundreds of engineers (a decent %)
Some of the best engineers, those that I respected the most, went. People who make no sense.
After last year's layoffs they told us they were "done" and it was "all behind us". Last year then turned out to a better year financially than 2022 (we have access to the top line numbers)
You can't trust anything anyone above you in the management chain tells you. Not one thing. Not ever. Even if they're being truthful they were probably lied to themselves or told a half truth.
Never get invested emotionally. SWEs in particularly no longer live in a world where you can expect to have a rewarding career working for >=5 years at any given firm. Take their fucking money, build a big emergency fund, save, invest, and focus on the rest of your life outside of work.
You can be somewhere for 10 years. have glowing performance reviews, feel like you're making a difference, think it'll never happen to you, not even be aware the company is in shit, and then... tomorrow you're gone.
Your job is NOT safe.
Some of the best engineers, those that I respected the most, went. People who make no sense.
After last year's layoffs they told us they were "done" and it was "all behind us". Last year then turned out to a better year financially than 2022 (we have access to the top line numbers)
You can't trust anything anyone above you in the management chain tells you. Not one thing. Not ever. Even if they're being truthful they were probably lied to themselves or told a half truth.
Never get invested emotionally. SWEs in particularly no longer live in a world where you can expect to have a rewarding career working for >=5 years at any given firm. Take their fucking money, build a big emergency fund, save, invest, and focus on the rest of your life outside of work.
You can be somewhere for 10 years. have glowing performance reviews, feel like you're making a difference, think it'll never happen to you, not even be aware the company is in shit, and then... tomorrow you're gone.
Your job is NOT safe.
I see what you are saying. I am an engineer-turned-EM and you don't know me, so please take everything I say with a grain of salt:
> Your job is NOT safe.
Nothing will make execs happier than having this line of thought popularized amongst engineers. It will allow them to hire cheaper, and exploit existing engineers more.
I think a better way to put it is:
"A job is not your family, and a job is not your identity. You must rely on yourself"
This line of thinking still means diversifying your options, building an emergency fund, have a fulfilling life outside work, keep doing interviews from time to time, spend some cycles thinking about "what would I do if I where to build my own startup", etc. But it will not put you in the "oh my I need to accept whatever they offer me right now" path.
Especially on FAANG companies, it very easy to "get lost in the technical work" and to "offshore your life's direction to the company", so to speak. If you think this might be happening to you, I recommend involving someone else - a coach, a therapist, a friend, a brother or a priest. Whatever works for you. Someone from outside the company. It might be scary and uncomfortable at first, but taking the driver's seat of your life is worth it.
> Your job is NOT safe.
Nothing will make execs happier than having this line of thought popularized amongst engineers. It will allow them to hire cheaper, and exploit existing engineers more.
I think a better way to put it is:
"A job is not your family, and a job is not your identity. You must rely on yourself"
This line of thinking still means diversifying your options, building an emergency fund, have a fulfilling life outside work, keep doing interviews from time to time, spend some cycles thinking about "what would I do if I where to build my own startup", etc. But it will not put you in the "oh my I need to accept whatever they offer me right now" path.
Especially on FAANG companies, it very easy to "get lost in the technical work" and to "offshore your life's direction to the company", so to speak. If you think this might be happening to you, I recommend involving someone else - a coach, a therapist, a friend, a brother or a priest. Whatever works for you. Someone from outside the company. It might be scary and uncomfortable at first, but taking the driver's seat of your life is worth it.
I disagree and I am sad that we're teaching each other to be skeptical and cynical.
The company is not your friend and not your enemy, I agree. However, people _do_ develop personal relationship with each other. Sometimes even across the different levels in the company hierarchy. Yes, as with any other relationship, circumstances and interests might override this, but relationships still do matter. People have emotions, and there are managers who're not psychopats and find it very hard to e.g. let people go.
And yes, value yourself, absolutely. And your job is not your family or your identity, and manage risk, and there are bad bosses and bad company cultures. But it's not uniform.
But please don't think that nobody cares about you in your workplace and you're a completely fungible cog. It's a horrible life to live. Let's not tell the already cynical young people that this is how the world works.
Even at big, bureaucratic companies like big investment banks, if you're at a certain level (not that high), eventually you'll mostly be taken care of. Not everyone and not always, but e.g. if you're an ED at an investment bank, you can have a job for life, maybe not at your current place forever, but the industry will take care of you. Similarly if you've been at dunno, Mercedes for 15 years and you're not the bottom 20 percent in terms of performance, then it's kinda guaranteed that you'll have a job in the auto industry forever.
People who have been let go from Google today can have an extremely lucrative job forever in the industry.
The company is not your friend and not your enemy, I agree. However, people _do_ develop personal relationship with each other. Sometimes even across the different levels in the company hierarchy. Yes, as with any other relationship, circumstances and interests might override this, but relationships still do matter. People have emotions, and there are managers who're not psychopats and find it very hard to e.g. let people go.
And yes, value yourself, absolutely. And your job is not your family or your identity, and manage risk, and there are bad bosses and bad company cultures. But it's not uniform.
But please don't think that nobody cares about you in your workplace and you're a completely fungible cog. It's a horrible life to live. Let's not tell the already cynical young people that this is how the world works.
Even at big, bureaucratic companies like big investment banks, if you're at a certain level (not that high), eventually you'll mostly be taken care of. Not everyone and not always, but e.g. if you're an ED at an investment bank, you can have a job for life, maybe not at your current place forever, but the industry will take care of you. Similarly if you've been at dunno, Mercedes for 15 years and you're not the bottom 20 percent in terms of performance, then it's kinda guaranteed that you'll have a job in the auto industry forever.
People who have been let go from Google today can have an extremely lucrative job forever in the industry.
This is just unrealistic. When layoffs happens, whole departments can get cut. They don’t differentiate performers.
Likewise, there is a huge bias in hiring against older developers. Getting laid off in your 40s is a death sentence. You’ll never make as much money again, and you’ll be lucky to find employment.
Be ready to retire by 50, because anything else is both risky and improbable.
Likewise, there is a huge bias in hiring against older developers. Getting laid off in your 40s is a death sentence. You’ll never make as much money again, and you’ll be lucky to find employment.
Be ready to retire by 50, because anything else is both risky and improbable.
You're never going to make as much again after 40: based on what metrics? Ageism is illegal in the US, and if this is true for you, you probably did not cultivate the type of software engineering skillset that scales well as you advance up the career ladder.
Ah yes, nothing illegal ever happens in the US.
Legality just isn’t a concern when it comes to big companies. I am convinced that if someone looks at history from far away in the future, they will compress feudalism and industrial capitalism together.
These companies have a big influence on what is legal or what is a priority for governments.
These companies have a big influence on what is legal or what is a priority for governments.
Serfs being bound to the land, and power being directly held by those who provided military service are pretty stark differences between Feudalism and Capitalism. Not even Marx equated the two systems.
> Ageism is illegal in the US
I have talked to literally hundreds of people in my life who have suffered through illegal workplace discrimination and I've honestly never met a single one who prosecuted a discrimination case successfully. Things are only illegal if you can prove them, and most managers don't go around yelling "holy shit I hate old people".
I have talked to literally hundreds of people in my life who have suffered through illegal workplace discrimination and I've honestly never met a single one who prosecuted a discrimination case successfully. Things are only illegal if you can prove them, and most managers don't go around yelling "holy shit I hate old people".
Agreed, but highly doubt the effect is nearly as dramatic as claimed. If the effect is to the extent that engineers in their 40s can never make the money they made in their 30s, that would be trivial to prove. Even a big corp would have significant trouble defending such a statistic.
The idea that you must retire from tech before 50 is so incredibly false I have difficulty believing this view is even shared here.
Perhaps in some of the "trendy" "bro-culture" startups you'd have a more difficult time as an older developer but even in those places, the level of experience and skills older devs bring can be extremely valuable.
But say you were laid off in your 40's, now what? Well, there are so many bigger, less volatile companies out there with solid pay that are desperate for senior people with experience. There's also consulting for those who have spent a career building up a network of contacts. You can still leverage those old contacts for future opportunities as well.
Governmental work and such is also a place where age is not a concern. Here I agree you might not make as much money but employment is always available to developers who are skilled, experienced and flexible.
Perhaps in some of the "trendy" "bro-culture" startups you'd have a more difficult time as an older developer but even in those places, the level of experience and skills older devs bring can be extremely valuable.
But say you were laid off in your 40's, now what? Well, there are so many bigger, less volatile companies out there with solid pay that are desperate for senior people with experience. There's also consulting for those who have spent a career building up a network of contacts. You can still leverage those old contacts for future opportunities as well.
Governmental work and such is also a place where age is not a concern. Here I agree you might not make as much money but employment is always available to developers who are skilled, experienced and flexible.
> idea that you must retire from tech before 50
Well I guess the idea is that all the "best" engineers would have already made millions by the time they hit 50 and so therefore those who are left are...
Well I guess the idea is that all the "best" engineers would have already made millions by the time they hit 50 and so therefore those who are left are...
Perhaps in the hyper inflated SV economy, but in the rest of the world you don't get to retire until you've reached the normal retirement age (minus a few years perhaps), and that makes it quite natural to see newly employed software engineers who are in their mid or even late 50s. I've worked with plenty of them.
I must admit though that I've only seen one newly hired in their 60s, but probably the very few that find themselves involuntarily out of a job at that age can afford to and choose to retire a little bit earlier than planned.
I must admit though that I've only seen one newly hired in their 60s, but probably the very few that find themselves involuntarily out of a job at that age can afford to and choose to retire a little bit earlier than planned.
Once you get into late 50s/60s, I know quite a few people in tech at that point who have had reasonably well-paying jobs (though certainly not top-level FAANG salaries) who have presumably managed their finances well who are pretty much ready to wind down at that point--whether forced or otherwise. They mostly haven't classically retired but they're working part-time on often IT-adjacent types of projects.
People who think this way are blinded by their own worldview. A large number of the best engineers aren't in the business to become wealthy, and they don't leave the industry if they become wealthy.
The ones who are in it just for the money rarely become the best engineers.
The ones who are in it just for the money rarely become the best engineers.
Translation:
To avoid being unemployable in your 50’s learn COBOL so you can work for a big stupid company or government.
To avoid being unemployable in your 50’s learn COBOL so you can work for a big stupid company or government.
Not at all.
Once out of the umbrella of the FAANGS, there are tons of jobs for SWE, just not at the eye watering salaries.
East Coast, tons of jobs at the 100K range.
Once out of the umbrella of the FAANGS, there are tons of jobs for SWE, just not at the eye watering salaries.
East Coast, tons of jobs at the 100K range.
The problem is that salaries above 100K are important to live securely in many places in the US.
Yet the household median income in the US is less than $100K and people seem to survive
Survival is not thriving. Lots of political upheaval underway in the US as a result.
Yes like this famous article about how someone felt poor with a household income of $200K-$500K a year.
https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2017/10/09/budget-breakdown-of-a-co...
And if you talk to the people who strongly identify with the MAGA movement, their main concerns are guns, illegal immigration, “persecution because of their Christian beliefs”, and for some strange reason - Disney.
People who know me and one of my friends calls us the “odd couple”. I’m a Black mostly agnostic bleeding heart libertarian capitalist pig who works in tech (including a stint in BigTech), my friend is a White former military high school dropout who is an evangelical Christian, gun loving and rural, who rails against those “illegals”.
But he attends a predominantly Black church and has been married to a deaf Vietnamese woman for two decades who he loves dearly.
I also use to live in a famous “sun down” town in Georgia made famous by Oprah. I’m often in conversations with modern “conservatives”. I don’t argue, I just listen.
https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2017/10/09/budget-breakdown-of-a-co...
And if you talk to the people who strongly identify with the MAGA movement, their main concerns are guns, illegal immigration, “persecution because of their Christian beliefs”, and for some strange reason - Disney.
People who know me and one of my friends calls us the “odd couple”. I’m a Black mostly agnostic bleeding heart libertarian capitalist pig who works in tech (including a stint in BigTech), my friend is a White former military high school dropout who is an evangelical Christian, gun loving and rural, who rails against those “illegals”.
But he attends a predominantly Black church and has been married to a deaf Vietnamese woman for two decades who he loves dearly.
I also use to live in a famous “sun down” town in Georgia made famous by Oprah. I’m often in conversations with modern “conservatives”. I don’t argue, I just listen.
That's why I said "in many parts of the US". There are certainly places in the US where someone can live quite comfortably on $100K. There are other parts where it would be quite difficult and where it would be almost impossible to own a home on that income.
“Living comfortably” and “owning a home” is not synonymous. Is there any place in the US that a household will be homeless and hungry making $100k?
Simply not being "homeless and hungry" is also not synonymous with "living comfortably". In many US cities, $100K is not enough to have much financial security and without owning a home it is more difficult to have much personal autonomy.
This would be a 66% pay cut for me. As in, it would take 3 years of that pay to match one of my current year’s pay. Investing aggressively and retiring at 50 seems like a smarter option.
>Governmental work and such is also a place where age is not a concern.
Why only single out government/public sector jobs as palces for all-age job stability?
Aerospace, defence, semiconductor, automotive, industrial, medical, healtchare, banking, insurance, manufacturing, naval, rail and freight, logistics and transportations, basically all legacy businesses, all are hiring SW engineers and are staffed by mostly older workers, but HN mostly snuffs at these fields because they're not in SV, are seen as un-cool, boring, old and crusty and don't pretend to change the world through innovation and paying millions in TC for 10h/week of pretending to work from home to psuh ads to people, like Google does, but it's not like you will starve to death and be homeless if you work as a dev in those "un-cool" kinds of fields for a lot less than what Google pays, going from 1% top earners to 5% top earners. If you're a 10x dev you'll find top paying jobs no matter your age.
This might sound harsh, but perhaps the last ~10+ years of hyper-growth in the VC funded SW sector has warped many devs perspective on their own value and what the rest of the real world is like, where if a company doesn't offer FAANG TC then it's automatically unlivable.
Hell, if AI makes my medicore coding skills redundant, as I'm not a 10X dev, I can always go into trades. Plumbers, carpenters, electricians, you name it, are making bank now as there's a shortage of trades and the labor market is overcrowded with all kinds of BS consultants and "laptop workers", as per the last south park episode which I recommend you watch.
Why only single out government/public sector jobs as palces for all-age job stability?
Aerospace, defence, semiconductor, automotive, industrial, medical, healtchare, banking, insurance, manufacturing, naval, rail and freight, logistics and transportations, basically all legacy businesses, all are hiring SW engineers and are staffed by mostly older workers, but HN mostly snuffs at these fields because they're not in SV, are seen as un-cool, boring, old and crusty and don't pretend to change the world through innovation and paying millions in TC for 10h/week of pretending to work from home to psuh ads to people, like Google does, but it's not like you will starve to death and be homeless if you work as a dev in those "un-cool" kinds of fields for a lot less than what Google pays, going from 1% top earners to 5% top earners. If you're a 10x dev you'll find top paying jobs no matter your age.
This might sound harsh, but perhaps the last ~10+ years of hyper-growth in the VC funded SW sector has warped many devs perspective on their own value and what the rest of the real world is like, where if a company doesn't offer FAANG TC then it's automatically unlivable.
Hell, if AI makes my medicore coding skills redundant, as I'm not a 10X dev, I can always go into trades. Plumbers, carpenters, electricians, you name it, are making bank now as there's a shortage of trades and the labor market is overcrowded with all kinds of BS consultants and "laptop workers", as per the last south park episode which I recommend you watch.
There are a lot of decent programming jobs anywhere in the world too, we might not be FAANG but jobs are decent enough to raise a family and build a house.
> build a house
Not where I live you can't build a house on a dev wage. Average dev wages is ~55k/year and average house price is something like 500k+.
Not where I live you can't build a house on a dev wage. Average dev wages is ~55k/year and average house price is something like 500k+.
I agree, all of those fit in my (admittedly lazy) "and such" part of the statement. Loads of jobs for all ages
Are you saying that there is no ageism in the tech industry at all ?
Well no, I clearly wasn't saying there is no ageism at all. I was taking issue with the comment regarding developers having to leave tech over 50 years old.
Within the AI bubble, I think there is lots of ageism, but in real world mission-critical i.e. "serious stuff" there is plenty of jobs for experienced engineers.
There absolutely is ageism, but it's not as widespread as many younger devs seem to think. It also tends to be concentrated in a particular segment of our industry. Big picture, there isn't enough ageism to lose sleep about it.
> The idea that you must retire from tech before 50 is so incredibly false I have difficulty believing this view is even shared here.
To the contrary, this is the very finest distilled HN for you. I wouldn't expect less.
To the contrary, this is the very finest distilled HN for you. I wouldn't expect less.
> The idea that you must retire from tech before 50 is so incredibly false I have difficulty believing this view is even shared here.
Must retire? No, of course not.
I worked through most of my 50's though and definitely saw "the writing on the wall". I don't want to scream "Ageism!" because I think people are often too quick to pigeon hole a thing that has much more complex roots.
For example, because of my white hair, beard, I'm probably not the guy you would go to and ask a Swift question to. And I don't blame anyone for having that ... instinct.
But it was a combination of things like that began to inform me that my better days in the industry were behind me.
Believe me, I tried to act as mentor when I knew I was probably within a year or two of heading out of the industry but I found the young'uns didn't want a mentor either. Oh well. I think I would have at their age but not everyone is the same.
Must retire? No, of course not.
I worked through most of my 50's though and definitely saw "the writing on the wall". I don't want to scream "Ageism!" because I think people are often too quick to pigeon hole a thing that has much more complex roots.
For example, because of my white hair, beard, I'm probably not the guy you would go to and ask a Swift question to. And I don't blame anyone for having that ... instinct.
But it was a combination of things like that began to inform me that my better days in the industry were behind me.
Believe me, I tried to act as mentor when I knew I was probably within a year or two of heading out of the industry but I found the young'uns didn't want a mentor either. Oh well. I think I would have at their age but not everyone is the same.
> is a death sentence. You’ll never make as much money again
Going from 800K-1.2M down to 200K-300K total comp is not that devastating I'd say :)
Going from 800K-1.2M down to 200K-300K total comp is not that devastating I'd say :)
>Going from 800K-1.2M down to 200K-300K total comp is not that devastating I'd say :)
If you've built up a 1.2M a year lifestyle, then going back to 250k a year lifestyle might feel like a "death sentence", at which point you will hear the world's smallest violin playing for you.
Hance why you shouldn't keep extending your lifestyle proportionally with your paycheck growth, and learn to stay humble and frugal and not spend to 'keep up with the Joneses'.
Unless you're in the same league with John Carmack or Andrej Karpathy where top companies are begging at your feet, you should treat jobs with very large TCs more like short therm lottery wins rather than cashflows guaranteed to last, since there's a high chance you're not that special as you think, and that there's probably others out there who can and are willing to do your work better and for cheaper when the crunch comes and the layoff axe starts to swing towards those non-exec workers responsible for company's biggest paycheck expenses. Those who've lived thorugh the 2008 days will know and remeber what I'm talking about.
If you've built up a 1.2M a year lifestyle, then going back to 250k a year lifestyle might feel like a "death sentence", at which point you will hear the world's smallest violin playing for you.
Hance why you shouldn't keep extending your lifestyle proportionally with your paycheck growth, and learn to stay humble and frugal and not spend to 'keep up with the Joneses'.
Unless you're in the same league with John Carmack or Andrej Karpathy where top companies are begging at your feet, you should treat jobs with very large TCs more like short therm lottery wins rather than cashflows guaranteed to last, since there's a high chance you're not that special as you think, and that there's probably others out there who can and are willing to do your work better and for cheaper when the crunch comes and the layoff axe starts to swing towards those non-exec workers responsible for company's biggest paycheck expenses. Those who've lived thorugh the 2008 days will know and remeber what I'm talking about.
For anyone making this kind of money at an early age, don't spend it... invest it.
If you're actually making $1.2 million a year, invest at least $500k/yr.
Then if you need to take a pay cut later, hopefully the dividends from your investment accounts brings your total income close to where it once was.
Also if you're reading this wondering if people actually make this amount of money coding... the answer is no, with the exception of an incredibly small percentage of people. Expecting $800k comp is not realistic for 98% of people.
If you're actually making $1.2 million a year, invest at least $500k/yr.
Then if you need to take a pay cut later, hopefully the dividends from your investment accounts brings your total income close to where it once was.
Also if you're reading this wondering if people actually make this amount of money coding... the answer is no, with the exception of an incredibly small percentage of people. Expecting $800k comp is not realistic for 98% of people.
This is good advice. But it's worth pointing out that by default many of these people are heavily invested in GOOG. And those that aren't are probably heavily invested in market instruments propped up by the GOOG price.
So, mumble mumble, something about diversifying.
I'm sure the layoffs are likely to lead to a short-term bump because the markets will interpret it as Google adulting. But if they're signalling that they're afraid of AI eating their market share, then you probably want to be proactive about that.
So, mumble mumble, something about diversifying.
I'm sure the layoffs are likely to lead to a short-term bump because the markets will interpret it as Google adulting. But if they're signalling that they're afraid of AI eating their market share, then you probably want to be proactive about that.
If they kept a large chunk of their vested stock in the same company they are working for - or any one company, they are doing it wrong
Well, yeah I agree. But I think most people do by default. That's really the idea of vesting... to align employee interests with the interests of the company.
At least at Amazon they gave you a choice pre vest between - sell all when they vest, sell enough to pay taxes, and sell none.
I always chose option 1. This is like personal finance 101.
And for the company the purpose of RSUs instead of cash is to not deplete cash reserves.
I always chose option 1. This is like personal finance 101.
And for the company the purpose of RSUs instead of cash is to not deplete cash reserves.
If you've built up a 1.2M / year lifestyle on a 1.2M / year income you've made some terrible mistakes, I doubt some internet advice is going to solve that.
>If you've built up a 1.2M / year lifestyle on a 1.2M / year income you've made some terrible mistakes
You'd be surprised by people's poor spending habbits. Aquitances of mine when they got their first SV job out of college at Facebook, they immediately bought brand new Porsche 911's.
You'd be surprised by people's poor spending habbits. Aquitances of mine when they got their first SV job out of college at Facebook, they immediately bought brand new Porsche 911's.
I know, that's easy to laugh at. And new army recruits spend their "signing bonus" on (so-called) muscle cars like the Mustang and Charger.
I think a token of "I've made it!" is fine. Maybe we all need that once in our life.
The problem is if it persists. (Worst, if somehow gambling, etc. becomes involved.)
I think a token of "I've made it!" is fine. Maybe we all need that once in our life.
The problem is if it persists. (Worst, if somehow gambling, etc. becomes involved.)
>And new army recruits spend their "signing bonus"
You get a signing bonus for the US militrary? Damn that's pretty sweet.
You get a signing bonus for the US militrary? Damn that's pretty sweet.
Only if you can’t afford it. If you’ve built up income streams to support it you’ve made a bunch of great decisions and inter generational wealth.
> If you've built up a 1.2M a year lifestyle
If you're living this way, feel free to reach out. I have loads of advice you don't want to but need to hear.
If you're living this way, feel free to reach out. I have loads of advice you don't want to but need to hear.
One of the pieces of career advice I've given my kids is: when your pay goes up, be very cautious about changing your lifestyle to match it. Going up that ladder is easy -- going back down is painful.
Ideally, your standard of living should cost you a fraction of what your income is.
Ideally, your standard of living should cost you a fraction of what your income is.
I was making $x in 2020 as a CRUD developer in Georgia.
I got a job at Amazon and was making $x+$100K
I was Amazoned last year from a remote position. By then, I had paid off debt, downsized from my big house in the burbs to a condo one third the size in state tax free Florida and could easily live off of $x- $30K even though I’m making around $50K more than I was making 3 years ago.
Guess how much I stressed when Amazon started Amazoning?
I got a job at Amazon and was making $x+$100K
I was Amazoned last year from a remote position. By then, I had paid off debt, downsized from my big house in the burbs to a condo one third the size in state tax free Florida and could easily live off of $x- $30K even though I’m making around $50K more than I was making 3 years ago.
Guess how much I stressed when Amazon started Amazoning?
Most devs aren't on $800-1.2M TC.
I can't speak for being let go past 40, but every place I've worked (including a startup) have had IC developers over 40, and all but one over 50, working there.
This is totally rediculous, I see plenty of 50+ in tech now and they're going to become more common over time.
Tech skewing young and being ageist is also partially an artefact of tech being a new hot growing rapidly changing field. That is waning over time.
Tech skewing young and being ageist is also partially an artefact of tech being a new hot growing rapidly changing field. That is waning over time.
This got me thinking, I'm wondering how this will interact with the fact that technologically, we're getting increasingly better abstractions. So there's less pressure to learn what happens physically, the way that folks like Wozniak had to.
Is low-level expertise going to continue to skew older? Or are things like Rust and embedded AI going to bring in a bunch of new blood?
Is low-level expertise going to continue to skew older? Or are things like Rust and embedded AI going to bring in a bunch of new blood?
> Or are things like Rust and embedded AI going to bring in a bunch of new blood?
AI product dev hat on for this comment. My take is AI will continue to give solid first drafts, and expertise, creativity, and curiosity are required to take it the rest of the way. Maybe, just maybe, we get beyond the GPT architecture and embed a reasonable state of the world for wider use cases similar to a CoPilot.
AI product dev hat on for this comment. My take is AI will continue to give solid first drafts, and expertise, creativity, and curiosity are required to take it the rest of the way. Maybe, just maybe, we get beyond the GPT architecture and embed a reasonable state of the world for wider use cases similar to a CoPilot.
We are getting more abstractions, not necessarily better ones. I much prefer working with people who figure out how things work under abstractions rather than relying on them blindly.
Unlikely. Some people really just are better at low level than high level (and vice versa.) Further, I would say anyone who started after say... '97 never needed to have that layer, and '87 may be true too. The true pressure hasn't existed in over 25 years and yet we still have low level expertise because embedded will continue to be a use case.
The most powerful abstractions are typically not free. The rate of performance improvement from improvements in hardware has slowed down and might continue slowing down. Thus, the pressure to learn what happens behind various abstractions might actually increase, if advantageous performance improvements can primarily be obtained by peeling back the layers of abstraction at the cost of some development efficiency, since you can't just wait a couple of years for hardware to develop to a point where it can handle your inefficient abstraction anymore.
How about the general decline of cognitive ability with age? I'm in my late 30s, starting to feel fatigue in dealing with nasty little problems on a daily basis. I can say whether an approach is good or bad, but actually coding the stuff with all the modern ephemeral frameworks and libraries is becoming increasingly uncomfortable. I would want to afford to do "recreational programming" on greenfield projects, unbound by time and business requirements, but it is a luxury.
50 year old here. You replace reflex intelligence with applying wisdom.
I'm a very senior IC in a FAANG and almost my whole job is going around and sharing 30+ years of wisdom with people on everything from "dealing with people" to architecture to pull request reviews.
I'm a very senior IC in a FAANG and almost my whole job is going around and sharing 30+ years of wisdom with people on everything from "dealing with people" to architecture to pull request reviews.
FAANG jobs and organisational structures are not the norm across the world. The ratio between "people fixing stuff" and "old wisemen" is heavily skewed towards the former.
No doubt on the latter. I write a lot of "wisdom based code" to "fix stuff." Ideally before it needs fixing. :)
Also, while I'm at FAANG now, I'm there because I was previously at a startup that was acquired by said FAANG, and if anything, there is even MORE of a need for this sort of wisdom intelligence in a startup. :)
Also, while I'm at FAANG now, I'm there because I was previously at a startup that was acquired by said FAANG, and if anything, there is even MORE of a need for this sort of wisdom intelligence in a startup. :)
Good for you, but you are in a privileged position. Over here in grim Eastern Europe and outside a capital, your best chance is to find a remote job that doesn't actually suck and has longer-term prospects. Climbing to a managerial position means controlling people and being in touch with other managers posting bullshit on LinkedIn. Nobody will hire you to just write "wisdom-based" proof of concepts or whatever.
Sounds like you could be having health problems or just depression. You might mention this to your doctor at your next check up. What you describing doesn’t sound like normal aging for someone in their 30s.
> How about the general decline of cognitive ability with age?
I don't think there is an inevitable general decline of cognitive abilities with age, or the effect isn't strong enough to matter. At least, I haven't really seen them.
What I have seen is older people who are just tired of the constant personal improvement that any career needs to continue to flourish. People often find their niche and just want to stay there. That's a different thing entirely, though.
I don't think there is an inevitable general decline of cognitive abilities with age, or the effect isn't strong enough to matter. At least, I haven't really seen them.
What I have seen is older people who are just tired of the constant personal improvement that any career needs to continue to flourish. People often find their niche and just want to stay there. That's a different thing entirely, though.
> How about the general decline of cognitive ability with age?
This is a real issue at say 85, not at 45. You almost certainly aren't quite as quick as you were when you were 25, but on the other hand you typically know a lot more and the experience probably means you actually make far fewer errors overall...
This is a real issue at say 85, not at 45. You almost certainly aren't quite as quick as you were when you were 25, but on the other hand you typically know a lot more and the experience probably means you actually make far fewer errors overall...
To be a 50 year old engineer you would have had to start your career in the 90s. There weren't 10% of the number of SWE in the 90s as now. That's why you see the profession skew so young. I have seen no evidence of older engineers having trouble finding work.
Maybe because you aren't old...
My career went in to the toilet in my 40s, and it has never really recovered. However, I'm an introvert and on the spectrum, so I lack good networking skills and never moved up the career ladder.
Even so, among my circle of friends there is a consensus that many of us were struggling around age 50, and now I am 60. The only jobs I've had in the last 5 years have been contracts. My current gig, I haven't seen a raise in 3 years, despite 20% inflation. I've been told that the company I work for has a freeze on raises, so I will have to start job hunting...
My career went in to the toilet in my 40s, and it has never really recovered. However, I'm an introvert and on the spectrum, so I lack good networking skills and never moved up the career ladder.
Even so, among my circle of friends there is a consensus that many of us were struggling around age 50, and now I am 60. The only jobs I've had in the last 5 years have been contracts. My current gig, I haven't seen a raise in 3 years, despite 20% inflation. I've been told that the company I work for has a freeze on raises, so I will have to start job hunting...
Being ready to retire at 50 would be a good thing, but getting laid off in your 40's is not a death sentence. I'm 63 now, still working as an engineer, and I was laid off in my 40's, twice. In addition to the emergency fund, another great way to build some security is to keep learning new stuff. In my experience the older engineers who get into trouble are the ones who try to rest on what they know and inhabit a niche they've built for themselves. In our business knowledge evaporates and niches crumble.
The last three companies I've worked for prefer hiring older workers. Well, they're not looking for age -- they're looking for very refined skills and experience -- but those thing are highly correlated with age.
If knowledge evaporates, maybe it wasn’t useful knowledge after all. Likewise, if a niche disappears, it wasn’t a good niche. Good long term strategy in terms of developing your career technically comes down to identifying knowledge and niches that aren’t going away any time soon. A person can have more or less insight when it comes to this.
> Getting laid off in your 40s is a death sentence. You’ll never make as much money again, and you’ll be lucky to find employment.
This just isn't true as a broad statement, although I don't doubt it's true for some parts of the industry. Big picture, though, older engineers are no less employable than younger ones. In the right company, experienced engineers are valued more highly, even.
This just isn't true as a broad statement, although I don't doubt it's true for some parts of the industry. Big picture, though, older engineers are no less employable than younger ones. In the right company, experienced engineers are valued more highly, even.
In FAANG and hot startups, maybe.
In the rest of the industry, not many software workers make enough to realistically retire by 50, anyway. Not without living like monks their entire lives. (recall: you need a lot more money to retire at 50 than at 65) And older workers mostly do OK in the rest of the industry, at least until age 60 or so.
In the rest of the industry, not many software workers make enough to realistically retire by 50, anyway. Not without living like monks their entire lives. (recall: you need a lot more money to retire at 50 than at 65) And older workers mostly do OK in the rest of the industry, at least until age 60 or so.
I will be 50 in June.
I got my first job in BigTech at 46 - working at AWS in Professional Services
When I got Amazoned last year, I had three offers within three weeks.
One of those offers was from a former coworker who is now a director at a well known public company. It would have paid about $50K more in cash than I was making in cash + RSUs at AWS. I didn’t want the stress.
The other offer was for a “staff architect” position at the company that acquired the company I worked for before going to AWS.
The third and the offer I did take was a for a senior full time position at a consulting company that should lead to staff position as we grow the AWS specialty that I know inside out from working with the team.
Unless I’m completely misreading the market - and I seriously doubt I am - there is no reason that if I cared to I couldn’t increase my total compensation by 30-40% inflation adjusted over the next few years
I got my first job in BigTech at 46 - working at AWS in Professional Services
When I got Amazoned last year, I had three offers within three weeks.
One of those offers was from a former coworker who is now a director at a well known public company. It would have paid about $50K more in cash than I was making in cash + RSUs at AWS. I didn’t want the stress.
The other offer was for a “staff architect” position at the company that acquired the company I worked for before going to AWS.
The third and the offer I did take was a for a senior full time position at a consulting company that should lead to staff position as we grow the AWS specialty that I know inside out from working with the team.
Unless I’m completely misreading the market - and I seriously doubt I am - there is no reason that if I cared to I couldn’t increase my total compensation by 30-40% inflation adjusted over the next few years
> Getting laid off in your 40s is a death sentence.
That's just not true. In my mid (ugh, getting to be late) 50s and I've been laid off in most of the downturns since the dot-com bust, including this recent one. Getting a new job at comparable compensation has rarely been a big problem. I suppose if you let your skills get rusty or work on a VERY specialized tech stack and don't want to do something else, then sure, you'll have problems.
But in this market, I'd rather be a grizzled veteran with demonstrable skills in a variety of areas than a new grad.
That's just not true. In my mid (ugh, getting to be late) 50s and I've been laid off in most of the downturns since the dot-com bust, including this recent one. Getting a new job at comparable compensation has rarely been a big problem. I suppose if you let your skills get rusty or work on a VERY specialized tech stack and don't want to do something else, then sure, you'll have problems.
But in this market, I'd rather be a grizzled veteran with demonstrable skills in a variety of areas than a new grad.
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Agreed. So much in life is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you look at your employer as an exploitative user of your life, then that is what you will get out of it. You will continually feel raw about things that happen, imputing mal intent where there is none. If you imagine upper management as sinister mustache-twirling villains, you are going to despise everything they say and do, regardless of its merit.
There are for sure exceptions, but I think most people would be very surprised at how little control the decision makers at the top actually have. They have a duty to make the best decisions for the company, and most of the time that is not ambiguous. The real difference I believe comes in how they handle it. Companies that provide generous severance, for example, are deserving of gratitude.
No doubt, it can really hurt when you have busted your ass and put your blood and sweat into a company, and they discard you. Many people tend to identify themselves with their employment, which I think lent very well to the idea of it being a family, but it won't be helpful to swing the pendulum all the way to the other side. Many people get a lot of fulfillment from their identity with the company, and there is nothing wrong with that. It's very natural, in fact. Humans are group-based animals that look for group associations and identify with them. Yes, it is great for people to use families and friends for that, but the reality is not everyone has that option.
A much healthier approach in my opinion is to find a good balance. Understand how the system works. When you see the sausage being made, and try to empathize and put yourself in the decision makers position, it can help take the sting off and give you a more realistic outlook on life.
The worst thing you can do for your mental health and life satisfaction, is embrace bitterness. You don't need buy into a delusion that things are great, that you are loved for you, or that the company is a big family, but you also don't need to buy into a delusion that the company and upper management are just evil heartless people figuring out how best to use and abuse you before tossing you out the door when they are finished with you. As with most things, the truth is somewhere in the middle. Try to find that truth.
There are for sure exceptions, but I think most people would be very surprised at how little control the decision makers at the top actually have. They have a duty to make the best decisions for the company, and most of the time that is not ambiguous. The real difference I believe comes in how they handle it. Companies that provide generous severance, for example, are deserving of gratitude.
No doubt, it can really hurt when you have busted your ass and put your blood and sweat into a company, and they discard you. Many people tend to identify themselves with their employment, which I think lent very well to the idea of it being a family, but it won't be helpful to swing the pendulum all the way to the other side. Many people get a lot of fulfillment from their identity with the company, and there is nothing wrong with that. It's very natural, in fact. Humans are group-based animals that look for group associations and identify with them. Yes, it is great for people to use families and friends for that, but the reality is not everyone has that option.
A much healthier approach in my opinion is to find a good balance. Understand how the system works. When you see the sausage being made, and try to empathize and put yourself in the decision makers position, it can help take the sting off and give you a more realistic outlook on life.
The worst thing you can do for your mental health and life satisfaction, is embrace bitterness. You don't need buy into a delusion that things are great, that you are loved for you, or that the company is a big family, but you also don't need to buy into a delusion that the company and upper management are just evil heartless people figuring out how best to use and abuse you before tossing you out the door when they are finished with you. As with most things, the truth is somewhere in the middle. Try to find that truth.
I don't think this necessarily holds in the world of remote work. At least for me, relationships are very surface level. Almost no friendly banter, limited 2 second "How was your weekend?" before meetings that no one cares about. Its hard to be friends with little black boxes and white text on a screen.
This is compounded when 75% of the team is made up of consultants.
I do agree though that its pretty awful but the thought of moving my family to a big city, doubling my cost of living and having to commute is also pretty bad. I live in a not tech city and would have to move to get a comparable salary at an in person job.
This is compounded when 75% of the team is made up of consultants.
I do agree though that its pretty awful but the thought of moving my family to a big city, doubling my cost of living and having to commute is also pretty bad. I live in a not tech city and would have to move to get a comparable salary at an in person job.
That sounds fine to me. I always found working with people much more fun than pretending to be friends with them.
I get this, but I will admit to missing the camaraderie I got from working in person with people. I miss grabbing lunch with someone or a drink after work. But thats in the past now, and a job is just a place I exchange life hours for dollars now.
Me and one of my employees are going through almost identical and seriously difficult personal times. Our company and the people within it have really rallied around us, providing personal and professional support in ways I could never have imagined.
I have said that while other companies I have worked within would be sympathetic, they definitely would not have been empathetic; however, at my current company, EVERYONE from the CEO to interns have been so very empathetic, helpful, and thoughtful.
We are all remote and have been since the pandemic. These are people who are reaching out regularly, coming to visit, offering support in whatever way possible, and being genuinely good human beings. It's simply a work culture when you don't have this, but you CAN find it.
Don't lose hope. Good companies and great people within them are there, remote or not.
I have said that while other companies I have worked within would be sympathetic, they definitely would not have been empathetic; however, at my current company, EVERYONE from the CEO to interns have been so very empathetic, helpful, and thoughtful.
We are all remote and have been since the pandemic. These are people who are reaching out regularly, coming to visit, offering support in whatever way possible, and being genuinely good human beings. It's simply a work culture when you don't have this, but you CAN find it.
Don't lose hope. Good companies and great people within them are there, remote or not.
Unicorns exist but in the job search it’s a crap shoot to find one. Nearly impossible to identify in an interview setting and likely only through world of mouth.
Impossible to diagnose during an interview… because it depends on you as well. Caring is a transient thing, I’ve had crap employees, and now we have an awesome “soldered” team, which every previous employee could have created… but didn’t.
I’m not saying you have total control over it… but it depends on how people interact.
I’m not saying you have total control over it… but it depends on how people interact.
This has long been true to some degree when you work with people scattered around the world. But it's a legit concern that, overall, we're probably developing much shallower relationships with the people we work with compared to when we were together in-person more of the time. Doubtless there are people who prefer just tuning out co-workers as much as possible. But it's reasonable to ask how it will affect many companies in the longer run when many co-worker relationships are very surface compared to pre-COVID.
I think change in the remote work world is that we can no longer take these casual relationships for granted, or assume that they will just come into being. In this new world, we have to be intentional about building them.
Whereas in an office environment, we'd naturally run into folks at the proverbial water cooler, and slowly develop more of a relationship with some folks — and similarly for camaraderie with the folks sitting around you — that just doesn't exist in remote.
In my experience, it is still possible to build these kinds of relationships, though. But it requires actively building them. It requires intentional effort, which doesn't come naturally to many of us, and especially so since many of us have not been used to having to do that, having come from office settings pretty recently. I was able to build meaningful friendships with remote colleagues, some of which have lasted beyond my time at the company, by intentionally making the time to ask and care about their lives outside of work, by setting up recurring 1:1s to just chat, etc. This can sometimes feel like it's "wasted time" that's taken away from your work, but I believe it's really important in order to feel better about where you're working and who you're working with, feel less like a cog in a machine, and as a result (at least for me) end up doing better work.
I wonder if, as the tech world becomes more accustomed to remote work, we'll eventually get better at this as an industry. My hope is that it'll get easier, or at least more natural as a result.
Whereas in an office environment, we'd naturally run into folks at the proverbial water cooler, and slowly develop more of a relationship with some folks — and similarly for camaraderie with the folks sitting around you — that just doesn't exist in remote.
In my experience, it is still possible to build these kinds of relationships, though. But it requires actively building them. It requires intentional effort, which doesn't come naturally to many of us, and especially so since many of us have not been used to having to do that, having come from office settings pretty recently. I was able to build meaningful friendships with remote colleagues, some of which have lasted beyond my time at the company, by intentionally making the time to ask and care about their lives outside of work, by setting up recurring 1:1s to just chat, etc. This can sometimes feel like it's "wasted time" that's taken away from your work, but I believe it's really important in order to feel better about where you're working and who you're working with, feel less like a cog in a machine, and as a result (at least for me) end up doing better work.
I wonder if, as the tech world becomes more accustomed to remote work, we'll eventually get better at this as an industry. My hope is that it'll get easier, or at least more natural as a result.
I've said it many times both here and in "real life" - teams filled with any sizable proportion of consults (15-20% and up I would say) are one of the clearest, brightest red flags you could see.
I've seen first-hand organizations shift from 100% employed teams to being majority consultants, and the majority of those consultants on 1-2 year contracts then leaving. Code quality goes to absolute shit. The name of the game is spending the first half of your contract not getting fired and the second half looking for the next contract. Zero documentation. Refusing to do turnover meetings. Not showing up for the last day/week of the contract because their next contract wanted them to start earlier so they didn't care if they got paid for this one or not. Most egregiously someone just brought in their next contract's laptop into our office with over a month left on their contract.
None of this happens with employees. Sure you'll occasionally have someone quit with minimal or no notice but that's the exception. We had to basically assume that any time we got in the last month of the contract was a bonus. Consultants work for their recruiting firm, not for your org, and they behave accordingly.
I've seen first-hand organizations shift from 100% employed teams to being majority consultants, and the majority of those consultants on 1-2 year contracts then leaving. Code quality goes to absolute shit. The name of the game is spending the first half of your contract not getting fired and the second half looking for the next contract. Zero documentation. Refusing to do turnover meetings. Not showing up for the last day/week of the contract because their next contract wanted them to start earlier so they didn't care if they got paid for this one or not. Most egregiously someone just brought in their next contract's laptop into our office with over a month left on their contract.
None of this happens with employees. Sure you'll occasionally have someone quit with minimal or no notice but that's the exception. We had to basically assume that any time we got in the last month of the contract was a bonus. Consultants work for their recruiting firm, not for your org, and they behave accordingly.
Very much agree.
I am working with probably 40 consultants on a team of 80.
The absolute lack of pride in their work is pushing me to my breaking point.
I will know if I am going to leave in a couple weeks, 2 things need to happen for me to stay; I get promoted this month and half the consultants leave. If both don't happen I think I am gone.
I will know if I am going to leave in a couple weeks, 2 things need to happen for me to stay; I get promoted this month and half the consultants leave. If both don't happen I think I am gone.
> Its hard to be friends with little black boxes and white text on a screen.
I think after a point, it is up to us to create the culture we want to see in a team. Someone has to start sharing more things, start talking about more things so others will feel like the same. Have a pizza session after every few successful sprints. Share puzzles and other things regularly so people have more things to talk about. It is easy to feel detached when everyone only uses a group channel, but a lot of meaningful connections happen when you do talk 1-1 in private.
I mean I have worked at places where no one even exchanged email ids when they are about to leave the company, and lurked in online places where people whom I have never even met employed me immediately when i mentioned that my day job company was going bankrupt.
I think after a point, it is up to us to create the culture we want to see in a team. Someone has to start sharing more things, start talking about more things so others will feel like the same. Have a pizza session after every few successful sprints. Share puzzles and other things regularly so people have more things to talk about. It is easy to feel detached when everyone only uses a group channel, but a lot of meaningful connections happen when you do talk 1-1 in private.
I mean I have worked at places where no one even exchanged email ids when they are about to leave the company, and lurked in online places where people whom I have never even met employed me immediately when i mentioned that my day job company was going bankrupt.
> I disagree and I am sad that we're teaching each other to be skeptical and cynical.
> The company is not your friend and not your enemy, I agree. However, people _do_ develop personal relationship with each other. Sometimes even across the different levels in the company hierarchy. Yes, as with any other relationship, circumstances and interests might override this, but relationships still do matter. People have emotions, and there are managers who're not psychopats and find it very hard to e.g. let people go.
> ...
> But please don't think that nobody cares about you in your workplace and you're a completely fungible cog. It's a horrible life to live. Let's not tell the already cynical young people that this is how the world works.
That's true, but the problem is the psychopathic organization exploits those relationships ruthlessly. It will use well-meaning people to lean on those relationships to get more out of employees, but then turn around and shit on them when it suits the org.
Corporations can be and (and usually are) psychopaths, even if they're made exclusively from well-adjusted, interpersonally-kind people. The whole is different from its parts.
> The company is not your friend and not your enemy, I agree. However, people _do_ develop personal relationship with each other. Sometimes even across the different levels in the company hierarchy. Yes, as with any other relationship, circumstances and interests might override this, but relationships still do matter. People have emotions, and there are managers who're not psychopats and find it very hard to e.g. let people go.
> ...
> But please don't think that nobody cares about you in your workplace and you're a completely fungible cog. It's a horrible life to live. Let's not tell the already cynical young people that this is how the world works.
That's true, but the problem is the psychopathic organization exploits those relationships ruthlessly. It will use well-meaning people to lean on those relationships to get more out of employees, but then turn around and shit on them when it suits the org.
Corporations can be and (and usually are) psychopaths, even if they're made exclusively from well-adjusted, interpersonally-kind people. The whole is different from its parts.
> But please don't think that nobody cares about you in your workplace and you're a completely fungible cog. It's a horrible life to live. Let's not tell the already cynical young people that this is how the world works.
I found this to be a very obvious reality in the companies in which I worked. And not in the sense of "poor me, nobody loves me": on the contrary, I found that I was more indifferent than expected even toward the departure of colleagues with whom I had a good relationship.
For example, in the current group of about 40 people in which I work, two directors who had moved up the ladder, were quite well-liked, and had a long tenure with the company, left to work for other companies. Their colleagues, including me, forgot about them within 2 weeks at most.
Another colleague was forced to retire after 40 years with the company: a month before his (forced and unexpected) retirement, he sat down with me to explain what he intended to do in the company over the next 3 years. But he was forced to retire and disappeared from people's minds within a few days.
Despite an excellent memory, I forget the names of most of my colleagues after a month's break. If I leave the company, they are never mentioned again. Apart from the usual exceptions, "standard" working relationships, especially in large companies, are tenuous, easily broken, and easily forgotten.
I found this to be a very obvious reality in the companies in which I worked. And not in the sense of "poor me, nobody loves me": on the contrary, I found that I was more indifferent than expected even toward the departure of colleagues with whom I had a good relationship.
For example, in the current group of about 40 people in which I work, two directors who had moved up the ladder, were quite well-liked, and had a long tenure with the company, left to work for other companies. Their colleagues, including me, forgot about them within 2 weeks at most.
Another colleague was forced to retire after 40 years with the company: a month before his (forced and unexpected) retirement, he sat down with me to explain what he intended to do in the company over the next 3 years. But he was forced to retire and disappeared from people's minds within a few days.
Despite an excellent memory, I forget the names of most of my colleagues after a month's break. If I leave the company, they are never mentioned again. Apart from the usual exceptions, "standard" working relationships, especially in large companies, are tenuous, easily broken, and easily forgotten.
> Despite an excellent memory, I forget the names of most of my colleagues after a month's break. If I leave the company, they are never mentioned again. Apart from the usual exceptions, "standard" working relationships, especially in large companies, are tenuous, easily broken, and easily forgotten.
I think this is just normal human self-regulation. Extreme example, but people are mostly OK and functional a month after their mother passes away. If the best and most critical person in my team would leave today then I would focus on filling the gap, etc. and I would not think of them very much after a few days, but this doesn't mean that all that they're a fully fungible cog.
I think this is just normal human self-regulation. Extreme example, but people are mostly OK and functional a month after their mother passes away. If the best and most critical person in my team would leave today then I would focus on filling the gap, etc. and I would not think of them very much after a few days, but this doesn't mean that all that they're a fully fungible cog.
> and I would not think of them very much after a few days
To me, it sounds like the definition of a fungible cog, where "fully" depends on whether a replacement with the same skills can be hired. One is expected to be functional at some point after losing their mother, but the mother's name and role in the org/family is unlikely to be forgotten, even after decades.
To me, it sounds like the definition of a fungible cog, where "fully" depends on whether a replacement with the same skills can be hired. One is expected to be functional at some point after losing their mother, but the mother's name and role in the org/family is unlikely to be forgotten, even after decades.
You're both right. To be fair, it reads like he was saying
> Your job is NOT safe.
in service of
> Take their fucking money, build a big emergency fund, save, invest, and focus on the rest of your life outside of work.
> Your job is NOT safe.
in service of
> Take their fucking money, build a big emergency fund, save, invest, and focus on the rest of your life outside of work.
I understand this rationale, but personally I have an extremely hard time disconnecting from work. It sucks 40 hours a week, which is most of my "alive" time, also sucks my brain stamina. Finding life outside of work is not easy, and considering that your main "alive time" activity is something that shouldn't be a pleasure, and is a f*cking battle, feels bad.
A full time job is generally under 2,000 hours a year while you’re awake ~5,840 (16 * 365) hours a year.
Overtime, long commutes, and thinking about the job at home can make it seem like all you do is work, but it’s possible to spend 40 hours a week having fun while you also have a full time job. Remember use your vacation and sick days, and say no to excessive unpaid overtime.
Overtime, long commutes, and thinking about the job at home can make it seem like all you do is work, but it’s possible to spend 40 hours a week having fun while you also have a full time job. Remember use your vacation and sick days, and say no to excessive unpaid overtime.
I refuse to work anywhere that requires me to work over 40 hours a week. You can ask up front what that expectation is and start looking for another job if they violate it.
Most people don't have nearly inexaustible amount of energy, so they need to rest and recuperate (merely just sleeping will not do it for them). So, if they have a demanding job, the 40 hours of week of having fun outside of work will largely consist of vegging on the coach in front of some TV show, or some similar low-energy activity.
People can always find a reason to rationalize why they’re not doing what they say they want to be doing.
It could also be possible that other people experience mental fatigue differently than you do.
It’s also possible people are talking about mental fatigue when they’re really dealing with depression.
If you’re mentally exhausted from work then going for a walk through a park is relaxing enough to regain some energy. If you’re depressed then you would still be vegging out on the weekend.
Which isn’t to say vegging out sometimes is a bad sign. Watching TV is fun in moderation.
If you’re mentally exhausted from work then going for a walk through a park is relaxing enough to regain some energy. If you’re depressed then you would still be vegging out on the weekend.
Which isn’t to say vegging out sometimes is a bad sign. Watching TV is fun in moderation.
Yes, but that doesn't change the fact that what I said is true.
> People can always find a reason to rationalize why they’re not doing what they say they want to be doing.
Believing that's true can help you decide if you are responsible for not reaching your goals or if you truly are the victim of circumstance.
> People can always find a reason to rationalize why they’re not doing what they say they want to be doing.
Believing that's true can help you decide if you are responsible for not reaching your goals or if you truly are the victim of circumstance.
What you wrote is true only in the narrowest sense: of course people “can” rationalize. People also “can” fly to the moon. That doesn’t mean that is what people are doing, and it comes across as deeply unempathetic to express as a default assumption.
It's not my default assumption. It's just true.
I understand that people can be legitimately held back by circumstances outside of their direct control. That is also true.
I believe that on average people tend to like to take credit for their accomplishments and find someone/something to blame for their lack of accomplishments.
Ask the people who would've gone pro if their high school coach hadn't been a dick. Or who got passed over for a promotion because of work politics.
I understand that people can be legitimately held back by circumstances outside of their direct control. That is also true.
I believe that on average people tend to like to take credit for their accomplishments and find someone/something to blame for their lack of accomplishments.
Ask the people who would've gone pro if their high school coach hadn't been a dick. Or who got passed over for a promotion because of work politics.
Repeatedly claiming your opinion is true does not make it so.
That's perhaps true, but the lack of energy is also simultaneously true. Just a tougher-than-usual week at work can give me crippling headaches from pushing myself to the brink. The time after work is definitely spent recuperating, so that I can fight another day.
No, it’s definitely true. Other things can be true as well, of course.
But if you’re not accomplishing the things you want to accomplish you should deeply consider the possibility that you’re lying to yourself before you accept that your circumstances are at fault.
But if you’re not accomplishing the things you want to accomplish you should deeply consider the possibility that you’re lying to yourself before you accept that your circumstances are at fault.
For some people, yeah. For others - you don't argue with a an attack of crippling headache, you lie paralysed in a convulsive spasm, waiting for it to pass. And then you remember that you perhaps should rest more.
I didn't say:
> You can always find a reason to rationalize why you're not doing what you say you want to be doing.
I did say:
> People can always find a reason to rationalize why they’re not doing what they say they want to be doing.
That statement is true.
> You can always find a reason to rationalize why you're not doing what you say you want to be doing.
I did say:
> People can always find a reason to rationalize why they’re not doing what they say they want to be doing.
That statement is true.
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> Nothing will make execs happier than having this line of thought popularized amongst engineers. It will allow them to hire cheaper, and exploit existing engineers more.
Why? The lay-offs are so broad, not selective at all. You're just as likely to get cut if you're working hard or not, if you're overpaid or underpaid. It's completely out of the employee's control, so why would it change the employee's behavior?
Why? The lay-offs are so broad, not selective at all. You're just as likely to get cut if you're working hard or not, if you're overpaid or underpaid. It's completely out of the employee's control, so why would it change the employee's behavior?
When companies make broad cuts, especially if they're eliminating projects or divisions they've decided are no longer important, the reality is that they don't do a lot of micro-optimizing at the individual level about who they keep and who they shed.
Sometimes you're just in the wrong place at the wrong time--and maybe it's even the impetus to do something different.
Sometimes you're just in the wrong place at the wrong time--and maybe it's even the impetus to do something different.
Depends, in my company layoffs were based on compensation. All the high compensation locations employees were canned.
> It's completely out of the employee's control, so why would it change the employee's behavior?
Employees don’t have visibility into their peers actual performance. They see a silver of it and infer. This makes layoffs look random. Then, we rely on publicly reported “I was given a great review and still let go!” posts — which are all self-interested. No one wants to hire or refer someone who was doing poorly so there’s an incentive to fib or have selective amnesia.
The whole cohort of folks let go are incentivized to keep up the fiction that it was random.
All things being equal, there is no reason to layoff someone high performing over their less capable peer. I’ve never seen it done randomly, and I’ve sat in these meetings.
This is not to say whole divisions or companies haven’t been let go, but that’s not the same situation here. We’re talking about selective cuts across the entire company where core, or advertising lost some folks, while others remained. That is not random.
Employees don’t have visibility into their peers actual performance. They see a silver of it and infer. This makes layoffs look random. Then, we rely on publicly reported “I was given a great review and still let go!” posts — which are all self-interested. No one wants to hire or refer someone who was doing poorly so there’s an incentive to fib or have selective amnesia.
The whole cohort of folks let go are incentivized to keep up the fiction that it was random.
All things being equal, there is no reason to layoff someone high performing over their less capable peer. I’ve never seen it done randomly, and I’ve sat in these meetings.
This is not to say whole divisions or companies haven’t been let go, but that’s not the same situation here. We’re talking about selective cuts across the entire company where core, or advertising lost some folks, while others remained. That is not random.
Layoffs that don't target whole teams are always a mix of politics and performance. The lie that they aren't is what people tell themselves to feel better.
For anyone reading this, please don’t subscribe to this level of cynicism.
For SWEs at Google and almost anywhere else, the wind has blown very favorably for you and that’s something to be celebrated.
The direction of the wind has shifted, but we can never expect it to stay blowing in one direction forever, even if others get lucky and catch one like that.
You will no doubt set your sail and take it to new and wonderful places.
Let’s take a minute and be grateful for how good SWEs have it - we are frequently so insanely disconnected from the realities and struggles of the normal working class and we should remember and express some gratitude for it regularly.
For SWEs at Google and almost anywhere else, the wind has blown very favorably for you and that’s something to be celebrated.
The direction of the wind has shifted, but we can never expect it to stay blowing in one direction forever, even if others get lucky and catch one like that.
You will no doubt set your sail and take it to new and wonderful places.
Let’s take a minute and be grateful for how good SWEs have it - we are frequently so insanely disconnected from the realities and struggles of the normal working class and we should remember and express some gratitude for it regularly.
If this is merely the result of a change in weather, then Sundar Pichai must be the god of the winds.
at Alphabet he[0] most certainly is
[0] well, probably not he alone, but he is the figurehead of a group that put him there and keeps him there, and at Alphabet that group shits the wind
[0] well, probably not he alone, but he is the figurehead of a group that put him there and keeps him there, and at Alphabet that group shits the wind
Are you seriously saying that people should express gratitude for being fired without ceremony, whilst the company at hand makes record profits?
All the "wind", "sails" and boat metaphors won't change the fact that loyalty is a virtue that fits very poorly on both sides of employment.
All the "wind", "sails" and boat metaphors won't change the fact that loyalty is a virtue that fits very poorly on both sides of employment.
That wasn't how I read that comment. What I heard him say was that we should be grateful for having been able to take advantage of an unusually favorable environment, while at the same time recognizing that it's been an unusually favorable environment that will, sooner or later, regress closer to the mean.
Agreed. But both interpretations stand I guess.
This is well-stated and appreciated positivity. It is disheartening to see the detractor/logic-leaping replies that followed. Thank you for writing it.
Its not that SWE's have it so good, its more that everyone else has an unacceptably bad situation with workers rights.
And funnily enough, the wind for the C suite just keeps blowing in that same direction.
"Your job is not safe" does not mean you should do everything possible to keep your job -- allowing yourself to be unfairly exploited and abused.
It means that you need to be responsible for yourself, and not allow thoughts like "I'm a valuable employee", or "I have too much seniority", or "my manager and I get along great" to convince you management won't lay you off or fire you or that they owe you anything.
As others have said, the employer-employee relationship is first and foremost a business relationship, i.e. transactional: you work and they pay you. When that relationship doesn't work any more for one side or the other, it ends.
It does often happen, of course, that professional friendships or even personal friendships develop. You are, after all, spending a lot of time with your co-workers. But don't think your good relationships or friendships will help if the business decides a layoff is necessary.
It means that you need to be responsible for yourself, and not allow thoughts like "I'm a valuable employee", or "I have too much seniority", or "my manager and I get along great" to convince you management won't lay you off or fire you or that they owe you anything.
As others have said, the employer-employee relationship is first and foremost a business relationship, i.e. transactional: you work and they pay you. When that relationship doesn't work any more for one side or the other, it ends.
It does often happen, of course, that professional friendships or even personal friendships develop. You are, after all, spending a lot of time with your co-workers. But don't think your good relationships or friendships will help if the business decides a layoff is necessary.
>"Your job is not safe" does not mean you should do everything possible to keep your job -- allowing yourself to be unfairly exploited and abused.
In my opinion it should mean that you not only consider the relationship transactional, you consider yourself as an independent business operating within a business transaction, an LLC or sole proprietorship if you will. Remove yourself from emotional attachment this way.
This line of thought leads people to naturally adopt the exact same sort optimization (exploitation) strategies businesses (your employer) does with the same justifications they use. As such you should focus on diversifying your employment or making sure you’re diversely employable should you need new revenue streams, have savings and cash reserves for economic downturns, and focus on your profit margins (time invested vs paid) and so on and optimize around these sort of criteria.
Obviously if you have a good transactional relationship and are to some degree dependent on that relationship you don’t do everything possible to undermine it (just as employers have limits they’ll stop at before employees start to flee) but never consider it at any sort of emotional or attached level, it’s merely a strategic relationship and be ready to optimize wherever you can for your LLC depending on its goals (i.e. your goals).
In my opinion it should mean that you not only consider the relationship transactional, you consider yourself as an independent business operating within a business transaction, an LLC or sole proprietorship if you will. Remove yourself from emotional attachment this way.
This line of thought leads people to naturally adopt the exact same sort optimization (exploitation) strategies businesses (your employer) does with the same justifications they use. As such you should focus on diversifying your employment or making sure you’re diversely employable should you need new revenue streams, have savings and cash reserves for economic downturns, and focus on your profit margins (time invested vs paid) and so on and optimize around these sort of criteria.
Obviously if you have a good transactional relationship and are to some degree dependent on that relationship you don’t do everything possible to undermine it (just as employers have limits they’ll stop at before employees start to flee) but never consider it at any sort of emotional or attached level, it’s merely a strategic relationship and be ready to optimize wherever you can for your LLC depending on its goals (i.e. your goals).
> This line of thought leads people to naturally adopt the exact same sort optimization (exploitation) strategies businesses (your employer) does with the same justifications they use.
But that’s exactly the kind of relationship it is. Instead of maintaining some fantasy, you should call a duck, a duck.
But that’s exactly the kind of relationship it is. Instead of maintaining some fantasy, you should call a duck, a duck.
I wouldn't say that people higher up can't be your friends, but when their office and them personally aren't the same thing.
I've seen family members fire other close family members, because a business is a business. Nothing special about it.
You can be friends with your colleagues, but when you understand that their role at a company is separate from your personal relationship - you may just get friends that transcend your employment.
My personal attitude towards employment - "I work for you while our goals align". Businesses most definitely treat any employee the same way.
I've seen family members fire other close family members, because a business is a business. Nothing special about it.
You can be friends with your colleagues, but when you understand that their role at a company is separate from your personal relationship - you may just get friends that transcend your employment.
My personal attitude towards employment - "I work for you while our goals align". Businesses most definitely treat any employee the same way.
I read it as: do the Barr minimum to meet expectations and nothing more because if they want to fire you your transformative impact is worth nothing
That's a bad strategy unless your highest priority is to avoid work. If you want to make more money or have more stability, you will absolutely do better on average if you do more than the minimum. While high performance does not guarantee security, and management doesn't always make the best choices about who to let go, the "do the minimum" people do tend to be the first to go. You don't have to outrun the bear, you have to outrun the slowest guy running from the bear.
Ok, maybe it's excessive, but surely going the extra mile when the relationship do good work <--> job safety is broken is something, at least personally, I won't do.
The bear is hungry and laid off entire divisions.
I'm not saying it's guaranteed to protect you, I'm saying that on average you are going to come out ahead. I've been in the industry 30 years. I've seen all kinds of good and bad management, firings, layoffs, promotions, and attrition. When you excel at your work, the odds are very good that someone will notice. Even if your boss does not, your colleagues likely will. That turns into strong referrals, which helps you find better opportunities whether or not you get laid off.
This is good and realistic advice. Companies exist to make profit and returns for their investors/shareholders and ultimately they will do what this necessary to make that happen. Layoffs are just another (unfortunate) business transaction.
I was once in a meeting with an SVP who was going over what he was going to say in an upcoming all-hands meeting. He kept referring to employees as “resources” and I told him he should call them people or team members as resources was dehumanizing and made it sound like we’re just line items on a spreadsheet and pawns on a chessboard. He looked at me and said you’re right - that is how they look at things, but thanked me for reminding me of his audience. He was candid with me only because I was also high up in the org.
Companies are not your friend. The people above you in the org are not your friend. You are not special or different or immune or safe. Ultimately, you do have to look out for yourself. If a company is able and willing to terminate your job for financial reasons, you need to be willing and able to terminate your job for financial reasons too - on your own terms and with a better higher paying job lined up. It’s just another business transaction. Loyalty is dead. Act accordingly.
I was once in a meeting with an SVP who was going over what he was going to say in an upcoming all-hands meeting. He kept referring to employees as “resources” and I told him he should call them people or team members as resources was dehumanizing and made it sound like we’re just line items on a spreadsheet and pawns on a chessboard. He looked at me and said you’re right - that is how they look at things, but thanked me for reminding me of his audience. He was candid with me only because I was also high up in the org.
Companies are not your friend. The people above you in the org are not your friend. You are not special or different or immune or safe. Ultimately, you do have to look out for yourself. If a company is able and willing to terminate your job for financial reasons, you need to be willing and able to terminate your job for financial reasons too - on your own terms and with a better higher paying job lined up. It’s just another business transaction. Loyalty is dead. Act accordingly.
I wouldn't put "loyalty is dead" so starkly. But certainly lifetime employment from either side of the fence is absolutely not the norm. I've generally stayed at places a reasonably long time (arguably too long once or twice) but I still haven't made it much past a decade.
Loyalty is absolutely dead in the employer => employee direction. The second it becomes financially advantageous to have layoffs or to fire one person in particular, it will happen. Your direct manager, maybe even your skip, might fight for you to stay. But if someone 6 levels above you decides your time has come, that's the end of it. The test for whether loyalty exists in this direction is the answer to "you can keep this person at the cost of a negative financial impact for your organization - you will not make this money up in the medium term." What does your manager say? Your skip? The CEO?
There is absolutely still some loyalty in the other direction. Lots of people here would say it's misplaced. When it works out for you (cachet in the org, seniority, whatever) it can pay off, but for lots of people it only gets them burned when they get laid off with outdated skills in outdated tech because they were a "company man" for the last decade.
There is absolutely still some loyalty in the other direction. Lots of people here would say it's misplaced. When it works out for you (cachet in the org, seniority, whatever) it can pay off, but for lots of people it only gets them burned when they get laid off with outdated skills in outdated tech because they were a "company man" for the last decade.
In Japan, there are stories of business men killing themselves because they have to lay off workers. The cultural norm there is that you’re employed for life - either your life or the companies, and both parties act to ensure that’s a long life. Maybe a little dramatic, but the cultural sentiment is there.
Google is cutting a few hundred R&D jobs out of their 180K employees, and countless ventures. These people could be repositioned, these people could be absorbed elsewhere. Google is wildly profitable, with record profits, which by definition means what they’re not falling on hard times.
Loyalty is dead.
Google is cutting a few hundred R&D jobs out of their 180K employees, and countless ventures. These people could be repositioned, these people could be absorbed elsewhere. Google is wildly profitable, with record profits, which by definition means what they’re not falling on hard times.
Loyalty is dead.
> Loyalty is dead.
Something that has never existed cannot die.
But the myth, and the brainwashing, of "employee loyalty" is still very much alive. Some even buy that crap.
Something that has never existed cannot die.
But the myth, and the brainwashing, of "employee loyalty" is still very much alive. Some even buy that crap.
> He kept referring to employees as “resources”
The classic comeback for this is to refer to management as "overhead."
The classic comeback for this is to refer to management as "overhead."
> Companies exist to make profit and returns for their investors/shareholders
Companies pay taxes, operate in a community, and employ people. Shareholders may not care about such trifles... until the race to rot is complete.
Companies pay taxes, operate in a community, and employ people. Shareholders may not care about such trifles... until the race to rot is complete.
I don’t know why we keep repeating the “companies exist to make profit for shareholders” line.
It’s barely real, it’s hardly law, and the more we say it, the worse companies will act because we’ve all accepted fate.
Companies exist in our society. They don’t have a right to profits. Any profits is a result of patronage and goodwill of the population. We can change laws, and cultural norms, and worker and environmental protections. We don’t need to be victims of greed like it’s some inevitable consequence of capitalism.
It’s barely real, it’s hardly law, and the more we say it, the worse companies will act because we’ve all accepted fate.
Companies exist in our society. They don’t have a right to profits. Any profits is a result of patronage and goodwill of the population. We can change laws, and cultural norms, and worker and environmental protections. We don’t need to be victims of greed like it’s some inevitable consequence of capitalism.
A company is not your friend, or your enemy. It's a machine. See it as such, use it as such.
A particular person above you in the management chain may actually be your friend. It does not mean that that person would be able to protect you from a layoff; that could be a conflict of interest. That person might give you an earlier warning so that you could start looking around ahead of time. That person could give you a glowing review and references for prospective employers. That person might introduce you to someone who might be interested in hiring you. But that person operates the machine, and plays by the rules of the machine, to which you have agreed when you have signed your offer.
Build good relationships with coworkers; this can be helpful, and is just more pleasant. But don't try to build a relationship with a company; you can't.
A particular person above you in the management chain may actually be your friend. It does not mean that that person would be able to protect you from a layoff; that could be a conflict of interest. That person might give you an earlier warning so that you could start looking around ahead of time. That person could give you a glowing review and references for prospective employers. That person might introduce you to someone who might be interested in hiring you. But that person operates the machine, and plays by the rules of the machine, to which you have agreed when you have signed your offer.
Build good relationships with coworkers; this can be helpful, and is just more pleasant. But don't try to build a relationship with a company; you can't.
A key thought as well, in my experience:
- never assume that just because it’s obvious to you (and your coworkers and boss) that it would be really stupid to lay you off or fire you, that they wouldn’t do it anyway.
A lot of what is going on IMO is burnout and disconnection from the on the ground reality at the executive layer.
That means short sighted, stupid, long term self harming decisions.
But just because what someone is doing is clearly stupid, doesn’t mean they won’t do it. A hard lesson to learn sometimes.
- never assume that just because it’s obvious to you (and your coworkers and boss) that it would be really stupid to lay you off or fire you, that they wouldn’t do it anyway.
A lot of what is going on IMO is burnout and disconnection from the on the ground reality at the executive layer.
That means short sighted, stupid, long term self harming decisions.
But just because what someone is doing is clearly stupid, doesn’t mean they won’t do it. A hard lesson to learn sometimes.
Or, quite simply, the performance of an employee or division is not the only determination in layoffs. You could lay off half of teams and fill them in with ostensibly high performers in other teams, and then be worse off than before because the high performer was dependent on context and fit.
Or, you may have a division that is profitable, but it takes an outsized attention in the organization relative to its profitability and the loss of revenue is made up for focus in the rest of the organization. (Ideally, you would find a way to spin that off or sell it, but there are times where the tight integration makes this unfeasible.)
And yes, there is disconnection from the on-the-ground reality too. (and all sorts of things) - but this all goes to say that layoffs, when executed, often are not correlated with individual performance.
Or, you may have a division that is profitable, but it takes an outsized attention in the organization relative to its profitability and the loss of revenue is made up for focus in the rest of the organization. (Ideally, you would find a way to spin that off or sell it, but there are times where the tight integration makes this unfeasible.)
And yes, there is disconnection from the on-the-ground reality too. (and all sorts of things) - but this all goes to say that layoffs, when executed, often are not correlated with individual performance.
What you’re saying is the nice, rational way to describe a scenario.
There is that, and it does happen that way often.
There is also sometimes people just do stupid, self harming things. Either because they are not able to properly process/know/understand what the consequences will be, or because their short term incentives encourage them to at their long term detriment.
Or because the organizational incentives make it worthwhile for them to harm the actual organizations long term interests, and they will be rewarded for screwing over the organization this way.
It’s easy for engineers in particular to look at 2+2 and assume that everyone else knows 4 is the obvious answer, and hence will act appropriately. and they just need to be shown the truth if somehow they don’t understand this
But that isn’t how people often work, especially when dysregulated, stressed out, under outside pressure, etc.
Often, there are many people between the decision makers and the folks who know the actual truth and the inevitable consequences who have incentives that will make them actively hurt anyone trying to tell the decision makers the truth - often because the decision maker implicitly or explicitly wants it that way.
even engineers, though it’s often hard to ‘know’ that when you’re in the middle of it.
Many people will burn their lives to the ground until everyone agrees 5 is the correct answer. Or happily reassure their boss 5 is the answer while burning everyone else’s lives to the ground.
That can make many real life situations very surprising and frustrating for engineers in particular.
Because how could someone do that based on ‘wrong’ (usually just not the same) information? It’s stupid!
Because sometimes for many people, the individual/self interested ‘smart’ thing is to be as ‘stupid’ as possible. And that strategy is not something someone can just change on a dime. It’s inherent.
And sometimes people are just stupid. Even otherwise really smart people.
There is that, and it does happen that way often.
There is also sometimes people just do stupid, self harming things. Either because they are not able to properly process/know/understand what the consequences will be, or because their short term incentives encourage them to at their long term detriment.
Or because the organizational incentives make it worthwhile for them to harm the actual organizations long term interests, and they will be rewarded for screwing over the organization this way.
It’s easy for engineers in particular to look at 2+2 and assume that everyone else knows 4 is the obvious answer, and hence will act appropriately. and they just need to be shown the truth if somehow they don’t understand this
But that isn’t how people often work, especially when dysregulated, stressed out, under outside pressure, etc.
Often, there are many people between the decision makers and the folks who know the actual truth and the inevitable consequences who have incentives that will make them actively hurt anyone trying to tell the decision makers the truth - often because the decision maker implicitly or explicitly wants it that way.
even engineers, though it’s often hard to ‘know’ that when you’re in the middle of it.
Many people will burn their lives to the ground until everyone agrees 5 is the correct answer. Or happily reassure their boss 5 is the answer while burning everyone else’s lives to the ground.
That can make many real life situations very surprising and frustrating for engineers in particular.
Because how could someone do that based on ‘wrong’ (usually just not the same) information? It’s stupid!
Because sometimes for many people, the individual/self interested ‘smart’ thing is to be as ‘stupid’ as possible. And that strategy is not something someone can just change on a dime. It’s inherent.
And sometimes people are just stupid. Even otherwise really smart people.
All that is also true. In both cases, it's not about the quality of the engineer or the work.
Also, sociopaths exist and they are often in management.
But in both cases, the key insight is that layoffs are often past the control of the engineer.
Also, sociopaths exist and they are often in management.
But in both cases, the key insight is that layoffs are often past the control of the engineer.
Yup, definitely. Often not only past the engineers control, but sometimes even past the control of the immediate management chain.
With the caveat that everyone responsible is also going to attempt to deny/deflect/reverse victim and offender, etc.
It’s amazing how ‘helpless’ some management/execs get when unpleasant decisions need to be made.
With the caveat that everyone responsible is also going to attempt to deny/deflect/reverse victim and offender, etc.
It’s amazing how ‘helpless’ some management/execs get when unpleasant decisions need to be made.
> offshore your life's direction to the company
That's a good way of putting it. I've let it happen to me in the past, and I've seen it happen many times.
Your comment is solid advice.
That's a good way of putting it. I've let it happen to me in the past, and I've seen it happen many times.
Your comment is solid advice.
> Nothing will make execs happier than having this line of thought popularized amongst engineers. It will allow them to hire cheaper, and exploit existing engineers more.
How is that? If a job is less secure, typically commands more pay. If you know you will be out of work in 6-12 months, your pay better include some cushion to cover time between jobs.
How is that? If a job is less secure, typically commands more pay. If you know you will be out of work in 6-12 months, your pay better include some cushion to cover time between jobs.
I appreciate your view but I took OP's comment differently.
"Your job is not safe" in my view means you should treat work as if you are a mercenary. Treat every role as short term, go in do the job, get paid and always be looking for the next better thing, no emotional ties. Be prepared to cut them before they cut you.
I feel like it would actually drive salaries up as people move to higher paying roles and companies scramble to keep people that they would have otherwise expected to remain for years.
For context, I once worked at company A for 2 years then got a new job offer for 20% more than I currently made. I accepted the offer and then told my VP that I got a new job and the offer was 35% more. He matched the 35% so I stayed for another year and then got a new job for 25% more than that. A little after that, Company A started doing layoffs. If I had been loyal I would have likely been laid off, instead I left with a much higher salary because I was loyal only to the money.
Companies used to be loyal but no longer are, your job is not safe.
Perhaps we actually are on the same page in principal as I agree with all of your other suggestions "diversifying your options, building an emergency fund, have a fulfilling life outside work" just a different take on the original comment.
I feel like it would actually drive salaries up as people move to higher paying roles and companies scramble to keep people that they would have otherwise expected to remain for years.
For context, I once worked at company A for 2 years then got a new job offer for 20% more than I currently made. I accepted the offer and then told my VP that I got a new job and the offer was 35% more. He matched the 35% so I stayed for another year and then got a new job for 25% more than that. A little after that, Company A started doing layoffs. If I had been loyal I would have likely been laid off, instead I left with a much higher salary because I was loyal only to the money.
Companies used to be loyal but no longer are, your job is not safe.
Perhaps we actually are on the same page in principal as I agree with all of your other suggestions "diversifying your options, building an emergency fund, have a fulfilling life outside work" just a different take on the original comment.
I hear you. I am also an engineer-turned-EM.
> Your job is NOT safe.
Nothing would make me happier than to eradicate this line of thought, but laying the responsibility of that on the employee is poor management at best, malicious bullshit at worst.
We EMs do nothing to re-assure our employees that they are valued co-workers and not "resources" to be managed.
When one of my valued employees comes to me and says "I got another job offer and the increase in TC will change my life," most of the time they are a top-performer I want to keep, so I go to my manager asking to match their comp. But...they have to ask their manager, then their manager, so on and so forth. Even HR sometimes steps in with excuses why we cant. By the time a decision is made, if one is ever made, the employee I wanted to keep is already at their new employer.
So I would recommend my employees look out for themselves, bc I (and my management hierarchy) certainly won't (though they can, they just don't want to).
And if you are still looking to lay responsibility on to someone, look in the mirror.
> Your job is NOT safe.
Nothing would make me happier than to eradicate this line of thought, but laying the responsibility of that on the employee is poor management at best, malicious bullshit at worst.
We EMs do nothing to re-assure our employees that they are valued co-workers and not "resources" to be managed.
When one of my valued employees comes to me and says "I got another job offer and the increase in TC will change my life," most of the time they are a top-performer I want to keep, so I go to my manager asking to match their comp. But...they have to ask their manager, then their manager, so on and so forth. Even HR sometimes steps in with excuses why we cant. By the time a decision is made, if one is ever made, the employee I wanted to keep is already at their new employer.
So I would recommend my employees look out for themselves, bc I (and my management hierarchy) certainly won't (though they can, they just don't want to).
And if you are still looking to lay responsibility on to someone, look in the mirror.
> "a job is not your identity"
This is so important.
This is so important.
This. Your company is not every going to fix you, optimize your life, or be loyal to you. But you can take responsibility of all those things, and never let up. Get better, look for opportunities that satisfy what you value - always.
Parts of it is that when you're cutting an arbitrary number (like 5%) just because.... you kind have to do it "randomly" so that there's no claim of discrimination. If it just so happens that all you best performers share a demographic trait of the protected or protected-adjacent kind (sex, orientation, religious beliefs, etc.) you'd expose yourself to discrimination lawsuits by people who don't match that facet.
It sucks and it's a symptom of risk management being a leading consideration to the process of a layoff, more so than performance optimization or culture change, but that's how it "makes sense"
It sucks and it's a symptom of risk management being a leading consideration to the process of a layoff, more so than performance optimization or culture change, but that's how it "makes sense"
I think the biggest thing any one person can do (regardless of your occupation) is to build up that emergency fund. Life happens and having those funds gives you options!
And you know what happens with the money that you take, save and invest?
They go in to public companies, they hire MBA's, and they try to improve profitability of company by letting engineers go.
Your money have come a full cycle :)
They go in to public companies, they hire MBA's, and they try to improve profitability of company by letting engineers go.
Your money have come a full cycle :)
TINA when CPI inflation (in the UK) is has been 18% in just 2 years.
> TINA when CPI inflation (in the UK) is has been 18% in just 2 years.
The UK inflation rate was 3.9 percent in November 2023, down from 4.6 percent in the previous month. Between September 2022 and March 2023, the UK experienced seven months of double-digit inflation which peaked at 11.1 percent in October 2022. https://www.statista.com/statistics/306648/inflation-rate-co...
The UK inflation rate was 3.9 percent in November 2023, down from 4.6 percent in the previous month. Between September 2022 and March 2023, the UK experienced seven months of double-digit inflation which peaked at 11.1 percent in October 2022. https://www.statista.com/statistics/306648/inflation-rate-co...
I can't tell from the context of your comment whether you believe the monthly inflation figures are inflation that happened in that month (the "one month's worth of inflation was X%") or if those are annualized figures (the "one month's measure of an annualized rate of inflation").
If you are of the belief that the monthly inflation figures "stack", you are saying inflation is much higher than the 18% in 2 years that GP reported.
If you are not of that belief, then the figures you cite are fairly consistent with the 2 year rise in prices being in the +18% neighborhood.
If you are of the belief that the monthly inflation figures "stack", you are saying inflation is much higher than the 18% in 2 years that GP reported.
If you are not of that belief, then the figures you cite are fairly consistent with the 2 year rise in prices being in the +18% neighborhood.
UK CPIH index value (includes cost of housing)
Nov 2021 - 114.1
Nov 2023 (latest value) - 130.0
So, 14%. 18% slightly out of date figure.
Cash in the bank, even at 5% rates, hasn't kept up.
Nov 2021 - 114.1
Nov 2023 (latest value) - 130.0
So, 14%. 18% slightly out of date figure.
Cash in the bank, even at 5% rates, hasn't kept up.
Cash in the bank normally doesn't keep up. If it does, the orthodox view is that you risk a deflationary spiral.
Central banks want to incentivize investments.
Central banks want to incentivize investments.
It's not what they want. It's the mechanics of their business.
They borrow short at base rates and lend long at a margin
They borrow short at base rates and lend long at a margin
Owning shares in the entities for which money for goods and services pass through is the way to keep up with inflation. If I buy things from Costco/Apple/Toyota/Novartis/etc, then they increase prices, then their share prices go up accordingly.
Anything else will fall short.
Anything else will fall short.
This is a phenomenon of the last two decades. Before the fed started cutting rates after 9/11 (to support the country, the financial markets, the housing markets, etc.) both money market and savings accounts (you had to choose a good bank) usually gave positive inflation adjusted return.
Barely.
In real terms US bills have returned 0.4%/yr over the last 120+ years
In real terms US bills have returned 0.4%/yr over the last 120+ years
Seems to me Treasury bills meaningfully outpace inflation, on average: https://www.bauer.uh.edu/rsusmel/other/lrret1.htm. But I was talking about cash accounts, which typically pay lower interest rates than T-bills or CDs (as noted on the above link).
In the late 1990s my savings account at the EmigrantDirect was paying about 7% with inflation around 3%.
This was not a term deposit, but a regular account, either itself with check-writing privileges or linked to a checking account with 1-3 day transfers. I think MMFs with check-writing paid similar interest, although not 100% sure as I never put my money there. Those were cash accounts as I could withdraw any amount, up to 100% of the account any time without any penalties.
This was not a term deposit, but a regular account, either itself with check-writing privileges or linked to a checking account with 1-3 day transfers. I think MMFs with check-writing paid similar interest, although not 100% sure as I never put my money there. Those were cash accounts as I could withdraw any amount, up to 100% of the account any time without any penalties.
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Probably a confusion of what that percentage is - whilst the monthly figure is as you have said, the accumulated/aggregate percentage of inflation over those two years is probably what GP refers to as 18%
> Probably a confusion of what that percentage is - whilst the monthly figure is as you have said, the accumulated/aggregate percentage of inflation over those two years is probably what GP refers to as 18%
“Montly” inflation rates are usually expressed in terms relative to the prior year, not prior month.
When we look at another data source, annual inflation rates for the UK don’t appear to be 18%: https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/GBR/united-kingdom/inf...
“Montly” inflation rates are usually expressed in terms relative to the prior year, not prior month.
When we look at another data source, annual inflation rates for the UK don’t appear to be 18%: https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/GBR/united-kingdom/inf...
I said in two years, not one.
1L Arla Lactofree milk was £1 around 2013 in Tesco. Today, it's £1.85.
Bank of England inflation calculator at https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy/inflation/in... says it should be £1.34
So much for the inflation numbers.
Bank of England inflation calculator at https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy/inflation/in... says it should be £1.34
So much for the inflation numbers.
Inflation measures are not across the board, they are aggregates. Similar to how pay at one company and profit is not ever the same even within the same industry or audience, different products have different prices.
The average male height is 176cm, but I'm 187. LIES I TELL YOU! PURE LIES!
aka, some folks on HN don't know about statistics.
aka, some folks on HN don't know about statistics.
Oh, I understand statistics, that's not what I'm saying: I'm plainly saying that so far, with anything I threw at it, the gov.uk inflation calculator is a plain lie.
In my experience--which is anecdotal, and thus shouldn't be trusted--nearly any discussion of inflation involves people waving around their untrustworthy anecdotal experience as evidence that the statistics are wrong.
Are you suggesting that while milk might have a price spike, carrots and beef would compensate?
But that's not what happens. What comes down in electronics. If you exclude food, shelter and medicine (things you need to live) the numbers are in line with govt estimates. But most people would bristle at this approach.
But that's not what happens. What comes down in electronics. If you exclude food, shelter and medicine (things you need to live) the numbers are in line with govt estimates. But most people would bristle at this approach.
At least in the US, the government publishes overall inflation, inflation less food and energy, and inflation for each major category.
"This item looks different to me", "this category looks different to me", and "this basket looks different to me" are real feelings, but the government isn't straight up lying about inflation measurements.
"This item looks different to me", "this category looks different to me", and "this basket looks different to me" are real feelings, but the government isn't straight up lying about inflation measurements.
> the government isn't straight up lying about inflation measurements
Agreed. The government publishes the methodology and the source data the final numbers are based on are generally publicly available. However, the methodology slowly changes with time. And whatever the rationale is (there is always one that sounds good) its effect is always lowering computed inflation numbers. And lower inflation numbers give government ability to keep printing and spending money -- a dream for most officials.
So while I do not think the government is straight up lying, it is slowly twisting the methodology due to seriously misaligned incentives. My 2c.
Agreed. The government publishes the methodology and the source data the final numbers are based on are generally publicly available. However, the methodology slowly changes with time. And whatever the rationale is (there is always one that sounds good) its effect is always lowering computed inflation numbers. And lower inflation numbers give government ability to keep printing and spending money -- a dream for most officials.
So while I do not think the government is straight up lying, it is slowly twisting the methodology due to seriously misaligned incentives. My 2c.
It's just a misdirection that hides details with extra steps so we can all just argue with zero concrete steps.
But either way, I've lately become convinced to ignore inflation. The real thing we should be reducing is printing of money, no if buts or maybes.
But either way, I've lately become convinced to ignore inflation. The real thing we should be reducing is printing of money, no if buts or maybes.
I work with farms. Some are having to cut the number of milkings from 3/day to 2/day since the workers they would normally use are not available.
That's why we now have the Vimes Boot Index - https://www.vimesbootsindex.co.uk/
And food prices feel like they're up 50% over the same period, especially when you start noticing the shrinkflation.
£6 for a pint of beer (outside of London) is 'the new normal'.
£6 for a pint of beer (outside of London) is 'the new normal'.
TINA stands for There Is No Alternative? That's a new one for me.
It’s okay, if they improve profitability enough at places like Boeing our investments will be the least of our worries!
> Your money have come a full cycle :)
Until the huge bubble around tech companies explodes.
Until the huge bubble around tech companies explodes.
Tech (Meta, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, and Alphabet) is pretty profitable with reasonable P/Es.
Reasonable by 2024 standards or by 1990 standards? I'm fairly sure that the P/Es of today would have been considered overvalued a few decades ago, when profits actually meant something, dividends were handed out, etc.
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Share prices increase if the supply and demand curves for the shares move accordingly.
Share buybacks decrease supply of shares relative to demand, so share prices increase.
Share buybacks are likelier to happen the more profitable a business is.
A higher share price at time t+1 than time t means the shareholder can earn a profit if they buy a share and then sell later.
Ergo, profits mean something.
Edit: as a reply to the comment below this, please take a moment to look around and identify anything providing you utility that was the product of a publicly traded company.
Share buybacks decrease supply of shares relative to demand, so share prices increase.
Share buybacks are likelier to happen the more profitable a business is.
A higher share price at time t+1 than time t means the shareholder can earn a profit if they buy a share and then sell later.
Ergo, profits mean something.
Edit: as a reply to the comment below this, please take a moment to look around and identify anything providing you utility that was the product of a publicly traded company.
A perfect example of how the only meaningful product of a publicly traded company is the stock itself.
I think they missed the idea that everything has a market. It is more of a macro econ class idea than the micro one most people take. Stock has is a market in itself. As well as the product they sell. But so is the money. The inputs for those different markets are different. You have very nicely described the market for stock dividends.
Stock buy backs are a tax efficient dividend.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/31/warren-buffett-explains-the-...
Google's PE is 25 today compared to the S&P of the 1990s 15 https://www.multpl.com/s-p-500-pe-ratio/table/by-year
That said in the 1990s the US had access to a huge new market (the USSR market), something that US companies don't have today.
Google's PE is 25 today compared to the S&P of the 1990s 15 https://www.multpl.com/s-p-500-pe-ratio/table/by-year
That said in the 1990s the US had access to a huge new market (the USSR market), something that US companies don't have today.
Dividends are not handed out because they are a silly way to distribute profits. Buybacks are better. This way people who want money out can sell some stock and those who don't avoid a burden of reinvesting the money as well as taxes.
Dividends mean a company managements thinks the stock is overvalued so it's not profitable to buy it back and it's better to pay cash out (there might be also some regulatory reasons like paying dividends to qualify for being an investment for various funds).
For those reasons avoiding companies that pay significant dividends is a superior investment strategy (because it means more competent management or management that doesn't consider the stock overvalued).
For those reasons avoiding companies that pay significant dividends is a superior investment strategy (because it means more competent management or management that doesn't consider the stock overvalued).
I don’t think you can generalize from one manager or even a team of management to all managers in every company.
But still your point about the absurd uncertainty of big company roles, even under glowing performance gauntlets as you so aptly say is well taken.
you highlight a paradox between the values the company espouses, and the ones they actually keep. In where it appears that, no loyalty is returned to the employee from the company in which the employee invested their loyalty so heavily.
Indeed, folks may quibble with this characterization, or even strongly disagree, but when cuts are made like this, even when valuable people could afford to be kept, that’s what it really comes down to.
Poor Google. The pain! What have they done to deserve this, oh heavens?
But still your point about the absurd uncertainty of big company roles, even under glowing performance gauntlets as you so aptly say is well taken.
you highlight a paradox between the values the company espouses, and the ones they actually keep. In where it appears that, no loyalty is returned to the employee from the company in which the employee invested their loyalty so heavily.
Indeed, folks may quibble with this characterization, or even strongly disagree, but when cuts are made like this, even when valuable people could afford to be kept, that’s what it really comes down to.
Poor Google. The pain! What have they done to deserve this, oh heavens?
Wait until your manager is laid off and you're talking to them afterward.
This has happened to me twice in my career and both times its like you're talking to a whole different person.
In my cynical opinion, being that different person is the number 1 trait companies look for when selecting managers
This has happened to me twice in my career and both times its like you're talking to a whole different person.
In my cynical opinion, being that different person is the number 1 trait companies look for when selecting managers
How different were they (your managers) before and after being laid off?
+1 super curious
Being an asshole while in charge and then back to nice, empathic person once he doesn't have any power over other people any more
it's funney yeah. lack of empathy is correlated in psych studies with increase in power over others. people with less power need to be more empahtetic / in tune with other's feelings in order to get their needs met. makes sense. can realted from my childhood! :) haha
Sounds like a very bad manager.
This episode of Planet Money is a good demonstration of that: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/08/28/435583328/epis...
In summary: Patty McCord helped create the company culture in Netflix not ever holding on to people, if your position becomes slightly redundant or your performance falters for a bit, you're out. She apparently called herself "the queen of the good goodbyes". She says that she does not like the word "fired", that people are just "moving on" and that this is good for everyone involved. At one point in the interview, she gleefully recounts admonishing an employee she let go for crying about about it.
The twist being that she herself was eventually fired as well. The interview does not go very deep into this because "she doesn't like to talk about it", and just says that leaving Netflix was "terrible, painful and sad".
In summary: Patty McCord helped create the company culture in Netflix not ever holding on to people, if your position becomes slightly redundant or your performance falters for a bit, you're out. She apparently called herself "the queen of the good goodbyes". She says that she does not like the word "fired", that people are just "moving on" and that this is good for everyone involved. At one point in the interview, she gleefully recounts admonishing an employee she let go for crying about about it.
The twist being that she herself was eventually fired as well. The interview does not go very deep into this because "she doesn't like to talk about it", and just says that leaving Netflix was "terrible, painful and sad".
What a psycho
Mind that being laid off also changes them. They are also human.
Nah, man: totally agree wif dat. But even that can express differently, there's a lot of boxes for that different person to fit into!
I mean, is this impostor syndrome or is it something else?
I mean, is this impostor syndrome or is it something else?
The Stanford prison experiment in action
Was that ever replicated?
No it’s conclusively been disproven many times.
For real? Where is that cited? Because SPE is still mentioned a lot. How is it disproven?
This is kind of silly. You probably chose to work at a company that “made billions”. You probably sought some perks related to doing so, be it remuneration, prestige, whatever. This is in part a game you choose to play, and the company that’s making billions is acting like a company that makes billions. You may in the future choose to make a different trade-off and work elsewhere? And I don’t mean some grow-or-die VC-backed startup.
I've worked across the spectrum from 8 people companies to 20,000 employee multi-nationals. From companies 30 years old to startups. It doesn't make a difference.
You likely won't see redundancy coming. Chances are you'll be dismissed out of the blue one random day.
You likely won't see redundancy coming. Chances are you'll be dismissed out of the blue one random day.
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Similar to me. The bigger the org the less likely you are to see it. My first one I see it in hindsight at a small company. They actually asked how many pens and pencils I had in my desk.
I have a hard time believing faang employees won't just drop the company they are working for if they are offered a 15 percent payrise from a competing company. Employees don't have to be loyal to their employers, why do employers have to be loyal to employees?
I’ve only jumped for 50%> boosts within FAANG.
Hopefully cyberpunk will get an inflow out of this situation. Don't ever trust corporations, even if they promise not to be evil, Lol
Cyberpunk is hypercapitalism with less ethics and even more survival of the fittest, plus cybernetics… and apart from the cybernetics part is actually not that far from some societies already.
Social resilience and social welfare have been vilified enough that I see just enough blanket downvotes in some social fora, as if its an icky subject or an allergy. Those who are at the top benefit from it, as long as as they have enough lackeys to do their bidding.
Social resilience and social welfare have been vilified enough that I see just enough blanket downvotes in some social fora, as if its an icky subject or an allergy. Those who are at the top benefit from it, as long as as they have enough lackeys to do their bidding.
To me cyberpunk is something entirely different. To me it just means going back to "the garage", inventing cool shit, not worrying about making +200K per year while being your bosses toy, and sticking it to The Man
I find it shocking that this is news to anybody, or that this has ever (in the last n generations) not been the case.
Your advice is sound: exchange your expertise for money, invest the money, leave.
Your advice is sound: exchange your expertise for money, invest the money, leave.
The information is not new but then there's actually internalizing that information and changing your views.
Quite a few BigCos had a genuine job-for-life culture until the 70s recessions hit. A few managed to keep it going until the 80s.
The big cultural change happened in the early 80s as MBA culture became the norm, with a shift towards zero sum neoliberal extremism and the uncoupling of pay from productivity.
The big cultural change happened in the early 80s as MBA culture became the norm, with a shift towards zero sum neoliberal extremism and the uncoupling of pay from productivity.
We can thank Milton Friedman and Jack Welsh for much of that shift.
Friedman popularized an idea that shareholders should be prioritized above all else and Jack Welsh implemented it at GE, showing just how much profit can be made when you care only about the money/stock.
Friedman popularized an idea that shareholders should be prioritized above all else and Jack Welsh implemented it at GE, showing just how much profit can be made when you care only about the money/stock.
Better put, the relationship you have with your employer is a business relation ship. It's not personal. They are not your friends, nor your enemies. It's simply a convenient arrangement between the two of you for as long as that lasts. And it might become convenient for either side to change that arrangement at any point.
The more you earn, the higher the risk that at some point somebody decides that they want to spend less / smarter. So, your risk increases with your salary. That's fine because it enables you to mitigate such a scenario by having savings.
I've been part of a big layoff round once. It wasn't personal. That was just my employer rounding up a large group of people to cut some meaningful chunk out of their salary expenses. It wasn't the last round either. The company, Nokia, ultimately got out of the phone and map business (I was in the maps unit). The final head count reduction was in the tens of thousands. A lot of those have since had successful careers and the Nokia implosion spawned quite a few successful companies.
But getting layed off is a bit of a rough ride. You feel bitter, angry, insulted, etc. But on reflection I actually got a fair deal and honestly I needed the wake up call that job security is a big illusion. I was just coasting in my career and a bit too comfortable. The moment was perfect as I was still in my thirties. This stuff gets harder as you get older, less flexible, and more dependent on job security. I've been doing startups and freelance work ever since. Which means I'm my own boss now and I've learned a lot in the decade since that happened.
The more you earn, the higher the risk that at some point somebody decides that they want to spend less / smarter. So, your risk increases with your salary. That's fine because it enables you to mitigate such a scenario by having savings.
I've been part of a big layoff round once. It wasn't personal. That was just my employer rounding up a large group of people to cut some meaningful chunk out of their salary expenses. It wasn't the last round either. The company, Nokia, ultimately got out of the phone and map business (I was in the maps unit). The final head count reduction was in the tens of thousands. A lot of those have since had successful careers and the Nokia implosion spawned quite a few successful companies.
But getting layed off is a bit of a rough ride. You feel bitter, angry, insulted, etc. But on reflection I actually got a fair deal and honestly I needed the wake up call that job security is a big illusion. I was just coasting in my career and a bit too comfortable. The moment was perfect as I was still in my thirties. This stuff gets harder as you get older, less flexible, and more dependent on job security. I've been doing startups and freelance work ever since. Which means I'm my own boss now and I've learned a lot in the decade since that happened.
You should add more nuance I think.
While this is a respectable way to see employer / employee relationships, it does not apply to every company / employee out there.
In particular, I think this is very true for BigCo, where most people are seen as fungible cogs.
The smaller the company, the better.
While this is a respectable way to see employer / employee relationships, it does not apply to every company / employee out there.
In particular, I think this is very true for BigCo, where most people are seen as fungible cogs.
The smaller the company, the better.
Smaller companies treat employees different, to an extent. Because in the end, regardless of company size, the owners expect a return of their investment. In case of owner-managed companies even more so.
To everyone their poison so, I guess. I learned that I am a large company guy, by a nature and nurture. Other people I know are the complete oppossite. One thing I learned so, no employee ever is safe. Not even lifetime employed state / public servants.
To everyone their poison so, I guess. I learned that I am a large company guy, by a nature and nurture. Other people I know are the complete oppossite. One thing I learned so, no employee ever is safe. Not even lifetime employed state / public servants.
Honestly the size really doesn’t matter that much. As soon as it’s favorable you are out in ANY company. In my observational experience it’s only 10 to 20% companies who have heart and where they do actually try to maintain talent and foster good working relationships.
I think the size definitely matters, but I am not sure about the extent to which it matters.
I work at a company of roughly over 200 employees that is part of a much bigger org. Layoffs never happen where I am working. And one factor may be that HR has a different, in some cases personal relationship with their employees. That is certainly not the case in the parent org where large-scale layoffs happen every few years.
Edit: And I would not even attest that my company is one of those with a "heart", as you say.
I work at a company of roughly over 200 employees that is part of a much bigger org. Layoffs never happen where I am working. And one factor may be that HR has a different, in some cases personal relationship with their employees. That is certainly not the case in the parent org where large-scale layoffs happen every few years.
Edit: And I would not even attest that my company is one of those with a "heart", as you say.
Have you been working for this company for 20+ years?
There's a high chance you're just a "sweet summer child" who wasn't there the last time things were REALLY bad.
There's a high chance you're just a "sweet summer child" who wasn't there the last time things were REALLY bad.
That is a valid point. But no, the company has been around for 31 years and I have only worked there for just over 8 years. I am confident however that no large-scale layoffs ever happened there, because I have heard all sorts of harrowing stories from "back then", abusive managers and the like, but layoffs were never mentioned.
Might be survivorship bias though because the people that could have been laid off in the first few years cannot be there to tell the tale, of course.
Might be survivorship bias though because the people that could have been laid off in the first few years cannot be there to tell the tale, of course.
The worse relationship I've had were in small companies. "Oh but we're so small we cannot afford raises" coming from the same people that are selling it millions later in the year.
> The smaller the company, the better.
I disagree. There is a lot of variance in small companies. There is a lot of variance in large companies as well (the famous "it will really depend on which team you belong to").
I really think there is little correlation between company size and your experience at such company. The predictive variables (if they ever exist) are elsewhere.
I disagree. There is a lot of variance in small companies. There is a lot of variance in large companies as well (the famous "it will really depend on which team you belong to").
I really think there is little correlation between company size and your experience at such company. The predictive variables (if they ever exist) are elsewhere.
True, the difference is you are more likely to get the experience you've heard from reviews in a small company vs complete unknown in a big company (may be great, may be crap depending on your line of management)
In my network we keep joining the same (relative small) companies because we roughly know the culture we can shape and create an environment
In my network we keep joining the same (relative small) companies because we roughly know the culture we can shape and create an environment
In smaller company you are closer to person with the decision power. It is much easier to build closer relationship and have high visibility to avoid being laid off.
Companies, of all sizes, are run by people.
If those people are assholes, the size of the company doesn't matter, your employment in that company will suck.
If those people are assholes, the size of the company doesn't matter, your employment in that company will suck.
While that is true, if any given person has some X% chance of being an asshole, the more layers of management there are above you, the higher the chances you are at the mercy of at least one (and possibly multiple) asshole(s).
You could use the exact same argument in the other direction: the more layers of management there are above you, the higher the chances a high-level managers will protect your team from armageddon. Sometimes, it's only a matter of a single email or a chat with a CxO.
I stand by my original point: no obvious correlation between company size and quality of life inside it.
I stand by my original point: no obvious correlation between company size and quality of life inside it.
Don't kid yourself about small companies. Unless you're the owner, you're a fungible cog everywhere.
In fairness, anyone can leave at any time. Your employer, regardless of size, has to be prepared for the possibilty that you'll quit for a better job, or for some other reason. It would be inadvisable to get emotionally attached to employees.
The reason you're less likely to get laid off at a small company is that small companies don't have the capital to hire indiscriminately, so they're less likely to have large inefficiencies. The number of employees is already as low as they can get away with, given their current revenue, so only a significant downturn in revenue would justify layoffs.
In fairness, anyone can leave at any time. Your employer, regardless of size, has to be prepared for the possibilty that you'll quit for a better job, or for some other reason. It would be inadvisable to get emotionally attached to employees.
The reason you're less likely to get laid off at a small company is that small companies don't have the capital to hire indiscriminately, so they're less likely to have large inefficiencies. The number of employees is already as low as they can get away with, given their current revenue, so only a significant downturn in revenue would justify layoffs.
Smaller companies also have a hard time hiring. A bad hire for your 7th employee is way more painful than for your 1000th, and you can't afford to spend to much time interviewing. If employee 7 does a good job and jives with the team, they'd be foolish to throw them out. Though I'm sure there genuinely are many small companies run foolishly out there.
Small companies (whether VC-funded or bootstrapped) have their own issues. They tend to be different from what you see at big companies but they're certainly not nirvana.
I thought this until a few days ago! At my “smaller company” of 150 or so employees, they just laid off a third of the company, and virtually everybody outside of the C suite was blindsided.
I think the posters who remind people that the employer/employee relationship is a business one have it right. We as engineers should strive as best as possible what our specific value is to a company. We should not delude ourselves into thinking we are more to the company than that. When we cease to have that value, or they cease to desire going down that path, they might end the relationship.
I think the posters who remind people that the employer/employee relationship is a business one have it right. We as engineers should strive as best as possible what our specific value is to a company. We should not delude ourselves into thinking we are more to the company than that. When we cease to have that value, or they cease to desire going down that path, they might end the relationship.
The problem with this is if you leave awful companies after not working there for very long then new companies will not want to hire you.
It doesn't work both ways. They only get the benefits. You do not.
It doesn't work both ways. They only get the benefits. You do not.
This is why the logical conclusion of this culture change is for anyone who can to move toward independent contracting. Like I mentioned in a different comment, I’ve had my best clients longer than any single job. But for the ones that didn’t work out, no one bats an eye at a 3 month contract.
> The more you earn, the higher the risk that at some point somebody decides that they want to spend less / smarter.
And it applies to everyone up to the CEO.
At my company a new CEO came in to much fanfare. A year later they were unceremoniously turfed out because the board decided they weren’t up to the “new direction” the company needed to go.
And not to mention the people under the CEO who road her coattails. They were all turfed in quick succession (or smartly saw the writing on the wall and bailed first).
It’s a business relationship. That’s all. Treat it as such. Get as much money as you can. Don’t kill yourself in the hope your sacrifice will be repaid, it probably won’t.
Basically take the emotion out of it. When management talks of “our big family” they are just saying that because people like to hear it. It’s not true.
And once you’ve gotten enough years under your belt you start to see through the talk pretty easily. Trust your gut. If the company starts to look wobbly, be the first out the door, not the last. Or at least plan according and don’t assume your job will be there next year or even next month.
And it applies to everyone up to the CEO.
At my company a new CEO came in to much fanfare. A year later they were unceremoniously turfed out because the board decided they weren’t up to the “new direction” the company needed to go.
And not to mention the people under the CEO who road her coattails. They were all turfed in quick succession (or smartly saw the writing on the wall and bailed first).
It’s a business relationship. That’s all. Treat it as such. Get as much money as you can. Don’t kill yourself in the hope your sacrifice will be repaid, it probably won’t.
Basically take the emotion out of it. When management talks of “our big family” they are just saying that because people like to hear it. It’s not true.
And once you’ve gotten enough years under your belt you start to see through the talk pretty easily. Trust your gut. If the company starts to look wobbly, be the first out the door, not the last. Or at least plan according and don’t assume your job will be there next year or even next month.
> If the company starts to look wobbly, be the first out the door, not the last.
For individual contributors leaving isn’t always that easy as most interviews now require Leetcode prep. If you haven’t already been practicing, it can take a few months to get prepared for the grind. This is even worse for folks who work and have obligations outside of work such as children or sick family members.
For individual contributors leaving isn’t always that easy as most interviews now require Leetcode prep. If you haven’t already been practicing, it can take a few months to get prepared for the grind. This is even worse for folks who work and have obligations outside of work such as children or sick family members.
I haven't interviewed in years, but I had the impression that Leetcode interviews were mostly for FAANG type jobs. Are non-software companies (i.e. ones where software is not the product) doing this too now ?!
It is a business relationship, but they always trying to convince employees that it is not. That it is a family, a friendship relationship.
You should be reliable, you should help everyone in your "family". If you leave your "family" abruptly it is a kind of betrayal.
Also funny is brainwashing employees to think that HR is their fried, that HR can help with issues at work.
It is a business. Do minimum amount of work you've been hired for, get your paycheck and focus on your private life!
You should be reliable, you should help everyone in your "family". If you leave your "family" abruptly it is a kind of betrayal.
Also funny is brainwashing employees to think that HR is their fried, that HR can help with issues at work.
It is a business. Do minimum amount of work you've been hired for, get your paycheck and focus on your private life!
Honestly a very depressing outlook.
If I would really think this way I wouldn’t wanna work in this industry.
The only times I was really happy and motivated at work was when I was working within a team where we were really friends - I’m still in contact with most of them years after the fact and some became really close friends - this was outside of IT though.
Your line of thinking seems to be common in the IT industry and I wonder if it’s a good industry for me to be in long term. I only was at one company so far where we had a really close-knit team.
Your line of thinking seems to be common in the IT industry and I wonder if it’s a good industry for me to be in long term. I only was at one company so far where we had a really close-knit team.
The only times I was really happy and motivated at work was when I was working within a team where we were really friends
Ditto!
A business is made of employees, but the employees are not the business. Sometimes that means decisions have to be made in favor (sometimes arguably) of the business over you.
Understanding the ephemerality of the situation can help you appreciate when it's going well and the people you work with, while helping you be prepared if and when something happens. Hopefully you will have gained a lot more experience, a bigger network of good friends, and have a decent nest egg to take you to the next job.
Ditto!
A business is made of employees, but the employees are not the business. Sometimes that means decisions have to be made in favor (sometimes arguably) of the business over you.
Understanding the ephemerality of the situation can help you appreciate when it's going well and the people you work with, while helping you be prepared if and when something happens. Hopefully you will have gained a lot more experience, a bigger network of good friends, and have a decent nest egg to take you to the next job.
> Honestly a very depressing outlook. If I would really think this way I wouldn’t wanna work in this industry. The only times I was really happy and motivated at work was when I was working within a team where we were really friends - I’m still in contact with most of them years after the fact and some became really close friends - this was outside of IT though.
It's important to differentiate between colleagues and the business. The people you work with can become friends, but ultimately the business will do whatever sociopathic thing makes the number go up the faster/helps to deal with the crippling emotional turmoil of the execs.
You can be friends with the people you work with/for, but if there comes a time when the business and the people's interests diverge, the business will normally win. As long as you are aware of this, you can be OK throughout it (sortof, getting laid off really, really sucks).
It's important to differentiate between colleagues and the business. The people you work with can become friends, but ultimately the business will do whatever sociopathic thing makes the number go up the faster/helps to deal with the crippling emotional turmoil of the execs.
You can be friends with the people you work with/for, but if there comes a time when the business and the people's interests diverge, the business will normally win. As long as you are aware of this, you can be OK throughout it (sortof, getting laid off really, really sucks).
Oh yea I totally agree with your comment (and the others in the chain in this vein)
It is extremely important (to me) to form some kind of relationship with the people I work with to stay motivated. It doesn’t have to be everyone and super close friendship - but that certainly helps if it comes naturally.
And yea businesses are like a form of “slow AI”. They will do what is necessary to survive even at the expense of the people who built them. And it is important to be mindful of that. But I can’t work with a Damocles sword hanging over me constantly. At some point I have to lie to myself and assume the business will also act in my interest if I do good work - even if it’s a naive and arguably stupid belief which has bitten me a couple times already. It wasn’t anyone’s “fault” or anyone acting with evil intent.
In the end I live after Juicy J’s eternal philosophy: “Everything is business Ain’t shit personal.”
It is extremely important (to me) to form some kind of relationship with the people I work with to stay motivated. It doesn’t have to be everyone and super close friendship - but that certainly helps if it comes naturally.
And yea businesses are like a form of “slow AI”. They will do what is necessary to survive even at the expense of the people who built them. And it is important to be mindful of that. But I can’t work with a Damocles sword hanging over me constantly. At some point I have to lie to myself and assume the business will also act in my interest if I do good work - even if it’s a naive and arguably stupid belief which has bitten me a couple times already. It wasn’t anyone’s “fault” or anyone acting with evil intent.
In the end I live after Juicy J’s eternal philosophy: “Everything is business Ain’t shit personal.”
There is a difference between your colleagues -- as people -- with whom you can have a close relationship, and the entity that is your employer, which you really have to assume would jettison you at a moment's notice, because almost all companies would if the need arose.
I don't think of it as depressing to act as if a fictional entity like a corporation isn't part of your family. By all means, be friends with your coworkers, show up and work hard, but don't get emotionally invested in a relationship with an LLC or a C Corp that can't love you back.
I don't think of it as depressing to act as if a fictional entity like a corporation isn't part of your family. By all means, be friends with your coworkers, show up and work hard, but don't get emotionally invested in a relationship with an LLC or a C Corp that can't love you back.
Corporations are not fictional entities. They are real things with their own goals and decision making networks independent of, and capable of enacting larger environmental change than, any individual human.
A person cannot form a friendship or familial relationship with a corporation, which is the point I was making.
Also, you are incorrect about corporations not being fictional entities. Try googling the phrase.
Also, you are incorrect about corporations not being fictional entities. Try googling the phrase.
It's completely the opposite. Only humans can take action and make decisions. A "corporation" is at most a piece of paper in some filing cabinet. It is essential in life to understand the difference between what exists and what does not exist. A corporation is an abstraction that is 100% under human control. It is something that doesn't exist.
Corporations are not under the control of a single human. This is like saying humans don’t exist because they’re made up of cells
> If I would really think this way I wouldn’t wanna work in this industry
I've got bad news for you about pretty much every other industry. They'll throw you away at the first opportunity to make the CEO a few more bucks too. It's the Jack Welchification of the American economy
I've got bad news for you about pretty much every other industry. They'll throw you away at the first opportunity to make the CEO a few more bucks too. It's the Jack Welchification of the American economy
It is depressing, with more years of experience I see that there are no friends at work, lots of lies and politics. Managers lie to their teams constantly. Team members lie about amount of work done, working hours worked, experience in cv, etc.
At first place of work I had really nice team of young engineers, we've been students without kids, with lots of energy. Job was quite boring, but days were full of jokes and friendship.
And yes, I would like to exit this industry but am not ready to switch to x0.2 salary. Golden handcuffs!
At first place of work I had really nice team of young engineers, we've been students without kids, with lots of energy. Job was quite boring, but days were full of jokes and friendship.
And yes, I would like to exit this industry but am not ready to switch to x0.2 salary. Golden handcuffs!
My advice is that if you ever feel like the poster and if you have the chance, change your job.
They're aren't brainwashing you, they are playing to their own benefit. In the same way that you "brainwash" them with a stretch of a resume and overly optimistic self evals.
There are people who recognize the game being played, and people who get their souls crushed because they failed to properly recognize how the pieces in the game move.
There are people who recognize the game being played, and people who get their souls crushed because they failed to properly recognize how the pieces in the game move.
Absolutely right. I was exactly thinking in same direction as your comment. There is no "they" it is just people. Job seekers, employees, employers all get economical with truth when needed.
Your relationship with $COMPANY should definitely be non-personal and unemotional - it's not a sentient being. Your relationship with the people, from the CEO down to your boss and coworkers should be situation-specific. I'm not sure how this is any different from all your other relationships. Do you love a $COMPANY where you are the consumer, or did you get great service from a specific person? Is $FAMILY super important, or a proxy for the close relationships it represents?
And this goes both ways, employees can go out as they please. The opposite party usually get hurt when it happens (either the firing or employee go out), and usually coworkers / existing workers that get the bad things.
So in my experience, don't get too attached to company (or coworker either), and go out if things start to go south or if there's better opportunity out there.
So in my experience, don't get too attached to company (or coworker either), and go out if things start to go south or if there's better opportunity out there.
> And this goes both ways, employees can go out as they please.
Spoken like a man who never needed healthcare, who never had dependents, who never lived under the cage of a visa.
Spoken like a man who never needed healthcare, who never had dependents, who never lived under the cage of a visa.
Presumably, you leave to go work for another company, so none of these are a problem.
So you’re not aware how much a visa screws you in the job search? And you’re not aware how much time raising a family takes from searching for a job? And you’re not aware of the fact not all doctors are in network for all insurances, that your new insurance company can and will deny your dependents their medication to force them to take cheaper stuff that doesn’t work, again, to prove it doesn’t work? And you have to sit and watch your wife or your child or whatever be hospitalized and crash and know it’s just what happens when you switch jobs?
Yeah correct, my experience is just locally, and the healthcare isn't that bad here.
US is just simply has a system that's very cons for employees, especially with visa and right to work law.
US is just simply has a system that's very cons for employees, especially with visa and right to work law.
I’m not the OP, but I don’t think you understood her/his comment. People leave jobs.
> I actually got a fair deal and honestly I needed the wake up call that job security is a big illusion. I was just coasting in my career and a bit too comfortable.
Many people fall for this and as long as you are an employee, no job is ever secure.
> I've been doing startups and freelance work ever since. Which means I'm my own boss now and I've learned a lot in the decade since that happened.
This gives some hope that there are those that have learned from the illusion and are now realizing that these companies do not care about you.
Many people fall for this and as long as you are an employee, no job is ever secure.
> I've been doing startups and freelance work ever since. Which means I'm my own boss now and I've learned a lot in the decade since that happened.
This gives some hope that there are those that have learned from the illusion and are now realizing that these companies do not care about you.
And if you're not an employee, your biggest client can decide to "go in a different direction" at any time. Of course, you try to diversify but you're still subject to the economy, clients having management changes, etc.
I was laid off my last job, of 27 years.
I didn't actually mind. It was completely anticipated, and we (me and my team) were pretty much ready. I think the company made the correct decision, but the reason they got there, was because they made a whole cascade of rotten choices, that painted them into a corner they couldn't get out of, easily.
I really wish that they would have involved me in some of the really dumb decisions they made, because I'm actually pretty good at strategic thinking, and could have easily advised them of alternatives.
But what is done, is done.
The really annoying part, was coming out of a 27-year "silo," into the current tech industry zeitgeist.
Nasty culture shock.
I didn't actually mind. It was completely anticipated, and we (me and my team) were pretty much ready. I think the company made the correct decision, but the reason they got there, was because they made a whole cascade of rotten choices, that painted them into a corner they couldn't get out of, easily.
I really wish that they would have involved me in some of the really dumb decisions they made, because I'm actually pretty good at strategic thinking, and could have easily advised them of alternatives.
But what is done, is done.
The really annoying part, was coming out of a 27-year "silo," into the current tech industry zeitgeist.
Nasty culture shock.
What sort of shock? Were you working full-time on a single application or suite of applications for that period?
We wrote image processing pipeline stuff in C++.
Backend of the backend.
The shock was encountering the value system of modern corporations and even individual ICs.
I’m not going to get more specific, but let’s just say that I have a value system that does not mesh well, with today’s tech culture.
Backend of the backend.
The shock was encountering the value system of modern corporations and even individual ICs.
I’m not going to get more specific, but let’s just say that I have a value system that does not mesh well, with today’s tech culture.
As long as you can get another job and can get severance pay, a layoff feel like an achievement than a loss. That happened me in my last company, one that I was very attached to for what I now think was irrational reasons. I wanted to leave anyway, but having it just happen and getting a nice severance pay was a perk. I am treating my new job as the complete opposite and the feeling is cathartic, which allows me to focus better on my work instead of worrying about the maintaining the illusion of identity in the company I work for.
> You can be somewhere for 10 years
Our organization has a policy that it hires developers on 3-year contracts, and renews them no more than two times. So when you have reached 9 years in the org; when you have become intimately familiar with the domain, and the codebase, and the way the org works etc., you are out.
I am still incredulous that someone has thought that yes, this is exactly how an organization should manage its software engineers.
Our organization has a policy that it hires developers on 3-year contracts, and renews them no more than two times. So when you have reached 9 years in the org; when you have become intimately familiar with the domain, and the codebase, and the way the org works etc., you are out.
I am still incredulous that someone has thought that yes, this is exactly how an organization should manage its software engineers.
Why? And why are you working there?
On the other hand, how many times in your career have you stayed at a company more than 9 years?
Doesn't matter. It is a lopsided relationship. As an employee, it is massive portion of your life. From the employer perspective you are a resource, and can be replaced (not making a moral judgement, just saying that you can...). So the fact that someone can leave after 2 years is less impactful on the company than a company that forces you to leave after X years.
If on the other hand you are just saying "well it is unlikely you will get to 9 years" the problem with that thinking is that the closer you get to 9 years and the more you have invested the more likely you will want to stay for 9 and being forced out for no reason is silly. It is a job, not the presidency.
If on the other hand you are just saying "well it is unlikely you will get to 9 years" the problem with that thinking is that the closer you get to 9 years and the more you have invested the more likely you will want to stay for 9 and being forced out for no reason is silly. It is a job, not the presidency.
> you are a resource, and can be replaced
This is exactly the disconnect between people's salary expectations and their actual salary. It's not really based on how valuable your work is, but how easily replaced you are.
This is exactly the disconnect between people's salary expectations and their actual salary. It's not really based on how valuable your work is, but how easily replaced you are.
Yes and to be completely fair, the benefit for an employee is to get to focus on one specialty rather than run a business. And have a known paycheck. And get experience while being paid to do so.
As you get older and have other responsibilities that life gives you, constant job hopping gets old too.
Honestly as long as a company has enough variety internally I (slightly) prefer staying with until they "go bad".
Now I also prefer startups and my carrier isn't yet that old (like ~8 years) so never is still the answer.
Through companies being often way less likely to give a trusted long term employee a payrise or trust them with more responsibilities then they are to do so with a new hired employee they have hard times to properly judge the skill of is still an (absurd but not IT specific) issue.
Now I also prefer startups and my carrier isn't yet that old (like ~8 years) so never is still the answer.
Through companies being often way less likely to give a trusted long term employee a payrise or trust them with more responsibilities then they are to do so with a new hired employee they have hard times to properly judge the skill of is still an (absurd but not IT specific) issue.
So you're leaving them right?
Why work for someone who clearly doesn't align with your professional values?
Why work for someone who clearly doesn't align with your professional values?
> intimately familiar with the domain, and the codebase, and the way the org works etc., you are out
the idea, i suppose, is to prevent anyone from becoming so integral and important that they will have negotiating leverage over the business.
Cogs needs to be replacible. It's also the core reason why thorough documentation, procedures and runbooks are encouraged.
the idea, i suppose, is to prevent anyone from becoming so integral and important that they will have negotiating leverage over the business.
Cogs needs to be replacible. It's also the core reason why thorough documentation, procedures and runbooks are encouraged.
Honestly that sounds fine and quite honest to have such a policy. I think in my career I've met like 2 or 3 engineers who would have been at one place longer than that.
> I am still incredulous that someone has thought that yes, this is exactly how an organization should manage its software engineers.
I'm not I have literally heard a software engineer which was since recently responsible for hiring just saying just a few sentences apart:
- oh we shouldn't hire this person they only ever worked for the same company so they must not interested in learning and improving themself
and then
- oh we shouldn't hire that person they have switched companies every 2-3 years so they must be bad at their job and jump companies before they get fired
... wtf
and that person didn't get that opinion due to being crazy or so but from spending ~2 days to read up on what you need to look out for when hiring people, i.e. from other software enginers, software project managers and people which founded startups
the problem is not only is there a lot of nonsense out their there are multiple different conflicting engineering cultures out their each insisting only their way is the right way and convincingly pursuing people why the other way is supposedly terrible. Not few of them also pushing a rather toxic culture or a live style which only work for a singles with workoholic like traits or people which at some point in their live had the luck to get rather wealthy and no assume any software enginer in the world is in their position. It's just shit.
I'm not I have literally heard a software engineer which was since recently responsible for hiring just saying just a few sentences apart:
- oh we shouldn't hire this person they only ever worked for the same company so they must not interested in learning and improving themself
and then
- oh we shouldn't hire that person they have switched companies every 2-3 years so they must be bad at their job and jump companies before they get fired
... wtf
and that person didn't get that opinion due to being crazy or so but from spending ~2 days to read up on what you need to look out for when hiring people, i.e. from other software enginers, software project managers and people which founded startups
the problem is not only is there a lot of nonsense out their there are multiple different conflicting engineering cultures out their each insisting only their way is the right way and convincingly pursuing people why the other way is supposedly terrible. Not few of them also pushing a rather toxic culture or a live style which only work for a singles with workoholic like traits or people which at some point in their live had the luck to get rather wealthy and no assume any software enginer in the world is in their position. It's just shit.
Not that I am insensitive to one’s predicament, but who takes 9 years to become familiar with a domain? Unless it’s some kind of software that runs a special kind of nuclear submarine that no one knows how it works and no one want to change more than one line of code per year.
I think that the issue is continuous raises. Instead the raises should slowly decrease but also the expectation of time commitment should decrease. It should be expected that someone with 10yrs experience at the firm only spent 10 or 15 hours per week working. They are exponentially more efficient. If it's then not expected that the company pay more, then the tenured employee isn't seen as a drain on resources. Hell they could even get payed less. It think it is fair because it allows people to seek out more work to fill their time.
> SWEs in particularly no longer live in a world where you can expect to have a rewarding career working for >=5 years at any given firm.
You can in SMEs. Avoid VC-owned or public companies. Of course, there are no guarantees.
You can in SMEs. Avoid VC-owned or public companies. Of course, there are no guarantees.
"Those that I respected the most." I always say this, but if you appreciate someone at work, dont say it to them. Say it to management. Managements face an impossible task of appreciating every single employees' worth. You can help.
> After last year's layoffs they told us they were "done" and it was "all behind us". Last year then turned out to a better year financially than 2022 (we have access to the top line numbers)
I've seen a manager at a large company make "once in 10 year cuts", then the next year make similar cuts. This was maybe 5/10 years ago and they still cut like this today - how on earth they are still operating I don't know.
One of the tricks they pulled was to sack a senior role and simply add the entire senior role to a junior role, but keep pay, etc, the same. The sell the idea to the junior employee they told them that it would help with promotions. 5 years of no promotions and insane stress they were out.
They are also legally required to have some positions filled with qualified people, but they have unqualified people working those positions with "on the job training".
The company itself has declared internally it will be bankrupt as early as next year without some form of financial assistance. COVID just about killed them with excessive borrowing to make up for missed revenue, to survive and come back into a poor economy.
I know two people working for this company, one is looking for another job, the other is stuck in the company as they did a deal with University support in return for being retained for some years.
> Never get invested emotionally. SWEs in particularly no longer live in a world where you can expect to have a rewarding career working for >=5 years at any given firm.
How many people work for a company now that they believe will be around in 10, 20, 50, 100 years time? There's an extremely high chance you will far outlive the company you work for.
> Take their fucking money, build a big emergency fund, save, invest, and focus on the rest of your life outside of work.
Given how things are going, I would suggest tangible assets that can be easily liquefied, even if in a poor economy.
I've seen a manager at a large company make "once in 10 year cuts", then the next year make similar cuts. This was maybe 5/10 years ago and they still cut like this today - how on earth they are still operating I don't know.
One of the tricks they pulled was to sack a senior role and simply add the entire senior role to a junior role, but keep pay, etc, the same. The sell the idea to the junior employee they told them that it would help with promotions. 5 years of no promotions and insane stress they were out.
They are also legally required to have some positions filled with qualified people, but they have unqualified people working those positions with "on the job training".
The company itself has declared internally it will be bankrupt as early as next year without some form of financial assistance. COVID just about killed them with excessive borrowing to make up for missed revenue, to survive and come back into a poor economy.
I know two people working for this company, one is looking for another job, the other is stuck in the company as they did a deal with University support in return for being retained for some years.
> Never get invested emotionally. SWEs in particularly no longer live in a world where you can expect to have a rewarding career working for >=5 years at any given firm.
How many people work for a company now that they believe will be around in 10, 20, 50, 100 years time? There's an extremely high chance you will far outlive the company you work for.
> Take their fucking money, build a big emergency fund, save, invest, and focus on the rest of your life outside of work.
Given how things are going, I would suggest tangible assets that can be easily liquefied, even if in a poor economy.
> How many people work for a company now that they believe will be around in 10, 20, 50, 100 years time? There's an extremely high chance you will far outlive the company you work for.
I’ve worked at the same company now for 14 years. If I chose to, I feel like there’s a good chance I could work another 15-25 years at the same firm. My company sells software to local, state, and federal government customers. There are competitors in this space, but no company dominates any particular sector. There’s ample room for growth. Our software is critical to government operations and is necessary even during economic downtimes. Working with employees who have been at the company for 30-40 years isn’t uncommon. I work on 911 systems and find the domain interesting, rewarding, and important. We can help save lives and help government work more effectively.
I’ve worked at the same company now for 14 years. If I chose to, I feel like there’s a good chance I could work another 15-25 years at the same firm. My company sells software to local, state, and federal government customers. There are competitors in this space, but no company dominates any particular sector. There’s ample room for growth. Our software is critical to government operations and is necessary even during economic downtimes. Working with employees who have been at the company for 30-40 years isn’t uncommon. I work on 911 systems and find the domain interesting, rewarding, and important. We can help save lives and help government work more effectively.
The company I'm speaking for is one of these government customers - and they are absolutely necessary with no competitors. I still think that given all that, they may be allowed to go bust simply because it is run so poorly and it might actually be better to start again.
> Take their fucking money, build a big emergency fund, save, invest.
Very sane advice, but unfortunately not always an option.
The likelihood of making real (not paper) life-changing money in a few years has considerably decreased in 5-10 years.
It will only come back with a good pace of IPOs and investor-positive acquisitions.
Very sane advice, but unfortunately not always an option.
The likelihood of making real (not paper) life-changing money in a few years has considerably decreased in 5-10 years.
It will only come back with a good pace of IPOs and investor-positive acquisitions.
Push for IPOs -> 'growth is all that matters' -> future redundancies.
The world needs sustainable businesses, not IPO jackpots for a few and looming redundancies for the rest.
The world needs sustainable businesses, not IPO jackpots for a few and looming redundancies for the rest.
That really depends quite a bit on how frugally a person is able and willing to live.
> The likelihood of making real (not paper) life-changing money
There is a difference between "save, build an emergency fund" and "get into some get-rich-quick scheme".
The goal of emergency funds and saving, for most people, is to prevent life-changing events, not create them. You don't need a ludicrous paycheck to have a rainy days fund, and to put money aside, and you shouldn't count on IPOs and acquisitions to build it.
There is a difference between "save, build an emergency fund" and "get into some get-rich-quick scheme".
The goal of emergency funds and saving, for most people, is to prevent life-changing events, not create them. You don't need a ludicrous paycheck to have a rainy days fund, and to put money aside, and you shouldn't count on IPOs and acquisitions to build it.
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> You can't trust anything anyone above you in the management chain tells you. Not one thing. Not ever. Even if they're being truthful they were probably lied to themselves or told a half truth.
I've been an executive and every position along the chain in the lead up to that within my industry. If I took anything away from my time in it (I have since moved back to practical hands on roles) it is that your above statement is sadly, quite accurate.
My time as an executive has left me soured on the industry full stop long term now i've realised its shit all the way up. I just kept thinking i'd get high enough to find people who like me, had morals or beliefs which they may apply to their decision making. But no, morals have no belonging it would appear in the executive class, which to be fair, I should have known about in advance, but my continued promotions were really quite accidental over the years and I am obviously niave.
I've been an executive and every position along the chain in the lead up to that within my industry. If I took anything away from my time in it (I have since moved back to practical hands on roles) it is that your above statement is sadly, quite accurate.
My time as an executive has left me soured on the industry full stop long term now i've realised its shit all the way up. I just kept thinking i'd get high enough to find people who like me, had morals or beliefs which they may apply to their decision making. But no, morals have no belonging it would appear in the executive class, which to be fair, I should have known about in advance, but my continued promotions were really quite accidental over the years and I am obviously niave.
This is why I don't work for publicly traded companies. It's like this every goddamn three months in a lot of them.
Ossified tech companies who fire their talent are quite literally sewing the seeds of their own destruction.
I expect in the next 2-5 years to see a dynamic flourising of innovative companies started by these unshackled workers.
I expect in the next 2-5 years to see a dynamic flourising of innovative companies started by these unshackled workers.
Let’s be real the majority of these people getting laid off aren’t gonna grind for 2-3 years with low odds of succeeding. Same thing that happened with Twitter layoffs and any covid layoffs.
People wanting to build stuff to their hearts desire long left or didn’t start at google in the first place
People wanting to build stuff to their hearts desire long left or didn’t start at google in the first place
Re "we have access to top line numbers".
Consider that that's only a part of the picture. Revenue minus costs, combined with the growth dynamics and constituent nature of both tell a fuller picture. Top line alone is almost meaningless
Consider that that's only a part of the picture. Revenue minus costs, combined with the growth dynamics and constituent nature of both tell a fuller picture. Top line alone is almost meaningless
> SWEs in particularly no longer live in a world where you can expect to have a rewarding career working for >=5 years at any given firm
Doesn't this apply to everyone?
Doesn't this apply to everyone?
Perhaps this is a non sequitur, but I've been writing Django & HTMX as well as using LLMs to the end of creating an automated circuit board factory. Previously, I co-founded a company that went public in the space. If you think any of the "best engineers, those that I respected the most" might be interested in working together with me, please send them my way - I'm hiring.
jeff+hn AT nimbleprecision DOT com
To your point, I can't make any promises that folks will be able to work at the company forever, but I can say that the ambition is to build a company for the long term and I do think there's a lot of value in having a long tenured engineering team insofar as the context folks build up for the problem set, the code base, and the team can be immense.
jeff+hn AT nimbleprecision DOT com
To your point, I can't make any promises that folks will be able to work at the company forever, but I can say that the ambition is to build a company for the long term and I do think there's a lot of value in having a long tenured engineering team insofar as the context folks build up for the problem set, the code base, and the team can be immense.
Some time ago when money were cheap it made sense to grow, now when money are expensive it makes sense to shrink.
I don't get why people get offended by it. we are not living in a "fair world" whatever that means.
You can die tomorrow or live another 50 years, nobody knows why. All of it is just luck.
I don't get why people get offended by it. we are not living in a "fair world" whatever that means.
You can die tomorrow or live another 50 years, nobody knows why. All of it is just luck.
Software guy with 40+ years in the biz here.
Your job never has been safe. Well, not in "big tech firm" territory anyway. I've not gone more than 3 years without seeing some kind of downsizing or shift in strategy or whatever. I swear that companies are like dogs, they roll over and scratch every once in a while, and have layoffs.
Sometimes it's just a distant boom over the horizon ("I hear they're getting killed over in Consumer"), sometimes it's like they line everyone up everyone in your division and boop! every fifth person and it sucks pretty hard.
I won't pontificate on another boring survival strategy, except to observe that I've nearly always switched jobs and technologies after five years anyway. I would be scared for my career if I spent ten years working on one thing.
Sometimes you're saved by smart, sometimes you're saved by lucky, and most of the time you'll be wrong about which one it was. :-)
Your job never has been safe. Well, not in "big tech firm" territory anyway. I've not gone more than 3 years without seeing some kind of downsizing or shift in strategy or whatever. I swear that companies are like dogs, they roll over and scratch every once in a while, and have layoffs.
Sometimes it's just a distant boom over the horizon ("I hear they're getting killed over in Consumer"), sometimes it's like they line everyone up everyone in your division and boop! every fifth person and it sucks pretty hard.
I won't pontificate on another boring survival strategy, except to observe that I've nearly always switched jobs and technologies after five years anyway. I would be scared for my career if I spent ten years working on one thing.
Sometimes you're saved by smart, sometimes you're saved by lucky, and most of the time you'll be wrong about which one it was. :-)
"I've nearly always switched jobs and technologies after five years anyway."
I'm another long-termer too, not as long but I aspire to! I haven't thought about it, but staying current, and switching techs is probably why I still love it and think I'll be ok in the next round of layoffs.
Right now it's cloud and serverless in python, next, I bet it's LLMs or something in that space. Before that, it was protocol-level C++, UI C++, Java middleware. It just keeps changing, and that's a good thing! I can't imagine working in a dull static changing world.
I'm another long-termer too, not as long but I aspire to! I haven't thought about it, but staying current, and switching techs is probably why I still love it and think I'll be ok in the next round of layoffs.
Right now it's cloud and serverless in python, next, I bet it's LLMs or something in that space. Before that, it was protocol-level C++, UI C++, Java middleware. It just keeps changing, and that's a good thing! I can't imagine working in a dull static changing world.
Pretty sure that if you have glowing perf reviews, your job is safe.
The "best engineers" you're talking about were the best by which metrics, and why were these metrics so different from those that execs used to determine who to lay off?
If they are indeed superior engineers, and your company is simply bad at evaluating talent, then they did a huge favor to these engineers by laying them off. Trust me.
The "best engineers" you're talking about were the best by which metrics, and why were these metrics so different from those that execs used to determine who to lay off?
If they are indeed superior engineers, and your company is simply bad at evaluating talent, then they did a huge favor to these engineers by laying them off. Trust me.
> Pretty sure that if you have glowing perf reviews, your job is safe.
No, because when large corps want to reduce head count/payroll, it often comes as a top down directive for every group to trim by X%...
In this type of environment being good at your job doesn't help - after a few cycles of these types of layoff all that are left are the better people, and the next X% layoff will be them.
No, because when large corps want to reduce head count/payroll, it often comes as a top down directive for every group to trim by X%...
In this type of environment being good at your job doesn't help - after a few cycles of these types of layoff all that are left are the better people, and the next X% layoff will be them.
Exactly, I had the best performance review ever at a corp I worked at. Did not make much difference when they reorganized.
Be loyal to people, not to companies.
Companies will cut you in a random layoff at the drop of a hat. I've seen this enough times in my career. It doesn't matter if they promise its the only/last/whatever cutoff, or it was for performance only, or whatever..
People in your network will pick you up and refer you / hire you on at the next gig.
My prior employer just did a wave of deep cuts and the stories I heard out of management were pretty crazy. Directory level people were basically given an hour to cut $X Million off their people budget from their directs and all their skip level staff. They then begin laying them off the same day. This was not a well planned or thought out process. So obviously the people I saw getting laid off were a mix of underperformerss, great-but-expensive, random personal grudges from the director, and unfortunately biased towards a lot of "lifers" who'd been there a long time.
Companies will cut you in a random layoff at the drop of a hat. I've seen this enough times in my career. It doesn't matter if they promise its the only/last/whatever cutoff, or it was for performance only, or whatever..
People in your network will pick you up and refer you / hire you on at the next gig.
My prior employer just did a wave of deep cuts and the stories I heard out of management were pretty crazy. Directory level people were basically given an hour to cut $X Million off their people budget from their directs and all their skip level staff. They then begin laying them off the same day. This was not a well planned or thought out process. So obviously the people I saw getting laid off were a mix of underperformerss, great-but-expensive, random personal grudges from the director, and unfortunately biased towards a lot of "lifers" who'd been there a long time.
Excellent advice. Time invested in cultivating your relationships and network is invaluable for generating opportunities. If people have a good experience working with you and understand what you are capable of, they will bring opportunities to your door throughout your career.
It's also more genuine too.
I have ex-coworker friends I've gotten regular drinks/meals with for close to 20 years now. Our average tenure at any shop meanwhile is 5 years. Who cares what company name is on the door.
You wouldn't catch me dead at any sort of company sponsored drinks/social thing.
I would also observe that some of the people most slavishly "living the brand", reposting stuff on LinkedIn, joining all the work social groups, etc.. were some of the first to get whacked in the last few rounds of layoffs at the old shop.
Which way does the causality go is a good question, but their time would probably have been better spent on having an organic network of people in the industry they genuinely enjoy the company of.
I have ex-coworker friends I've gotten regular drinks/meals with for close to 20 years now. Our average tenure at any shop meanwhile is 5 years. Who cares what company name is on the door.
You wouldn't catch me dead at any sort of company sponsored drinks/social thing.
I would also observe that some of the people most slavishly "living the brand", reposting stuff on LinkedIn, joining all the work social groups, etc.. were some of the first to get whacked in the last few rounds of layoffs at the old shop.
Which way does the causality go is a good question, but their time would probably have been better spent on having an organic network of people in the industry they genuinely enjoy the company of.
the overall tone and content of your post really reminded me of this song
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WngY-xti0lo
""Never get invested emotionally.""
Second this, because it so hard. You pour yourself into something, and then management changes, direction changes, and suddenly your baby turns into crap. Your creation probably isn't even put out of its misery, it is allowed to live, but gets tortured, and mangled into some unholy abomination.
It can be very upsetting. I still dwell on a big project, get angry, tense, it is very unhealthy, and also difficult to let go.
Second this, because it so hard. You pour yourself into something, and then management changes, direction changes, and suddenly your baby turns into crap. Your creation probably isn't even put out of its misery, it is allowed to live, but gets tortured, and mangled into some unholy abomination.
It can be very upsetting. I still dwell on a big project, get angry, tense, it is very unhealthy, and also difficult to let go.
I think it is a misconception that if a company does well, it will hire more people and pay more. It is purely a supply and demand situation. The ideal number of employees in a company is zero.
I think that depends on the type of business. If the company sells software then they are more likely to consider good developers as an asset, but if the product is something else that just has a software component, or for software jobs unrelated to the product (accounting, etc), then you are just a cost to be reduced, not an asset.
I’ve been in several different orgs that held a lot of layoffs and they’re sometimes performance related but other times just wrong place, wrong time as others have commented.
I also see advice that states you should change jobs every few years to ensure you continue to grow as a person, ensure salary growth (a real thing in my experience) and to ensure you’re staying relevant. So it seems that we want the option to move on our terms but we don’t think companies should view it the same. Management is also painfully aware that key employees can be ‘one bad meeting away’ from leaving. It seems like if we want stability then we probably need to offer some as well; many in this thread describe the relationship as either transactional or a negotiation and if we really believe it then we should view it from both sides.
Finally, there are large industries where there is significant stability: government, defense, etc. They don’t have FAANG comp, but can pay reasonably well.
I also see advice that states you should change jobs every few years to ensure you continue to grow as a person, ensure salary growth (a real thing in my experience) and to ensure you’re staying relevant. So it seems that we want the option to move on our terms but we don’t think companies should view it the same. Management is also painfully aware that key employees can be ‘one bad meeting away’ from leaving. It seems like if we want stability then we probably need to offer some as well; many in this thread describe the relationship as either transactional or a negotiation and if we really believe it then we should view it from both sides.
Finally, there are large industries where there is significant stability: government, defense, etc. They don’t have FAANG comp, but can pay reasonably well.
> You can't trust anything anyone above you in the management chain tells you
See a recent HN thread: "Signs that it's time to leave a company" _ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38943040
When you see that management people can't be direct, plain-spoken, and authentic with employees, you should realise that there is a cronyarchy... and you are not in the special club.
See a recent HN thread: "Signs that it's time to leave a company" _ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38943040
When you see that management people can't be direct, plain-spoken, and authentic with employees, you should realise that there is a cronyarchy... and you are not in the special club.
> management people can't be direct, plain-spoken, and authentic with employees,
This just corporate culture though. where are you working where that isnt the case?
This just corporate culture though. where are you working where that isnt the case?
AMEN to that brother !
The easiest way to follow this advice is to take it to its logical conclusion and just offer your services on a contracting basis, as a single member LLC or a small partnership. At this point in the US tech industry the relationship between employers and FTEs is so tenuous that there isn’t much difference between the two legal arrangements in terms stability. I’ve kept my best clients much, much longer than my longest tenured FTE jobs.
And there are lots of benefits to being independent legally. Tax benefits aside, the pay is usually much higher, and you can/should take on multiple clients simultaneously. This leaves you less exposed to the whims of a single C-suite, and lets you stack up silly amounts of money when times are good.
And there are lots of benefits to being independent legally. Tax benefits aside, the pay is usually much higher, and you can/should take on multiple clients simultaneously. This leaves you less exposed to the whims of a single C-suite, and lets you stack up silly amounts of money when times are good.
Not going to happen in the US as healthcare is not portable and its too expensive to purchase on your own.
Well, this is one of the reasons you charge more as a freelancer. It's ~$2k/mo for a family; even if I charged exactly the same as my market rate as an FTE, that would be less than the tax benefit I get from operating through a properly set up LLC taxed as an S-corporation. LTD and E&O insurance are other big expenses, but they're not prohibitive given the delta in hourly rate between FTE and C2C.
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There are a lot of hackernewsers frothing at the mouth for layoffs, so excited that all the engineers they don't think are good are gonna get laid off. This right here is the thing they don't understand: companies are typically incompetent when it comes to performance measurement and there's a good chance they'll lay off good people and leave the suck ups who don't do anything. After all, if you're so confident that you're company has been incompetent enough to make a bunch of bad hires and keep them to this point, why would you be confident they'd suddenly get it right this time?
> Take their fucking money, build a big emergency fund, save, invest, and focus on the rest of your life outside of work.
That will lead you back to the same place when the fund runs out.
Invest in yourself instead of Google. Especially as a SWE. It's never been easier to start your own company.
That will lead you back to the same place when the fund runs out.
Invest in yourself instead of Google. Especially as a SWE. It's never been easier to start your own company.
I'm not a libertarian, but since there are many people here tempted by its simplicity and claimed intellectual elegance [1], I want to share "The Libertarian Argument for Unions":
> This essay examines the arguments that many self-proclaimed libertarians make against unionization. It examines whether unions could be expected to arise in a libertarian utopia; whether we could expect them to arise in both the private and the public sector; what limits, if any, we could expect to be imposed on union organizing and behavior; and specifically, whether rules that make the workplace a union shop – that is, a place where all non-management employees are required to be members of the union and contribute to the cost of collective bargaining, or whether rules similar to those embodied in what are typically called “right-to-work” laws are more likely to prevail and be thought consistent with the demands of libertarianism. Finally, I close by examining the relationship between libertarianism and some popular conceptions of liberty a little more closely and argue that, while many people who think of themselves as libertarians believe that maximizing individual negative liberty is fundamental, this is actually a mistake. Libertarianism actually rejects that concept of liberty in favor, I will argue, of a more republican conception, under which liberty is defined as an absence of domination, and a high degree of unionization and this form of liberty are totally compatible.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/in-the-name-of-libe...
[1] I personally reject "elegance" as the driving first principle when weighing ethical and normative theories. There are higher standards to seek: most importantly, a rejection of dogmatism and the embrace of continual learning. Any calcified definition of "elegance" cannot stand the test of time; what is elegant to one generation may be deeply immoral to the next. To be clear, I don't mean to say that notions of ethics must be left ambiguous. I certainly do not defend ethical "systems" which amount to little more than evergreen debates over weighing contradictory principles. Rather, I mean ethical systems must improve as our intelligence and awareness improve.
> This essay examines the arguments that many self-proclaimed libertarians make against unionization. It examines whether unions could be expected to arise in a libertarian utopia; whether we could expect them to arise in both the private and the public sector; what limits, if any, we could expect to be imposed on union organizing and behavior; and specifically, whether rules that make the workplace a union shop – that is, a place where all non-management employees are required to be members of the union and contribute to the cost of collective bargaining, or whether rules similar to those embodied in what are typically called “right-to-work” laws are more likely to prevail and be thought consistent with the demands of libertarianism. Finally, I close by examining the relationship between libertarianism and some popular conceptions of liberty a little more closely and argue that, while many people who think of themselves as libertarians believe that maximizing individual negative liberty is fundamental, this is actually a mistake. Libertarianism actually rejects that concept of liberty in favor, I will argue, of a more republican conception, under which liberty is defined as an absence of domination, and a high degree of unionization and this form of liberty are totally compatible.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/in-the-name-of-libe...
[1] I personally reject "elegance" as the driving first principle when weighing ethical and normative theories. There are higher standards to seek: most importantly, a rejection of dogmatism and the embrace of continual learning. Any calcified definition of "elegance" cannot stand the test of time; what is elegant to one generation may be deeply immoral to the next. To be clear, I don't mean to say that notions of ethics must be left ambiguous. I certainly do not defend ethical "systems" which amount to little more than evergreen debates over weighing contradictory principles. Rather, I mean ethical systems must improve as our intelligence and awareness improve.
Not sure why one would be "attached" to a company. It is a friggin business. You exchange your labor for money. That is all about it. Yes some projects can be exciting and mentally rewarding, especially in the initial stages but never forget that you are not the one running the show. Worry about yourself first. Owners of the company do just that and act accordingly. There are exceptions here and there but never rely on those. Hope for the best prepare for the worst.
I do not perceive transactional relationships as a tragedy. It's the best feedback loop there is.
You achieve the goals that are aligned with the business - business pays you.
I've been a contractor for 10 years and never took a dollar unless the goal is achieved. Ended up getting full-time position as a head of engineering hefty compensation by one of my clients.
You achieve the goals that are aligned with the business - business pays you.
I've been a contractor for 10 years and never took a dollar unless the goal is achieved. Ended up getting full-time position as a head of engineering hefty compensation by one of my clients.
“Your job is NOT safe.”
I read once somewhere that the phrase “my job”/“your job” is one of the biggest oxymorons ever termed in America. You do not possess the job. You do not own it. You never did. There never was a time where anyone did. The “job” is owned by the employer. You may be assigned it. It may be unassigned by the employer. Or reassigned by the employer. Or redefined by the employer. “Your job” never was.
On the flip. It’s your life. Own that. We came up with the ideas of continuous integration, apply that to the relationship. Constantly renegotiate how your life overlaps with your employers job.
I read once somewhere that the phrase “my job”/“your job” is one of the biggest oxymorons ever termed in America. You do not possess the job. You do not own it. You never did. There never was a time where anyone did. The “job” is owned by the employer. You may be assigned it. It may be unassigned by the employer. Or reassigned by the employer. Or redefined by the employer. “Your job” never was.
On the flip. It’s your life. Own that. We came up with the ideas of continuous integration, apply that to the relationship. Constantly renegotiate how your life overlaps with your employers job.
Who else here feels that humans have an innate need to be emotionally invested in their daily lives ?
- goal of your company / values - need to grow - need to perform and be seen as such - need to belong
so often we can read warnings about not falling for this, but it's so common .. it's wired in us it seems
- goal of your company / values - need to grow - need to perform and be seen as such - need to belong
so often we can read warnings about not falling for this, but it's so common .. it's wired in us it seems
The desire for meaning through their work is used against a worker.
https://www.fuqua.duke.edu/duke-fuqua-insights/kay-passion-e...
> The researchers found that people consider it more legitimate to make passionate employees leave family to work on a weekend, work unpaid, and handle unrelated tasks that were not in the job description.
> The team found passion exploitation consistently across eight studies with more than 2,400 total participants. The studies varied in design, in the participants (students, managers, random online samples) and in the kinds of jobs they considered.
> In one study, participants who read that an artist was strongly passionate about his job said it was more legitimate for the boss to exploit the artist than those who read the artist wasn’t as passionate. This finding extended to asking for work far beyond the job description, including leaving a day at the park with family and cleaning the office bathroom.
Study: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30998042/
https://www.fuqua.duke.edu/duke-fuqua-insights/kay-passion-e...
> The researchers found that people consider it more legitimate to make passionate employees leave family to work on a weekend, work unpaid, and handle unrelated tasks that were not in the job description.
> The team found passion exploitation consistently across eight studies with more than 2,400 total participants. The studies varied in design, in the participants (students, managers, random online samples) and in the kinds of jobs they considered.
> In one study, participants who read that an artist was strongly passionate about his job said it was more legitimate for the boss to exploit the artist than those who read the artist wasn’t as passionate. This finding extended to asking for work far beyond the job description, including leaving a day at the park with family and cleaning the office bathroom.
Study: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30998042/
Well most humans do, but psychopaths (and I speak from personal experience) probably do not, and the smarter among them tend to do really well in the American corporate context.
that's true, the economy doesn't reward human needs and the bad ones bubble up above and end up controlling your life..
It is even worse in certain Asian countries. Your entire identity and self-worth is defined by your work.
I'm just glad that I'm being able to completely disconnect from work, when I check out. My tittle means nothing. Where I work means nothing. I do enjoy my co-workers, that's about it.
I'm just glad that I'm being able to completely disconnect from work, when I check out. My tittle means nothing. Where I work means nothing. I do enjoy my co-workers, that's about it.
You should immediately flip the bozo bit in any leader who tells you that layoffs are done and you don't need to worry. That is a bullshit statement that no manager with any experience would ever say. It's so bad, I honestly question if that's what they actually said and I have no basis other than experience to believe that!
Time to unionize.
> Never get invested emotionally.
And yet, like in love, the trick is to love again.
Sure, be wise and have high standards about money. But there are some good entrepreneurs here. I was employee #250, it went IPO, became a millionaire. And now that I’ve created a startup, I try to pay it forward.
Large corporations, of course no.
And yet, like in love, the trick is to love again.
Sure, be wise and have high standards about money. But there are some good entrepreneurs here. I was employee #250, it went IPO, became a millionaire. And now that I’ve created a startup, I try to pay it forward.
Large corporations, of course no.
Look, all sentences in any language implicitly start with or end with the words: "For now." The sooner you incorporate that into your beliefs, the better off you will be. It isn't about "trust." Trust is conditional and blind trust in statements that cannot be true under all circumstances is something you just need to grow out of; circumstances change and intents change.
As you gain experience, you get really good at parsing and identifying axes of flexibility in statements from the power structure. In general, professional managers in a power structure will always distort or mislead with any statements they make to turn any announcement into a steering opportunity. This is just how it is and it's really not about "trust", it's about manipulation.
Manipulation is _everywhere_ in the tech companies. Nothing is more amazing to me than an experience I had early on that woke me up: the day after I attended a meeting about how the company was working on a project that was incredibly unethical (think google's china search engine-level unethical or worse, like Nokia's building anti-dissident features into their 3g networking for Iran), I attended a company all hands where the entire message from every exec, including those that were involved, was about how we were a force for free speech, freedom, etc. I already knew but it was stark.
They also engage in constant attempts to blur things. Google, in particular, spends a lot of money to help muddy the job-vs-personal waters because it gives them power. For their first decade and a half, at least, they ran the whole company like college - extracurricular activities, etc. This wasn't just because the founders had no professional experience prior, it was strategic to make it very hard for people to leave (and when they started leaving for FB, that was to another place that was similar).
So forget about "trust" - start thinking in terms of "what is this person not saying, what is this person trying to imply without putting it in words, what flexibility are they reserving for themselves with their statements" etc.
As you gain experience, you get really good at parsing and identifying axes of flexibility in statements from the power structure. In general, professional managers in a power structure will always distort or mislead with any statements they make to turn any announcement into a steering opportunity. This is just how it is and it's really not about "trust", it's about manipulation.
Manipulation is _everywhere_ in the tech companies. Nothing is more amazing to me than an experience I had early on that woke me up: the day after I attended a meeting about how the company was working on a project that was incredibly unethical (think google's china search engine-level unethical or worse, like Nokia's building anti-dissident features into their 3g networking for Iran), I attended a company all hands where the entire message from every exec, including those that were involved, was about how we were a force for free speech, freedom, etc. I already knew but it was stark.
They also engage in constant attempts to blur things. Google, in particular, spends a lot of money to help muddy the job-vs-personal waters because it gives them power. For their first decade and a half, at least, they ran the whole company like college - extracurricular activities, etc. This wasn't just because the founders had no professional experience prior, it was strategic to make it very hard for people to leave (and when they started leaving for FB, that was to another place that was similar).
So forget about "trust" - start thinking in terms of "what is this person not saying, what is this person trying to imply without putting it in words, what flexibility are they reserving for themselves with their statements" etc.
>Your job is NOT safe.
Maybe your job(s).
But there are certainly companies out there that actually care about the welfare of their employees. Usually family owned and such.
That's where I choose to work and they have always taken care of my needs and listened to me.
I never really understood why people have such a desire to work for these big companies that don't care about you. I guess it's just different strokes...
Maybe your job(s).
But there are certainly companies out there that actually care about the welfare of their employees. Usually family owned and such.
That's where I choose to work and they have always taken care of my needs and listened to me.
I never really understood why people have such a desire to work for these big companies that don't care about you. I guess it's just different strokes...
I definitely try to pick jobs based on vibe, but that's still not 100% safe. I adore my current employer. Best place I've ever worked. But we're contractors, and my team's contract just ended unexpectedly. I trust they respect me enough to rotate me to another team, but I gotta sweat bullets and send out résumés nonetheless.
> my team's contract just ended unexpectedly.
Is it really a contract if it can end unexpectedly? I know it is, but really the original purpose of a contract is to set the terms and conditions, so nothing was surprise when it happened.
We really need a better term for these one sided work agreements.
Is it really a contract if it can end unexpectedly? I know it is, but really the original purpose of a contract is to set the terms and conditions, so nothing was surprise when it happened.
We really need a better term for these one sided work agreements.
often they have buyout clauses and such for this kind of termination. Its very common.
The cost of the contract being one cost, so when you think about cost of managing the contract and contracts etc. severing it via a payout can be cheaper, and is often sudden to the contractors unfortunately.
The cost of the contract being one cost, so when you think about cost of managing the contract and contracts etc. severing it via a payout can be cheaper, and is often sudden to the contractors unfortunately.
Yeah, places that I'm used to working do things like: when covid hit and work dried up, the company told employees to go out and find charity work and the company would pay your full salary to do the charity work.
They share in the profits with the employees and such.
I mean sure, it's not 100% a save job. If something truly terrible happened and the company went bankrupt etc, then of course you can still lose your job.
But no time have I ever seen or felt like they would ever lay off people unless the company literally couldn't go on to survive some other way.
They share in the profits with the employees and such.
I mean sure, it's not 100% a save job. If something truly terrible happened and the company went bankrupt etc, then of course you can still lose your job.
But no time have I ever seen or felt like they would ever lay off people unless the company literally couldn't go on to survive some other way.
Cause they pay 2-3x as much, that’s why.
I worked at such a place right out of college. Always claiming we were family and that they would take care of their workers. Then covid happened, they lost some money, and laid off 25% of their employees, including people who had been there 10+ years. Now I work at a big company and make 3x as much with similar workloads. Glad I learned early on that no company is actually a family and will put your needs above the needs of the company!
>Glad I learned early on that no company is actually a family and will put your needs above the needs of the company!
You learned that 1 company isn't a family company and puts your needs above the company...
When covid hit and work dried up where I work, the company told employees to go out and find charity work and the company paid our full salary to do the charity work.
Just one example of the way they think and act. I've been there 15 years and never seen a single instance or case that would make me believe they would act any other way.
They pay plenty fair and I make more than I know what to do with for myself.
You learned that 1 company isn't a family company and puts your needs above the company...
When covid hit and work dried up where I work, the company told employees to go out and find charity work and the company paid our full salary to do the charity work.
Just one example of the way they think and act. I've been there 15 years and never seen a single instance or case that would make me believe they would act any other way.
They pay plenty fair and I make more than I know what to do with for myself.
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Gee if only there were a way to organize labor so we have more collective protections.... i Wonder if any sv startup has thought of that?
My ex-firm (an healthtech company in the US) is doing well.
I was a manager there. I was demoted while my newborn was in the NICU (neonatal ICU) at the beginning of my paternity leave. And my position was eliminated a few weeks after I came back to work. As a condition of getting severance, I can't officially talk about it.
That is the culture of tech companies today.
I was a manager there. I was demoted while my newborn was in the NICU (neonatal ICU) at the beginning of my paternity leave. And my position was eliminated a few weeks after I came back to work. As a condition of getting severance, I can't officially talk about it.
That is the culture of tech companies today.
Managers will never be honest. Managers are modern practitioners of Taylorism(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_management). They have to see you as a number and a resource in order to do their jobs and fit in the hierarchy. Thats why you never trust them and always reverse manage them.
> SWEs in particularly no longer live in a world where you can expect to have a rewarding career working for >=5 years at any given firm
"no longer" -> this might be the time to seriously talk about unionization. Programmers used to have a huge advantage at the bargaining table, going in as an individual. If parent is correct (I tend to agree) these days are over and they're not coming back. In that case, collective bargaining promises better results.
I see a lot more unionization efforts in software lately. Maybe it's just my own confirmation bias but maybe it's just that others are coming to the same conclusions.
"no longer" -> this might be the time to seriously talk about unionization. Programmers used to have a huge advantage at the bargaining table, going in as an individual. If parent is correct (I tend to agree) these days are over and they're not coming back. In that case, collective bargaining promises better results.
I see a lot more unionization efforts in software lately. Maybe it's just my own confirmation bias but maybe it's just that others are coming to the same conclusions.
> People who made no sense.
My company made some bad decisions and had two rounds of layoffs as a result. I was cut in the first round. My boss is also a friend and confirmed over beer that the highest paid of us were the first to go.
I had negotiated higher pay based on past experience when I joined. So it goes.
My company made some bad decisions and had two rounds of layoffs as a result. I was cut in the first round. My boss is also a friend and confirmed over beer that the highest paid of us were the first to go.
I had negotiated higher pay based on past experience when I joined. So it goes.
Unless you’re truly special, The days of multi hundred thousand total comp packages are over - you’d better learn to live as though you’re on a ~175k salary, and if that’s too low, start taking steps on cutting NOW
See also the other hiring post on todays HN front page that’s a Bay Area startup but only hiring for South America for engineering
See also the other hiring post on todays HN front page that’s a Bay Area startup but only hiring for South America for engineering
I have never been a cynic until recently.
"Maybe a recession is forthcoming?" Better 'can a bunch of people just in case it happens to be so.
"Maybe LLMs will reduce programming needs?" Better 'can a bunch of people just in case it happens to be so.
I can adapt to an increased level of cynicism, even to the point it informs my concrete career decisions.
But this level of bad faith itself must do some damage to the economy, mustn't it? There must be some concrete value that would be generated by increasing good faith between employers and employees, musn't there be?
"Maybe a recession is forthcoming?" Better 'can a bunch of people just in case it happens to be so.
"Maybe LLMs will reduce programming needs?" Better 'can a bunch of people just in case it happens to be so.
I can adapt to an increased level of cynicism, even to the point it informs my concrete career decisions.
But this level of bad faith itself must do some damage to the economy, mustn't it? There must be some concrete value that would be generated by increasing good faith between employers and employees, musn't there be?
Megacorps have international plans. Theyre eying the Asian market and surrounding areas planning to be an integral part of converting their society to modernism. Big tech is literally creating their customers via corporate imperialism.
I haven't reached the 5 year mark in my entire career. I have been working in the software industry over 30 years.
>> You can't trust anything anyone above you in the management chain tells you. Not one thing. Not ever.
This seems like a really negative and self-damaging perspective. I'm the direct manager for 14 people with whom I have hard-won relationships, built on trust and caring over long periods of time. We're not friends or family, but I honestly care about them. I share as much as I can, and try to include my confidence and assessment of what I share. If they follow your advice and unequivocally discount it all, I think they're actually in an even WORSE situation. Regardless, what a sad, scary way to live.
This seems like a really negative and self-damaging perspective. I'm the direct manager for 14 people with whom I have hard-won relationships, built on trust and caring over long periods of time. We're not friends or family, but I honestly care about them. I share as much as I can, and try to include my confidence and assessment of what I share. If they follow your advice and unequivocally discount it all, I think they're actually in an even WORSE situation. Regardless, what a sad, scary way to live.
I've had great relationships with managers like you. And yet had that sudden 1-1 meeting where I was told "your services are no longer needed". In one case, there wasn't even a face-to-face meeting, or any explanation for termination. I got a call from my recruiter, and my corporate access was cut off precisely at 5pm.
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AI has increased productivity which might be a reason for it
AI has increased the perception of productivity to unwitting managers, which is a dangerous pit to be falling into.
It's like a lot of those fabled 10x engineers that I've run into over the years; they may seem like they're incredibly productive and managers love them, but in reality their work is so riddled with issues and rushed half-baked ideas, that they end up costing the other engineers on the team 10x the amount of their time to review and fix it all. And it's those other engineers who do all of the invaluable but underappreciated cleanup work who are getting the boot right now.
It's like a lot of those fabled 10x engineers that I've run into over the years; they may seem like they're incredibly productive and managers love them, but in reality their work is so riddled with issues and rushed half-baked ideas, that they end up costing the other engineers on the team 10x the amount of their time to review and fix it all. And it's those other engineers who do all of the invaluable but underappreciated cleanup work who are getting the boot right now.
Is your assertion that 10x engineers don’t exist? Because I assure you that is false, regardless what your personal experiences may be.
Oh I'm sure they exist, that's why I said "a lot", not "all". My point is more about how managers perceive the employees they manage. They all want to believe that they found the goose that lays the golden eggs, but in reality so many perceived rockstar engineers are just over-confident or over-eager people mass producing garbage.
That's the important parallel with using AI in production: on the surface it may seem like the solution to all productivity problems, but in reality it still takes a lot of human brainpower to review, assess, fix and maintain whatever the AI model spits out. Especially since generative AIs like to present their work with supreme confidence, and it's getting increasingly hard to separate the chaff from the wheat.
That's the important parallel with using AI in production: on the surface it may seem like the solution to all productivity problems, but in reality it still takes a lot of human brainpower to review, assess, fix and maintain whatever the AI model spits out. Especially since generative AIs like to present their work with supreme confidence, and it's getting increasingly hard to separate the chaff from the wheat.
I think a sizeable % of engineers can be 10x-ers as ICs / leads - but it's kind of an "in the zone" thing, when they're experienced in the stack and the product, can navigate the org, are motivated and aren't held back by issues with team or management (or personal issues etc).
But it's like growing plants, in the sense that it only takes one crucial element to be missing to limit growth (or "output").
I've met a few ppl who were _reliable_ 10xers (could navigate a much wider range of techs / domains / situations than others) but I've seen even the best crash and burn at times when the circumstances aren't right.
But it's like growing plants, in the sense that it only takes one crucial element to be missing to limit growth (or "output").
I've met a few ppl who were _reliable_ 10xers (could navigate a much wider range of techs / domains / situations than others) but I've seen even the best crash and burn at times when the circumstances aren't right.
There are also 100x engineers and probably even some 1000x+ engineers.
These are the kind of people who cook up something like git when they take a one year sabbatical from their main project.
Or even hardware people like Jim Keller.
10x engineers are plentiful if you define the median engineer as 1x. There are a LOT of mediocre engineers out there to draw the median down.
These are the kind of people who cook up something like git when they take a one year sabbatical from their main project.
Or even hardware people like Jim Keller.
10x engineers are plentiful if you define the median engineer as 1x. There are a LOT of mediocre engineers out there to draw the median down.
Widespread use of tools like Copilot hasn’t been happening for long enough for you to draw these generalisations with an appropriate degree of confidence. This just comes across as you misrepresenting your personally-aligned hypothetical as reality.
I have come to the conclusion that a lot of the 10x developer stuff is basically down to the 10x person being the original author of the code.
Every other developer on the project has to do at least 3 times as much work, they have to read through the original code and try and understand what the original person was thinking of when writing it before even getting to solving the problem at hand.
A true 10x developer would write code good enough that every other developer could maintain it as easily as the original author.
Every other developer on the project has to do at least 3 times as much work, they have to read through the original code and try and understand what the original person was thinking of when writing it before even getting to solving the problem at hand.
A true 10x developer would write code good enough that every other developer could maintain it as easily as the original author.
I feel I am one of those developers that codes 100 times faster since ai tools came out. I was not slow before by the way. But now I can take a well defined interface and class example, ask gpt4 for a new well defined variant, and out it comes. one tweak and a test later its done.
Some things that would have taken me weeks take days. And some things that used to take days take 1-3 hours.
Novel work can't yet be automated. But... most of the work I do is not novel, and theres files and files of preexisting context for copilot to consume.
As for this effect being widespread and noticed enough to be related to the firing. I dont think its the case.
The people I work with don't seem to get nearly as much out of the tools as I do, and not for lack of trying. They're constantly using the tools too. Even if companies are considerably more productice with the tools, I do not think management would have been attuned enough to performance and costd to have instigated layoffs from it.
Some things that would have taken me weeks take days. And some things that used to take days take 1-3 hours.
Novel work can't yet be automated. But... most of the work I do is not novel, and theres files and files of preexisting context for copilot to consume.
As for this effect being widespread and noticed enough to be related to the firing. I dont think its the case.
The people I work with don't seem to get nearly as much out of the tools as I do, and not for lack of trying. They're constantly using the tools too. Even if companies are considerably more productice with the tools, I do not think management would have been attuned enough to performance and costd to have instigated layoffs from it.
You’re benchmarking yourself based on your own experience of course. Not to say this is horribly wrong but yeah, doesn’t tell the rest of us much about productivity.
Like saying that you run faster after a cup of coffee, cool ?
Like saying that you run faster after a cup of coffee, cool ?
No this is not a psychological trick.
Much of what I've done with ai tools I have had to do before and struggled over days. I was a python dev mostly but I had cases at work where I needed to write java, c, or c++. The genicam compliant industrial camera nonsense it got me through in a few hours was insane. And using a fuzzy logic library. I did not have to spend tons of time reading the documentation, struggling with cmake, or figuring out how to install and link dlls or even syntax for that matter. I can start to type a comment of a high level description of a small codeblock and copilot spits it out. This works in any language.
It isnt that it speeds up every single operation I do. When I get in the zone I toggle it off. But 80% of the time i hit a snag it instantly short circuits me through the issue. I can and do ask follow up questions about how the thing works so the next time I come across it it wont even be a snag. So I have had slowly compounding speed boosts from it for two years. I code faster with it also because it taught me things, and I have learned when to turn it off (often)
Much of what I've done with ai tools I have had to do before and struggled over days. I was a python dev mostly but I had cases at work where I needed to write java, c, or c++. The genicam compliant industrial camera nonsense it got me through in a few hours was insane. And using a fuzzy logic library. I did not have to spend tons of time reading the documentation, struggling with cmake, or figuring out how to install and link dlls or even syntax for that matter. I can start to type a comment of a high level description of a small codeblock and copilot spits it out. This works in any language.
It isnt that it speeds up every single operation I do. When I get in the zone I toggle it off. But 80% of the time i hit a snag it instantly short circuits me through the issue. I can and do ask follow up questions about how the thing works so the next time I come across it it wont even be a snag. So I have had slowly compounding speed boosts from it for two years. I code faster with it also because it taught me things, and I have learned when to turn it off (often)
How much better do you find ChatGPT 4 compared to the free version?
It's far superior.
The free version is essentially worthless. Gpt4 is an incredible tool I have learned so much from.
It's starting to replace some low-level jobs, like copywriting and art-based positions. For development, the only thing I've found it good for is giving me example usage for custom Apis and other things that I can't just Google/download.
It's marginally better than Stackoverflow (which I've only ever used to give me an idea that I then turn into my own code, usually written from scratch, because most code is littered with security vulnerabilities).
It's a long way from replacing developers or increasing productivity on a measurable level. It's also like building your business on quick sand. Some feature you use today might be put behind a higher pay-tier (or removed) at any time.
It's marginally better than Stackoverflow (which I've only ever used to give me an idea that I then turn into my own code, usually written from scratch, because most code is littered with security vulnerabilities).
It's a long way from replacing developers or increasing productivity on a measurable level. It's also like building your business on quick sand. Some feature you use today might be put behind a higher pay-tier (or removed) at any time.
I have only used the free version of ChatGPT and I'll admit that it has been helpful, but only for maybe 50% of the stuff In ask it.
Maybe 15% of the time it has been a hindrance by making up stuff. It's basically a faster version of Stack Overflow / web search.
A lot of IT work is maintenance work, and it knows nothing about those systems. It's good for me for JavaScript as I spend 80% of my time on the backend. I know enough JavaScript to debug other peoples work, or to add some simple jQuery / vanilla JS to an HTML page (which is all that is needed in the majority of cases), but if I was to build a React App from scratch, it would likely look like beginner level stuff.
Has anyone had experience with the paid version of ChatGPT? How does it compare?
Maybe 15% of the time it has been a hindrance by making up stuff. It's basically a faster version of Stack Overflow / web search.
A lot of IT work is maintenance work, and it knows nothing about those systems. It's good for me for JavaScript as I spend 80% of my time on the backend. I know enough JavaScript to debug other peoples work, or to add some simple jQuery / vanilla JS to an HTML page (which is all that is needed in the majority of cases), but if I was to build a React App from scratch, it would likely look like beginner level stuff.
Has anyone had experience with the paid version of ChatGPT? How does it compare?
Anything to back this up outside of tweets from "influencers" that tell you they are 100x more productive?
Well, hopefully there's a silver lining to all this: Talented and underappreciated engineers (or those just caught in the crossfire of shitty policies) will go on and start new, more exciting companies.
Then they will realize that the media has been fully monopolized and can't find get any users and that it's not so easy outside of the cushy confines of Big Tech.
And then they will realize that the people complaining about big tech monopolies and their rent seeking behaviour were maybe not so crazy after all.
Isn't Google the largest DNC donor? Pretty sure we can trust them if so
I still haven't gotten over the fact that most of these corporate employees think that the majority of the population literally became crazy over the past few years.
They must think we all got long COVID with brain damage and that the vaccines protected them from this.
They must think we all got long COVID with brain damage and that the vaccines protected them from this.
> and start new, more exciting companies
Which what money?
With these interest rates and Section 174, it's pretty rough out there to start one as compared to ~6 years ago.
Which what money?
With these interest rates and Section 174, it's pretty rough out there to start one as compared to ~6 years ago.
Its an inevitability. As large companies focus on profitability of existing business lines, small companies entertaining risk will discover new markets. High growth in new markets (with fewer competing startups, easier hiring, and institutional blind spots) will make investment attractive -even in a high rate environment. Of course each dollar of fundraising will be hard earned - requiring those startups to have a much higher bar for adding real value and sustainable business model. This cycles repeats itself across history.
6 years ago, with cheap money and everyone eager to start new firms makes success more of a lottery than a systematized effort. I'd rather be a startup founder raised on lean capital with less of a crowded marketplace.
6 years ago, with cheap money and everyone eager to start new firms makes success more of a lottery than a systematized effort. I'd rather be a startup founder raised on lean capital with less of a crowded marketplace.
Still young without dependents? Great.
Have a family and esp these employees in high CoL cities? Very tough.
Speaking from experience. Been there done that.
"We'll have all this new innovation via new startups now!" is such a feel good sentiment to layoffs but in reality is nowhere close to a solution for the affected employees
Have a family and esp these employees in high CoL cities? Very tough.
Speaking from experience. Been there done that.
"We'll have all this new innovation via new startups now!" is such a feel good sentiment to layoffs but in reality is nowhere close to a solution for the affected employees
The masks have finally fallen.
Vote with your labor and be willing to change immediately jobs (that is why remote is great). If you did not like what the manager said in a random meeting quit on the spot, find another job online. No more notice courtesies.
It's gonna be great.
Vote with your labor and be willing to change immediately jobs (that is why remote is great). If you did not like what the manager said in a random meeting quit on the spot, find another job online. No more notice courtesies.
It's gonna be great.
There's going to be no tech jobs in America is what's going to happen. That's where this is headed.
Yeah this is what Amazon said about warehouse employees and now they have to pay them $25 per hour and offer free tuition programs in addition to fat sign up bonuses.
Workers have the power. They just need to remember it.
Workers have the power. They just need to remember it.
Warehouses have locality.
Digital jobs dont.
Digital jobs dont.
I don't see OpenAI hiring for the digital jobs of engineering and research in Slovakia or Thailand. Weird, they probably missed the memo.
Open AI pays $800,000 a year salary for highly specialized machine learning engineers.
Way different than the bread and butter jobs most of the tech industry consists of.
Open AI has maybe a thousand jobs out of millions of jobs in the tech industry. I wouldn't say its a good sample.
Way different than the bread and butter jobs most of the tech industry consists of.
Open AI has maybe a thousand jobs out of millions of jobs in the tech industry. I wouldn't say its a good sample.
Why? You think they'll outsource work to foreign countries?
They have already started outsourcing to Canada at 60% of the cost.
One of my clients outsources all large projects to a company in Ukraine (The HQ is there, but the developers are in other parts of Europe). The time zone isn't too bad, their English/communication is nearly perfect, and it's at a fraction of the cost here in the US.
A large year-long project that I was the tech lead on that involved moving our legacy systems to a brand-new system (this includes all of the coding, etc) cost the company around $90,000. There were 10 devs on staff.
One of my clients outsources all large projects to a company in Ukraine (The HQ is there, but the developers are in other parts of Europe). The time zone isn't too bad, their English/communication is nearly perfect, and it's at a fraction of the cost here in the US.
A large year-long project that I was the tech lead on that involved moving our legacy systems to a brand-new system (this includes all of the coding, etc) cost the company around $90,000. There were 10 devs on staff.
> A large year-long project that I was the tech lead on that involved moving our legacy systems to a brand-new system (this includes all of the coding, etc) cost the company around $90,000. There were 10 devs on staff.
Sounds like complete BS. Even just taking in salaries, that's $9K/year/dev - even living in Ukraine you would make more than that. If you've moved out of the country and are in Poland for example, that's not a livable wage.
Sounds like complete BS. Even just taking in salaries, that's $9K/year/dev - even living in Ukraine you would make more than that. If you've moved out of the country and are in Poland for example, that's not a livable wage.
They were probably not full time on that project. Since it's a contracting company, contractors can be assigned to many projects.
I Oversee the project and can see all invoices from the contracting company. Even so, This is the cost of one developer in the US, which would never be able to complete this project in a year.
9k a year in Ukraine is entirely possible for dev work. Especially if you are outside the main city. Devs in Ukraine often juggle multiple projects. It’s not uncommon to work 2-3 projects at a time.
So you want us to believe that the same managers who could not
manage remote US employees and started crying for return to office will suddenly be able to run a tight ship with overseas freelancers?
Boy, they are in for a treat.
Boy, they are in for a treat.
I think you underestimate just how good overseas talent is now…
The problem isn't how good overseas talent is (I worked with Avanade developers from Poland and they are excellent, need zero ramp up time) but rather is our own management good enough to work with them if management can't even work with remote people in the same time zone.
Remember, Europe culture is very different. There are laws there and you can't "manage by crisis" when your team has multiple people in Europe. Basically, this forces management to actually do its job instead of relying on Venkat (who is on an H1B visa and can't fight back) to be unofficially on call 24/7.
Remember, Europe culture is very different. There are laws there and you can't "manage by crisis" when your team has multiple people in Europe. Basically, this forces management to actually do its job instead of relying on Venkat (who is on an H1B visa and can't fight back) to be unofficially on call 24/7.
Google Scroogles Xooglers
Does this mean my phone will stop trying to interrupt and "assist" me despite disabling Google Assistant?
I'm surprised to see so many comments here taking layoffs personally, or talking about how layoffs are stupid.
Layoffs are not personal, and the corollary to that is that you should never treat your company as a friend. It's a company trying to maximize value.
Also, layoffs do work. Almost every large, successful company has done them at some stage. They are an expected, and necessary, part of operating a company and responding to changing market conditions.
Yes, it sucks. They are not nice. But it's expected and it's helpful to remember that.
Layoffs are not personal, and the corollary to that is that you should never treat your company as a friend. It's a company trying to maximize value.
Also, layoffs do work. Almost every large, successful company has done them at some stage. They are an expected, and necessary, part of operating a company and responding to changing market conditions.
Yes, it sucks. They are not nice. But it's expected and it's helpful to remember that.
When a company has embedded itself so deeply in public life - globally - it's reasonable to have strong feelings about its actions.
When we say layoffs work, are we considering the way the same companies overhired just a few years ago, harming the rest of the employment market? Do we remember this in later discussions when we treat these companies as prescient hiveminds, in spite of them using overtuned bang-bang control for their hiring? Do we remember it in discussions about workers rights and the things we tie to employment in the naive assumption that only those who deserve it lose their jobs?
When we say layoffs work, are we considering the way the same companies overhired just a few years ago, harming the rest of the employment market? Do we remember this in later discussions when we treat these companies as prescient hiveminds, in spite of them using overtuned bang-bang control for their hiring? Do we remember it in discussions about workers rights and the things we tie to employment in the naive assumption that only those who deserve it lose their jobs?
I find it a bit hilarious that programmers feel entitled being employed for life in one company. Did you ever consider finishing the project? Getting it done and delivered?
My first paid job as a programmer was like that. We made an exam software for university, a complete package covering the process from authoring test questions to making reports.
We made it in 6 months and it was done. Finished. Working. There was some maintenance/improvement, but that was a separate deal. We did not expect university to employ us for life to maintain it.
Shouldn't that be a norm?
Like, yeah, obviously Google has a lot of projects, so they can allocate programmers to do something different after something is done. But they didn't promise employment for life, did they?
Obviously, people like being securely employed. But, perhaps, that should be addressed at societal level - e.g. unemployment benefits.
My first paid job as a programmer was like that. We made an exam software for university, a complete package covering the process from authoring test questions to making reports.
We made it in 6 months and it was done. Finished. Working. There was some maintenance/improvement, but that was a separate deal. We did not expect university to employ us for life to maintain it.
Shouldn't that be a norm?
Like, yeah, obviously Google has a lot of projects, so they can allocate programmers to do something different after something is done. But they didn't promise employment for life, did they?
Obviously, people like being securely employed. But, perhaps, that should be addressed at societal level - e.g. unemployment benefits.
You’re suggesting that Microsoft should be done with Windows by now, are you?
If only. Circa windows 7 era would have been a perfect time, just keep adding security updates and we'd be golden.
I'm suggesting that it's up to Microsoft management to decide what software they want to develop, and programmers should expect they are hired to develop a product. Downsizing should be considered a norm.
People came to assume that a total comp >$100k is a norm, but it's really not.
E.g. engineer working on research projects for INRIA in France might get up to $3000 gross a month. (And you might get better job security in France but it comes with a bit of total comp hit, as you see.)
That's the reality for most people on Earth. Salary >$100k should be considered an insane arb opportunity, not a stable job expectation.
Microsoft makes a shitload of money selling Windows to billions of people, and is able to pay a lot to devs? OK, good for those devs. But would that last? Uncertain.
People came to assume that a total comp >$100k is a norm, but it's really not.
E.g. engineer working on research projects for INRIA in France might get up to $3000 gross a month. (And you might get better job security in France but it comes with a bit of total comp hit, as you see.)
That's the reality for most people on Earth. Salary >$100k should be considered an insane arb opportunity, not a stable job expectation.
Microsoft makes a shitload of money selling Windows to billions of people, and is able to pay a lot to devs? OK, good for those devs. But would that last? Uncertain.
> People came to assume that a total comp >$100k is a norm, but it's really not….
Microsoft makes a shitload of money
Who should receive the shitload of money that these companies make?
Who should receive the shitload of money that these companies make?
Under capitalism, investors.
Under UBI, you and I.
Under UBI, you and I.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_and_demand
These companies make a lot of money because of supply & demand. They pay large salaries because of supply & demand. They have layoffs because of supply & demand.
It's free market. Stop complaining unless you can propose something better.
These companies make a lot of money because of supply & demand. They pay large salaries because of supply & demand. They have layoffs because of supply & demand.
It's free market. Stop complaining unless you can propose something better.
>It's a free market
"OK Google, what's a patent?"
"OK Google, what's a patent?"
You are describing contract work... maybe look into it if you like it other people don't and thats also ok.
> Shouldn't that be a norm?
When guilds/unions are stronger, then project only work is fine to organize around.
When guilds/unions are stronger, then project only work is fine to organize around.
>But, perhaps, that should be addressed at societal level - e.g. unemployment benefits.
Google lobby.
Google lobby.
I’m surprised to see even one comment that appears to be arguing that a layoff cannot be stupid or have a negative effect on the company value.
"Layoffs do work" will require a little bit of proper evidence. With long-term effects if possible.
Well, it worked for the Telecom's industry.
yup.
yup.
I think what your parent meant was that, instead of just asserting that something is true, you provide some peer reviewed research or something like that which supports your assertion. For example, you might want to include a link to some article pointing to research which supports your assertion. For example, you can add something like
https://hbr.org/2022/12/what-companies-still-get-wrong-about...
to your comment. Of course, this link points to two decades of research showing that your assertion is wrong, so you probably don't want to include this specific link in your comment, but you get the idea I hope.
https://hbr.org/2022/12/what-companies-still-get-wrong-about...
to your comment. Of course, this link points to two decades of research showing that your assertion is wrong, so you probably don't want to include this specific link in your comment, but you get the idea I hope.
>Of course, this link points to two decades of research showing that your assertion is wrong, so you probably don't want to include this specific link in your comment, but you get the idea I hope.
I think that the state of the telecoms industry will let you infer that I was being sarcastic and will also provide quite strong evidence that the study you cite is correct!
I think that the state of the telecoms industry will let you infer that I was being sarcastic and will also provide quite strong evidence that the study you cite is correct!
Oh my goodness, someone does sarcasm and I don't get it, story of my life! I'm sorry for wrongly inferring your position.
Mass layoffs work when there was over-hiring (management's fault) or there was a big revenue downturn (market forces). This time it was because of over-hiring at the COVID mania. People left safer jobs to join FAANGs tempted with higher salaries and a prospect of improving their CV. And now they are dumped back into the toughest tech jobs market in 20 years.
This is totally a fault of management and none of them are losing their jobs! People have a good reason to be pissed off.
This is totally a fault of management and none of them are losing their jobs! People have a good reason to be pissed off.
I really don't agree with this line of thinking.
> Mass layoffs work when there was over-hiring
Ok, let's define "over-hiring".
Google...
had 99k employees in 2018, 119k in 2019, 135k in 2020, 156k in 2021, 190k in 2022, 174k in 2023.
and made $136b in 2018, $161b in 2019, $182b in 2020, $257b in 2021, $282b in 2022, $297b in 2023.
They basically doubled their headcount to double their revenue. How is that over-hiring??? Each person added as much revenue as the ones before them.
Over-hiring would have been if post-Covid business would have dropped, which, guess what, did NOT happen for FAANG. It was, in the worst case scenario, stable (even then, slightly growing).
> Mass layoffs work when there was over-hiring
Ok, let's define "over-hiring".
Google...
had 99k employees in 2018, 119k in 2019, 135k in 2020, 156k in 2021, 190k in 2022, 174k in 2023.
and made $136b in 2018, $161b in 2019, $182b in 2020, $257b in 2021, $282b in 2022, $297b in 2023.
They basically doubled their headcount to double their revenue. How is that over-hiring??? Each person added as much revenue as the ones before them.
Over-hiring would have been if post-Covid business would have dropped, which, guess what, did NOT happen for FAANG. It was, in the worst case scenario, stable (even then, slightly growing).
Don't forget there are also hundreds of thousands of external people. Bodies bought from different vendors, doing pretty much the same job as internals but with lower pay and almost no benefits.
They've been cut a lot last year, but no news about it.
Also there are cuts in high cost of living locations. Why to keep people in California if you can hire in Warsaw and pay x0.25 of US rate there?
They've been cut a lot last year, but no news about it.
Also there are cuts in high cost of living locations. Why to keep people in California if you can hire in Warsaw and pay x0.25 of US rate there?
Is there a source for higher cost locations being affected more than lower cost ones? I didn't get that impression.
I suspect that more of these layoffs happen in the US, both because it's the most expensive location, has the most staff and has the least friendly redundancy laws (for employers, that is)
It's wage suppression.
>"And now they are dumped back into the toughest tech jobs market in 20 years."
Is this the consensus then that is really rough out there right now? I know that big tech has been hit hard the last year but is the outlook equally bad for startups, enterprise etc. as well?
Is this the consensus then that is really rough out there right now? I know that big tech has been hit hard the last year but is the outlook equally bad for startups, enterprise etc. as well?
Yeah, layoffs is possibly the least personal way to get fired.
I remember a recruiter recommending a person who was laid off to me: "Oh, he was was part of a layoff, it's not like he was fired or something".
Of course it still absolutely sucks to be laid off, but everyone knows there isn't much rhyme or reason to them other than "companies want money".
I remember a recruiter recommending a person who was laid off to me: "Oh, he was was part of a layoff, it's not like he was fired or something".
Of course it still absolutely sucks to be laid off, but everyone knows there isn't much rhyme or reason to them other than "companies want money".
We should be clear that this isn’t a uniformly held attitude. Before the recent layoff wave started in late 2022, losing your job, even for layoffs raised eyebrows and questions. This has definitely changed the past year but im not sure the stigma is gone just yet.
It's even more surprising since SWEs coming from Google don't really have problems finding new jobs or staying afloat until their next job anyway.
And a lot have sailed by doing very little work compared to other jobs
I have never personally met a "rest and vest" person in bigtech. Is this opinion based on anything?
I have.
Plenty of people here have too https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14943146
Plenty of people here have too https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14943146
That isnt accurate. I’m in the discord group for laid off googlers and hundreds of them have been struggling for months.
It is not the individual layoff which is the issue for the people. It is the general feeling that the little man get squeezed under the argument of cost savings and the rich man takes out even more than the year before, independent of the market and company performance. In the past the entrepreneur took the yearly risks and was rewarded or not for it.
The variation / risk on the (unrealistic) return is now managed on the backs of the employees. These layoffs are often bound to the goal to have a return like Apple and not like General Electric (company examples are educated guesses).
In the end, the employees have a miserable life and products of the company are a shit show.
The variation / risk on the (unrealistic) return is now managed on the backs of the employees. These layoffs are often bound to the goal to have a return like Apple and not like General Electric (company examples are educated guesses).
In the end, the employees have a miserable life and products of the company are a shit show.
It’s one metric: revenue per employee. In a more capital expensive market, such as our current one, this metric is the one corporate managers are focusing on.
For example, Google:
https://fourweekmba.com/google-revenue-per-employee/
Ultimately it’s about something called austerity, which is taught in mba-jargon filled economic theory as a way to keep the working classes inline. Since the 1920s, western countries have used a cycle of expansion and contraction to crush the working people’s power in the interest of controlling inflation (which is really largely the direct result of excess government money printing as a result of imbalanced spending), all the while consolidating more-and-more wealth in smaller and smaller circles of people. It’s an absolutely psychotic way to run a business cycle, and it kills a great many people directly:
https://archive-yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/how-austerity-ki...
The latest deleveraging of worker cries and demands for better conditions and pay comes as workers are asking for more work-at-home and flexibility, a more balanced work/life balance, and focus on similar health and wellness goals, as well as demands for salary raises to keep up with the ongoing inflation.
For three decades worker pay has been dropping. The gap between the growth of productivity and that of a typical worker’s pay has grown quite extreme, and continues to grow through the application of austerity principle:
https://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/
While it looks like “inflation and interest rates are causing the problems,” it remains easily predictable economic theory that we would find ourselves here. People may not realize it, but since 2020, the US has printed nearly 80% of ALL US Dollars in circulation. To put that in perspective, at the start of 2020 we had ~$4 trillion in circulation. Now, there is nearly $19 TRILLION in circulation, a 375% jump in 3 years.
This of course causes “inflation,” which is in no small part what the news likes to call “excess corporate profits.” Basically inflation benefits those that hold real assets and are closest to the money printers, while crushing those who don’t and are the furthest (often the most marginalized).
And again, austerity is applauded:
https://fortune.com/2023/03/02/marc-benioff-salesforce-earni...
Consider that the market rewards these companies handsomely for their layoffs:
- Amazon had $2.8 million in earnings (before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization – or EBITDA) for every staff member they laid off in January.
- Meta had $3.9 million in earnings for each of the 11,000 staff members they laid off in November. In response to Meta’s cost-cutting strategy, its stock price increased by 19 percent.
- Tech giant Microsoft had an EBITDA of $98.8 billion in 2022. This means they earned $9.8 million for each person they laid off in January 2023.
- Other companies’ layoffs weren’t as difficult to understand: WeWork ended 2022 with an EBITDA of -$824 million, and Spotify ended its fiscal year with an EBITDA of -$290 million.
https://www.business.com/finance/big-tech-earnings-and-layof...
So it’s unfortunately financially rewarding to lay people off, and it’s a measurable economic impact you can show the board and your investors…
Meanwhile there are some CEOs who have figured out how to keep everyone employed, and it points to the fact that this model isn’t the only possible way for businesses to operate:
https://www.benefitnews.com/news/a-tech-ceo-avoided-mass-lay...
There will come a day when the current management ethos becomes unfashionable and mass layoffs become a sign of failure and poor executive management, but unfortunately the market rewards it right now, and ultimately products and employee quality of life are secondary concerns to our rather sociopathic business cycle.
Forgive my diatribe. I have developed quite a passion for this issue over the years, as my training taught me all about layoffs and how to do them, but after running companies for a long while, I’ve become quite unhappy with “business as usual.” This system sucks, and it’s causing massive breakdowns in trust between employees and employers that ultimately cause irreversible harm to actual global competitiveness. The system people live and work in has to be in those people’s best interests to proliferate and ultimately needs to align profit with the best interests of society.
In my mind, the long term concequences of the current system’s breakdown of trust is devastating to everyone involved and counterproductive to lasting global competitiveness (which requires cooperation, teamwork and a growth mindset these adversarial conditions cannot foster), and yet we happily pedal along as if everything is fine.
It’s not.
For example, Google:
https://fourweekmba.com/google-revenue-per-employee/
Ultimately it’s about something called austerity, which is taught in mba-jargon filled economic theory as a way to keep the working classes inline. Since the 1920s, western countries have used a cycle of expansion and contraction to crush the working people’s power in the interest of controlling inflation (which is really largely the direct result of excess government money printing as a result of imbalanced spending), all the while consolidating more-and-more wealth in smaller and smaller circles of people. It’s an absolutely psychotic way to run a business cycle, and it kills a great many people directly:
https://archive-yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/how-austerity-ki...
The latest deleveraging of worker cries and demands for better conditions and pay comes as workers are asking for more work-at-home and flexibility, a more balanced work/life balance, and focus on similar health and wellness goals, as well as demands for salary raises to keep up with the ongoing inflation.
For three decades worker pay has been dropping. The gap between the growth of productivity and that of a typical worker’s pay has grown quite extreme, and continues to grow through the application of austerity principle:
https://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/
While it looks like “inflation and interest rates are causing the problems,” it remains easily predictable economic theory that we would find ourselves here. People may not realize it, but since 2020, the US has printed nearly 80% of ALL US Dollars in circulation. To put that in perspective, at the start of 2020 we had ~$4 trillion in circulation. Now, there is nearly $19 TRILLION in circulation, a 375% jump in 3 years.
This of course causes “inflation,” which is in no small part what the news likes to call “excess corporate profits.” Basically inflation benefits those that hold real assets and are closest to the money printers, while crushing those who don’t and are the furthest (often the most marginalized).
And again, austerity is applauded:
https://fortune.com/2023/03/02/marc-benioff-salesforce-earni...
Consider that the market rewards these companies handsomely for their layoffs:
- Amazon had $2.8 million in earnings (before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization – or EBITDA) for every staff member they laid off in January.
- Meta had $3.9 million in earnings for each of the 11,000 staff members they laid off in November. In response to Meta’s cost-cutting strategy, its stock price increased by 19 percent.
- Tech giant Microsoft had an EBITDA of $98.8 billion in 2022. This means they earned $9.8 million for each person they laid off in January 2023.
- Other companies’ layoffs weren’t as difficult to understand: WeWork ended 2022 with an EBITDA of -$824 million, and Spotify ended its fiscal year with an EBITDA of -$290 million.
https://www.business.com/finance/big-tech-earnings-and-layof...
So it’s unfortunately financially rewarding to lay people off, and it’s a measurable economic impact you can show the board and your investors…
Meanwhile there are some CEOs who have figured out how to keep everyone employed, and it points to the fact that this model isn’t the only possible way for businesses to operate:
https://www.benefitnews.com/news/a-tech-ceo-avoided-mass-lay...
There will come a day when the current management ethos becomes unfashionable and mass layoffs become a sign of failure and poor executive management, but unfortunately the market rewards it right now, and ultimately products and employee quality of life are secondary concerns to our rather sociopathic business cycle.
Forgive my diatribe. I have developed quite a passion for this issue over the years, as my training taught me all about layoffs and how to do them, but after running companies for a long while, I’ve become quite unhappy with “business as usual.” This system sucks, and it’s causing massive breakdowns in trust between employees and employers that ultimately cause irreversible harm to actual global competitiveness. The system people live and work in has to be in those people’s best interests to proliferate and ultimately needs to align profit with the best interests of society.
In my mind, the long term concequences of the current system’s breakdown of trust is devastating to everyone involved and counterproductive to lasting global competitiveness (which requires cooperation, teamwork and a growth mindset these adversarial conditions cannot foster), and yet we happily pedal along as if everything is fine.
It’s not.
[deleted]
what do you mean by “earnings per staff member laid off”? are you dividing their total earnings by number of staff laid off? if so, then Apple earning 100 billion while laying off 10 employees would be “earning 10 billion per staff laid off”, or am i misunderstanding?
Wow... This all seems a bit cherry-picked...
- The google metric doesn't make sense. In fact, the graph tells sort of the opposite story. Revenue per employee shot up and then they did layoffs in response... huh? My guess is that this graph is missing the forecasts that are being used to make these decisions. Google likely has a similar chart, but one that goes out 5-10 years and is showing a concerning trend (that was certainly the case when I worked there).
- Austerity is a government thing. I'm not connecting the dots between deficit reduction and corporate layoffs...
- I thought the money supply calculations changed recently which is why the metric shot up in recent years.
- How are you getting Microsoft was rewarded with 9.8M per employee for their "layoffs?" They cut 10k people, so wouldn't this mean if they had laid off 1 person, they would have earned 98B per layoff? This metric doesn't make sense.
- The "other CEO" you link to runs a company with 200 employees. I'm not sure this is comparable to a company the size of Google.
- The google metric doesn't make sense. In fact, the graph tells sort of the opposite story. Revenue per employee shot up and then they did layoffs in response... huh? My guess is that this graph is missing the forecasts that are being used to make these decisions. Google likely has a similar chart, but one that goes out 5-10 years and is showing a concerning trend (that was certainly the case when I worked there).
- Austerity is a government thing. I'm not connecting the dots between deficit reduction and corporate layoffs...
- I thought the money supply calculations changed recently which is why the metric shot up in recent years.
- How are you getting Microsoft was rewarded with 9.8M per employee for their "layoffs?" They cut 10k people, so wouldn't this mean if they had laid off 1 person, they would have earned 98B per layoff? This metric doesn't make sense.
- The "other CEO" you link to runs a company with 200 employees. I'm not sure this is comparable to a company the size of Google.
Companies aren't charities. Just because they can afford to hire or keep an employee doesn't mean they should or have to.
You're also forgetting that raw dollars are not how companies are viewed. Every company is viewed on how it performs agains the risk free return rate. The rate going from 0 -> 5+ means companies must now generate returns in excess of the RFR in line with their generally accepted risk. This is the ultimate outcome of raising rates to reduce inflation - across the board layoffs lowering averages salaries.
You're also forgetting that raw dollars are not how companies are viewed. Every company is viewed on how it performs agains the risk free return rate. The rate going from 0 -> 5+ means companies must now generate returns in excess of the RFR in line with their generally accepted risk. This is the ultimate outcome of raising rates to reduce inflation - across the board layoffs lowering averages salaries.
Companies aren't charities, but if they don't act charitably towards employees it's a bad deal for employers and employees.
I think that was their point. To not be taken advantage of employees are incentivized to do as little work as possible.
I think that was their point. To not be taken advantage of employees are incentivized to do as little work as possible.
"since 2020, the US has printed nearly 80% of ALL US Dollars in circulation" - I've seen this notion repeated and I assume it's a reference to M1 as published by FRED: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M1SL
The actual story, as far as I can tell, is that money that had previously been considered as M2 (=less liquid) is also counted as M1 due to rule changes regarding savings accounts.
To see this is the case, you can plot both together. If in fact, new money was printed, you would expect M2 to have the same jump as M1, as M2 is M1 + more stuff. However, you see a much smaller jump:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=1dwhY
The rule-change coincided with COVID relief measures which did include money-printing, but at a much smaller scale than implied.
The actual story, as far as I can tell, is that money that had previously been considered as M2 (=less liquid) is also counted as M1 due to rule changes regarding savings accounts.
To see this is the case, you can plot both together. If in fact, new money was printed, you would expect M2 to have the same jump as M1, as M2 is M1 + more stuff. However, you see a much smaller jump:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=1dwhY
The rule-change coincided with COVID relief measures which did include money-printing, but at a much smaller scale than implied.
Wow this is very helpful. I'd heard that as well. Thanks for commenting this
[deleted]
Agreed. As a legitimate inventor and innovator, these management teams are signaling to me that they are not worth working for. The rest of talent that creates actual value, whether in engineering, sales, management, or otherwise, should seriously pay attention and do the same.
> and products of the company are a shit show
I guess we'll see if this turns out to be true. If it does, they'll realize their mistakes, and the competitors that didn't let people go should outperform them. If it doesn't, then it'll show that many tech companies simply overhired, which I think we all know they did over the past few years.
I myself work at a telco where business has stagnated over the past decade, due to market saturation and new, cheaper competition. We've had layoffs each year since I started since that's the only way to keep increasing profits. One day it'll probably hit me, but oh well. I know our company has fat to trim and if I'm actually not making any real impact, then I'm fine with looking for a job where I do. Efficient companies are important for a healthy economy.
I guess we'll see if this turns out to be true. If it does, they'll realize their mistakes, and the competitors that didn't let people go should outperform them. If it doesn't, then it'll show that many tech companies simply overhired, which I think we all know they did over the past few years.
I myself work at a telco where business has stagnated over the past decade, due to market saturation and new, cheaper competition. We've had layoffs each year since I started since that's the only way to keep increasing profits. One day it'll probably hit me, but oh well. I know our company has fat to trim and if I'm actually not making any real impact, then I'm fine with looking for a job where I do. Efficient companies are important for a healthy economy.
> I guess we'll see if this turns out to be true.
https://killedbygoogle.com/
https://killedbygoogle.com/
surely you don’t want google to maintain 100s of experiments indefinitely.
It's not about killing experiments. It's about things that were advertised as the next big thing with fanfare to not be properly maintained and eventually killed even though they had a lot of users. That's the problem.
By any reasonable metric, Google SWEs are "the rich man" in American society.
This isn't the right way to view it -- it's not necessarily about a dollar amount. People making 6 figures and people making 5 figures are not enemies. The segmentation is between those tho provide work and those who perform it, with the former profiting off the surplus value provided by the latter
Who do you think owns public companies?
Are you insinuating that the workers (or the public) have the ability to self-determine through share ownership? You are aware that Alphabet stock is split, with the class B shares being owned by the founders, right?
Public company stocks need to go up because that's how millions of people with economic profiles not dissimilar to Google SWEs fund their retirement.
The top 10% of americans own ~90% of stocks. I think the top 1% owns somewhere around 45% of those stocks.
Do you think FAANG SWEs aren't in the top 10% of Americans?
Investors aren't some distinct class, we're mainly talking about pension funds and the 401ks of similarly well-compensated professional-managerial workers.
Investors aren't some distinct class, we're mainly talking about pension funds and the 401ks of similarly well-compensated professional-managerial workers.
The "little man" is the line employee, vs the machinations of the boardroom and the demands of the stock market. The salary level isn't that relevant.
No they’re not, we’re talking about major shareholders. They’re the ones driving these layoffs to eke out a few more dollars that they don’t need.
> Research has long shown that layoffs have a detrimental effect on individuals and on corporate performance. The short-term cost savings provided by a layoff are often overshadowed by bad publicity, loss of knowledge, weakened engagement, higher voluntary turnover, and lower innovation — all of which hurt profits in the long run. To make intelligent and humane staffing decisions in the current economic turmoil, leaders must understand what’s different about today’s larger social landscape. The authors also share strategies for a smarter approach to workforce change.
https://hbr.org/2022/12/what-companies-still-get-wrong-about...
https://hbr.org/2022/12/what-companies-still-get-wrong-about...
Unions make sense if the employers have the ability to exploit the workers. By forming a collective bargaining position the workers can prevent that from happening. With the tight labor market there are very few places where employers are able to exploit anyone, people can just move to another job. And in many European countries there are already strong worker protections in place through legislation. (I would argue too much, where I live).
So unions are of little use anymore, except for perhaps using the power they have to exploit employers. I think being a member of one signals to an employer you may want to exploit them, rightly or wrongly, at least where I live it's often understood membership will hurt your chances of getting higher up in the organisation.
So unions are of little use anymore, except for perhaps using the power they have to exploit employers. I think being a member of one signals to an employer you may want to exploit them, rightly or wrongly, at least where I live it's often understood membership will hurt your chances of getting higher up in the organisation.
> Unions make sense if the employers have the ability to exploit the workers.
This is an overly narrow definition, so I label it is largely incorrect.
Think of it this way: society involves dynamically-shifting power balances. To the extent the goals of a society include:
(a) standardizing certain rights and norms
(b) providing checks and balances so the powerful have less temptation and ability to exploit the less
We don't want to rely on only one mechanism to achieve (a) and (b). Sure, we want healthy markets and skilled workers. We also want workers who have enough flexibility to change industries and to move geographically. But we also want effective regulation. And we ALSO want organizations that can directly advocate on behalf of workers.
> So unions are of little use anymore, except for perhaps using the power they have to exploit employers.
This statement is silly and ignores the realities I've seen. Sure, a union left to its own devices might be tempted to push too far. But given the dynamic one tends to see in western economies, there is always some kind of negotiation with the associated corporation. Such negotiation is quite similar to parties in the legal system hashing it out. Both may start off far apart but the negotiation tends to lead towards compromise. In the United States, unions that push to far face public backlash and even Presidential action.
I'm not making any dogmatic claims here. I'm simple rejecting overly simplistic arguments against unions. I will readily accept that unions are not silver bullets and there are documented cases of corruption and misaligned incentives. But the solution is not to argue that the notion of a union is useless. The intellectually honest solution is to seek achievable solution in the mess that is the real world. I laugh at people who aren't even trained economists who interpret their models as some kind of reality -- or worse, some kind of normative specification.
Very few dogmatic claims pro- or anti- union survive contact with reality.
This is an overly narrow definition, so I label it is largely incorrect.
Think of it this way: society involves dynamically-shifting power balances. To the extent the goals of a society include:
(a) standardizing certain rights and norms
(b) providing checks and balances so the powerful have less temptation and ability to exploit the less
We don't want to rely on only one mechanism to achieve (a) and (b). Sure, we want healthy markets and skilled workers. We also want workers who have enough flexibility to change industries and to move geographically. But we also want effective regulation. And we ALSO want organizations that can directly advocate on behalf of workers.
> So unions are of little use anymore, except for perhaps using the power they have to exploit employers.
This statement is silly and ignores the realities I've seen. Sure, a union left to its own devices might be tempted to push too far. But given the dynamic one tends to see in western economies, there is always some kind of negotiation with the associated corporation. Such negotiation is quite similar to parties in the legal system hashing it out. Both may start off far apart but the negotiation tends to lead towards compromise. In the United States, unions that push to far face public backlash and even Presidential action.
I'm not making any dogmatic claims here. I'm simple rejecting overly simplistic arguments against unions. I will readily accept that unions are not silver bullets and there are documented cases of corruption and misaligned incentives. But the solution is not to argue that the notion of a union is useless. The intellectually honest solution is to seek achievable solution in the mess that is the real world. I laugh at people who aren't even trained economists who interpret their models as some kind of reality -- or worse, some kind of normative specification.
Very few dogmatic claims pro- or anti- union survive contact with reality.
> But the solution is not to argue that the notion of a union is useless. The intellectually honest solution is to seek achievable solution in the mess that is the real world.
You can say that about any topic, but what specifically are you proposing? Or do you just want to talk about stuff?
You can say that about any topic, but what specifically are you proposing? Or do you just want to talk about stuff?
I refer you to what I already wrote:
> We don't want to rely on only one mechanism to achieve (a) and (b). Sure, we want healthy markets and skilled workers. We also want workers who have enough flexibility to change industries and to move geographically. But we also want effective regulation. And we ALSO want organizations that can directly advocate on behalf of workers.
> We don't want to rely on only one mechanism to achieve (a) and (b). Sure, we want healthy markets and skilled workers. We also want workers who have enough flexibility to change industries and to move geographically. But we also want effective regulation. And we ALSO want organizations that can directly advocate on behalf of workers.
Ultimately we need a cohesive strategy to convert your wishes and desires into actionable legislation and policies and consensus building around those - which is the hard part. It seems to me, few people want to take crack at that.
> Or do you just want to talk about stuff?
Saying that comes across as dismissive.
Saying that comes across as dismissive.
You were kinda wishy washy in your response. I'm bringing the conversation back on track. Sorry, didn't know you were so sensitive to language. I'll try to calibrate my responses to you.
I see your desire to "bring the conversation back on track". On your terms, it would seem. It came across rather heavy handedly. This is a request you can make, not something you can impose.
By "wishy-washy" do you feel like... I'm being indecisive? Not taking a firm stance? Changing positions?
Here's how I see it -- I often intentionally don't "hit people over the head" with my particular positions. It doesn't mean I don't have a stance; instead, I often prefer to frame the issue first. I consider this a starting point, not an ending one, so feel free to continue the conversation.
By "wishy-washy" do you feel like... I'm being indecisive? Not taking a firm stance? Changing positions?
Here's how I see it -- I often intentionally don't "hit people over the head" with my particular positions. It doesn't mean I don't have a stance; instead, I often prefer to frame the issue first. I consider this a starting point, not an ending one, so feel free to continue the conversation.
You see this through a very American lens. I think you are trying to paint my statement as "anti union", it is not intended as such. What you describe is much better solved with government legislation and trade bodies. There is a reason union membership in some Northern Europe has dwindled from over 80% to less than 5%, they have simply outlived their usefulness.
Unions have the wrong incentives. They represent employees and have no incentive to think about future employees, employers, customers or anyone else. There are simply better ways to organise society.
Unions have the wrong incentives. They represent employees and have no incentive to think about future employees, employers, customers or anyone else. There are simply better ways to organise society.
How does it make sense for Google to keep laying off people (many of them skilled overperformers) while continuing to hire? It seems they have alienated a large part of their workforce with these decisions. Plus they are running into legal fights in Europe where it's not so easy to randomly fire employees.
I would truly like to understand this, but I haven't heard an explanation of why the actions make sense for the organization as a whole.
It makes me worried about investing in GOOG.
I would truly like to understand this, but I haven't heard an explanation of why the actions make sense for the organization as a whole.
It makes me worried about investing in GOOG.
The people they are hiring are probably cheaper than the people being laid off. The costs of the layoff are massive in morale, lost know how, missed opportunities, etc. But to the finance people, that's just as well because it's not their problem to deal with.
I understand it might make sense for specific managers who meet some goals and get bonuses, etc.
But I'm asking for an explanation of why it would be reasonable for the organization as a whole and for its shareholders (the ones who understand what's going on).
But I'm asking for an explanation of why it would be reasonable for the organization as a whole and for its shareholders (the ones who understand what's going on).
Managers are basically never consulted on layoffs. At a high enough level in the organization, you might find out a week or two before everyone else and mark some people as critical, but that's about it.
Basically every company I've worked at can be roughly divided into the finance side and the business side, and IME all the important shots are called by the finance people. The business side has to justify itself in terms the finance people set, not the other way around. As for how it makes financial sense, I can't speak to that, but things do tend to work out the way the CFO predicts. That's hardly surprising, because the other finance people working on Wall St. are looking at the same spreadsheets and following the same economic theory.
By the way, I don't think this is a good way to run companies. But it's the way I think almost all of them are run.
Basically every company I've worked at can be roughly divided into the finance side and the business side, and IME all the important shots are called by the finance people. The business side has to justify itself in terms the finance people set, not the other way around. As for how it makes financial sense, I can't speak to that, but things do tend to work out the way the CFO predicts. That's hardly surprising, because the other finance people working on Wall St. are looking at the same spreadsheets and following the same economic theory.
By the way, I don't think this is a good way to run companies. But it's the way I think almost all of them are run.
>It makes me worried about investing in GOOG.
If you have a lot of money, you have their ear..
If you have a lot of money, you have their ear..
people are constantly job hopping, Google has to always be hiring just to negate attrition.
Second, there isnt a single budget for hiring that interviews everyone and ships them out everywhere. certain groups/products can be growing within google while others are shrinking. should the chrome team not be allowed to grow because google+ was in the trash can?
third, not every employee is exchangeable, you cant just shuffle everyone around the company. You cant just take someone from the google maps team and have them start working on nexus phones.
all of these things are fairly obvious if you thought about it for more than 30 seconds, so its somewhat concerning you find this topic so perplexing.
Second, there isnt a single budget for hiring that interviews everyone and ships them out everywhere. certain groups/products can be growing within google while others are shrinking. should the chrome team not be allowed to grow because google+ was in the trash can?
third, not every employee is exchangeable, you cant just shuffle everyone around the company. You cant just take someone from the google maps team and have them start working on nexus phones.
all of these things are fairly obvious if you thought about it for more than 30 seconds, so its somewhat concerning you find this topic so perplexing.
> third, not every employee is exchangeable, you cant just shuffle everyone around the company. You cant just take someone from the google maps team and have them start working on nexus phones.
True, but even so, you can train the employee for the new role. You need to do the same anyway for a new, external candidate (and it's even worse because they will need to familiarise themselves with internal tools and processes that the Maps employee would already be familiar with).
True, but even so, you can train the employee for the new role. You need to do the same anyway for a new, external candidate (and it's even worse because they will need to familiarise themselves with internal tools and processes that the Maps employee would already be familiar with).
re: 1, 2, 3
Google has been hiring people into the same roles and teams where they have laid people off.
> all of these things are fairly obvious if you thought about it for more than 30 seconds, so its somewhat concerning you find this topic so perplexing.
Wow, you are rude.
Google has been hiring people into the same roles and teams where they have laid people off.
> all of these things are fairly obvious if you thought about it for more than 30 seconds, so its somewhat concerning you find this topic so perplexing.
Wow, you are rude.
All big companies do this, even ones that have a supposed "freeze."
For me this is very offputting and definitly makes me move faster out of that system.
I can either work for the next 30 years 40h a week and create some 'value' for companies like google and have nice holidays, etc. OR i don't.
And yes i can afford a very basic version of not working anymore already or at least no longer playing the game in some companies.
Wasn't there some Gen X/Z meme about quite quitting? Guess what could incluence this? Having an appreciation for your company and your companies management style.
I can either work for the next 30 years 40h a week and create some 'value' for companies like google and have nice holidays, etc. OR i don't.
And yes i can afford a very basic version of not working anymore already or at least no longer playing the game in some companies.
Wasn't there some Gen X/Z meme about quite quitting? Guess what could incluence this? Having an appreciation for your company and your companies management style.
A lot of people here have never worked in an economic downturn, and workers WANT to believe their job is more than a job. Why else would they devote so much time and energy to it? It may just even represent their self-worth.
Layoffs don't work long-term, especially for healthy companies looking to cut costs (Harvard Business Review: https://hbr.org/2022/12/what-companies-still-get-wrong-about...)
Nobody wants to work at a company that does layoffs after a huge year.
If the alternatives are not working at all, or working at a company that might have problems paying their employees , I think many will take the risk of working at a large tech company that does regular layoffs but gives generous severance
For me it is the cycle of over hiring and layoffs that make me mad. Executives bear no consequences for their decisions instead the consequences are borne by the lower level employees.
What I would like to see is senior and executive management (Director+) bonuses cancelled for the year a layoff occurs. If they aren’t willing to cancel bonuses company wide then a layoff is really just stock manipulation. By making sure they bear some of the consequences maybe they will make better choices in the future.
What I would like to see is senior and executive management (Director+) bonuses cancelled for the year a layoff occurs. If they aren’t willing to cancel bonuses company wide then a layoff is really just stock manipulation. By making sure they bear some of the consequences maybe they will make better choices in the future.
If you don't want to be laid off, don't get hired. It's just part of the process. Or get a government job. I hear people can last dozens of years in those.
I think you're arguing against a strawman. Nobody says layoffs are stupid because they're not a very "nice" thing to do. They say so because the statement "it's a company trying to maximize value" is contentious.
The long term objective of a company is not to save as much money as possible. It's to spend money toward endeavors that generate more money.
If the layoff is because of an efficiency improvement, that's justified - like a factory replacing labor with newer cheaper robots. However, that's not what the tech layoffs were about. Tech companies are basically saying we want to do less work. It's not an efficiency improvement, it's a downsizing of their business activities, and it's not clear-cut whether that's a good business strategy for companies that are wildly profitable and growing.
The long term objective of a company is not to save as much money as possible. It's to spend money toward endeavors that generate more money.
If the layoff is because of an efficiency improvement, that's justified - like a factory replacing labor with newer cheaper robots. However, that's not what the tech layoffs were about. Tech companies are basically saying we want to do less work. It's not an efficiency improvement, it's a downsizing of their business activities, and it's not clear-cut whether that's a good business strategy for companies that are wildly profitable and growing.
a company can have multiple products that are at different stages in the business cycle. If Microsoft never did layoffs in their entire history they would still have a dev team working on Zunes, and 95% of the company would be working on desktop windows
Could they have moved the Zune team to the Xbox team or Surface team, the windows teams to azure or Xbox, etc?
I would buy a Zune if they were still developing them. Zune and Windows Phone were excellent products.
Most of the tech companies generate their revenue from their core businesses. For Google it's ~80% from ads, and probably even more of their profit comes from Ads. The history of companies being able to generate abnormal profits in other business lines is not favorable overall. I think experimenting and trying to find new sources of revenue makes sense, but the flip side of that is you have to kill those projects if they aren't going to pan out. It makes sense to shutdown even profitable businesses (or sell them) if you can make more by reinvesting in your core business.
It's naïve to think that frequent layoffs at the periphery of their business (itself not true - there were layoffs in Ads, Search and other similar "core businesses") won't affect their core business. Google loses a bit of its brand value every time it does a big public layoff. At some point, the Google brand will be most associated with the word layoff and nothing else. It affects morale for existing employees and makes the whole company culture just a little more selfish and paranoid.
Associating your company with unhappiness and strife does not come without a cost.
Associating your company with unhappiness and strife does not come without a cost.
This is why I hate working as a regular salaried employee. After this happened to me a few years after college, I spent over a decade building up a consulting business. I always keep multiple clients at the same time and I'm not devasted if one chooses not to renew my contract.
Consulting can be pretty stressful and needs good social skills. It's not for everybody.
It's interesting that you think this is lower risk. Maybe that's a US thing? Typically employees are harder to cut than simply choosing not to extend contracts with consultants.
There are different kinds is of risks, but generally, earning $100k each from 5 customers is less risky than earning $500k from 1 customer.
Whether or not it is extra work or if it is worth the extra work is dependent on the individual.
Whether or not it is extra work or if it is worth the extra work is dependent on the individual.
I would hope they make 3-10x running their own consultancy compared to working as an employee. The risk is still much higher, but it’s offset by the large reward.
In all the EU countries I know you can't be fired one day to another without a serious reason
anything you recommend to read on how to start consulting practice?
One anecdote: contracts fell on my lap, via natural conversations with friends who work as full-timers in the industry (their employers needed help).
So in my case, it was having a network and connecting across it regularly.
So in my case, it was having a network and connecting across it regularly.
Someone should start an massive incubator that takes in top laid off employees and gives them resources to build a competing product. They will be motivated as hell and have a ton of domain knowledge and generally have a good idea on how to do things in way more efficient way than what their former employer did. For kicks and to save money replace most of mngmnt roles with AI model.
There are often non-compete clauses in employment contracts. Depending on the country, they're not worth the paper they're written on sometimes. In others, legally binding.
Illegal in California.
Most people don't live in California.
Google has some employees in California.
Most people do actually live in California (by plurality)
Are there any examples of companies successfully enforcing non-competes against rank and file employees? (I'm excluding high value targets like Jeff Dean here where it might actually make sense to put millions in lawyers behind a suit).
I don't think you get to non-compete people you fire. That's an on-resignation constraint.
I'd be genuinely interested what the legal situation here would be, if that's true...
It would be rather interesting if it would be legal for me to hire somebody, then fire them the next day and they couldn't compete with me for some period of time. But then again, US employment law is rather different from EU so maybe that's possible there?
Non-compete clauses are often part of severance packages. You can choose not to take it, naturally.
A layoff isn't a firing unless you choose to not accept the package. Accepting a severance is considered voluntary separation. You sign a document stating this.
Not true as a general statement. May be true in certain cases. And certainly, in the case of a layoff (such as this one), with a severance package, a non-compete could be part of the severance agreement.
(Or not, depending on locale. For sure not in California.)
(Or not, depending on locale. For sure not in California.)
Or having only ever worked at FAANG(s), many of them completely lack the skills that would make them effective as an entrepreneurs and it would be nigh useless to try to incubate new businesses out of them. Maybe. Not all. I am thinking of traits and skills such as actually talking to your users, selling product to customers, doing things small scale, being able to work without huge back office support, not having KPIs to game, and such.
Completely agree with this take. I worked in FAANG and before that I worked in various startups.
Most of the people around me are very adapted to this very specific hyper-structured environment that we are in. This is not a criticism - they are thriving in this environment and everyone is happy.
But no way would I want to take these people with me on a new venture. (the inverse is also true; I would not take a shoot-from-the-hip go-getter and put them into a mature product environment that with intense legal scrutiny)
Most of the people around me are very adapted to this very specific hyper-structured environment that we are in. This is not a criticism - they are thriving in this environment and everyone is happy.
But no way would I want to take these people with me on a new venture. (the inverse is also true; I would not take a shoot-from-the-hip go-getter and put them into a mature product environment that with intense legal scrutiny)
How do you reconcile your final paragraph/sentence with your own ability to succeed[1] in both environments?
My experience is that the ability to adopt to structured/unstructured environments are not mutually-exclusive: some people may thrive in one but not the other, and others can do well in both (or none!) My motto is to make the right trade-offs in any environment - which is a universal superpower for engineers in my book; especially when coupled with curiosity and a willingness to learn.
1. I'm taking the charitable presumption.
My experience is that the ability to adopt to structured/unstructured environments are not mutually-exclusive: some people may thrive in one but not the other, and others can do well in both (or none!) My motto is to make the right trade-offs in any environment - which is a universal superpower for engineers in my book; especially when coupled with curiosity and a willingness to learn.
1. I'm taking the charitable presumption.
You might be too charitable. There were hard transition phases where I was not necessarily considered successful.
And I probably only made it through because my employer had deep pockets and chilled while I took time to adapt. The other direction (big co -> startup) is no where near as forgiving.
Mottos are fine, but what we need to succeed is skill and practice with skills.
We are susceptible to innovators dilemma on a personal basis, and it’s hard to break habits and intuition hardened over years in a different environment.
And when I was in start up land I did watch a lot imported talent from FAANG come in and bomb out - they were trying to care about long term code quality and we needed to slap together a demo in 48 hours. It was like oil and water
Edit: btw I don’t mean to signal that it’s impossible to do to be someone who thrives in both situations. It was a comment on the original suggestion of “just start a new company and hire up all these lay offs to get rich quick”. I believe that’s not going to be a good strategy
And I probably only made it through because my employer had deep pockets and chilled while I took time to adapt. The other direction (big co -> startup) is no where near as forgiving.
Mottos are fine, but what we need to succeed is skill and practice with skills.
We are susceptible to innovators dilemma on a personal basis, and it’s hard to break habits and intuition hardened over years in a different environment.
And when I was in start up land I did watch a lot imported talent from FAANG come in and bomb out - they were trying to care about long term code quality and we needed to slap together a demo in 48 hours. It was like oil and water
Edit: btw I don’t mean to signal that it’s impossible to do to be someone who thrives in both situations. It was a comment on the original suggestion of “just start a new company and hire up all these lay offs to get rich quick”. I believe that’s not going to be a good strategy
Great points on the direction! I'd love to hear the opinion of someone who started out in big tech and then transitioned to a startup.
Sales part can be the value add incubator brings. I also specifically mentioned "top".
I refuse to hoist the guillotine when the time (seems sooner every day) arrives. But I also refuse to stand in the way either, or at least more than I'm already doing by incessantly badgering the kleptoclass that they will get tennis court-ed if they keep this shit up.
Posting beat after beat and carpet bombing Sunnyvale like fucking Curtis LeMay at the same time is offensive to everything about being an American, and a hacker, and really just a human.
https://finviz.com/quote.ashx?t=GOOG&p=d
Layoffs happen, markets go dry, the world moves on. But stuffing your pockets until it's spilling out while walking around the Bay Area with a Samurai Sword drunk from Fucki Sushi?
I won't help them drag you out of your Tesla and beat them to death with your own iPhone. But let's quit while we're ahead assholes?
Posting beat after beat and carpet bombing Sunnyvale like fucking Curtis LeMay at the same time is offensive to everything about being an American, and a hacker, and really just a human.
https://finviz.com/quote.ashx?t=GOOG&p=d
Layoffs happen, markets go dry, the world moves on. But stuffing your pockets until it's spilling out while walking around the Bay Area with a Samurai Sword drunk from Fucki Sushi?
I won't help them drag you out of your Tesla and beat them to death with your own iPhone. But let's quit while we're ahead assholes?
Are you…okay?
It seems Google cut several hundred roles…out of how many? Don’t they employ more than 25k engineers?
I don’t want to make light of anyone losing their job, but this just doesn’t seem meaningful at this scale
I don’t want to make light of anyone losing their job, but this just doesn’t seem meaningful at this scale
The meaning is found in the combination of the name and verb in the title, afaik the first occurrence.
No, there were layoffs at this time last year.
It's news because it's been repeated ad nauseam only recruitment, HR, sales and other non tech roles will be affected by layoffs in big tech companies. The numbers aren't important just that there are numbers because it relates to engineering and it's something the tech community didn't expect.
Hasn't it been a foregone conclusion for over a year now that engineering is definitely part of the layoffs and hiring freezes?
Where are people still saying it's only non-technical roles?
Where are people still saying it's only non-technical roles?
Seriously, why people in tech are opposed to unions?
In Europe, unions and Betriebsrat (works committee) are the norm. Why not in the US?
Indoctrinated that unions are communism and/or result in worse working conditions and wages.
You add unions in tech, and then wonder why dev salaries in EU and the UK are so abysmally low.
Unions are for employees what HR is for companies and I don't see companies doing everything that's legal and some things which are blatantly illegal to prevent themselves from having HR departments
There are basically no unions in tech in Europe. The countries where tech workers are dominated by tech unions can be counted on one hand, and they're probably the Nordic ones.
Germany doesn't really have tech unions and for sure they don't dominate the tech scene. France, neither, Eastern Europe (all of them), don't, Southern Europe, not that I know of.
Salaries are still low.
Germany doesn't really have tech unions and for sure they don't dominate the tech scene. France, neither, Eastern Europe (all of them), don't, Southern Europe, not that I know of.
Salaries are still low.
> dev salaries in EU and the UK are so abysmally low
I don't think they are. I think salaries in the US are astronomical, and it boggles the mind how in California a 22 year old React nerd can command a salary five times higher than, say, a teacher.
It's all a matter of perspective. From my perspective, if you can sit on your sofa, build a website, and pull in €80k, you're doing just fine.
I don't think they are. I think salaries in the US are astronomical, and it boggles the mind how in California a 22 year old React nerd can command a salary five times higher than, say, a teacher.
It's all a matter of perspective. From my perspective, if you can sit on your sofa, build a website, and pull in €80k, you're doing just fine.
> It's all a matter of perspective. From my perspective, if you can sit on your sofa, build a website, and pull in €80k, you're doing just fine.
Where do you put the sofa? For locals who inherited and apartment somewhere in Stockholm or Berlin, or have been living in rent-controlled apartment for 20 years, sure, 50k after-tax is fine-ish. What about expats who didn't inherit a 500k Euro apartment from their late grandma?
Where do you put the sofa? For locals who inherited and apartment somewhere in Stockholm or Berlin, or have been living in rent-controlled apartment for 20 years, sure, 50k after-tax is fine-ish. What about expats who didn't inherit a 500k Euro apartment from their late grandma?
You can comfortably rent an apartment in most of Europe at market rates on an €80k salary.
Define "comfortably". In EU cities with developed IT job markets (Munich, Stockholm, Paris, etc.) you will be spending half of more of your after tax salary just on rent. And you won't be able to afford to live there anymore after you retire.
Warsaw is a counterpoint to that, for example.
It has a developed IT job market, and as a senior software developer you'd likely be spending ~20% of your salary on rent.
Europe is more than just the few most expensive cities.
It has a developed IT job market, and as a senior software developer you'd likely be spending ~20% of your salary on rent.
Europe is more than just the few most expensive cities.
Oh, I'm from eastern Europe myself and of course you can have quite comfortable life there for 80k gross. The counterpoint to that is that 80k is not nearly close to average salary of a person "developing web sites from their sofa" in that region.
That's my understanding of the market (from experience), and it appears to be supported here: https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/levels/senior/loc...
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Nah, Spain has crap salaries, and I have never heard of unions here.
Unions are pretty rare in tech in the UK also. I don’t think that’s the reason.
That's not true I'm afraid.
UTAW and CWU specifically are unions for tech workers in the UK. At big companies especially, like BT, a sizable proportion of the workforce is unionised.
UTAW and CWU specifically are unions for tech workers in the UK. At big companies especially, like BT, a sizable proportion of the workforce is unionised.
> why dev salaries in EU and the UK are so abysmally low
American dev salaries are the exception. It's the rest of the world where they're not outstanding.
American dev salaries are the exception. It's the rest of the world where they're not outstanding.
I think they were the exception, the lay offs are likely execs realizing they can get the same or better by hiring someone remotely in a developing country to do the work.
Not saying this is a better outcome for anyone specifically, but surely it's compelling?
Not saying this is a better outcome for anyone specifically, but surely it's compelling?
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Most probably because they think unions would standardize salaries and eliminate outlier FAANG compensation packages. Everybody thinks they are special and would get that outlier compensation after all. An idea which is not so battle-tested as we see.
Yeah the union I'm a part of said this was the major thing that people don't like at tech companies, and they explicitly say that their approach is not the same with other industries, and that they are fully on board with things like performance based compensation and keeping up with market rates.
In the US, when you say "labor union", people think of a factory worker standing in a picket line outside some dinosaur car assembly plant in Flint, Michigan that's about to close anyway.
The media has very successfully demonized unions, and many skilled workers believe the company line that unions drive down average wages, make it impossible to fire useless people, charge heavy membership fees, etc.
The media has very successfully demonized unions, and many skilled workers believe the company line that unions drive down average wages, make it impossible to fire useless people, charge heavy membership fees, etc.
I usually think actors, writers, athletes, doctors, lawyers.
Maybe it's a marketing issues.
Actors and other have "Guilds", lawyers have a "Bar"...
(sure the other two you mentioned have unions but...)
Actors and other have "Guilds", lawyers have a "Bar"...
(sure the other two you mentioned have unions but...)
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100% Agreed, and if we can combine that with some apprenticeships and minimum quifications for membership, I'm all in.
Just name it like something you'd find from DnD.
Just name it like something you'd find from DnD.
Except in real medieval Europe, guilds and apprenticeships were not about thieves and wizards, but instead smiths, carpenters and bricklayers.
Well, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic... and at the time this was as advanced as you get!
At the time, arguably some of the most advanced technology was the Gothic Cathedral. However, it was seen as Divine, not Magical.
Then it's settled, it's gonna be Software Engineering Bestiary.
What unions do doctors and lawyers belong to? Never hear of unions for these professions in the US.
AMA is the union for doctors
The AMA is not a collective bargaining association, just a professional organization. When doctors unionize, they become part of other unions: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/13/business/economy/doctors-...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Bar_Association - For Lawyers. A bit like for Doctors, they get themselves involved in the accreditation process of education facilities and then by extension the State Bar organizations.
And teachers.
The only assembly plant in Flint is the truck plant and that won't e closing anytime soon
https://www.gm.com/company/facilities/flint-assembly
https://www.gm.com/company/facilities/flint-assembly
I don't think they are that common in tech in Europe/Germany as well.
SWEs are used to being in a good negotiation position and not in need for collective bargain.
My employer has a works council, but no union representation. That council is mostly occupied with dealing with compensation (provisions, product assignments, ...) of sales people, who make the largest group, thus most votes. SWE needs aren't seen.
SWEs are used to being in a good negotiation position and not in need for collective bargain.
My employer has a works council, but no union representation. That council is mostly occupied with dealing with compensation (provisions, product assignments, ...) of sales people, who make the largest group, thus most votes. SWE needs aren't seen.
One reason is that in times of high growth, unions tend to be a limiting factor to innovation, growth and worker compensation, especially for top performers.
Another is that during layoffs, unions may force the company to lay off people based on seniority instead of competency.
If you compare salaries for developers between Germany and the US, I think this point becomes blatantly clear.
Another is that during layoffs, unions may force the company to lay off people based on seniority instead of competency.
If you compare salaries for developers between Germany and the US, I think this point becomes blatantly clear.
It's not blatantly clear that US's salaries are due to lack of developer unions.
Not that alone, but a lot of the factors that hold European companies back compared to American ones when it comes to innovation come from the same ideology, whether it appears as regulation, taxation or a number of other factors aimed at improving safety and comfort, even if it comes at the cost of liberty and incentive.
You could just as well say that US tech sector is prosperous due to using native ascii keyboards.
There is no way to get a clear picture if unions limit innovation or whatever.
There is no way to get a clear picture if unions limit innovation or whatever.
That "liberty and incentive" is extremely unevenly distributed, which is why this thread exists.
Besides - the US is clearly losing its reputation for tech competence.
Between some of the world's crappiest broadband (unevenly distributed again), NASA Moon missions failing to reach the Moon, Boeing blowing their own doors off, and Google's search enshitification and inability to understand what a stable product line is - among others - the US really isn't the powerhouse of progress it thinks it is.
Besides - the US is clearly losing its reputation for tech competence.
Between some of the world's crappiest broadband (unevenly distributed again), NASA Moon missions failing to reach the Moon, Boeing blowing their own doors off, and Google's search enshitification and inability to understand what a stable product line is - among others - the US really isn't the powerhouse of progress it thinks it is.
> That "liberty and incentive" is extremely unevenly distributed
Absolutely. I said in high growth phases, it may be beneficial for employees to not organize. Once an industry stabilizes, that may change. The German model has certainly been working much better for automotive and other established industries.
But even developers who have not been able to get into FAANG positions, US developer salaries are still higher than German ones, as far as I can tell. And for the ones that did get into FAANG, the difference is vast, even for entry level.
Absolutely. I said in high growth phases, it may be beneficial for employees to not organize. Once an industry stabilizes, that may change. The German model has certainly been working much better for automotive and other established industries.
But even developers who have not been able to get into FAANG positions, US developer salaries are still higher than German ones, as far as I can tell. And for the ones that did get into FAANG, the difference is vast, even for entry level.
U.S. developer salaries are also higher than in Japan and over developed salaries, even if those labor markets aren't exactly known for unionization, either.
Fair enough, though it is possible to get the effects of a union without a union, if worker-employee relationship resembles a feudal lord-serf relationship, where the serf is bound to the lord for life, but the lord is also responsible for covering the basic needs of the serf.
Obviously, Japan, China and Korea come from quite different circumstances to Europe and the US in a multitude of ways.
Obviously, Japan, China and Korea come from quite different circumstances to Europe and the US in a multitude of ways.
That’s also what corporations were like in the U.S. up until the 1980s. Being lifers and having stability was commonplace.
Have you considered that it might not be European companies "getting held back", but American companies unduly getting ahead by externalizing their negative effects onto society. Think social media and mental health, advertising and mass surveillance, Airbnb's business model vs displaced local population, proliferating gig economy vs exploited gig workers, for example.
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Those are very subjective "negative effects". And it is perfectly possible that the American people is perfectly willing to accept those in exchange for the 50% extra household income compared to Germany.
I know I would.
I know I would.
Well, in exchange for the lower salary I get less crumbling infrastructure, a mostly working health system, in average better schools without need for extra security, ... and I get better protection from being fired in the spot and better unemployment benefits.
All that then leads to cities without no-go areas, where kids can play outside alone.
While of course downsides are that I don't have an as big house and no big backyard.
All that then leads to cities without no-go areas, where kids can play outside alone.
While of course downsides are that I don't have an as big house and no big backyard.
Don't forget that European media love to focus on the worst aspects of the US. Not every school in the US requires armed guards and infrastructure is pretty good in many places.
And in particular, if you have a senior position at a FAANG company, you make enough money to put away significant savings for a rainy day, you get access to healthcare that is typically more modern than what is available in Europe, and you don't need to expose yourself to those inner cities unless you want to.
And talking about no-go-zones. They're starting to pop up in Europe now, too, there are plenty of them in Sweden. I wouldn't put all the blame for them on capitalism. Rather, such phenomena seem to be more associated with cases of ethnic or social minorities that feel alienated by society.
And in particular, if you have a senior position at a FAANG company, you make enough money to put away significant savings for a rainy day, you get access to healthcare that is typically more modern than what is available in Europe, and you don't need to expose yourself to those inner cities unless you want to.
And talking about no-go-zones. They're starting to pop up in Europe now, too, there are plenty of them in Sweden. I wouldn't put all the blame for them on capitalism. Rather, such phenomena seem to be more associated with cases of ethnic or social minorities that feel alienated by society.
> less crumbling infrastructure
German infrastructure is crumbling too. I wouldn't hold it up as some shining beacon.
> and I get better protection from being fired in the spot
Yes, that's the difference in attitudes people are talking about. It's the safety of keeping what you have versus the drive to reach for better. Societies' outcomes reflect that. More diversity in outcomes in the US, but also better in the median.
German infrastructure is crumbling too. I wouldn't hold it up as some shining beacon.
> and I get better protection from being fired in the spot
Yes, that's the difference in attitudes people are talking about. It's the safety of keeping what you have versus the drive to reach for better. Societies' outcomes reflect that. More diversity in outcomes in the US, but also better in the median.
> More diversity in outcomes in the US, but also better in the median.
To be fair, the median household in the US doesn't have that much more disposable income if taking healthcare and child care costs into account, especially if they're simultaneously expected to save up a 1-2 year buffer and maybe more if they want a comfortable retirement.
But for the top 20%, which includes many tech workers, the difference is larger.
To be fair, the median household in the US doesn't have that much more disposable income if taking healthcare and child care costs into account, especially if they're simultaneously expected to save up a 1-2 year buffer and maybe more if they want a comfortable retirement.
But for the top 20%, which includes many tech workers, the difference is larger.
Too bad that extra income isn't reflected in national happiness scores [1], the ultimate KPI that anyone really cares about, deep down.
[1] https://happiness-report.s3.amazonaws.com/2023/WHR+23.pdf
[1] https://happiness-report.s3.amazonaws.com/2023/WHR+23.pdf
Would you care to precisify which part of those two-column 166 A4-pages supports your claim?
Page 36, "Figure 2.1: Ranking of Happiness based on a three-year-average 2020–2022"
That chart doesn't support your claim that higher household income isn't reflected in happiness scores. Multiple factors are at play in those scores. The report mentions a few, but I couldn't find how much each correlates with the self-reported life evaluation.
As a funny BTW, the country used in this thread as a direct comparison, Germany, is indistinguishable from the US in this table.
As a funny BTW, the country used in this thread as a direct comparison, Germany, is indistinguishable from the US in this table.
His point was that it's not the only factor, and if you read that paper he cited there is a breakdown of exactly what factors contributed to happiness.
A social support network was one of the highest ranked, much higher than GDP per capita (the wealth of a nation, which can be used as a proxy for personal income if you have a Gini index to weight it against).
Finland comes out well ahead even if you weight it against Gini, and Finnish developers aren't earning more than US folks by a country mile.
A social support network was one of the highest ranked, much higher than GDP per capita (the wealth of a nation, which can be used as a proxy for personal income if you have a Gini index to weight it against).
Finland comes out well ahead even if you weight it against Gini, and Finnish developers aren't earning more than US folks by a country mile.
> externalizing their negative effects onto society
Those US products are in common use in Europe, too, with the same effects. It's not illegal to create the kind of products Google and Facebook sell from Europe.
The main difference is not the relationships between companies and consumers, but rather the relationship between the companies, workers and the government.
> gig workers
I remember reading a book about this when in high school (in the 80s, though the book was quite a bit older), written by and from the perspective of the unions, where they argued that the during phases of growth, unions DID hold salaries back, but (according to themselves) this was more than made up for during recessions.
In the 19th century, the factory workers had a "gig economy" too, where they would often have to work on a day-by-day basis, and would show up at the gates of the factory every morning hoping to have work that day. If there were not enough workers, they could ask for very good salaries, but if there was a surplus it led to collapsing wages AND a high risk of no income at all, ie even worse than the Uber model.
This is precisely why many companies are trying to make regular dev roles as interchangeable as possible. By minimizing the dependency on individuals, they make their own bargaining position much stronger.
And when you stop being an employee that is valued for your individual contributions, and become an easily replicable "resource", it may very well be in your best interest to unionize.
However, there are externalities connected to unions, as they DO tend to stifle innovation, lowering all boats.
If worker well-being is a high priority, but a country ALSO wants a dynamic economy, one may want to look to Denmark, where most of the "safety net" responsibilities are moved from the employers to the government.
That requires a taxation level a bit higher than in Germany, but may be part of the reason why wages are significantly higher, and only exceeded by special cases like the US, Switzerland and Norway.
Those US products are in common use in Europe, too, with the same effects. It's not illegal to create the kind of products Google and Facebook sell from Europe.
The main difference is not the relationships between companies and consumers, but rather the relationship between the companies, workers and the government.
> gig workers
I remember reading a book about this when in high school (in the 80s, though the book was quite a bit older), written by and from the perspective of the unions, where they argued that the during phases of growth, unions DID hold salaries back, but (according to themselves) this was more than made up for during recessions.
In the 19th century, the factory workers had a "gig economy" too, where they would often have to work on a day-by-day basis, and would show up at the gates of the factory every morning hoping to have work that day. If there were not enough workers, they could ask for very good salaries, but if there was a surplus it led to collapsing wages AND a high risk of no income at all, ie even worse than the Uber model.
This is precisely why many companies are trying to make regular dev roles as interchangeable as possible. By minimizing the dependency on individuals, they make their own bargaining position much stronger.
And when you stop being an employee that is valued for your individual contributions, and become an easily replicable "resource", it may very well be in your best interest to unionize.
However, there are externalities connected to unions, as they DO tend to stifle innovation, lowering all boats.
If worker well-being is a high priority, but a country ALSO wants a dynamic economy, one may want to look to Denmark, where most of the "safety net" responsibilities are moved from the employers to the government.
That requires a taxation level a bit higher than in Germany, but may be part of the reason why wages are significantly higher, and only exceeded by special cases like the US, Switzerland and Norway.
> whether it appears as regulation, taxation or a number of other factors aimed at improving safety and comfort
Also stuff like being bereft of energy resources (compared to American oil/gas/solar), having fucking Russia to the East, the cost of rebuilding after WW2, having lots of languages and cultures (limiting effective market size)...
Also stuff like being bereft of energy resources (compared to American oil/gas/solar), having fucking Russia to the East, the cost of rebuilding after WW2, having lots of languages and cultures (limiting effective market size)...
On the other hand, the highest paying professions don't have unions, even outside tech.
MD's have unions where I live. They're probably the highest paying profession in the country.
About 7% of doctors are in local unions, and that's a recent trend. They rose to high pay without unions.
https://www.axios.com/2022/11/07/more-physicians-join-unions
https://www.axios.com/2022/11/07/more-physicians-join-unions
They have professional associations - the most successful unions ever, not least because they pretend not to be unions. See the medical profession as a good example.
Doctors, lawyers, psychiatrists, accountants...
Sports and movies/TV have unions, and those are by far the highest paid individual contributors. Tech workers just have been sold a bill of goods that they will be held back by unions. Meanwhile, tech CEOs "unionized" to make sure that poaching was held back, and by extension, compensation.
If you're picking jobs where a tiny number of people are employed, then Fortune 100 CEOs make far more than athletes and actors, they're not unionized.
This thread is about labor unions, which negotiate salaries. Sports people are almost universally not in this category - they usually have an agent to negotiate their individual salary.
If you're talking the SAG for actors and the like, median actor income is $46k, one of the lowest paid professions. That works out to $23/hr for fulltime work. You can get that at McDonalds in many places.
Try again.
This thread is about labor unions, which negotiate salaries. Sports people are almost universally not in this category - they usually have an agent to negotiate their individual salary.
If you're talking the SAG for actors and the like, median actor income is $46k, one of the lowest paid professions. That works out to $23/hr for fulltime work. You can get that at McDonalds in many places.
Try again.
I don't know why you added "Try again", especially because I intentionally specified "Individual contributors". Your response also highlights what I was talking about: unions do not hold back their highest paid members while bringing up the bottom for their lowest paid members, just as is the case for SAG.
Most unions cap pay, e.g., [1]. A simple Google gives plenty of evidence.
Your claim about SAG is also wrong; SAG has plenty of pay caps too. For example, here [2] is one explained on their own site. They've always had them and likely always will. There's plenty more.
Unions extract higher pay by making a monopoly on labor (and US antitrust law had to carve out a special monopoly exception for them). This monopoly obtains higher wages for those in the union at the cost of those prevented from working by the union and by increased prices to the surrounding economy. These are all standard econ results.
[1] https://www.heritage.org/jobs-and-labor/commentary/should-un...
[2] https://www.sagaftra.org/important-notice-regarding-2022-com...
Your claim about SAG is also wrong; SAG has plenty of pay caps too. For example, here [2] is one explained on their own site. They've always had them and likely always will. There's plenty more.
Unions extract higher pay by making a monopoly on labor (and US antitrust law had to carve out a special monopoly exception for them). This monopoly obtains higher wages for those in the union at the cost of those prevented from working by the union and by increased prices to the surrounding economy. These are all standard econ results.
[1] https://www.heritage.org/jobs-and-labor/commentary/should-un...
[2] https://www.sagaftra.org/important-notice-regarding-2022-com...
The British Medical Association would like a word. They are a union, despite the name. UK junior doctors and consultants are currently on strike!
US doctors avg $316k/ year. UK doctors avg 138k/yr.
Thanks for more evidence of how unions "improve" outcomes.
https://www.physiciansweekly.com/how-do-us-physician-salarie...
Thanks for more evidence of how unions "improve" outcomes.
https://www.physiciansweekly.com/how-do-us-physician-salarie...
£138k a year in most of the UK is a very, very comfortable living. Especially when you don't have to pay for things like _your own healthcare._ It puts you comfortably in the top 5% of earners.
The same could be said for most professions in the UK. They're paid less than their US counterparts, but it's an excellent example of how you can't always measure quality of life in $ and £.
My job as a software engineer pays considerably less in the UK than my US counterparts, so why haven't I moved there?
The same could be said for most professions in the UK. They're paid less than their US counterparts, but it's an excellent example of how you can't always measure quality of life in $ and £.
My job as a software engineer pays considerably less in the UK than my US counterparts, so why haven't I moved there?
I never heard of an IT union in Germany.
Verdi and IG Metall represent developers. (IGM a bit more traditional, when IBM built machines here; verdi tries to take over as software development is a service of some kind)
> during layoffs, unions may force the company to lay off people based on seniority instead of competency.
Interesting. That's the default by law here in Sweden, but can be negotiated with the union -- usually in exchange for better severance compensation.
Interesting. That's the default by law here in Sweden, but can be negotiated with the union -- usually in exchange for better severance compensation.
I actually had Sweden in mind when writing it.
Maybe I was unclear (or I'm not getting your point): forcing the company to go only by seniority is what happens without the union.
Low salaries in tech in EU is not related to unions. Most software jobs are outside of unions. There amount of money in the EU industry is lower and people are ok to low salaries. It is an open market: people are getting paid bare minimum.
Covid and remote work shift changed a bit, though. Salaries in the EU tech grown dramatically.
Covid and remote work shift changed a bit, though. Salaries in the EU tech grown dramatically.
Unions limit the innovation the worker wouldn't have gotten proper credit for anyway...meh... Sounds like a good trade for fair working conditions.
they are the norm but not on the tech world. in my 10+ years working in europe (tech) i've never once met someone that was part of a union. i've had this discussion with my manager recently and you can see that people are starting to become aware (of unions) and see the need, after years of feeling untouchable. it's still very early though.
In Europe, unions can have devastating effects by ruining the relationships between the leadership and the rank-and-file.
We are stuck in a self-reinforcing feedback loop where unions represent a very small portion of the employees therefore most employees avoid being associated with unions because it makes you look like an activist.
We are stuck in a self-reinforcing feedback loop where unions represent a very small portion of the employees therefore most employees avoid being associated with unions because it makes you look like an activist.
Google leadership has been doing a thorough job at ruining the relationships between leadership and the rank-and-file
My comment was about what is happening in Europe, not in the US.
There's this phenomenon where employees earning higher than their friends and family OR at least doing work in a clean and safe environment tend to believe that they are not workers and they oppose regulations and unions because they feel like its beneath them.
At the company of a friend of mine, the white collar employees do charity events for the blue colar ones and while the blue colar ones participate on labour day events, the white collar ones are too cool to be with them.
But when the actual non-workers(the true elite) feel like they can make more money by laying off some white collar workers, the cool white collars go through the exact same process as the blue collar ones they chipped in for.
Also, these are not even high earning white collars, they just happen to work in a pleasant environment. Many blue collar workers make more money in comparison to white them and are closer to the non-workers since they can actually do highly paid short term contract work.
There's a strong cognitive dissonance going on among white collar workers, having trouble to process the signals on if they are the cool elite or the working class. In Europe, this is not as strong because of the unions and regulations pushing all workers to earn more less the same and the work environments are safe and clean. In places outside of EU there can be workers which are 10x or 100x beter off than those at the bottom because the top can be higher but usually the bottom is also much lower and this gets the better off ones very confused.
At the company of a friend of mine, the white collar employees do charity events for the blue colar ones and while the blue colar ones participate on labour day events, the white collar ones are too cool to be with them.
But when the actual non-workers(the true elite) feel like they can make more money by laying off some white collar workers, the cool white collars go through the exact same process as the blue collar ones they chipped in for.
Also, these are not even high earning white collars, they just happen to work in a pleasant environment. Many blue collar workers make more money in comparison to white them and are closer to the non-workers since they can actually do highly paid short term contract work.
There's a strong cognitive dissonance going on among white collar workers, having trouble to process the signals on if they are the cool elite or the working class. In Europe, this is not as strong because of the unions and regulations pushing all workers to earn more less the same and the work environments are safe and clean. In places outside of EU there can be workers which are 10x or 100x beter off than those at the bottom because the top can be higher but usually the bottom is also much lower and this gets the better off ones very confused.
Nope. This is laughably out of touch -" I don't understand how certain people don't think like I do so they must be irrational." If unions were structured differently, there would be more incentives. People at large, in group form are much more rationale then academics want to give credit, they are simply following the incentives in their life and attempting to do what's best for themselves. Unions in the US are not very incentivising.
In the us, the way laws are written, unions are a political entity and basically from inception are in bed with the government. This creates a mismatch of incentives as the union is motivated to operate politically and this is reflected internally because that's how power is derived externally and thus internally. This creates a lot of odd things like the local foreman who manages the house is doing so because he has been around for 20 years or because he is friends with the guy who has been around for 20 years or because he bought in with millions to be that guy not because they are the right people for the job.
Because of these legal protections and structures unions don't have to compete against other unions and they don't have to compete for the workers membership either. For example the IATSE gets a cut of your work if you work in the industry because that's legally mandated even if you aren't a member. This encourages unions to become bloated, and self serving and it's not immediately clear their value add. Just like elsewhere in society top down structures begin to appear where a few people at the top of the union get most of the pie.
Workers are hesitate to involve themselves with unions here because they are yielding agency to a political machine in a fairly permanent way.
Don't forget some of the cons and headlines around unions here either. Some of the unions using violence, like the teamsters, here to gain power. Teachers unions trying to keep bloated headcounts in empty (by half) schools in Chicago nearly bankrupting the city. Police unions protecting their members despite obvious misconduct. Lots of police/fireman/city unions keep garenteeing investment return rates that aren't in line with the market that eventually bankrupt the city.
If the legal freedom and incentives were there people would do it, but this system is by design.
I am a soft engineer but have remained a iatse card holder.
In the us, the way laws are written, unions are a political entity and basically from inception are in bed with the government. This creates a mismatch of incentives as the union is motivated to operate politically and this is reflected internally because that's how power is derived externally and thus internally. This creates a lot of odd things like the local foreman who manages the house is doing so because he has been around for 20 years or because he is friends with the guy who has been around for 20 years or because he bought in with millions to be that guy not because they are the right people for the job.
Because of these legal protections and structures unions don't have to compete against other unions and they don't have to compete for the workers membership either. For example the IATSE gets a cut of your work if you work in the industry because that's legally mandated even if you aren't a member. This encourages unions to become bloated, and self serving and it's not immediately clear their value add. Just like elsewhere in society top down structures begin to appear where a few people at the top of the union get most of the pie.
Workers are hesitate to involve themselves with unions here because they are yielding agency to a political machine in a fairly permanent way.
Don't forget some of the cons and headlines around unions here either. Some of the unions using violence, like the teamsters, here to gain power. Teachers unions trying to keep bloated headcounts in empty (by half) schools in Chicago nearly bankrupting the city. Police unions protecting their members despite obvious misconduct. Lots of police/fireman/city unions keep garenteeing investment return rates that aren't in line with the market that eventually bankrupt the city.
If the legal freedom and incentives were there people would do it, but this system is by design.
I am a soft engineer but have remained a iatse card holder.
Obviously all generalizations are wrong but this particular comment was well received. Must have rang some bells.
Unions kill innovation, at least in US. And 10-20% of people do the actual work so 80-90% can have the time to complain nonstop while making 400k plus.
As an American I don’t really use that many cutting edge tools from Europe on a daily basis. Maybe my Miele vac.
On the other hand almost everyone in the world uses something made by American corporations.
As an American I don’t really use that many cutting edge tools from Europe on a daily basis. Maybe my Miele vac.
On the other hand almost everyone in the world uses something made by American corporations.
Maybe in the US, but that's a problem how you unionize.
> As an American I don’t really use that many cutting edge tools from Europe on a daily basis. Maybe my Miele vac.
Keep in mind Europe exports more to the world market than America does (and more of them are goods versus services). Like yeah, if you live in the US you probably use more American-made tools - that is not true for the rest of the world.
Just looking around my kitchen now - my knives are made in Germany; my coffee grinder in Norway; my toaster in the UK. Then it's mostly made in China (air fryer, microwave, kettle, pressure cooker). The coffee roaster I have packed away is made in South Korea; the 3D printer on the kitchen table is made in Czechia.
I don't think I own a single kitchen tool or appliance made in the US.
EDIT: Actually, yeah I've got an Aeropress made in the US.
Keep in mind Europe exports more to the world market than America does (and more of them are goods versus services). Like yeah, if you live in the US you probably use more American-made tools - that is not true for the rest of the world.
Just looking around my kitchen now - my knives are made in Germany; my coffee grinder in Norway; my toaster in the UK. Then it's mostly made in China (air fryer, microwave, kettle, pressure cooker). The coffee roaster I have packed away is made in South Korea; the 3D printer on the kitchen table is made in Czechia.
I don't think I own a single kitchen tool or appliance made in the US.
EDIT: Actually, yeah I've got an Aeropress made in the US.
As a European I'm curious which unions and industries are you talking about? I've been working tech or tech-adjacent jobs my entire life here and I've never been in a union nor do I know any friends (developers / designers) that are in a union. And I'm going to conferences and meetups on a regular. I'm not saying unions don't exist (probably more so in certain industries), but for devs to be in a union in Europe? Never heard of it.
"Betriebsrat" sounds German to me, so possibly Germany?
And definitely Sweden. Many (most?) of my software engineer colleagues are members of either the engineering-specific "Sveriges Ingenjörer" or generic white-collar "Unionen" union.
And definitely Sweden. Many (most?) of my software engineer colleagues are members of either the engineering-specific "Sveriges Ingenjörer" or generic white-collar "Unionen" union.
> “Betriebsrat" sounds German to me, so possibly Germany?
I am in Germany and I never heard of any union for Devs, not even large firms having any specific ones for Devs. My colleagues frequently discuss about unionizing but there are huge pay disparity hence most often it is hard to get everyone on board sadly.
Most unions are intended for craftsmen, minijobs, public transports and such. There are some small employers covered by famous IG Metall tariff but that is not the norm. I know that likes of Airbus has some kind of union that covers most of the departments and hence pays insane salary but that is something I heard from friends of people who work there, so I can’t assure accuracy.
There might be unions but that is not the norm except some dinosaurs.
I am in Germany and I never heard of any union for Devs, not even large firms having any specific ones for Devs. My colleagues frequently discuss about unionizing but there are huge pay disparity hence most often it is hard to get everyone on board sadly.
Most unions are intended for craftsmen, minijobs, public transports and such. There are some small employers covered by famous IG Metall tariff but that is not the norm. I know that likes of Airbus has some kind of union that covers most of the departments and hence pays insane salary but that is something I heard from friends of people who work there, so I can’t assure accuracy.
There might be unions but that is not the norm except some dinosaurs.
I believe here in Norway it's about 50% of devs that are in the technical unions.
It’s very common in Norway. Many IT people are member of NITO (Norwegian Society of Engineers and Technologists) or Tekna (Norwegian Society of Graduate Technical and Scientific Professionals).
My estimate would be that at most 40-50% of developers are unionized in Norway (more for ops/IT-department workers). In Sweden that's more like 80%.
Even 40% makes a huge difference, though.
Even 40% makes a huge difference, though.
Yeah, and Tekna a few years back was one of those pushing to get rid of the (now illegal) anti-competition contracts all employers made you sign. So while most people don't see them day-to-day (as in, they don't set tariffs and often don't negotiate your salary), they still influence a lot. And the salary statistics is very useful in leveling the playing field and getting what you're worth.
And the union deals on insurances, mortgage etc. saves me much more money each year than the union fee.
And the union deals on insurances, mortgage etc. saves me much more money each year than the union fee.
Dont you just love it when people speak of their own little bubble as if it was an entire continent? I never met anyone in “Europe” working in tech part of a union.
We need to stop talking about "Europe" in general for things as country-specific as labor laws and unions.
Unions in Germany aren't really split up by profession, but by industry. So if you e.g. work in the car or manufacturing industry, there's a good chance that most workers in your company are part of "IG Metall", which is the biggest union in Germany. And that union then negotiates the salary & working conditions for every normal employee, even if you aren't part of the union. So if you ever met a developer from Siemens, Mercedes, BMW, Bosch, etc. they are probably enjoying the benefits of a union.
As you said, they are only under that umbrella because of the sector. Outside of those companies, there's basically no unions at all in IT/Mostly-IT companies.
Atruvia, 1&1 and SAP have... and they are probably the biggest native german employers.
Interesting. I think that makes a lot more sense for the heavy industries in Germany. I've been working for many years across the border in the Netherlands (South Holland specifically) where there's a lot of tech/design companies and studios and I just haven't come across anyone in a union or even heard of people being in a union.
I worked in tech (DAX company) in Germany for almost a decade and we were unionized.
I'd say the union was one of the main reasons why we didn't have mass layoffs when the company was in a hard spot. Instead more acceptable options like part-time and voluntary resignation with exit packages were negotiated and still met similar cost saving goals.
In small shops you probably won't have a union but they don't tend to hire&fire like the big multinationals.
I'd say the union was one of the main reasons why we didn't have mass layoffs when the company was in a hard spot. Instead more acceptable options like part-time and voluntary resignation with exit packages were negotiated and still met similar cost saving goals.
In small shops you probably won't have a union but they don't tend to hire&fire like the big multinationals.
My only experience dealing with an union as a SWE, in Germany at that, has been a negative one. It shaped my opinion on the topic.
What about it was negative?
They didn't want me to negotiate my offer, after I went through the whole interview process. Passed the message through my prospective boss: "take it or leave it, you can't have it better than people already at the company".
Yeah, salary negotiations in the context of a union contract is a specific skill. Knowing the system is absolutely essential.
The way to go would have been to communicate to your prospective boss that he needs to create a position in a higher compensation tier, or a position outside the union contract. If they want you badly enough, both are possibilities. Especially position outside the union contract are very common once you're a senior/principal engineer.
If it's only a small bump you want (not an entire compensation tier), telling your prospective boss that he needs to take your CV and convince HR that this means you have 15 years of relevant experience will also work - this will get you a high compensation level within your tier.
The way to go would have been to communicate to your prospective boss that he needs to create a position in a higher compensation tier, or a position outside the union contract. If they want you badly enough, both are possibilities. Especially position outside the union contract are very common once you're a senior/principal engineer.
If it's only a small bump you want (not an entire compensation tier), telling your prospective boss that he needs to take your CV and convince HR that this means you have 15 years of relevant experience will also work - this will get you a high compensation level within your tier.
I've never heard of anyone using unions in software in europe. Maybe something popular in just one country?
The problem with unions is that if you are a top performer it's harder to get promoted, if you're crap it's harder to get rid of you.
Overall it's great for non productive people who can pay a little and coast, great for everyone else. I can understand unions for low paid jobs the should be done by machines (eg. factory workers) but it doesn't make sense for knowledge work where performance has huge impact.
Oh and they want money to do that.
The problem with unions is that if you are a top performer it's harder to get promoted, if you're crap it's harder to get rid of you.
Overall it's great for non productive people who can pay a little and coast, great for everyone else. I can understand unions for low paid jobs the should be done by machines (eg. factory workers) but it doesn't make sense for knowledge work where performance has huge impact.
Oh and they want money to do that.
Because in the US of A anything that's not aligned with maximising shareholder value is communism.
Because a big tech company will think twice before opening o position in Europe and will consider not the impact of that position could bring, but how hard is to fire someone from that position. Some of the people targeted by the last year's lay-offs were still employed one year later and the company couldn't do anything for stupid legal reasons, like not already having a union to negotiate for 1 person. Being in a limbo for 1 year, not being able to do anything except quit and loose any potential layoff compensation package, but neither able to work for the company, nor interview and find a new job is horrible for everyone involved.
US restarted hiring quickly after the layoffs, but EU has still a hiring freeze in several FAANGS.
US restarted hiring quickly after the layoffs, but EU has still a hiring freeze in several FAANGS.
> Why not in the US?
How many large tech. companies has Europe produced ?
Why would (or even: could) anyone start/build a cutting-edge tech. company in Europe given the hell that labor laws are over there ?
Labor laws in Europe are a giant hindrance to economic growth.
People in most European countries have made a political choice: safety and stagnation over wealth and growth.
That's their choice, fine, they're free to do as they please in their own house.
But when you make a choice, you can't ignore the consequences of these choices.
That's why "not in the US":
Different political choices, betting on growth, agility, innovation, running fast, and yes -- ooooh, what a terrible thing -- taking risks, and among others that employment may come and go because the world is not a static place.
How many large tech. companies has Europe produced ?
Why would (or even: could) anyone start/build a cutting-edge tech. company in Europe given the hell that labor laws are over there ?
Labor laws in Europe are a giant hindrance to economic growth.
People in most European countries have made a political choice: safety and stagnation over wealth and growth.
That's their choice, fine, they're free to do as they please in their own house.
But when you make a choice, you can't ignore the consequences of these choices.
That's why "not in the US":
Different political choices, betting on growth, agility, innovation, running fast, and yes -- ooooh, what a terrible thing -- taking risks, and among others that employment may come and go because the world is not a static place.
It has nothing to do with labor laws, it's more about lack of investors.
Many tech companies started in Europe, got successful then moved to US because they could not longer find big enough investors in Europe.
Google only did layoffs very recently so I don't see how be able to fire people at will helped them grow.
Many tech companies started in Europe, got successful then moved to US because they could not longer find big enough investors in Europe.
Google only did layoffs very recently so I don't see how be able to fire people at will helped them grow.
> it's more about lack of investors.
And why would you say, aren't there any large investors?
If the labor market conditions were good (and taxes, and work ethics, and ... the list is very long), the investors would come, even from far away, believe me.
Money can move around the world very fast these days.
And why would you say, aren't there any large investors?
If the labor market conditions were good (and taxes, and work ethics, and ... the list is very long), the investors would come, even from far away, believe me.
Money can move around the world very fast these days.
Wow, that's a very opinionated take, to say the least. Especially when by Europe we mean three dozen countries or so, all of them with their own history, policies and laws. A little bit more nuance would help.
In Poland most people scoff at any mention of unions for software developers. I think this is because we're still in the phase of quick SWE salary growth powered in large part by the best performers in the field being good negotiators in salary talks with incoming foreign capital. They drive the companies' labor cost expectations up and it benefits everybody in the field.
There's also a huge disparity between the SWE salaries and the rest of the society in Poland, I can imagine fears that unionization overall would flatten out those differences.
Another factor is that in places where we have unions (leftover fields still highly tied to the government, e.g. teachers) they tend to not function very well in practice (not enough employee advocacy, unhealthy level of union politics affecting people's outcomes in the workplace etc.).
Lastly, we're still pretty fresh to the whole capitalism game as a country, so we're scared of anything that resembles a step backwards.
There's also a huge disparity between the SWE salaries and the rest of the society in Poland, I can imagine fears that unionization overall would flatten out those differences.
Another factor is that in places where we have unions (leftover fields still highly tied to the government, e.g. teachers) they tend to not function very well in practice (not enough employee advocacy, unhealthy level of union politics affecting people's outcomes in the workplace etc.).
Lastly, we're still pretty fresh to the whole capitalism game as a country, so we're scared of anything that resembles a step backwards.
The US also pays significantly more. Unions change the risk calculation for employers, and the result will be changes in compensation, and often increased costs to consumers.
Also unions in the US have quite often rewarded seniority over skill and effort, making them less attractive to high performers.
Early on in tech I outperformed all those I started with, and was able to make significantly more as a result. My friends in union jobs (electrician, auto plant workers, ..) did not get any such opportunity to shine, and they even had to strike (i.e., no pay) when the local shops decided they should. They're not allowed to work outside jobs, they have a terrible time starting new shops, since the existing union power brokers like the control over their employment.
I looked into moving to the UK, and saw how few startups in the EU become big, how hard it is in most countries there to make new businesses compared to the US, and decided against it. The EU is ~450M people, the US is ~330M. Now look at how few companies in the EU become worth 1B compared to the US. That low ratio also applies to smaller (and larger) companies.
Increased benefits to workers for one facet of employment is not free. Laws adding costs per employee to an employer are not simply paid out of magic money.
Also unions in the US have quite often rewarded seniority over skill and effort, making them less attractive to high performers.
Early on in tech I outperformed all those I started with, and was able to make significantly more as a result. My friends in union jobs (electrician, auto plant workers, ..) did not get any such opportunity to shine, and they even had to strike (i.e., no pay) when the local shops decided they should. They're not allowed to work outside jobs, they have a terrible time starting new shops, since the existing union power brokers like the control over their employment.
I looked into moving to the UK, and saw how few startups in the EU become big, how hard it is in most countries there to make new businesses compared to the US, and decided against it. The EU is ~450M people, the US is ~330M. Now look at how few companies in the EU become worth 1B compared to the US. That low ratio also applies to smaller (and larger) companies.
Increased benefits to workers for one facet of employment is not free. Laws adding costs per employee to an employer are not simply paid out of magic money.
Where is any evidence to back this? How can you compare a VC funded tech job pay to a normal trade pay? Software pays a lot because its a good business. There is no physical product cost so labor can be higher, and margins are higher. Comparing the EU and US start up cultures and implying its somehow due to labor protections is disingenuous.
You do make some very good points, but I disagree on one.
>Now look at how few companies in the EU become worth 1B compared to the US. That low ratio also applies to smaller (and larger) companies.
Money is power/control, and not having a concentration of wealth is a good thing for society. Granted many of the ultra wealthy also support giving away their wealth - but (IMHO) the Benevolent dictator model for social change is indicative of a failure of government. I think there is wastage of allocated capital both when its done by elected officials and also with the ultra wealthy.
>Now look at how few companies in the EU become worth 1B compared to the US. That low ratio also applies to smaller (and larger) companies.
Money is power/control, and not having a concentration of wealth is a good thing for society. Granted many of the ultra wealthy also support giving away their wealth - but (IMHO) the Benevolent dictator model for social change is indicative of a failure of government. I think there is wastage of allocated capital both when its done by elected officials and also with the ultra wealthy.
> not having a concentration of wealth is a good thing for society
The US has higher income for median, for the poor. for those in poverty, for every decile, by a decent margin.
For example, US median income is around 46k. Germany is a reasonable first world country, yet median income is 33k (all in PPP dollars). This is huge. Most of the first world has similarly low income, at every level.
If your argument against income is that some people make a lot, so instead make everyone poorer, I find that a weak argument. It is a common outcome of poorly designed policies that those focusing on the rich or poor but with a bad understanding of history and econ end up making. I'd rather policymakers learn econ and history and learn that things like rent control, or various forms of taxes, have consequences that often hurt those they claim to want to help.
Here's some metrics for various ways to measure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_c...
OECD has tons more.
> I think there is wastage of allocated capital both when its done by elected officials and also with the ultra wealthy.
You think the average person would allocate capital better than those that understand investment and growth, and are willing to risk their own resources? There's a reason govt funds vastly underperform general markets - those with less to lose (i.e., those playing with other's money) likely fare worse at allocation than those that have more skin in the game. I know that most workers I tend to hang out with have a terrible understanding of how econ/macro/finance or even starting and funding businesses works.
Also those countries that tend strongly into socialism instead of capitalism have not done as well as those with strong capitalist bases (i.e., all first world countries - where people can own the means of production and operate for their own profit). If capital were allocated so much better in the places you seem to want, where is the evidence that it works? There's 200+ countries; if it worked, you'd think it would be winning somewhere....
The US has higher income for median, for the poor. for those in poverty, for every decile, by a decent margin.
For example, US median income is around 46k. Germany is a reasonable first world country, yet median income is 33k (all in PPP dollars). This is huge. Most of the first world has similarly low income, at every level.
If your argument against income is that some people make a lot, so instead make everyone poorer, I find that a weak argument. It is a common outcome of poorly designed policies that those focusing on the rich or poor but with a bad understanding of history and econ end up making. I'd rather policymakers learn econ and history and learn that things like rent control, or various forms of taxes, have consequences that often hurt those they claim to want to help.
Here's some metrics for various ways to measure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_c...
OECD has tons more.
> I think there is wastage of allocated capital both when its done by elected officials and also with the ultra wealthy.
You think the average person would allocate capital better than those that understand investment and growth, and are willing to risk their own resources? There's a reason govt funds vastly underperform general markets - those with less to lose (i.e., those playing with other's money) likely fare worse at allocation than those that have more skin in the game. I know that most workers I tend to hang out with have a terrible understanding of how econ/macro/finance or even starting and funding businesses works.
Also those countries that tend strongly into socialism instead of capitalism have not done as well as those with strong capitalist bases (i.e., all first world countries - where people can own the means of production and operate for their own profit). If capital were allocated so much better in the places you seem to want, where is the evidence that it works? There's 200+ countries; if it worked, you'd think it would be winning somewhere....
>If your argument against income is that some people make a lot, so instead make everyone poorer, I find that a weak argument
How did what I say in any way relate with making everyone poorer? You're just assuming what my position is, and also assuming the outcome based on what happened in other random countries, in a completely different setting.
I'm against concentrations of power because the government should not have a competitor when it comes to power. We elect the government, and in a functioning democracy the government's policies are decided on by voters. This in effect ensures only the people get to decide who govern them. There should never be another entity which can out compete a government when it comes to power and influence.
>I'd rather policymakers learn econ and history and learn that things like rent control, or various forms of taxes, have consequences that often hurt those they claim to want to help.
Its a common talking point, but in reality that is just an opinion masquerading as fact. It presumes everything in economics is an inarguable fact. It is not. Humans have been successfully governing themselves under various systems of governance. Anyway, that itself is a 4 hour debate, so I'll just leave it at that. If you want the final word you have it, I won't argue with it ;)
How did what I say in any way relate with making everyone poorer? You're just assuming what my position is, and also assuming the outcome based on what happened in other random countries, in a completely different setting.
I'm against concentrations of power because the government should not have a competitor when it comes to power. We elect the government, and in a functioning democracy the government's policies are decided on by voters. This in effect ensures only the people get to decide who govern them. There should never be another entity which can out compete a government when it comes to power and influence.
>I'd rather policymakers learn econ and history and learn that things like rent control, or various forms of taxes, have consequences that often hurt those they claim to want to help.
Its a common talking point, but in reality that is just an opinion masquerading as fact. It presumes everything in economics is an inarguable fact. It is not. Humans have been successfully governing themselves under various systems of governance. Anyway, that itself is a 4 hour debate, so I'll just leave it at that. If you want the final word you have it, I won't argue with it ;)
> Its a common talking point, but in reality that is just an opinion masquerading as fact.
Spoken like someone ignorant of history and econ. Rent control is such a screw up, over and over, that it's a basic part of econ 101, yet politicians and everyday people want and obtain it again and again, each time to the same outcome - less housing and less affordable housing.
Care to point out where rent control has been a smashing success, and compare that to places it has been a dismal failure? This is not opinion - this is fact. Or simply read some survey papers - google has plenty.
A good tax example is something like the Swedish Financial Transaction Tax [1], which was a major screw up, yet has been tried in around 15 countries, all with similar screw ups, yet is popular (see Bernie Sanders version from ~2020 for example). There are ample academic papers detailing all of these.
Also fact. Go ahead and explain how the Swiss tax was a success.
People ignorant of history and econ, and most importantly how econ works, continually repeat stupid ideas. Maybe this time magic will work because they believe it?
You are a prime example of this problem with your claim. Yes, there is some play in econ, but it's no where near something one can just wish away, yet people ignorant of it try.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_financial_transaction_...
Spoken like someone ignorant of history and econ. Rent control is such a screw up, over and over, that it's a basic part of econ 101, yet politicians and everyday people want and obtain it again and again, each time to the same outcome - less housing and less affordable housing.
Care to point out where rent control has been a smashing success, and compare that to places it has been a dismal failure? This is not opinion - this is fact. Or simply read some survey papers - google has plenty.
A good tax example is something like the Swedish Financial Transaction Tax [1], which was a major screw up, yet has been tried in around 15 countries, all with similar screw ups, yet is popular (see Bernie Sanders version from ~2020 for example). There are ample academic papers detailing all of these.
Also fact. Go ahead and explain how the Swiss tax was a success.
People ignorant of history and econ, and most importantly how econ works, continually repeat stupid ideas. Maybe this time magic will work because they believe it?
You are a prime example of this problem with your claim. Yes, there is some play in econ, but it's no where near something one can just wish away, yet people ignorant of it try.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_financial_transaction_...
You can believe in your ideology, the problem is you have to convince others if you want to do anything democratic, and so far you haven't. I said I won't argue with you so I wont ;) Good luck.
I presented an event which is a list of facts - there is no opinion on it. Did you read it? I suspect not.
The ideology in this thread is only willfull ignorance - showing someone something easy to grasp, yet they refuse to believe it.
You illustrate my point precisely. Mass (and often willful) ignorance leads humanity to make bad decisions.
> I said I won't argue with you
Yet you continue to reply after you already said you won't.....
The ideology in this thread is only willfull ignorance - showing someone something easy to grasp, yet they refuse to believe it.
You illustrate my point precisely. Mass (and often willful) ignorance leads humanity to make bad decisions.
> I said I won't argue with you
Yet you continue to reply after you already said you won't.....
Many differences between the US and EU, not just workers benefits.
IMO, more likely to affect startup company success in becoming big:
- One common language, one culture, one currency across the US (sure, differences between states in culture but not as diverse as in Europe). This is gradually converging via the EU, but the US has a couple of centuries headstart...
- VC funding concentration in California (think about how many of those "US" companies are from California); VC investors in US are global names if you work in the industry, in EU they are regional names.
- Generalising a bit here, but from my experience, I find work/life balance generally considered more important in EU compared to US. In the US, work is given a higher priority and if your boss asks you to stay late/work on a weekend, many colleagues in the US would do it, European colleagues would put e.g. family first instead.
- Side note; work/life balance point can be reflected in terms of national culture, e.g. "The American Dream"
IMO, more likely to affect startup company success in becoming big:
- One common language, one culture, one currency across the US (sure, differences between states in culture but not as diverse as in Europe). This is gradually converging via the EU, but the US has a couple of centuries headstart...
- VC funding concentration in California (think about how many of those "US" companies are from California); VC investors in US are global names if you work in the industry, in EU they are regional names.
- Generalising a bit here, but from my experience, I find work/life balance generally considered more important in EU compared to US. In the US, work is given a higher priority and if your boss asks you to stay late/work on a weekend, many colleagues in the US would do it, European colleagues would put e.g. family first instead.
- Side note; work/life balance point can be reflected in terms of national culture, e.g. "The American Dream"
Google has a union. It costs thousands of dollars per year to join and primarily focuses on political issues like lobbying management not to pursue contracts with the US military.
And even if they had a good union, I fail to see how it would have prevented this.
And even if they had a good union, I fail to see how it would have prevented this.
I don't think its so much the industry as the geography. It is all about tradeoffs and I don't think there is a clear answer as to what the better way is. I am in the US and to me the American dream is the selling point here. While I don't think the American dream is as easy as it was decades ago, I do think its still very much a possibility when I see the number of immigrants that come either as skilled workers or labor and can really lift themselves up. I am not European but my impression is that lots of the EU advertises itself as stable.
I personally have no interest in joining a union. I don't think companies are my friend but I also know that it is bad to become complacent which I find a lot of lifers at big companies can become. I am not suggesting you need to be working 90 hour weeks but I do think a lot of individuals, including engineers, fall into the trap of doing one thing well and nothing else and stick into a single role for such a time that they lose plasticity. The employee - employer relationship is not a war against each other but a market balance, I need to be adding incremental value and the employer needs to be recognizing it and we are left to negotiate the terms.
I personally have no interest in joining a union. I don't think companies are my friend but I also know that it is bad to become complacent which I find a lot of lifers at big companies can become. I am not suggesting you need to be working 90 hour weeks but I do think a lot of individuals, including engineers, fall into the trap of doing one thing well and nothing else and stick into a single role for such a time that they lose plasticity. The employee - employer relationship is not a war against each other but a market balance, I need to be adding incremental value and the employer needs to be recognizing it and we are left to negotiate the terms.
Well, unions tend to average the outcome. But IT positions, being on the top side of the employee distribution, can typically obtain more.
I can give you a real-world example. Our company (Italy) office was relocated, and unions entered negotiations to obtain three days of remote work for the entire personnel. However, I and others refused to sign the agreement because, with more negotiation power, our target was full remote work. However, in doing so, we were undermining the union positions, which made them unhappy. Fortunately, things ended well; all personnel got the three days, and a few other people were granted full remote work.
I can give you a real-world example. Our company (Italy) office was relocated, and unions entered negotiations to obtain three days of remote work for the entire personnel. However, I and others refused to sign the agreement because, with more negotiation power, our target was full remote work. However, in doing so, we were undermining the union positions, which made them unhappy. Fortunately, things ended well; all personnel got the three days, and a few other people were granted full remote work.
In Europe unions negotiate with company leaders to make deals that help businesses negotiate market conditions. In the US unions enable workers to gang up on management in order to increase pay. The words are similar, but the structures, operations, and goals involved are all completely different.
In the past Software Engineers never needed unions. We were just in super high demand at all times and we could name our price.
Yeah things have changed. It may be time for Software Engineers to unionize.
Yeah things have changed. It may be time for Software Engineers to unionize.
Because engineers in america earn way, way more than european ones. Would you rather have a union or an extra $100k in salary?
Two words: managerial accounting.
And the lack of this practice across an entire industry. Margins are getting smaller and smaller and the successful companies will use such practices to inform all sorts of decisions, from building in house vs 3rd party vendor, to hiring, to R&D, etc.
The days of YOLO moonshots are over for our industry. Of course venture capital will continue to exist but perhaps directed to new industries.
And the lack of this practice across an entire industry. Margins are getting smaller and smaller and the successful companies will use such practices to inform all sorts of decisions, from building in house vs 3rd party vendor, to hiring, to R&D, etc.
The days of YOLO moonshots are over for our industry. Of course venture capital will continue to exist but perhaps directed to new industries.
I definitely wouldn’t say the days of YOLO moonshots are completely over (just look at the current level of investment in AI startups). Those days will return when the investment climate is improved, as it was prior to this recession and will be afterwards.
In relative terms, it's not huge - NYT is no more specific than hundreds, so let's say 500, out of 182,000 - that's 0.27% (though obviously a higher impact on engineering - you might that would be what they'd cut last).
And it seems to be layoffs in hardware which, frankly, Google is not great with. Yes, Pixel has improved vs previous years. But Pixel is mostly US, Apple owns the US market and Pixel is not making any inroads (at best it is eating other Android devices). Google has no real runaway hardware hits. It's had a few promising launches but then they manage to take them in bad directions (Google WiFi going from a simple focused thing to becoming this giant Google Home mess that's a pain in the ass to use, Chromecast devices losing functionality, etc, etc). Google support documentation has been 100% useless every time I've had an issue (to be fair: so is Apple's).
Amazon's hardware (Alexa) is the market leader I think and even it was hit with layoffs last year wasn't it? Even specifically Alexa which Google's Assistant hardware line tries to compete with.
It's probably extremely rational to step back and conclude that Google sucks at hardware. I do like Google WiFi (it frustrates me but it is fairly set-it-and-forget-it for my parents/non technical friends) and Pixel (because I hate iOS).
Amazon's hardware (Alexa) is the market leader I think and even it was hit with layoffs last year wasn't it? Even specifically Alexa which Google's Assistant hardware line tries to compete with.
It's probably extremely rational to step back and conclude that Google sucks at hardware. I do like Google WiFi (it frustrates me but it is fairly set-it-and-forget-it for my parents/non technical friends) and Pixel (because I hate iOS).
Google as a company doesn't have the attention span or focus anymore to ship excellent hardware. "Everyone knows" that they don't stay focused on things, and I can't imagine that making it easy to higher top quality hardware and firmware folks. Once you eliminate good pay and stability, there's not a lot to recommend Google to hardware folks.
You need to distinguish "hardware" and "consumer hardware".
Google wouldn't exist as you know it if they didn't didn't build great data center and network hardware.
Their problems in consumer hardware are not about the hardware specifically. It is about product management and go-to-market.
Google wouldn't exist as you know it if they didn't didn't build great data center and network hardware.
Their problems in consumer hardware are not about the hardware specifically. It is about product management and go-to-market.
Fire engineering since it is expenses.
Hire sales since they earn money.
I don't see this comment going down well here regardless of how much truth there may be to it.
Probably won't go down well because it's clearly overly simplistic.
If taken at face value, software companies should simply have 0 software developers.
If taken at face value, software companies should simply have 0 software developers.
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jeez, i didn't know humor is not welcome here.
Sometimes HN gets pretty thoughtless posts, which can make it hard to realize when a post contains dry humor.
It’s just business. And it’s not like swe aren’t making 400k or more at least in bay area.
People need to understand that just because you have a little bit of RSUs and a 200k base doesn’t mean you’re God.
You’re an asset like a machine. And you’re expensive to the bottom line.
This is literally explicitly laid out now with section 174.
If you’re taking this personally ask yourself why you’re even working for arguably some of the best most efficient capitalists on the planet. Maybe you should work for a government agency or smaller company. But you want that 400k plus right?
People need to understand that just because you have a little bit of RSUs and a 200k base doesn’t mean you’re God.
You’re an asset like a machine. And you’re expensive to the bottom line.
This is literally explicitly laid out now with section 174.
If you’re taking this personally ask yourself why you’re even working for arguably some of the best most efficient capitalists on the planet. Maybe you should work for a government agency or smaller company. But you want that 400k plus right?
But we are a family!
That salary is a reflection of market forces.
The fundamentals remain the same: they are workers who support families of arbitrary needs and complexities and not just themselves. Are they expensive to the bottom line? Good -- they _allow_ the bottom line because they are the ones generating value.
Not the shareholders and upper managers calling for layoffs to maximize their stock prices who you seem to appreciate more.
The fundamentals remain the same: they are workers who support families of arbitrary needs and complexities and not just themselves. Are they expensive to the bottom line? Good -- they _allow_ the bottom line because they are the ones generating value.
Not the shareholders and upper managers calling for layoffs to maximize their stock prices who you seem to appreciate more.
I’m just pointing out reality. Sorry I know it’s not “kind” or whatever. Just true though.
If someone makes a Faustian bargain, it will have consequences.
You make a deal with the devil (biggest capitalist empires on the planet - I don’t think they’re evil btw I’m just making analogy) and the devil will come for you.
For them, it’s just business. That’s their whole point of existence, to run their business and grow even at their stage. I don’t work for these companies but I do hold positions in them through my 401k.
If someone makes a Faustian bargain, it will have consequences.
You make a deal with the devil (biggest capitalist empires on the planet - I don’t think they’re evil btw I’m just making analogy) and the devil will come for you.
For them, it’s just business. That’s their whole point of existence, to run their business and grow even at their stage. I don’t work for these companies but I do hold positions in them through my 401k.
I have worked in the Bay Area for decades, and never seen 400k+. My current contract comes out at about 165k with no benefits.
The reason I work for a soul-less telco, is that it is hard (for me at least) to find a job in the first place. I've been at plenty of small companies as well. If I could have gotten in at Google I would have done it in a heart beat, not just for the money, but to have FAANG on my resume.
The reason I work for a soul-less telco, is that it is hard (for me at least) to find a job in the first place. I've been at plenty of small companies as well. If I could have gotten in at Google I would have done it in a heart beat, not just for the money, but to have FAANG on my resume.
Once again demonstrating the difference between leadership and management.
Why in this particular time frame? Just before the performance reviews?
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Just a day ago I was reading a comment from a - funnily, google - engineer gaslighting another engineer that had a hard time finding a job in this market.
I'm seeing so many people doing this at the moment. "Maybe you need to reskill". "You need to work on your interview skills". "You're not applying to the right positions". Etc...
You can't know what the market is like until you're looking for work, and as someone who's been in this industry for 15 years and has been applying to roles recently, I know it's really rough out there regardless of what some are saying. It's like nothing I've ever seen before. I'm getting messages from colleagues every week who have been recently laid off and can't find work. Some are now getting desperate.
We did some hiring where I work in Dec. We had over 150 candidates and only extended offers to 9 candidates. Your chance of being hired was literally only 5% IF the recruiter thought your profile was at least good enough to send over for consideration. I'm guessing the actual number that applied was likely 300+. That's absolutely brutal compared to anything I've ever experience. Typically if I applied for a role in the past I might have a 20-25% chance of getting an offer, and during the last 5 years that was probably as high as 40-50%.
People in jobs need to consider themselves extremely lucky right now. In this market a good developer probably only as a 2-3% chance of getting any job they apply for and will likely need to take a decent cut in pay too.
You can't know what the market is like until you're looking for work, and as someone who's been in this industry for 15 years and has been applying to roles recently, I know it's really rough out there regardless of what some are saying. It's like nothing I've ever seen before. I'm getting messages from colleagues every week who have been recently laid off and can't find work. Some are now getting desperate.
We did some hiring where I work in Dec. We had over 150 candidates and only extended offers to 9 candidates. Your chance of being hired was literally only 5% IF the recruiter thought your profile was at least good enough to send over for consideration. I'm guessing the actual number that applied was likely 300+. That's absolutely brutal compared to anything I've ever experience. Typically if I applied for a role in the past I might have a 20-25% chance of getting an offer, and during the last 5 years that was probably as high as 40-50%.
People in jobs need to consider themselves extremely lucky right now. In this market a good developer probably only as a 2-3% chance of getting any job they apply for and will likely need to take a decent cut in pay too.
I agree that job hunting is brutal. However, my experience in doing interviews recently is that half the guys who got through the screening interview with our manager were worthless. And he probably rejected 90% of the candidates sent by the recruiter. Of the 2 people hired, one is kind of mediocre, and we are not talking FAANG standards.
The timing coincides with layoffs at the company I work for, Aurora Innovation. I assume it’s done on purpose to be overshadowed by larger layoffs.
How big was the layoff?
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5+ years ago, Big Tech was desperate to retain employees. This of course increased wages. Google, in particular, was always insanely profitable on a per-employee basis, at times exceeding $1 million in profit per employee.
The pandemic was really a perfect opportunity for these companies to reset the relationship with their employees. Layoffs weren't an issue if everyone was doing layoffs. Making people afraid for their jobs suppresses wages. All of this is just to increase profits.
This is going to backfire. Google, for example, allowed people to work on things. If it didn't work out, you'd go work on something else. Gmail famously came out of this approach. Google even studied this dynamic and determined psychological safety was key to success [1].
The lesson now? If you work on a project that fails, you may get laid off. The success or failure of that project will have almost nothing to do with your individual input yet you will still suffer the consequences. So employees will stop taking risks.
The other way this will backfire is that Big Tech employees are discovering they aren't above the same forces that dominate the existence of every other working person, namely that there is an adversarial relationship between employer and employee and the employer will seek to get the most work possible at the lowest cost.
What this will lead to is labor organization and collective bargaining. It will take awhile. White collar workers, and Americans in particular, generally have zero class consciousness. Collective action in general has been successfully demonized through decades of propaganda and a cult-like following of objectivism. But it will happen.
[1]: https://allwork.space/2022/10/psychological-safety-is-the-ke...
The pandemic was really a perfect opportunity for these companies to reset the relationship with their employees. Layoffs weren't an issue if everyone was doing layoffs. Making people afraid for their jobs suppresses wages. All of this is just to increase profits.
This is going to backfire. Google, for example, allowed people to work on things. If it didn't work out, you'd go work on something else. Gmail famously came out of this approach. Google even studied this dynamic and determined psychological safety was key to success [1].
The lesson now? If you work on a project that fails, you may get laid off. The success or failure of that project will have almost nothing to do with your individual input yet you will still suffer the consequences. So employees will stop taking risks.
The other way this will backfire is that Big Tech employees are discovering they aren't above the same forces that dominate the existence of every other working person, namely that there is an adversarial relationship between employer and employee and the employer will seek to get the most work possible at the lowest cost.
What this will lead to is labor organization and collective bargaining. It will take awhile. White collar workers, and Americans in particular, generally have zero class consciousness. Collective action in general has been successfully demonized through decades of propaganda and a cult-like following of objectivism. But it will happen.
[1]: https://allwork.space/2022/10/psychological-safety-is-the-ke...
Don't forget that at Google promotions were based on successful launches, leading to multiple competing chat apps and a mountain of ther abandoned products. The company has been successful seemingly put of pure luck, and we're about to see how long they can milk the few cash cows they created.
Also, the employees at Google are compensated with stocks, so they see their fortunes rise as their ex colleagues leave the building in layoffs. This makes unionizing all that harder.
Also, the employees at Google are compensated with stocks, so they see their fortunes rise as their ex colleagues leave the building in layoffs. This makes unionizing all that harder.
Google is overrated. It's been obvious for over a decade after they built an interview process that is heavily biased towards those who recently took an algorithms class. You had talking heads yammering about how hard it was to get into Google, which to be honest, made the company even less appealing. Is this a software engineering company or some kind of hyped up nightclub?
Yeah, maybe it's a hard interview if you've been out of college for a while, haven't written classical algorithms professionally for years, and don't want to spend weeks or months of free time bashing your head on leetcode. What isn't pressure tested by the Google interview process? Just about every other skill that is needed to be a good software engineer.
Obviously, Google has some good engineers, but my goodness was the hype around the company offputting.
Yeah, maybe it's a hard interview if you've been out of college for a while, haven't written classical algorithms professionally for years, and don't want to spend weeks or months of free time bashing your head on leetcode. What isn't pressure tested by the Google interview process? Just about every other skill that is needed to be a good software engineer.
Obviously, Google has some good engineers, but my goodness was the hype around the company offputting.
I think there is some truth to this for sure, it doesn't mean you're hiring practical / driven people, it means you're likely hiring people who are good at rote memorization.
It means you are hiring people who are highly compliant. Which is important when your goal is to scale whatever already works.
> It's been obvious for over a decade after they built an interview process that is heavily biased towards those who recently took an algorithms class.
What would you do instead? Threads about tech interviews are always the same: we all complain about the process with no real alternative when you want to hire at that scale.
In particular about:
> Just about every other skill that is needed to be a good software engineer.
How would you assess them better than current common processes like leetcode interviews?
If one could do better hiring at the same cost or less, the whole industry would be interested, even if they'd have to delegate some of their hiring to an external company. The fact that leetcode interviews are still so common indicates that maybe something is missing from alternatives, be it scalability, fairness or even whether they actually provide more signal than leetcode interviews.
What would you do instead? Threads about tech interviews are always the same: we all complain about the process with no real alternative when you want to hire at that scale.
In particular about:
> Just about every other skill that is needed to be a good software engineer.
How would you assess them better than current common processes like leetcode interviews?
If one could do better hiring at the same cost or less, the whole industry would be interested, even if they'd have to delegate some of their hiring to an external company. The fact that leetcode interviews are still so common indicates that maybe something is missing from alternatives, be it scalability, fairness or even whether they actually provide more signal than leetcode interviews.
I've seen plenty of HN threads where good alternative processes were described. I'm not going to be exhaustive here: writing a program over a few hours that is reflective of the kind of work that the company actually does, coming up with and debating the architecture of a system, mock code reviews, etc.
You might say these don't scale as well as standardized testing of university classical algorithms knowledge. The general response to that would be that if you're optimizing for scale, then you're not optimizing for quality, so stop the hype around Google only hiring "the best."
It's telling that as Google has begun to regularly lay off engineers, they have also begun to deemphasize classical algorithms in their interview process.
You might say these don't scale as well as standardized testing of university classical algorithms knowledge. The general response to that would be that if you're optimizing for scale, then you're not optimizing for quality, so stop the hype around Google only hiring "the best."
It's telling that as Google has begun to regularly lay off engineers, they have also begun to deemphasize classical algorithms in their interview process.
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> they have also begun to deemphasize classical algorithms in their interview process
Can you elaborate?
Can you elaborate?
To your point, while I haven't interviewed with Google, don't they actually do a number of the things you're talking about (e.g. ask about system design or ask you to look at some existing code)? I'm guessing every interviewer isn't asking you some variation of "find a loop in a linked list".
At big tech companies, "writing a program over a few hours that is reflective of the kind of work that the company actually does" is not really a good, representative performance measure. Often times, you will be solving problems across multiple domains, outside of your area of expertise. You have to take on the role of PM, data scientist, SWE, researcher, etc.
Internal restructuring of the company may even take you from working on backend web apis to distributed databases. It is expected that you re-acclimatize and learn quickly. Giving you a take-home test to write some CRUD app isn't necessarily sampling those same attributes.
p.s.: also not a fan of classical algorithm style interviews. Clearly, they also have a bias.
Internal restructuring of the company may even take you from working on backend web apis to distributed databases. It is expected that you re-acclimatize and learn quickly. Giving you a take-home test to write some CRUD app isn't necessarily sampling those same attributes.
p.s.: also not a fan of classical algorithm style interviews. Clearly, they also have a bias.
> Internal restructuring of the company may even take you from working on backend web apis to distributed databases
This is a stretch. It's unlikely that an interview process would test such disparate skills directly, and a competent company will avoid moving an engineer into a role that requires a drastically different skillset without separate verification that they can handle the new role.
This is a stretch. It's unlikely that an interview process would test such disparate skills directly, and a competent company will avoid moving an engineer into a role that requires a drastically different skillset without separate verification that they can handle the new role.
> Internal restructuring of the company may even take you from working on backend web apis to distributed databases.
This isn’t true. I’ve worked in multiple FAANG companies’ infrastructure orgs, including distributed kv stores, as a SWE. Anybody joining those kinds of teams are either specialists, very junior, or already had some kind of experience in the domain before joining.
Recruiters that say stuff like “we want strong generalists… blah blah” are not the people who are sourcing candidates for these deep systems roles. It looks a lot like the ML roles.
This isn’t true. I’ve worked in multiple FAANG companies’ infrastructure orgs, including distributed kv stores, as a SWE. Anybody joining those kinds of teams are either specialists, very junior, or already had some kind of experience in the domain before joining.
Recruiters that say stuff like “we want strong generalists… blah blah” are not the people who are sourcing candidates for these deep systems roles. It looks a lot like the ML roles.
You really think this is the best interview process we can do?
In Denmark we rarely perform tech interviews the way you Americans do. Part of this is because of how available education is, so virtually everyone who’s applying for a tech job comes with some sort of academic education, meaning that they’ve proven their worth to get it. I’ve worked a side gig as an external examiner for a decade now, I’ve got good confidence in anyone I haven’t failed.
Another part is that tech interviews are often sort of useless. One of the most expensive mistakes you can make as a manager is to hire the wrong person. Even in Denmark where it’s relatively easy to let a new hire go within the first three months, you’ve still invested an enormous amount of resources into the process as well as the impact a wrong hire will have on team moral. So what we look for first and foremost is cultural and personal fit within the team you’re supposed to be working in. We’re far more likely to do some personality test on you than a technical interview, not because we believe those are a science or accurate in anyway but because they are great talking points to get to know you in a high stress situation. We do this because technical skills can also be taught, and regardless of your background, we’re going to have to “adjust” you into the way we work.
We may ask you some technical questions, but they’ll typically be on a more theoretical level than practical because we want to know how you think about tech. Again to see if your “ideological” fit is good rather than to test your technical prowess.
In my anecdotal experience this is a far better process than technical interviews. But it is made possibly by education, precious work experience and the fact that if you really turn out to be terrible then it’s “free” to let you go. It also requires direct managers and often team members to handle the process with HR on the sideline, rather than HR handling the entire hiring process… but I can’t imagine working for someone I’ve never met.
Another part is that tech interviews are often sort of useless. One of the most expensive mistakes you can make as a manager is to hire the wrong person. Even in Denmark where it’s relatively easy to let a new hire go within the first three months, you’ve still invested an enormous amount of resources into the process as well as the impact a wrong hire will have on team moral. So what we look for first and foremost is cultural and personal fit within the team you’re supposed to be working in. We’re far more likely to do some personality test on you than a technical interview, not because we believe those are a science or accurate in anyway but because they are great talking points to get to know you in a high stress situation. We do this because technical skills can also be taught, and regardless of your background, we’re going to have to “adjust” you into the way we work.
We may ask you some technical questions, but they’ll typically be on a more theoretical level than practical because we want to know how you think about tech. Again to see if your “ideological” fit is good rather than to test your technical prowess.
In my anecdotal experience this is a far better process than technical interviews. But it is made possibly by education, precious work experience and the fact that if you really turn out to be terrible then it’s “free” to let you go. It also requires direct managers and often team members to handle the process with HR on the sideline, rather than HR handling the entire hiring process… but I can’t imagine working for someone I’ve never met.
What are some noteworthy Danish companies that have created innovative products?
This has nothing to do with hiring processes.
Hiring talented people that will build innovative products has nothing to do with hiring processes?
Talent that is evaluated in, effectively, one dimension? Commercializing a product successfully is a highly multi-dimensional endeavor.
Even building a reasonably well-functioning engineering team is highly multi-dimensional.
Even building a reasonably well-functioning engineering team is highly multi-dimensional.
My 2c is that culture around work (in general - not specific to tech) and pay in Europe are a much bigger contribution than hiring. By no means am I trying to disparage European engineers or those who stay for a myriad of good reasons. But, it's also clear that some of the best EU engineers would rather work in the US for much higher pay. Even companies like Google* pay much worse if you work on YouTube in Paris vs the US.
* at least in the past from talking to peers
* at least in the past from talking to peers
Agreed. The implication that a lack of algorithms testing during software engineering interviews has much of anything to do with successful innovation, as opposed to the infinitude of other factors that go into commercializing a product, is unpersuasive.
And do these leetcode style questions test innovation at all? I don't think they're asking candidates to invent new algorithms.
And do these leetcode style questions test innovation at all? I don't think they're asking candidates to invent new algorithms.
Cultural, personal and ideological (oof, what a word... kind of a red flag) are just proxies for "people _I_ like". Go far enough down that path and that is how you end up discriminating people for how they look/think/express themselves.
I'll honestly take Leetcode every time over this. I can grind algorithms, I can't change the fact that I'm Indian/Hispanic/Whatever.
I'll honestly take Leetcode every time over this. I can grind algorithms, I can't change the fact that I'm Indian/Hispanic/Whatever.
It can be, again, being Danish makes this a little hard to talk about on the global scale. We’re very homogeneous to the point that I once worked in a team where 33.3% weren’t white men and that was so far above the organisations average that we were awarded… we had one woman and one Indian guy, so 2 out of 6, and that’s how homogeneous our society is.
But I’ve worked in a little bit of both environments. Usually it depends more on the people than the hiring practices in my experience. It’s always a danger that you’ll want to hire someone like yourself.
But I’ve worked in a little bit of both environments. Usually it depends more on the people than the hiring practices in my experience. It’s always a danger that you’ll want to hire someone like yourself.
That means that from the start, you rule out people who don't have this academic education. Then there's the question of the relevance of this education: either you only take CS graduates, in which case your applicant pool is quite small if you want to hire thousands of employees (but this might work if you only need to hire a few people). Or you broaden it, and you then have no guarantee that people will actually be able to write or understand code because they didn't have to to get your degree. That's without even getting into grade inflation and exam cheating.
> We do this because technical skills can also be taught, and regardless of your background, we’re going to have to “adjust” you into the way we work.
The thing is, after your technical fit, if you add a leetcode easy question, you can quickly check that the person you're interviewing can at least write a for-loop. Isn't this a useful filter?
> We do this because technical skills can also be taught, and regardless of your background, we’re going to have to “adjust” you into the way we work.
The thing is, after your technical fit, if you add a leetcode easy question, you can quickly check that the person you're interviewing can at least write a for-loop. Isn't this a useful filter?
Well yes, but as education is freely available, you’ll even get paid to study by the government, almost every applicant is going to have a relevant education. Or in the case of some people who’ve changed careers an education to show that they are capable of getting a degree and then a work history to show how they’ve transitioned into CS.
That being said your point isn’t completely without merit. But think about it from the management perspective, as I said, the wrong hire is the most expensive mistake you’ll make in middle management, so it’s more about risk management. If you get 10 good applicants, and pick the top 4-5 of those, then you’re likely left with 5 people who will each be a good hire. It’s not so much about finding the perfect hire, you’re just looking for a good hire, and part of the process of selecting those 4-5 people will be choosing people with good educations, or very good work histories. That might sort some people that are excellent out of the pile, but it also lowers the risk significantly.
That being said your point isn’t completely without merit. But think about it from the management perspective, as I said, the wrong hire is the most expensive mistake you’ll make in middle management, so it’s more about risk management. If you get 10 good applicants, and pick the top 4-5 of those, then you’re likely left with 5 people who will each be a good hire. It’s not so much about finding the perfect hire, you’re just looking for a good hire, and part of the process of selecting those 4-5 people will be choosing people with good educations, or very good work histories. That might sort some people that are excellent out of the pile, but it also lowers the risk significantly.
In America, there is a history of using "cultural fit" as an excuse to discriminate against socially marginalized groups (both those that have and haven't escaped economic marginalization in the intervening years). So that's another criterion that Americans will have trouble with: it's difficult to be certain that your lack of "cultural fit" is something fundamental to do with your personality or work style, or if it's some aspect of your identity that is unrelated to your work performance (something that an effective, if biased, employer and team might discover if you were given a chance).
> Part of this is because of how available education is, so virtually everyone who’s applying for a tech job comes with some sort of academic education, meaning that they’ve proven their worth to get it.
I interviewed hundreds of people in my career, 95%+ had university degrees, and in my experience, this is a much weaker signal than you make it. Only consistent takeaway I have is people with CS degrees from elite schools are unlikely to be completely terrible, but not much beyond that: the people with these elite degrees didn’t even necessarily pass coding/algorithm interviews, and people with less elite degrees would pass or fail with no additional signal from the degree. I’ve seen many, many people with CS degrees fail at things that I wouldn’t expect someone who passed an intro programming class to fail, things like keeping track of running maximum and an index of element at which the maximum occurs.
I interviewed hundreds of people in my career, 95%+ had university degrees, and in my experience, this is a much weaker signal than you make it. Only consistent takeaway I have is people with CS degrees from elite schools are unlikely to be completely terrible, but not much beyond that: the people with these elite degrees didn’t even necessarily pass coding/algorithm interviews, and people with less elite degrees would pass or fail with no additional signal from the degree. I’ve seen many, many people with CS degrees fail at things that I wouldn’t expect someone who passed an intro programming class to fail, things like keeping track of running maximum and an index of element at which the maximum occurs.
I’m not the kind of person to say that an elite degree is end all be all. But the kind of skill a person exhibits to get into a good college and complete a degree is not necessarily well exercised within the sprint that is a tech interview. Obtaining a degree, especially at a good school, is much more akin to running a marathon. To the extent that you need hires who can be marathon runners for your team, I’d upweight an elite degree accordingly.
I've been interviewing people for Software Eng jobs for more than 10 years an I haven't used leetcode style problems for like 8 of those years.
Leetcode interviewing is lazy interviewing. It's for when you don't want to put an effort in your interviewing process to check if the candidates have the skills you need for the position you are filling.
For example. My interview process nowadays is one web API interaction challenge: Https://challenge.bax-dev.com (in Spanish, so you may have to do a Google translate. Use with curl)
In that untimed challenge the candidate submits their code and email. They arrive to my email and I check the code quality of submissions with my morning coffee.
Then in the ONLY 90 minutes Interview with me, we talk 30 mins about experience in their resume, 30 mins about our company and the position, and we code the "server" side to the web client they created .
We do it pair programming style. The questions I achieve to answer are: would I pair program with thus guy? (Like, is she cool to work with?) And does she know what she is doing?
I've had very good results with this method.
And, from the code exercises I am sure anyone can guess what skills am I looking for.
There was a great circlejerk on reddit in one of the outages where people asked whither Google engineers have inverted enough binary trees to bring their systems online. Basically saying that the skills they hire for are for Algirithm competitions, not for building enterprise software.
And I say this as a CompSci PhD who did his good share of data structure and algorithms during my time in academia.
Leetcode interviewing is lazy interviewing. It's for when you don't want to put an effort in your interviewing process to check if the candidates have the skills you need for the position you are filling.
For example. My interview process nowadays is one web API interaction challenge: Https://challenge.bax-dev.com (in Spanish, so you may have to do a Google translate. Use with curl)
In that untimed challenge the candidate submits their code and email. They arrive to my email and I check the code quality of submissions with my morning coffee.
Then in the ONLY 90 minutes Interview with me, we talk 30 mins about experience in their resume, 30 mins about our company and the position, and we code the "server" side to the web client they created .
We do it pair programming style. The questions I achieve to answer are: would I pair program with thus guy? (Like, is she cool to work with?) And does she know what she is doing?
I've had very good results with this method.
And, from the code exercises I am sure anyone can guess what skills am I looking for.
There was a great circlejerk on reddit in one of the outages where people asked whither Google engineers have inverted enough binary trees to bring their systems online. Basically saying that the skills they hire for are for Algirithm competitions, not for building enterprise software.
And I say this as a CompSci PhD who did his good share of data structure and algorithms during my time in academia.
stealing your interview method, this is an amazing idea.
.... if I use this will you sue me?
This should be the standard wtf
This should be the standard wtf
Lol not at all. I am actually part of a group of CTOs in my area and I know of a couple of people that have "copied" the method one way or another. For all I care I am happy for people to copy it. That's the type of process I would like to have. So who knows, maybe later I'll be applying for your company, and nothing better than following a process that I enjoy (or at least is not as asinine as the leetcode/whiteboard algorithm crap)
How many people have you interviewed with this technique? After how many applications will you need to change your exercise, such that it becomes expensive to put that much structure into it? How do you deal with applicants knowing each other and giving each other the challenge and tips on how to solve it / what your reactions and probes were?
The pair programming part is not that different to how algorithm interviews are conducted at least in some places. You can definitely be silent for 1h and expect the best solution, or you can collaborate with the applicant and see whether their communication is good, their thinking is structured, etc.
> In that untimed challenge the candidate submits their code and email.
I expect you can't do that in companies which are highly sought after because it's too easy to cheat, and the stakes are high enough that people will do it. Yes the pair programming part lowers the chances, but people already cheat on live coding through various means, it'd be even easier if parts of the challenge are untimed.
Overall I think the difference here is that of scale: if you hire a few people in specific positions, then fine. If you hire thousands (and you can rightly question whether that makes sense in the first place but that's the assumption for many of these companies), you can't have a specific interview for each and every position, you can't reuse the same interview question after having used it for 500 times, such that you can't invest that much into it in the first place.
The pair programming part is not that different to how algorithm interviews are conducted at least in some places. You can definitely be silent for 1h and expect the best solution, or you can collaborate with the applicant and see whether their communication is good, their thinking is structured, etc.
> In that untimed challenge the candidate submits their code and email.
I expect you can't do that in companies which are highly sought after because it's too easy to cheat, and the stakes are high enough that people will do it. Yes the pair programming part lowers the chances, but people already cheat on live coding through various means, it'd be even easier if parts of the challenge are untimed.
Overall I think the difference here is that of scale: if you hire a few people in specific positions, then fine. If you hire thousands (and you can rightly question whether that makes sense in the first place but that's the assumption for many of these companies), you can't have a specific interview for each and every position, you can't reuse the same interview question after having used it for 500 times, such that you can't invest that much into it in the first place.
Thank you for caring about the craft.
Have you built a $1 Trillion company? No.
Has your company pioneered some great open source software (Kubernetes, Go, React, PyTorch, Cassandra? No.
How do you even know that your method is correct, scalable? Answer is you don't know.
It's mind-boggling that people who hire for software engineers who write CRUD apps used by 20 people, think they know how to hire for firms that serve 4 Billion+ users.
Has your company pioneered some great open source software (Kubernetes, Go, React, PyTorch, Cassandra? No.
How do you even know that your method is correct, scalable? Answer is you don't know.
It's mind-boggling that people who hire for software engineers who write CRUD apps used by 20 people, think they know how to hire for firms that serve 4 Billion+ users.
> people who hire for software engineers who write CRUD apps used by 20 people
It seems like you believe that anyone who doesn't work for Google works for a boutique web design firm?
It seems like you believe that anyone who doesn't work for Google works for a boutique web design firm?
No. Even if they work for BigBank. They usually are building some internal / enterprise app used by 20-100 people.
Statistically that's what they are. There are only a handful of Billion+ scale apps.
Also, it's ridiculous to shit on Silicon Valley hiring practices when they constantly churn out innovative software stacks and products.
Statistically that's what they are. There are only a handful of Billion+ scale apps.
Also, it's ridiculous to shit on Silicon Valley hiring practices when they constantly churn out innovative software stacks and products.
1. I would guess that many of the commenters in this subthread work for Silicon Valley big tech, including some apparent (ex-)Googlers who are openly skeptical of their company’s interview process.
2. By reputation, most big Silicon Valley companies, including those that operate “high scale” apps don’t put as much stock into leetcode-style interviews as Google.
3. Silicon Valley, obviously, does not have the monopoly on high scale applications.
2. By reputation, most big Silicon Valley companies, including those that operate “high scale” apps don’t put as much stock into leetcode-style interviews as Google.
3. Silicon Valley, obviously, does not have the monopoly on high scale applications.
No offense, but most (ex-) Googlers have zero business / customer value sense. So, they have no weight in their opinions about how to build a $1T Business
Do applicants get bonus points if they mention that your steps are incorrectly numbered? :)
So, with your interview process, assuming two people could complete the (very simple) task of doing a simple backend web service, how do you determine who is worth 100k and who is worth 300k?
How can you tell who is going to come up with the innovative solution to a challenging problem and who is just merely competent?
How can you tell who is going to come up with the innovative solution to a challenging problem and who is just merely competent?
(Sorry for the meta-question, but I'm not sure where better to post this.)
There's a sibling comment by @xtracto that's marked "[dead]", but IMO shouldn't be.
Is there any normal means of appealing that status without bothering the admins?
There's a sibling comment by @xtracto that's marked "[dead]", but IMO shouldn't be.
Is there any normal means of appealing that status without bothering the admins?
You can click into the comment and then hit vouch if that is available to you. It's near the flag link.
Ah, thank you. I assumed that if I was able to vouch for a comment, I could do so from the tree view.
Have you actually every talked about code and architecture to another peer? If levels are cca same it quickly becomes an effortless exercise where ideas flow quickly and topics are immediately picked up. Lets call it brainstorming.
Why can't we repeat that in interview? I don't care if some dev can code some method names or detailed algorithms from his head, when it takes 3 seconds to find exact solution. In other words, there is little real added value from such a skill. You get much better peek into somebody's head with above - but it requires significantly more effort on interviewee's side, heck maybe even some preparation.
You can to certain extent hack leetcode process by just doing leetcode. Its much harder to be verbally fluent about designs, concepts and libraries that you never used. And for the rest, there is a trial period, you can't skip that 3 months experience and cram it into interviews.
Why can't we repeat that in interview? I don't care if some dev can code some method names or detailed algorithms from his head, when it takes 3 seconds to find exact solution. In other words, there is little real added value from such a skill. You get much better peek into somebody's head with above - but it requires significantly more effort on interviewee's side, heck maybe even some preparation.
You can to certain extent hack leetcode process by just doing leetcode. Its much harder to be verbally fluent about designs, concepts and libraries that you never used. And for the rest, there is a trial period, you can't skip that 3 months experience and cram it into interviews.
Are you referring to system design interviews, or are you describing something else? System design interviews are commonly used along with leetcode interviews, especially in senior roles.
You are absolutely correct. This discussion is pointless. When you have a 10k org you cannot allow ad-hoc methods because there are unscrupulous actors: people will sell the job, there will be nepotism, and discrimination.
Hiring at scale with some bar of quality needs industrial processes. That's a real constraint of the system.
Any alpha gets ruthlessly optimized away. Referrals? Now sold for split. GitHub Open Source? Now produced for cash or undifferentiated slop.
People who don't run large orgs don't get this. But also many people who run small orgs don't get this: you don't need to run large org machinery for small orgs. Part of the advantage is agility. Part of the advantage is that everyone is still on the same page and that it's obvious when they're not.
So big orgs have no choice. Small orgs have no need.
Hiring at scale with some bar of quality needs industrial processes. That's a real constraint of the system.
Any alpha gets ruthlessly optimized away. Referrals? Now sold for split. GitHub Open Source? Now produced for cash or undifferentiated slop.
People who don't run large orgs don't get this. But also many people who run small orgs don't get this: you don't need to run large org machinery for small orgs. Part of the advantage is agility. Part of the advantage is that everyone is still on the same page and that it's obvious when they're not.
So big orgs have no choice. Small orgs have no need.
> Hiring at scale with some bar of quality needs industrial processes.
Sounds kinda logical, but is it really?
It's not like BigCorp only has one guy doing the interviewing for 100's of positions. You're interviewing for a job on a team regardless of company size, and presumably what matters to them is whether you are a good fit for the need they have on their team, not whether you pass some industrial scale screening test.
Sounds kinda logical, but is it really?
It's not like BigCorp only has one guy doing the interviewing for 100's of positions. You're interviewing for a job on a team regardless of company size, and presumably what matters to them is whether you are a good fit for the need they have on their team, not whether you pass some industrial scale screening test.
>What would you do instead?
Encourage a competitive market environment where there aren't just a handful of polarized "make it" companies that everyone is applying to regardless of fit or career objective because landing a job there is a golden ticket?
Encourage a competitive market environment where there aren't just a handful of polarized "make it" companies that everyone is applying to regardless of fit or career objective because landing a job there is a golden ticket?
> How would you assess them better than current common processes like leetcode interviews?
OP said "just about every other skill that is needed to be a good software engineer", for which leetcode is useless.
Communication skills, organizational skills, hell, even general knowledge isn't covered by leetcode-like interviews.
Personally, speaking as someone who doesn't like but has to interview potential hires, I have found that there is zero overlap between people doing well in leetcode interviews, and hires doing well in their first year.
> If one could do better hiring at the same cost or less, the whole industry would be interested
I think this is a naive perspective. If there is any takeaway from the recent wave of layoffs, it would be that company wide decisions may be driven by factors that have no relation with actual financial performance. Google could have kept all these engineers and still make an absurd profit.
The notion here is that some company, at some point in time, started putting their applicants through these kind of puzzles, and it became trendy.
OP said "just about every other skill that is needed to be a good software engineer", for which leetcode is useless.
Communication skills, organizational skills, hell, even general knowledge isn't covered by leetcode-like interviews.
Personally, speaking as someone who doesn't like but has to interview potential hires, I have found that there is zero overlap between people doing well in leetcode interviews, and hires doing well in their first year.
> If one could do better hiring at the same cost or less, the whole industry would be interested
I think this is a naive perspective. If there is any takeaway from the recent wave of layoffs, it would be that company wide decisions may be driven by factors that have no relation with actual financial performance. Google could have kept all these engineers and still make an absurd profit.
The notion here is that some company, at some point in time, started putting their applicants through these kind of puzzles, and it became trendy.
AFAIK communication skills are routinely evaluated in those interviews: if you have the best code but can't explain how it works, you won't score highly on them. You should be able to discuss tradeoffs, how you reason, etc.
They clearly don't help to evaluate organizational skills, but no one said you should only have these interviews. I'm guessing no company does only leetcode-style interviews, at least I don't know of any.
> I have found that there is zero overlap between people doing well in leetcode interviews, and hires doing well in their first year.
You could only evaluate this correlation among people who did pass your leetcode interviews and were thus beyond a certain bar, unless I'm missing something. The question is whether selecting according to this bar is useful, but it doesn't look like you evaluated this. Or did you do leetcode interviews and just hired anyone regardless of how they performed in them? I agree with you that beyond a certain bar, the signal becomes lesser. But being able to tell whether a candidate can write a for loop is a pretty strong (anti-)indicator for many SWE jobs.
> The notion here is that some company, at some point in time, started putting their applicants through these kind of puzzles, and it became trendy.
I agree that there's probably some of that. But companies are made of people, and if so many are still doing that decades now after they started and don't see a competitive advantage in switching, maybe it's the best they've been able to come up with, given their constraints. Again, there's real money to be made for those coming up with an alternative that'd scale and perform better.
They clearly don't help to evaluate organizational skills, but no one said you should only have these interviews. I'm guessing no company does only leetcode-style interviews, at least I don't know of any.
> I have found that there is zero overlap between people doing well in leetcode interviews, and hires doing well in their first year.
You could only evaluate this correlation among people who did pass your leetcode interviews and were thus beyond a certain bar, unless I'm missing something. The question is whether selecting according to this bar is useful, but it doesn't look like you evaluated this. Or did you do leetcode interviews and just hired anyone regardless of how they performed in them? I agree with you that beyond a certain bar, the signal becomes lesser. But being able to tell whether a candidate can write a for loop is a pretty strong (anti-)indicator for many SWE jobs.
> The notion here is that some company, at some point in time, started putting their applicants through these kind of puzzles, and it became trendy.
I agree that there's probably some of that. But companies are made of people, and if so many are still doing that decades now after they started and don't see a competitive advantage in switching, maybe it's the best they've been able to come up with, given their constraints. Again, there's real money to be made for those coming up with an alternative that'd scale and perform better.
> AFAIK communication skills are routinely evaluated in those interviews: if you have the best code but can't explain how it works, you won't score highly on them. You should be able to discuss tradeoffs, how you reason, etc.
I want to specifically address this because communication can make or break teams. The kind of communication that you describe - conveying objective information - is not enough to build a well-functioning team. One of the most important questions, IMHO, is how do your teammates disagree with one another, especially on issues that don’t have a clear right answer? If you don’t probe for the answer to that question, then you’re hiring with a huge unknown.
There’s no way to know if Mrs. leetcode master X is a team player based on these kinds of interviews. She could come in and destroy a team with her personality. Granted a socially adept person can fake a pleasant personality during a few hours of interviewing, but the rare great interview processes will at least force a mini disagreement or few and gauge the candidate’s response.
I want to specifically address this because communication can make or break teams. The kind of communication that you describe - conveying objective information - is not enough to build a well-functioning team. One of the most important questions, IMHO, is how do your teammates disagree with one another, especially on issues that don’t have a clear right answer? If you don’t probe for the answer to that question, then you’re hiring with a huge unknown.
There’s no way to know if Mrs. leetcode master X is a team player based on these kinds of interviews. She could come in and destroy a team with her personality. Granted a socially adept person can fake a pleasant personality during a few hours of interviewing, but the rare great interview processes will at least force a mini disagreement or few and gauge the candidate’s response.
This begs the question though: how do you evaluate communication skills better than this to encompass what you miss on technical discussions? It's easy to look like a team player in an interview setting where disagreements are low-stakes and theoretical. People do prepare for these behavioral interviews, there are whole sections in the same old reference book used for leetcode interviews. I honestly doubt people can tell between a well-prepared candidate from one that's a genuine team player before actually working with them.
I also want to reiterate the point that I don't know of any company that solely uses leetcode-style interviews, so they do tend to evaluate some kind of communication skills in another one.
I also want to reiterate the point that I don't know of any company that solely uses leetcode-style interviews, so they do tend to evaluate some kind of communication skills in another one.
I would hope no company relies solely on leetcode questions, but the common understanding was that Google was, at least in the not-so-distant past, among big tech companies, the closest to that style.
The weight that a company allocates to communication skills can also be measured on a spectrum. What I suggested in the comment to which you responded may be considered extreme by engineering interview standards, but the more you can probe an engineer’s communication style during an interview, especially in an adversarial conversation, the higher confidence you can have in their interpersonal compatibility with your team.
It’s one thing to answer questions about behavioral characteristics, which can be prepped. It’s another to induce the behavioral characteristics you’d like to test and see them for yourself. That’s a lot harder to fake.
The weight that a company allocates to communication skills can also be measured on a spectrum. What I suggested in the comment to which you responded may be considered extreme by engineering interview standards, but the more you can probe an engineer’s communication style during an interview, especially in an adversarial conversation, the higher confidence you can have in their interpersonal compatibility with your team.
It’s one thing to answer questions about behavioral characteristics, which can be prepped. It’s another to induce the behavioral characteristics you’d like to test and see them for yourself. That’s a lot harder to fake.
"Yeah, it sucks for everybody and it doesn't work very well, but it scales!"
Not picking on you, this is a very common refrain. The apparent advantages of scalable processes seem to trump the demonstrable disadvantages, especially in hiring. The end result is a system most people acknowledge flat-out sucks, it just flat-out sucks in bulk. We say "hiring the right people is the most important thing we do, so let's mechanize it and spend as little time-per-unit as possible". I find it more sad than funny.
Not picking on you, this is a very common refrain. The apparent advantages of scalable processes seem to trump the demonstrable disadvantages, especially in hiring. The end result is a system most people acknowledge flat-out sucks, it just flat-out sucks in bulk. We say "hiring the right people is the most important thing we do, so let's mechanize it and spend as little time-per-unit as possible". I find it more sad than funny.
I think absolutes like "it sucks" are rather unhelpful when you need to choose something anyway, so it's not like doing nothing is an option. What would help is a clear alternative and how it does better one certain metrics while satisfying requirements. Yes scale does seem to be a constraint for big companies using this process, among other requirements making the whole leetcode process appealing. It's not only about costs.
Code reviews. Some “interesting” code, which actually work, but which is inefficient in multiple ways. Dig deeper and deeper.
Architecture suggestions for a relatively simple problem, discuss the suggestions.
Architecture suggestions for a relatively simple problem, discuss the suggestions.
The heart of the problem is that people hiring for software engineering roles think hiring is all about "what you know". It isn't. To hire a good candidate, hire for "who you are" and "who you can become". You want to hire learners not "experts" (read: someone versed in the methods that are about to be obsolete). Hiring is always more about adaptability and soft skills, no matter what role you're hiring for except in very specific, usually time-bound circumstances. This is why true specialists are either on contract or are consultants. Most of the tech industry does hiring completely wrong because, as usual, most software engineers are hyper literal, narrow minded, and lack the social insight required to be effective on a fundamentally social problem.
I don’t think Google is necessarily overrated instead I think they have some issues being both an advertising company and something else.
I look at them from an EU enterprise perspective. Back 10-15 when the big move into the cloud started Google was ahead of their competition. They had online office, and they still have some excellent services that are sort of unmatched by both Amazon and AWS in terms of managed backends like Firebase, but today they make up almost no enterprise sales. This is largely because they never managed to transition into a world where they could sell their products to enterprise. One part is their data and privacy policies which are an obvious issue the other part is support. One of the most important things Microsoft sells to Enterprise is support, and I don’t mean the stuff you and I get as private persons, I mean how their headquarters will call your CTO with updates when something goes down, how you have direct channels to get things changed like when teams was turned on by default instead of something your IT department controlled, or how you can even visit their Azure server centres and look at “your” server if you’re a big enough customer. This is why AWS sort of “lost” in the EU, because when they first entered the market they had the automated support similar to what Google has now, where you can talk to a useless chatbot and never get anywhere even if you’re paying them millions of dollars. Unlike Google, Amazon quickly adjusted and suddenly they had better support and EU compliance than Microsoft (who still can’t guarantee that only EU citizens ever work on the maintenance of their data centres where your data is stored).
The one place Google was a little different was in Education. They actually seemed to know how to sell that, but even here their advertising roots are now losing them deals. Because now there is a focus on how everything in Google education is shared with Google, and while that data might be valuable to Google it’s losing them all their sales in education, which also means they lose the data…
Unless Google somehow changes course, and becomes both an advertising company, and, a tech company, they are just never going to be relevant outside of advertising again. At least for Enterprise, but even as a private customer, you’re probably thinking twice about their products considering how many of them they shut down.
I think it’s a shame considering a lot of their products are very good and affordable, but is what it is.
I look at them from an EU enterprise perspective. Back 10-15 when the big move into the cloud started Google was ahead of their competition. They had online office, and they still have some excellent services that are sort of unmatched by both Amazon and AWS in terms of managed backends like Firebase, but today they make up almost no enterprise sales. This is largely because they never managed to transition into a world where they could sell their products to enterprise. One part is their data and privacy policies which are an obvious issue the other part is support. One of the most important things Microsoft sells to Enterprise is support, and I don’t mean the stuff you and I get as private persons, I mean how their headquarters will call your CTO with updates when something goes down, how you have direct channels to get things changed like when teams was turned on by default instead of something your IT department controlled, or how you can even visit their Azure server centres and look at “your” server if you’re a big enough customer. This is why AWS sort of “lost” in the EU, because when they first entered the market they had the automated support similar to what Google has now, where you can talk to a useless chatbot and never get anywhere even if you’re paying them millions of dollars. Unlike Google, Amazon quickly adjusted and suddenly they had better support and EU compliance than Microsoft (who still can’t guarantee that only EU citizens ever work on the maintenance of their data centres where your data is stored).
The one place Google was a little different was in Education. They actually seemed to know how to sell that, but even here their advertising roots are now losing them deals. Because now there is a focus on how everything in Google education is shared with Google, and while that data might be valuable to Google it’s losing them all their sales in education, which also means they lose the data…
Unless Google somehow changes course, and becomes both an advertising company, and, a tech company, they are just never going to be relevant outside of advertising again. At least for Enterprise, but even as a private customer, you’re probably thinking twice about their products considering how many of them they shut down.
I think it’s a shame considering a lot of their products are very good and affordable, but is what it is.
Most "leetcode" questions they ask are just easy level programming puzzles. The fact that many developers seem to hate it and even struggle with it says more about the developers applying than it does about Google.
The fact that there are whole industries built on training these puzzles is a big signal that you're wrong.
Also it's funny that engineers leaving Google, Amazon, et all NEED to practice these skills in order to get other roles because it just shows that these skills aren't needed (read: exercised, grown) working in their day-to-day jobs.
Also it's funny that engineers leaving Google, Amazon, et all NEED to practice these skills in order to get other roles because it just shows that these skills aren't needed (read: exercised, grown) working in their day-to-day jobs.
>The fact that there are whole industries built on training these puzzles is a big signal that you're wrong.
Wrong about what? That they are easy? If you know binary search, sorting, sets, hash tables, recursion then it is easy. If you wanted to make it more aligned with what a developer does day to day the alternative is doing a small project in your own time which is more time consuming for everyone.
Wrong about what? That they are easy? If you know binary search, sorting, sets, hash tables, recursion then it is easy. If you wanted to make it more aligned with what a developer does day to day the alternative is doing a small project in your own time which is more time consuming for everyone.
Leetcode "easy" questions are just common sense application of everyday algorithms and data structures. These might make sense for an automated screening test of "is this candidate lying about knowing the language".
But, then there's the ones that are all about specific techniques such as dynamic programming + memoization, or specific graph algorithms etc, etc. Any decent programmer can learn how to do these harder problems under time pressure (interview) through practice, but this is really about Leetcode grinding prep... these are not problems you would likely encounter in most jobs, and in the real world you'd just Google for algorithms or ask a colleague if you needed help.
But, then there's the ones that are all about specific techniques such as dynamic programming + memoization, or specific graph algorithms etc, etc. Any decent programmer can learn how to do these harder problems under time pressure (interview) through practice, but this is really about Leetcode grinding prep... these are not problems you would likely encounter in most jobs, and in the real world you'd just Google for algorithms or ask a colleague if you needed help.
> The fact that there are whole industries built on training these puzzles is a big signal that you're wrong.
I'm not sure that logic alone is a compelling: It's conceivable that this secondary industry addresses a real gap in university curricula, or a need for ongoing training of experienced developers.
But I think your overall point still holds, because there's a consensus that a large number of Leetcode-like puzzles require familiarity with problems and solutions that hardly every come up in real professional software development, and aren't even good proxies for the abilities that do matter.
I'm not sure that logic alone is a compelling: It's conceivable that this secondary industry addresses a real gap in university curricula, or a need for ongoing training of experienced developers.
But I think your overall point still holds, because there's a consensus that a large number of Leetcode-like puzzles require familiarity with problems and solutions that hardly every come up in real professional software development, and aren't even good proxies for the abilities that do matter.
> Most "leetcode" questions they ask are just easy level programming puzzles.
As a senior developer currently looking for work, I have mixed feelings about leetcode-like questions. Here's my take:
Pro: They rule out most/all applicants who lack basic programming competence.
Con: Any timed or live programming test can make some applicants fail because of performance anxiety.
Pro/con: Some of the problems require (a) very high intelligence or (b) familiarity with how people have solved that specific problem in the past.
I think (b) is a major source of complaints, because for most people the only solution is Leetcode grinding, which outside of the interview process isn't a good use of one's professional development time.
Con: At least for timed problems on Hackerrank, you have a dilemma: A simple, straightforward solution takes little time to code, and is easy to explain. But it might also take too long to run on some of the test cases, which then requires you to guess at the source of slowness, and try to fix it.
But in multi-problem Hackerrank tests, you don't necessarily know if you have enough time to do that, because the other problems in the set might or might not require lots of time as well. And you can't revisit an earlier problem once you've submitted a solution.
As a senior developer currently looking for work, I have mixed feelings about leetcode-like questions. Here's my take:
Pro: They rule out most/all applicants who lack basic programming competence.
Con: Any timed or live programming test can make some applicants fail because of performance anxiety.
Pro/con: Some of the problems require (a) very high intelligence or (b) familiarity with how people have solved that specific problem in the past.
I think (b) is a major source of complaints, because for most people the only solution is Leetcode grinding, which outside of the interview process isn't a good use of one's professional development time.
Con: At least for timed problems on Hackerrank, you have a dilemma: A simple, straightforward solution takes little time to code, and is easy to explain. But it might also take too long to run on some of the test cases, which then requires you to guess at the source of slowness, and try to fix it.
But in multi-problem Hackerrank tests, you don't necessarily know if you have enough time to do that, because the other problems in the set might or might not require lots of time as well. And you can't revisit an earlier problem once you've submitted a solution.
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Your assertion is that Google asks “just easy level programming problems.” Assuming we accept this argument, that probably tells most of us more about Google than it does about some straw-man developer.
But I’ll give Google a bit more credit than you and guess that they ask questions that are at least above the “easy” level.
But I’ll give Google a bit more credit than you and guess that they ask questions that are at least above the “easy” level.
They are literally not easy-level
Just take a look at the list https://leetcode.com/problem-list/top-google-questions/
Just take a look at the list https://leetcode.com/problem-list/top-google-questions/
I joined Google 11 years into my career. So while I had taken an algorithms class recently, I just reread the algorithm book I used in college and spent a bunch of time studying all of them. I actually found it a lot of fun, as it was a good refresher for myself.
The problem is it only works for a certain personality and thinking type that can do that under pressure in front of an interviewer. Most of us who have been in the industry for a while solve algorithm problems by working in an editor or REPL, and do so in a solitary way, with time to pause and think.
The Google-style process (that so many people copied) acts as if the ability to do that kind of thinking under time pressure and in front of a generally-elitist interviewer is some kind of marker of the ability to work on the job. It isn't.
Plus I worked at Google for a decade and the amount of times I had to do actual algorithm/data structure fundamental stuff was about 0. 90% of Googlers are wiring existing crap together, and if they stray outside of that they'll get spanked in a code review anyways.
The Google-style process (that so many people copied) acts as if the ability to do that kind of thinking under time pressure and in front of a generally-elitist interviewer is some kind of marker of the ability to work on the job. It isn't.
Plus I worked at Google for a decade and the amount of times I had to do actual algorithm/data structure fundamental stuff was about 0. 90% of Googlers are wiring existing crap together, and if they stray outside of that they'll get spanked in a code review anyways.
I wouldn't characterize Leetcode interviewing as being biased towards those who recently took an algorithms class - it's biasing in favor of those (of any level of experience) who are willing to spend a few months practicing Leetcode.
I thought that Google/etc had at least dialed this back a bit, or maybe just dialed back the "how many gas stations are in the US" type questions, after realizing this wasn't the best predictor of good performance.
I thought that Google/etc had at least dialed this back a bit, or maybe just dialed back the "how many gas stations are in the US" type questions, after realizing this wasn't the best predictor of good performance.
> or maybe just dialed back the "how many gas stations are in the US" type questions, after realizing this wasn't the best predictor of good performance.
These problems (known as fermi problems) have been out of vogue for over a decade now. Google is one of the companies that pioneered algorithm-centric leetcode problems as a replacement for fermi problems.
Leetcode problems are not hugely useful outside of the data given by solving a fizzbuzz. Rather, it’s just another excuse so interviewers can convince themself a person is smart, call it signal, and justify a hire.
The last time Google gave me a job offer, one of my interviews was literally a souped up fizzbuzz - straightforward imperative code with no trick, no complicated algorithms, and no fancy data structures. I suppose that may be the reason I got an offer, that I didn’t need fancy algorithms that I hadn’t prepared.
Ultimately it’s impossible to know if someone will be a good hire from an interview. Being a good engineer requires a bunch of traits that simply can’t be tested. The leetcode interview, as I see it, acknowledges this weakness and instead chooses to filter out low-effort candidates, as anyone persistent can practice leetcoding and interviewing (in theory).
These problems (known as fermi problems) have been out of vogue for over a decade now. Google is one of the companies that pioneered algorithm-centric leetcode problems as a replacement for fermi problems.
Leetcode problems are not hugely useful outside of the data given by solving a fizzbuzz. Rather, it’s just another excuse so interviewers can convince themself a person is smart, call it signal, and justify a hire.
The last time Google gave me a job offer, one of my interviews was literally a souped up fizzbuzz - straightforward imperative code with no trick, no complicated algorithms, and no fancy data structures. I suppose that may be the reason I got an offer, that I didn’t need fancy algorithms that I hadn’t prepared.
Ultimately it’s impossible to know if someone will be a good hire from an interview. Being a good engineer requires a bunch of traits that simply can’t be tested. The leetcode interview, as I see it, acknowledges this weakness and instead chooses to filter out low-effort candidates, as anyone persistent can practice leetcoding and interviewing (in theory).
This is pretty consistent with my experience. I had one hardcore algorithms question that I bombed, but the other ones hinged on things like "when should you use a map vs a list" that should be second nature to anyone who has been writing code long enough.
> a bunch of traits that simply can’t be tested
I think there's a lot more that could be tested that what current implementation-centric interviews measure. At my company for example, I feel like we've gotten a lot of use out of our debugging interviews.
I think there's a lot more that could be tested that what current implementation-centric interviews measure. At my company for example, I feel like we've gotten a lot of use out of our debugging interviews.
Last year I went through a loop and a couple of the questions I got and mentioned to friends who are SWE's at Google thought they were too hard for an interview, especially after checking their proposed solutions in the internal problem bank.
So it's definitely still happening.
No I didn't get the job because they were too hard for me to even get a brute force solution.
So it's definitely still happening.
No I didn't get the job because they were too hard for me to even get a brute force solution.
It’s just sad, since of course those questions have nothing to do with the skills you actually need on the job: “the login authentication is failing once every 10,000 times, go fix it!” Oooh, shall I use a B-tree!?
Having worked there I agree on some points. I thought the interview process was bullshit.
But, people generally work there for two reasons:
Pay and benefits top-knotch. I made two times there what I'm making now, post-Google, and I'm still making more 30% than my peers who work in-office for local companies do. (I work remote). Free food and other perks were also amazing.
Exposure to really large systems and scale. A lot of people really get off on building systems that scale as big as some of the Google stuff.
And honestly the internal engineering quality at Google is excellent. But conservative, and bespoke. They build their own everything, which they can do because they have buckets of cash. And what they build is mostly superior, and more consistently engineered. The internal code quality is generally meticulous.
But, people generally work there for two reasons:
Pay and benefits top-knotch. I made two times there what I'm making now, post-Google, and I'm still making more 30% than my peers who work in-office for local companies do. (I work remote). Free food and other perks were also amazing.
Exposure to really large systems and scale. A lot of people really get off on building systems that scale as big as some of the Google stuff.
And honestly the internal engineering quality at Google is excellent. But conservative, and bespoke. They build their own everything, which they can do because they have buckets of cash. And what they build is mostly superior, and more consistently engineered. The internal code quality is generally meticulous.
I did over 400 interviews working there, and many hundreds more serving on hiring committees. I never gave a leetcode interview, and saw only a modest amount of them in committee.
“It’s all leetcode BS” makes a great offhand d complaint but was not the actual truth.
“It’s all leetcode BS” makes a great offhand d complaint but was not the actual truth.
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Then I'm super unlucky because my last phone interview there 3 weeks ago was definitely Leetcode.
I’ve interviewed there multiple times over the years. It was full of typical leetcode shit. There’s a reason there’s a list of problems on leetcode tagged as Google having used them recently…
Okay, then what questions did you give in interview?
I personally did a lot of system design, debugging (systems or code), or deep technical dive (explain in more and more detail how something works and why it works that way).
I only interviewed once with them, but there wasn't anything I'd consider leetcode.
There was a rather aggressive interviewer who drilled me on an architectural web services question despite interviewing for a systems programming position on Fuchsia and having a resume solely in embedded/systems programming. From my limited experience I'd say the interview process is broken, but not in the way people on here think.
There was a rather aggressive interviewer who drilled me on an architectural web services question despite interviewing for a systems programming position on Fuchsia and having a resume solely in embedded/systems programming. From my limited experience I'd say the interview process is broken, but not in the way people on here think.
Google reached out to me a few times to see if I'd interview with them. On the one or two phone calls I had with their recruiters, they explicitly advised me to practice algorithms (leetcode et al) if I wanted to move forward. Perhaps what you were doing was not the norm.
I personally like the story of the hiring committee that refused to hire themselves
https://youtu.be/r8RxkpUvxK0?t=531
https://youtu.be/r8RxkpUvxK0?t=531
I watched this a while ago and thought I’m clearly too dumb to work at Google because I’m not going to come up with convex hull algorithms in an interview room.
Then why is there hundreds of Google tagged questions on LeetCode?
It’s a big company, and I left 5 years ago
Ironically, many of their software products are bloated and slow as fuck. (There are some that are top class too, but just sayin.. )
>many of their software products are bloated and slow as fuck
Which? I regularly use Gmail, Maps, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Home, Voice, and Takeout. I don’t think any of those are bloated or slow, but maybe I’m missing something.
I’m also curious which you think are top class.
Which? I regularly use Gmail, Maps, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Home, Voice, and Takeout. I don’t think any of those are bloated or slow, but maybe I’m missing something.
I’m also curious which you think are top class.
The ones I think are top class are not really end-user oriented, it's core stuff like the search engine, their JS engine, etc. (IMO) The bloated ones are their webapps that suck up gigabytes and gigabytes of ram and CPU resources (client side) for basic stuff like showing you one couple of pages of emails or playing a video file.
Unless you're willing to spend more than 20~30% of your engineer's precious time on the hiring process (or have GPT-7 or whatever GAI lol), it will always be BS. And that's not scalable; this could work when your hiring is mostly through employee's personal/professional network since ROI will be better than average, but when you need to hire thousands new employees it will quickly become a bottleneck.
The only thing you can do is designing an acceptable level proxy done with high efficiency. Unfortunately we don't really have a good way there to figure out something more efficient than coding interview + system design interview yet. A good interviewer can still extract a surprising amount of valuable signals within 45 mins but not everyone is interested in being a good interviewer.
The only thing you can do is designing an acceptable level proxy done with high efficiency. Unfortunately we don't really have a good way there to figure out something more efficient than coding interview + system design interview yet. A good interviewer can still extract a surprising amount of valuable signals within 45 mins but not everyone is interested in being a good interviewer.
As I’ve grown more senior in age and rank I’ve come to realise just how important it is to carry on the selection process after the interview, during probation, and managing performance throughout your hire’s entire journey. It just feels so incredibly imprecise relying on a few hours of meetings to gauge if someone is good or not, and the probationary period is crucial for correcting mistakes. Frankly, we also can’t afford to say no accidentally to someone who would turn out to be a great hire.
I’m seeing this now through the lens of hiring at a 100 person org, but I’ve done hundreds of interviews as a FAANG employee too. The difference there, I would say, and what GOOG try to do is to shoot for the moon and get hiring nailed at the interview process. This comes at the expense of rejecting nine out of ten candidates because the candidate firehouse is free flowing and plentiful: something I don’t have at my much more normal startup.
I’m seeing this now through the lens of hiring at a 100 person org, but I’ve done hundreds of interviews as a FAANG employee too. The difference there, I would say, and what GOOG try to do is to shoot for the moon and get hiring nailed at the interview process. This comes at the expense of rejecting nine out of ten candidates because the candidate firehouse is free flowing and plentiful: something I don’t have at my much more normal startup.
I’ve don’t think I’ve ever seen engineers complain about the rejection rate of Google’s interview process. The more common criticism/meme regards the laziness of running candidates through a unidimensional leetcode gauntlet. Half joking, but why even have engineers run these interviews at all? A proctor could get the same job done at a fraction of the cost. If a proctor can run the interview process, then how valuable is the signal?
Not that I particularly love the big G but
why are top comments taking this seriously? Google grew in 2022 from 150,000 to 190,000 then down to 170,000 in 2023. What are couple of hundred down in such a large company? This is just some FUD piece.
Nothing FUD about highly respected engineers I know personally getting fired when the company is immensely profitable. The FUD is created by Google’s senior leadership.
This is how you get tech unions.
>This is how you get tech unions.
Apparently not, this has been going on for decades. This is a small culling compared to 2001 and 2008. Google is now a shit company just collecting rents, has been for probably 15 years, and this is indicative of a shit company just collecting rents.
Apparently not, this has been going on for decades. This is a small culling compared to 2001 and 2008. Google is now a shit company just collecting rents, has been for probably 15 years, and this is indicative of a shit company just collecting rents.
I feel like layoffs are like a lot of bad habits. Once you break the seal, it becomes easier and easier to give yourself permission to do it again and with more frequency.
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SWE no longer a safe space.
Now what?
I would ask about second careers to get away from SWE.
But to do what? What job is safe now? Safe and pays.
Doctor? That would be a tough second act.
I would ask about second careers to get away from SWE.
But to do what? What job is safe now? Safe and pays.
Doctor? That would be a tough second act.
>SWE no longer a safe space. Now what?
It hasn't been for 20+ years, except there was maybe a 4 year period from 2018 to 2022 where it was safe.
It was boom and bust in the dotcom era, there were tons of layoffs during the financial crisis, microsoft was always known to stack rank, IBM and Oracle do layoffs as an annual company tradition, etc.
I worked for a mega-corp in 2015 and there were constantly layoffs and reorgs and hiring sprees and divisions culled. This is all how it goes.
This was never a safe field. It was an exciting and interesting one.
It hasn't been for 20+ years, except there was maybe a 4 year period from 2018 to 2022 where it was safe.
It was boom and bust in the dotcom era, there were tons of layoffs during the financial crisis, microsoft was always known to stack rank, IBM and Oracle do layoffs as an annual company tradition, etc.
I worked for a mega-corp in 2015 and there were constantly layoffs and reorgs and hiring sprees and divisions culled. This is all how it goes.
This was never a safe field. It was an exciting and interesting one.
Any thoughts on this is simply a 'pause' because of the unknown.
Corporations hate hiring when going into the unknown time period.
For better or worse, managers don't understand AI, and it is pretty hyped.
There could be hiring freezes just in anticipation of 'some change is coming so we should pause hiring just in case'.
Corporations hate hiring when going into the unknown time period.
For better or worse, managers don't understand AI, and it is pretty hyped.
There could be hiring freezes just in anticipation of 'some change is coming so we should pause hiring just in case'.
An early effect of AI programming "efficiency"?
I work in Core Eng at google. Woke up this morning and saw my director - who we all loved and had been at Google for 20 years - is gone.
One concerning thing that I haven't seen reported is that my leadership chain is almost entirely Indian, all the way up. And they've announced that they are starting to offshore entire core products to India, primarily in bangalore IIUC.
One concerning thing that I haven't seen reported is that my leadership chain is almost entirely Indian, all the way up. And they've announced that they are starting to offshore entire core products to India, primarily in bangalore IIUC.
I think it's safe to say we are on the downward slop of peak Google.
Modern Google is an embodiment of many of the flaws which allowed them to crush Lycos 20 years ago.
I work remotely for a big US company and I have heard talk of similar plans within the company, offshoring entire products' engineering work to India. Luckily my work is very niche (vuln research). I can only imagine the subpar and vulnerability ridden code we'll be seeing over the next few years from all the offshoring + irresponsible overusage of AI tools.
Why would the code be subpar? Is a google employee in US somehow more competent than the one in India?
What you are thinking about was outsourcing which is very different than Google hiring in India.
Just because you are paid more you are not a ‘better’ programmer
if you hyperfocus on one aspect, sure, they have a bad argument
Its not like this off-to-on shore oscillation has never happened before
Its not like this off-to-on shore oscillation has never happened before
Quality from India is awful. Both from functionality and just… caring. They don’t really care as much it’s always just good enough. They are generally very difficult to work with.
Give Indians US salaries and see if they're "difficult to work with".
It's not a cost thing, it's not solved by salary.
It's a culture mismatch, I am certain that Indian SWE's think that American SWE's are difficult to work with.
In India "work is god" (as a report of mine has once said), and perception is reality. You do as good as you can and hide your mistakes.
America is aggressively: Pro-failure. In which I mean American SWE's will fail and move on with the idea that they've learned and grown.
It's just a different mindset, and while you probably agree with the American mindset, they'll be similar to each other in reality.
The reason that people dislike working with Indians is:
A) A communication issue, which is exacerbated by not writing specifications properly.
and
B) Indians wanting to go slower and with proper specifications and strictly adhering to those specifications.
Germans are also somewhat like this, so Indians and Germans tend to work significantly better together than Americans and Indians.
It's a culture mismatch, I am certain that Indian SWE's think that American SWE's are difficult to work with.
In India "work is god" (as a report of mine has once said), and perception is reality. You do as good as you can and hide your mistakes.
America is aggressively: Pro-failure. In which I mean American SWE's will fail and move on with the idea that they've learned and grown.
It's just a different mindset, and while you probably agree with the American mindset, they'll be similar to each other in reality.
The reason that people dislike working with Indians is:
A) A communication issue, which is exacerbated by not writing specifications properly.
and
B) Indians wanting to go slower and with proper specifications and strictly adhering to those specifications.
Germans are also somewhat like this, so Indians and Germans tend to work significantly better together than Americans and Indians.
Once you get into a mindset of quality not mattering and only pushing down the costs there’s no coming back. Look a large retail brands and how disposable we treat things. They went from northeast to southern US to Mexico to China. The creation of the product will happen in the US for cultural reasons (you cannot outsource marketing generally), but it all hits a wall.
Look at Boeing.
See: Amazon
Europeans are paid way way less and aren’t hard to work with. Same with Australia.
> Is a google employee in US somehow more competent than the one in India?
Broadly speaking, I would argue yes.
Broadly speaking, I would argue yes.
yes
I've worked with both brilliant and mediocre people from many countries, including India.
It's hard to criticise offshoring without seeming racist. The problem that I have seen is not the developers - it's that the people in charge are fixated on the hourly rate as the key metric, and the suppliers are then complicit in gaming that metric.
As soon as you make the lowest hourly rate the most important metric in software development, I guarantee you that quality will suffer.
It's hard to criticise offshoring without seeming racist. The problem that I have seen is not the developers - it's that the people in charge are fixated on the hourly rate as the key metric, and the suppliers are then complicit in gaming that metric.
As soon as you make the lowest hourly rate the most important metric in software development, I guarantee you that quality will suffer.
> Is a google employee in US somehow more competent than the one in India?
It depends.
There are people in India that are brighter and more hard-working than most people in the USA, just by statistical chance. But there is something that can happen there that I don't know what it is and affects some.
In another job our company had a site in India and I remotely supported them. Most people I interacted with wanted step by step instructions and hand-holding. One day someone news enters, bright and full of energy, so we could give him the documentation, point him in the right direction and he did the job. Until he didn't and also wanted step by step directions and hand-holding.
To this day I don't know what prompted the change. My only guess is that there's something cultural going on that can make people tone themselves down and not be proactive.
Just my 2 cents.
It depends.
There are people in India that are brighter and more hard-working than most people in the USA, just by statistical chance. But there is something that can happen there that I don't know what it is and affects some.
In another job our company had a site in India and I remotely supported them. Most people I interacted with wanted step by step instructions and hand-holding. One day someone news enters, bright and full of energy, so we could give him the documentation, point him in the right direction and he did the job. Until he didn't and also wanted step by step directions and hand-holding.
To this day I don't know what prompted the change. My only guess is that there's something cultural going on that can make people tone themselves down and not be proactive.
Just my 2 cents.
I've had similar experiences over the years. The Indian devs who were worth their salt were salaried employees; the ones that took all the ELI5 hand-holding were the contractors who seemed to have just graduated from a 60-day programming bootcamp and wouldn't tell you they had a problem and needed help if their lives depended on it.
I have always attributed this to the management of the consulting companies that supply the contractors - they're all about the billable hours, and quality control isn't really their problem so they don't focus on it.
I have always attributed this to the management of the consulting companies that supply the contractors - they're all about the billable hours, and quality control isn't really their problem so they don't focus on it.
This just isnt true about "statistical chance". The IQ distributions are very different and a huge amount of the top talent emigrates anyway. 130 iq is order 1/100 in america and more than 1/1000 in india. Population difference doesnt make up the gap.
You're going to hear the same answer you always hear, which never satisfies people, but it's a culture thing. Americans are more willing to say "no" or try and negotiate with their boss/leadership on what they can realistically accomplish. The end result is that engineering will push back against unrealistic deadlines or unreasonable feature requests - theoretically making a successful outcome more likely. You'll notice this has nothing to do with skill or intelligence (well, maybe "soft skills"). But - and this might be controversial - providing that feedback to leadership makes you a better programmer.
In the US the expectation setting works both ways: management tells employees what it expects of them, and employees tell management what they're realistically capable of achieving. Management will ask for extra, and employees will sometimes get less done than they promised (sometimes because there were unforeseen difficulties, extenuating circumstances etc), but in the end it all works out.
In the US the expectation setting works both ways: management tells employees what it expects of them, and employees tell management what they're realistically capable of achieving. Management will ask for extra, and employees will sometimes get less done than they promised (sometimes because there were unforeseen difficulties, extenuating circumstances etc), but in the end it all works out.
It seems like it's a two-way street, isn't it? If American devs are more likely to say "no" and push back, then American managers/bosses on some level come to expect that behavior.
I wonder what it's like at Indian tech companies with Indian engineers. Managers there must have a cultural way of dealing with this that works.
IMO, that's the big problem with offshoring. It's rarely the case that the company that offshores stands up an office in the other country and staffs it with people who were held to the same standards in hiring as candidates for U.S.-based jobs would be. If companies did it that way, they might be more successful at navigating cultural differences, but most of the time they use subcontractors instead.
I wonder what it's like at Indian tech companies with Indian engineers. Managers there must have a cultural way of dealing with this that works.
IMO, that's the big problem with offshoring. It's rarely the case that the company that offshores stands up an office in the other country and staffs it with people who were held to the same standards in hiring as candidates for U.S.-based jobs would be. If companies did it that way, they might be more successful at navigating cultural differences, but most of the time they use subcontractors instead.
YES!
It's not much to do with country/race and a lot to do with pay. I've been sitting through more interviews than I can count as my F500 company is trying the same thing. Despite alleged pre-screenings, I've been amazed by how many devs with 10+ years of experience on their resume that can't code fizzbuzz (let alone answer actual questions in a way I'd expect of a senior dev with that much experience).
Companies don't go to India for their best developers -- they go to save all the money they can. If a US dev costs $150k, they aren't going to spend $150k for an Indian dev. To make this scheme "worth it", they won't pay more than $75k (likely no more than $40-50k).
You get what you pay for. A smart, talented Indian dev isn't going to work for next-to-nothing. They're smarter than that. They'll relocate to the US/EU, work for a large Indian company (where they get better working conditions), or even work freelancer jobs instead.
It's not much to do with country/race and a lot to do with pay. I've been sitting through more interviews than I can count as my F500 company is trying the same thing. Despite alleged pre-screenings, I've been amazed by how many devs with 10+ years of experience on their resume that can't code fizzbuzz (let alone answer actual questions in a way I'd expect of a senior dev with that much experience).
Companies don't go to India for their best developers -- they go to save all the money they can. If a US dev costs $150k, they aren't going to spend $150k for an Indian dev. To make this scheme "worth it", they won't pay more than $75k (likely no more than $40-50k).
You get what you pay for. A smart, talented Indian dev isn't going to work for next-to-nothing. They're smarter than that. They'll relocate to the US/EU, work for a large Indian company (where they get better working conditions), or even work freelancer jobs instead.
reddit moment
- language barrier
- culture barrier
- thousand mile separation
- 12 hour schedule difference
Software quality has ultimately always been around requirements and understanding the problems being solved. That's already hard enough with collocated native speakers.
On top of this is the fundamental master/slave or imperialistic nature to first world/"third world" software development. It is of course buried under self-interest, desperation, and "professionalism". This will always lead to a reduced sense of involvement in the code and mission of the project.
There is the educational issues, where India values memorization and and devalues creativity and independent thought. Where those exist in Indian workers, the regimented nature of orgs over there (related to the imperalism vibe) stamp them out, and the rest is lost in other language and culture barriers.
I would also hazard to say that India is much more obsessed with cultural status (echoes of the caste system), and low software developer jobs aren't good enough on the hierarchy. They aren't Brahmin. Brahmins are managers and leaders.
Of course the cultural barrier represents a turf war. Indians want to own sections of code/orgs with just Indians. The managers explicitly scheme this. Of course all middle managers scheme, so I don't want to seem like I'm casting Indian managers as any more sociopathic than US ones. But it is still a turf war that divides along racial lines. The US-side companies expect multicultural cooperative work. Unless there is the owner/master dynamic, you don't see Americans of non-indian descent working in India except as liasons or owners/managers/bosses.
It's all related to the lifespan arc of software. The software is made/architected in the first world, and eventually is handed off for "maintenance" to outsourcing. Eventually that becomes untenable, and a full rewrite or rearchitecture is performed, and the cycle begins anew.
I apologize if anything I wrote offended anyone, I wanted to be as dispassionate as possible.
- culture barrier
- thousand mile separation
- 12 hour schedule difference
Software quality has ultimately always been around requirements and understanding the problems being solved. That's already hard enough with collocated native speakers.
On top of this is the fundamental master/slave or imperialistic nature to first world/"third world" software development. It is of course buried under self-interest, desperation, and "professionalism". This will always lead to a reduced sense of involvement in the code and mission of the project.
There is the educational issues, where India values memorization and and devalues creativity and independent thought. Where those exist in Indian workers, the regimented nature of orgs over there (related to the imperalism vibe) stamp them out, and the rest is lost in other language and culture barriers.
I would also hazard to say that India is much more obsessed with cultural status (echoes of the caste system), and low software developer jobs aren't good enough on the hierarchy. They aren't Brahmin. Brahmins are managers and leaders.
Of course the cultural barrier represents a turf war. Indians want to own sections of code/orgs with just Indians. The managers explicitly scheme this. Of course all middle managers scheme, so I don't want to seem like I'm casting Indian managers as any more sociopathic than US ones. But it is still a turf war that divides along racial lines. The US-side companies expect multicultural cooperative work. Unless there is the owner/master dynamic, you don't see Americans of non-indian descent working in India except as liasons or owners/managers/bosses.
It's all related to the lifespan arc of software. The software is made/architected in the first world, and eventually is handed off for "maintenance" to outsourcing. Eventually that becomes untenable, and a full rewrite or rearchitecture is performed, and the cycle begins anew.
I apologize if anything I wrote offended anyone, I wanted to be as dispassionate as possible.
[deleted]
Yes, the average US engineer is better than the average Indian engineer. Any other questions?
> Is a google employee in US somehow more competent than the one in India?
Yes. I can’t speak for Google employees but I’ve worked with Indian FTE teams at another big tech company. Indian FTEs are generally less competent than US FTEs at the same level. Upper management knows this and they don’t care because US employees are 3-4x more expensive, so they can hire 3 senior engineers in India for the cost of 1 in the US, which is still a good deal on a cost-per-output basis.
I think the reason for this competency discrepancy may be the huge incentive to move to the US because of pay. In other words, if Indian engineers were as good as their US counterparts, they would move to the US and make 3-4x as much, which leaves only those incapable or unwilling to move in the Indian market.
Yes. I can’t speak for Google employees but I’ve worked with Indian FTE teams at another big tech company. Indian FTEs are generally less competent than US FTEs at the same level. Upper management knows this and they don’t care because US employees are 3-4x more expensive, so they can hire 3 senior engineers in India for the cost of 1 in the US, which is still a good deal on a cost-per-output basis.
I think the reason for this competency discrepancy may be the huge incentive to move to the US because of pay. In other words, if Indian engineers were as good as their US counterparts, they would move to the US and make 3-4x as much, which leaves only those incapable or unwilling to move in the Indian market.
Yes, US engineers tend to be better. In India engineering is not a prestigious career. It is a stepping stone to management. So few Indian engineers stay in the profession long enough to get good.
On visa? Curious because that makes a big difference.
> almost entirely Indian, all the way up.
Only one of the trio that effectively run the company are Indian
Only one of the trio that effectively run the company are Indian
Any IT company that is prestigious and pays a lot of money will have a lot of Indians in management positions.
> One concerning thing that I haven't seen reported is that my leadership chain is almost entirely Indian,
Yup, that's a very visible pattern at this point.
The other one is when entire reporting chains are mainland Chinese (or in the process of being converted to via "reorgs" such as this one).
And before anyone calls racism into the discussion, it's fairly easy to objectively check that it is the case in the internal eng. org chart if you work there.
Yup, that's a very visible pattern at this point.
The other one is when entire reporting chains are mainland Chinese (or in the process of being converted to via "reorgs" such as this one).
And before anyone calls racism into the discussion, it's fairly easy to objectively check that it is the case in the internal eng. org chart if you work there.
Interestingly, according to Googlegeist in 2020, it was Asian folks that scored the highest in terms of "enjoying" working at Google. Caucasian satisfaction scores were much lower.
As an individual contributor software engineer, I've worked with offshore developers before and always found the experience unproductive. The problem is always management tells me to help them so they can learn. I don't mind being in a mentor role, but I'm not interested in mentoring a temp contract worker.
Google is a global company. They make money from developing countries, they should have employees in those countries as well. Or else the money flows only back to California.
But they don't want employees in Bangalore. They want indentured servants and poverty wages. 25 years ago, I was told there would be no software developers in America, and yet the number has gone up every year.
Google is a global company. They make money from developing countries, they should have employees in those countries as well. Or else the money flows only back to California.
But they don't want employees in Bangalore. They want indentured servants and poverty wages. 25 years ago, I was told there would be no software developers in America, and yet the number has gone up every year.
> But they don't want employees in Bangalore. They want indentured servants and poverty wages.
Google has a ton of employees in Bangalore that passed the same interviews and are paid way more than typical offshore devs, this just isn't true. Google gets the best people in India who wants to stay there, those are good enough to develop software without much help.
Google has a ton of employees in Bangalore that passed the same interviews and are paid way more than typical offshore devs, this just isn't true. Google gets the best people in India who wants to stay there, those are good enough to develop software without much help.
Way to go for DEI initiatives.
This has been the case from long before DEI. Indians rather have the highest entry barriers for expat entry into the US, waitlists for visa and green cards run towards hundreds of years for each candidate.
I think you are talking about the permanent residence program through job sponsorship. Yes, this is limited because it is based on the country of origin. Countries with fewer residents in the US are given residence quickly. Others are given residence slowly. Viable options for Indians to gain residence here have to be through means other than job opportunities, such as business investments or family ties or extraordinary talent.
A solution of course is for india to split into multiple independent states. Then only one or two states might be given slower residency programs. Others will be given faster programs.
A solution of course is for india to split into multiple independent states. Then only one or two states might be given slower residency programs. Others will be given faster programs.
From my observation it’s all about comfort. Having reports, especially ones with their own, who share your own background makes communication more frank. In other words, like a sibling, they all share the same state, it makes your job easier. It’s very hard to leave the comfort zone.
I’ve seen leadership chain made up entirely white guys in their 50s because the guy at the top has a type.
For me, mine are diverse but all are kids of immigrants or recent immigrants from Europe, Africa, Asia and West Indies. When everyone are qualified we tend to go with what we’re comfortable with. It’s unfortunate.
[deleted]
This is happening all across tech. Once again, the middle class is being hollowed out by a bunch of wealthy reptiles and we’re just sitting back and watching.
500 comments not a single one is interesting.
Are layoffs becoming an annual thing in tech now? Last year there was the "macroeconomic conditions" excuse that every company used. How are they justifying this round?
It’s still macro.
The media has been peddling the idea that things are rosy economically but that’s not people are seeing and experiencing. December’s CPI is through the roof. The economy has been soft and with ZIRP gone, things are adjusting accordingly.
We’re now paying the piper —a little.
The media has been peddling the idea that things are rosy economically but that’s not people are seeing and experiencing. December’s CPI is through the roof. The economy has been soft and with ZIRP gone, things are adjusting accordingly.
We’re now paying the piper —a little.
The media is peddling the opposite, that “things are still tough.” The numbers are clear: December CPI was hardly “through the roof”, wages ant anll levels are still growing faster than inflation and consumer behavior (spending) is robust. Most people are acting as if the economy is strong.
This is the USA: poor people continue to suffer and governments at the state and federal level are increasing their suffering, especially kids. That is also getting reported.
It’s like the crime stats: people believe crime is raging “elsewhere though not here” even though trends are down mostly across the board.
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/cpi.pdf
This is the USA: poor people continue to suffer and governments at the state and federal level are increasing their suffering, especially kids. That is also getting reported.
It’s like the crime stats: people believe crime is raging “elsewhere though not here” even though trends are down mostly across the board.
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/cpi.pdf
I find it really hard to believe crime is down across the board. I don't even have to look it up to know that isn't true in cities. Sounds like something a liberal politician would say, since it's bullshit.
Walgreens and such would not be pulling up stakes in places if it wasn't for rampant shoplifting. Other stores would not be pulling back on self-checkout either.
Since police are mainly following up on serious crime, people ease up on reporting lesser crimes like break-ins, window smashing, porch thievery, etc. And then politicians point to statistics --which given dampened reporting, means they "look" okay, but on the street it's not okay.
Never in my life have I see so much open selling of "not for individual sale, only for sale at $retail_store" on the sidewalks.
Since police are mainly following up on serious crime, people ease up on reporting lesser crimes like break-ins, window smashing, porch thievery, etc. And then politicians point to statistics --which given dampened reporting, means they "look" okay, but on the street it's not okay.
Never in my life have I see so much open selling of "not for individual sale, only for sale at $retail_store" on the sidewalks.
Inflation ticked up to 3.4%, it's not through the roof. Real wages are up. The economy is absolutely doing very well for some people.
Are you guys and gals checking your grocery receipts? Eggs have doubled over the last two years. Milk, meats, fruits and veggies... I can't think of much that hasn't gone up at a higher rate than before the pandemic.
I applaud the Fed for hiking interest rates, free money can't go on forever if you want to avoid the fate of Argentina, but c'mon, the economy is not good. It's not bad, but it's not good.
Laid off people and those fired are finding it harder to find equivalent employment like they did before.
I would bet a good roll or money that if the opposition were in the whitehouse, we'd be hearing about how shitty the economy is right now. It may not be shitty but it's not rosy like they pretend it is.
I applaud the Fed for hiking interest rates, free money can't go on forever if you want to avoid the fate of Argentina, but c'mon, the economy is not good. It's not bad, but it's not good.
Laid off people and those fired are finding it harder to find equivalent employment like they did before.
I would bet a good roll or money that if the opposition were in the whitehouse, we'd be hearing about how shitty the economy is right now. It may not be shitty but it's not rosy like they pretend it is.
This is often brought up and I'm fully willing to be shown that I'm out of touch, but where are people buying these supposed "expensive" eggs and groceries? I'll literally share my last grocery receipt (admittedly smaller due to already having most ingredients):
- Chicken thighs $6.24
- Ground beef $5.97
- Feminine items $9.97
- Bell pepper $0.82
- Lettuce $1.77
- Celery $2.98
- Shrimp $7.92
- Tortilla soup $3.82
- Yogurt (single) $0.64
- Diced tomatoes $0.96
- Black beans $0.82
- Yogurt (pack) $2.47
- Andouille sausage $3.94
Total: $51.24
Sampling from other receipts I've got milk at $3.33, lunchmeat $4.46, my last gas bill was $18.65 to fill up. So far in January, shopping at Walmart and with a crockpot, I've been able to feed myself and my girlfriend for around $139. Fair disclaimer I live in a LCOL metro but was it ever really cheaper than this?
- Chicken thighs $6.24
- Ground beef $5.97
- Feminine items $9.97
- Bell pepper $0.82
- Lettuce $1.77
- Celery $2.98
- Shrimp $7.92
- Tortilla soup $3.82
- Yogurt (single) $0.64
- Diced tomatoes $0.96
- Black beans $0.82
- Yogurt (pack) $2.47
- Andouille sausage $3.94
Total: $51.24
Sampling from other receipts I've got milk at $3.33, lunchmeat $4.46, my last gas bill was $18.65 to fill up. So far in January, shopping at Walmart and with a crockpot, I've been able to feed myself and my girlfriend for around $139. Fair disclaimer I live in a LCOL metro but was it ever really cheaper than this?
Those prices are really good. Admittedly, I don't shop at big box stores or warehouse supermarkets. But I do usually go to the same chain or interweekly I will go to a local grocery store (which have higher markups), never the less, the same basket of goods has gone up approx 25 to 30% over the last couple of years, in my experience. The most affected are baked goods, coffee beans, eggs, milk, juices, meats & seafood but also has showed up in things like flowers and herb plants.
I live in a high COL area and groceries are expensive, even at the stores that have had traditionally lower price points. Also, as long as I can afford it, I'm not eating ground beef that costs $5.97 or eggs with yolks that are barely a pale yellow in color. The quality of the your food matters a lot.
> - Bell pepper $0.82
Different parts of the country. Bell peppers are $2-$3 each at all the stores near me.
The cheap eggs are $5 a carton, the eggs that taste good are now at $10 a dozen, which is 2x what they were a year ago.
Different parts of the country. Bell peppers are $2-$3 each at all the stores near me.
The cheap eggs are $5 a carton, the eggs that taste good are now at $10 a dozen, which is 2x what they were a year ago.
Datapoint, at Costco in Texas Kirkland eggs are still $5 for a 24 carton.
A gallon of organic milk in the midwest is $7.
A pound of skirt steak is $17.
A pound of skirt steak is $17.
I just bought skirt steak for $7 a pound at my local mexican grocer in Chicago. Not even a sale, that's just the normal price.
Eggs are now $2 a dozen at walmart.
“Last two years” is a different metric than “December”isn’t it?
They were touting easing inflation, but it came in hotter than they hoped for. They also pretend food hasn't gone up. People in this thread argue it hasn't gone up much. It has gone up --and that does not include the shrinkflation aspect.
They're fooling themselves. Come election time, people will let them know how they feel, one way or the other -Carville was astute.
They're fooling themselves. Come election time, people will let them know how they feel, one way or the other -Carville was astute.
3.4% in what timeframe? Your number is meaningless without timeframe...
inflation is always measured year over year if the timeframe isnt specified
I think its going to be a "revenues were up while costs were down - so we will continue this trajectory until it breaks" strategy.
What is interesting is that now with all the layoffs we also have more CS graduates than ever [0] who were told that tech companies are struggling to find candidates to fill their vacancies. We are reaching a point, if not already at the point where we will have bunch of unemployed CS grads who will have to make a pivot into something entirely different.
[0] https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d22/tables/dt22_322.10.a...
[0] https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d22/tables/dt22_322.10.a...
You may be interested in looking at the current Taulbee survey[1] - it surveys PhD granting CS and CE programs and collects MS and BS degree numbers as well.
I also found [2] that shows "computer and information science" graduates having a higher-than-average unemployment rate than other degrees. In 2018.
My anecdotal experience over the last 15 years as a person on the hiring side of the table is that my organization has received multiple qualified applicants for our open positions, several of who are almost always new CS grads looking for their first job. And my organization is in an area with multiple companies that hire software engineers and we typically pay somewhat below market. That experience makes me question if there is now (or even has been in that 15 years) an actual shortage of candidates for these types of jobs.
I also found [2] that shows "computer and information science" graduates having a higher-than-average unemployment rate than other degrees. In 2018.
My anecdotal experience over the last 15 years as a person on the hiring side of the table is that my organization has received multiple qualified applicants for our open positions, several of who are almost always new CS grads looking for their first job. And my organization is in an area with multiple companies that hire software engineers and we typically pay somewhat below market. That experience makes me question if there is now (or even has been in that 15 years) an actual shortage of candidates for these types of jobs.
[1-pdf] https://cra.org/crn/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2023/05/2022-Taulbee-Survey-Final.pdf
[2-pdf] https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/pdf/coe_sbc.pdfAre you sure we're reaching that point? The market has certainly cooled but tech jobs are still available. I do think that many new grads will have to adjust their expectations from high 6 figure jobs in FAANGs to normal-but-still-fine compensation in tier 3-4 companies.
I would also argue that it's hard to predict what the market looks like 4 years into the future. That's a reality people should acknowledge when they start a CS degree, etc.
I would also argue that it's hard to predict what the market looks like 4 years into the future. That's a reality people should acknowledge when they start a CS degree, etc.
Long story short - I would advise to not go into debt for a top tier CS degree, unless truly passionate.
I am fortunate enough to have been educated in Europe and without any student debt. I can switch careers, without needing to keep income at a level to pay living expenses and loans.
I am fortunate enough to have been educated in Europe and without any student debt. I can switch careers, without needing to keep income at a level to pay living expenses and loans.
So what would you advise?
No new grad making even mid six figures. High six figures is only reached at pretty senior levels most FAANG employees won't reach.
I had a theory that FAANG (et al.) are implicitly trying to solve the problem of developer salaries.
If we take things back to basics: supply and demand.
If your biggest cost is developer salaries, then making a huge supply of developers is the best way to suppress those wages.
I have long felt that the push to get women and minorities into coding was driven by this: to get as many people coding as possible so that supply was not constrained and developers could no longer name their price.
I do not believe that Sundar carries Sergei's principles of making people want to work at google for a long time; I think of him more like a businessman (same as Tim Cook, actually). No strong principles, just pushing the company forward.
For them the "company" is the C-Level and the branding and the partners. Not the employed.
If we take things back to basics: supply and demand.
If your biggest cost is developer salaries, then making a huge supply of developers is the best way to suppress those wages.
I have long felt that the push to get women and minorities into coding was driven by this: to get as many people coding as possible so that supply was not constrained and developers could no longer name their price.
I do not believe that Sundar carries Sergei's principles of making people want to work at google for a long time; I think of him more like a businessman (same as Tim Cook, actually). No strong principles, just pushing the company forward.
For them the "company" is the C-Level and the branding and the partners. Not the employed.
It's their own fault for driving CS grad salaries so high.
They are literally the cause why fresh CS grad with 1 year of experience says no to a 140k salary in NYC/Boston. (at least before the first wave of layoffs)
They are literally the cause why fresh CS grad with 1 year of experience says no to a 140k salary in NYC/Boston. (at least before the first wave of layoffs)
[deleted]
> Google confirmed the Assistant cuts, earlier reported by Semafor, and the hardware layoffs, earlier reported by the blog 9to5Google.
Nice. So one can reasonably expect the Google Home device et all to get even worse at all the basic functionality it used to be quite good at as far as 2017.
Nice. So one can reasonably expect the Google Home device et all to get even worse at all the basic functionality it used to be quite good at as far as 2017.
That's not really what I meant. I mean the issues with basic communication:
Google: (...) would you like to know more?
cromka: YES
Google: <silence>
This happens notoriously and effectively it feels as if the devices had became more "dumb" in general, not loosing particular skills.
Google: (...) would you like to know more?
cromka: YES
Google: <silence>
This happens notoriously and effectively it feels as if the devices had became more "dumb" in general, not loosing particular skills.
[deleted]
There's an old Bob Seger song I quote about work:
"I used her, she used me and neither one cared. We were getting our share." - Night Moves / Seger.
In a sense, that's how I view work. I'm there to get a check, they are there to use my labor and make money. As long as we're both happy. It is all good. But... never forget we are using each other.
"Ain't it funny how the night moves
When you just don't seem to have as much to lose
Strange how the night moves"
Ain't it?
"I used her, she used me and neither one cared. We were getting our share." - Night Moves / Seger.
In a sense, that's how I view work. I'm there to get a check, they are there to use my labor and make money. As long as we're both happy. It is all good. But... never forget we are using each other.
"Ain't it funny how the night moves
When you just don't seem to have as much to lose
Strange how the night moves"
Ain't it?
I have to admit I found this rather profound.
For context: Google One Year Stock Chart https://www.google.com/finance/quote/GOOGL:NASDAQ?sa=X&sqi=2...
These companies are companies. Meant to maximize profit.
We've also gotten to the point where we're pursuing Capitalism for Capitalism's sake. The idea of how layoffs affect people doesn't matter. That's for society to figure out.
Oh, and these companies which have high earnings (I avoided the use of "profit" because these companies often shuffle money around to manufacture or negate profitability), a also pay some of the lowest marginal taxes by entities in our society. Sucks, that's not their problem... they're hear to maximize shareholder profit.
Just an ouroboros of capitalistic sociopathy.
These companies are companies. Meant to maximize profit.
We've also gotten to the point where we're pursuing Capitalism for Capitalism's sake. The idea of how layoffs affect people doesn't matter. That's for society to figure out.
Oh, and these companies which have high earnings (I avoided the use of "profit" because these companies often shuffle money around to manufacture or negate profitability), a also pay some of the lowest marginal taxes by entities in our society. Sucks, that's not their problem... they're hear to maximize shareholder profit.
Just an ouroboros of capitalistic sociopathy.
This is probably going to be an unpopular opinion but these huge salaries of the past 5 years have really hurt technology. Instead of the best, hungriest minds working on the best problems in the most agile way, they're languishing in one of these gigantic megacorps working at a molassess pace on some improved way to sell you ads.
This is not a hot take at all. Especially on HN.
The part about huge salaries being involved is
i mean, you will get a solid severance package
It is striking to me that a vast majority of comments here amount to i.e. "every person for themself" -- or at best i.e. "build relationships with individuals". If you are reading this, step outside your usual mindset. Can you see the individualistic bias in the comments here?
One need not be a pro-union progressive to simply recognize that we would all benefit from considering other alternatives. Hard-nosed libertarian economists who study game theory know it isn't a complete accounting of human interactions. Collaboration and alliances are worth seeking out. It doesn't _have_ to be a race to the bottom where employees all scurry around terrified, meanwhile hoping they claw their way up into management.
One need not be a pro-union progressive to simply recognize that we would all benefit from considering other alternatives. Hard-nosed libertarian economists who study game theory know it isn't a complete accounting of human interactions. Collaboration and alliances are worth seeking out. It doesn't _have_ to be a race to the bottom where employees all scurry around terrified, meanwhile hoping they claw their way up into management.
@dang: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38947580
Can we get a merge? There is a lot of discussion in this other topic.
Can we get a merge? There is a lot of discussion in this other topic.
> The Silicon Valley company laid off employees in its core engineering division, as well as those working on the Google Assistant, a voice-operated virtual assistant, and in the hardware division that makes the Pixel phone, Fitbit watches and Nest thermostat, three people with knowledge of the cuts said.
Why would this hit core engineering if the company needs to focus on AI ? I'd imagine these people would be ever more valuable
Why would this hit core engineering if the company needs to focus on AI ? I'd imagine these people would be ever more valuable
Companies are hiring right now (it has picked up) but it's very competitive as well. A recruiter friend of mine told me that they are getting more good candidates into the final interview stages and that it's definitely a buyers market right now.
So it makes sense in some ways for companies to cut out a percentage of the more expensive staff and reallocate to other teams and hire new people at better rates.
So it makes sense in some ways for companies to cut out a percentage of the more expensive staff and reallocate to other teams and hire new people at better rates.
Form/join a union
Canadian Ex-Googlers, we are hiring full stack engineers. Email me at collin at autocorp dot ai
My dad worked for Swift & Co. for 45 years. Nonetheless, when I first switched jobs, he applauded me, with "They're not loyal to you, so why should you be loyal to them?"
A corollary to what everyone said here is: always be thinking about the value of what you're doing to someone else. They always give the big rewards to people who happily take on "relevant to this place ONLY" tasks. You get promoted if you suck up to the middle managers and acquire skills that absolutely no other company values.
So if you pursue skills that are strictly "looking out for ME" you can expect some blowback. Ignore it.
A corollary to what everyone said here is: always be thinking about the value of what you're doing to someone else. They always give the big rewards to people who happily take on "relevant to this place ONLY" tasks. You get promoted if you suck up to the middle managers and acquire skills that absolutely no other company values.
So if you pursue skills that are strictly "looking out for ME" you can expect some blowback. Ignore it.
A lot of good comments here. I think there is a quote I learn from Thich Nhat Hanh that I wanted to share: "you could say you sacrifice a lot to be number one in your job, but it makes no sense to say you sacrifice a lot to be happy"
There you go.
Being happy often requires tons of sacrifice though.
Atheletes winning championships are happy, they sacrificed to get there.
Watching my kids have fun at disney land makes me happy, I sacrifice my time and own interest to make it happen
Atheletes winning championships are happy, they sacrificed to get there.
Watching my kids have fun at disney land makes me happy, I sacrifice my time and own interest to make it happen
[deleted]
Google is almost a 2T company.
The amount of wealth that big google shareholders hold in the 1T+ tech companies is mind boggling.
Perhaps US should consider raising capital gains tax.
The amount of wealth that big google shareholders hold in the 1T+ tech companies is mind boggling.
Perhaps US should consider raising capital gains tax.
How is that relevant to the layoffs?
I don't know if its implied, but I would say since we are now talking about it, the money raised from this could go to meaningfully increasing things like unemployment benefits, for example.
When it comes to large shareholders that wouldn't actually do anything. Nobody sells in these new blue chips; they just borrow against their positions.
I've thought about this for a long time. If we wanted to actually tax this wealth, we should just make people pay capital gains on marked-to-market positions every 10 years. Now before everyone starts shouting "yea, but the valuations aren't value," you could easily tax them on the lowest reasonable marked-to-market nominal value over the last decade, and you'd still get that tax revenue, just a decade later. It's just a way to have a property tax on a very speculative type of property.
I've been a casual investor my entire life, and I still think it's ridiculous that you can just hold an asset forever and never pay a property tax on it, but some guy scraping together a life for his wife and kid has to pay property taxes on his house every year.
I've thought about this for a long time. If we wanted to actually tax this wealth, we should just make people pay capital gains on marked-to-market positions every 10 years. Now before everyone starts shouting "yea, but the valuations aren't value," you could easily tax them on the lowest reasonable marked-to-market nominal value over the last decade, and you'd still get that tax revenue, just a decade later. It's just a way to have a property tax on a very speculative type of property.
I've been a casual investor my entire life, and I still think it's ridiculous that you can just hold an asset forever and never pay a property tax on it, but some guy scraping together a life for his wife and kid has to pay property taxes on his house every year.
If you wanted to tax the wealth.. have a wealth tax? It's a thing in countries including Norway and Switzerland, and similar things exist in others (e.g. Italy taxes assets in some weird non linear way).
Yes there is a wealth tax in Switzerland, but... it would have to be much higher to make a difference. Raising it will not pass a referendum, which it practically has to in Switzerland. It has one big advantage, though: official numbers about wealth distribution.
I think micro taxation on all transactions (including at ATMs) would work better. Easier to explain, harder to avoid since you tax both sides of each transaction.
I think micro taxation on all transactions (including at ATMs) would work better. Easier to explain, harder to avoid since you tax both sides of each transaction.
This is what a GST/VAT is, but far less disruptive. Taxing transactions that don't actually exchange ownership would be bonkers.
Aren’t these taxations generally regressive given poor people spend ~100% of their income and ultra rich people spend <1%.
So you’re taxing the poor person on all of their money but barely taxing the rich person.
Makes sense to me. We already have a wealth tax of sorts. It’s called “property tax” which is mostly a house tax. We can tax other property too, including virtual assets such as shares.
This is a scheme to tax capital gains, not wealth. The point of this prescription isn't that "the rich have too much money," it is that we have gotten to the point where some of the largest capital gains go untaxed, period.
The idea that a gain isn't a gain until the asset is sold is nonsense. That'd literally be like saying that Bill Gates or Warren Buffett never made a dime on any of their stock that they are giving the charity. It's a ludicrous conception of capital gains, but it's exactly the one we use.
The idea that a gain isn't a gain until the asset is sold is nonsense. That'd literally be like saying that Bill Gates or Warren Buffett never made a dime on any of their stock that they are giving the charity. It's a ludicrous conception of capital gains, but it's exactly the one we use.
I answered the way I did cause you wrote "if we wanted to tax this wealth".
Which is the point, really, cause nobody cares about the small person who got a 1000% return on 50$ of Bitcoin, we care about massive assets owned by a tiny minority who is able to dodge capital gains tax even if their asset growth is only 4% per year.
Which is the point, really, cause nobody cares about the small person who got a 1000% return on 50$ of Bitcoin, we care about massive assets owned by a tiny minority who is able to dodge capital gains tax even if their asset growth is only 4% per year.
Let's say you have $1,000,000, and you by a share of Bershire or whatever that increases to $3,000,000.
A capital gains tax taxes the $2,000,000 unrealized -- but eventually effective -- gain.
A wealth tax taxes the $3,000,000 estimated net worth.
There is a real distinction. A real reason to incentivize productive capital, and that is you get to keep what you've earned. The point I'm trying to make is only that people should pay taxes, and an unrealized capital gain from literally 40 years ago isn't some unknowable investment outcome... it's a capital gain.
A capital gains tax taxes the $2,000,000 unrealized -- but eventually effective -- gain.
A wealth tax taxes the $3,000,000 estimated net worth.
There is a real distinction. A real reason to incentivize productive capital, and that is you get to keep what you've earned. The point I'm trying to make is only that people should pay taxes, and an unrealized capital gain from literally 40 years ago isn't some unknowable investment outcome... it's a capital gain.
Our system would make sense if it was the case that the literal only way to turn and asset into money was to sell it. But, because assets can instead be used as collateral for loans, asset owners (overwhelmingly the wealthy in the U.S.) get to have their cake and eat it too.
I’ve never understood this reasoning. Loans need to be repaid at some point, so one must realize some income to pay them back, at which point they will owe tax.
You could generate a lot of revenue via a rule (enforcement TBD) that requires people to establish a reasonable valuation on an asset before they can use the asset as collateral for a loan.
Then anyone who wanted material benefit off of their wealth would be required to pay taxes on it, rather than "benefit now, leave the gains to my estate".
Then anyone who wanted material benefit off of their wealth would be required to pay taxes on it, rather than "benefit now, leave the gains to my estate".
Why not treat collateralization the same as a sale? Bezos puts 1B worth of AMZN as collateral? Sure, but now treat that as a capital gains event and trigger appropriate taxes.
When the loan is repaid and AMZN is uncollaterized, treat it as a new buy event with a new cost basis.
When the loan is repaid and AMZN is uncollaterized, treat it as a new buy event with a new cost basis.
I have no expertise in the matter, but largely agree "realization" should be when "value is assessed and used for gain" and not a strict sale. That being said, I don't want the Pandora's box of redefining "realization" opened.
You can do it carefully and one clear scenario at a time. First, go with collaterization. Then, when billionaires find something else, go with that. And on and on.
Tax the sale of everything and the entire problem goes away.
At that point, it doesn't matter that they borrowed against their positions because spending the money they borrowed still taxes their stocks indirectly.
At that point, it doesn't matter that they borrowed against their positions because spending the money they borrowed still taxes their stocks indirectly.
Exactly, people constantly debate this but it's a solved problem. Don't tax input, tax output.
It also gives you a better scalpel. Instead of trying to wrangle the different income structures (blends of w2, 1099, stocks, bonds, real estate, etc etc), differentiate via the purchases:
- superyachts: very high tax - luxury cars: high tax - vacation homes: high tax - clothes: low tax - staple groceries: no tax
It also gives you a better scalpel. Instead of trying to wrangle the different income structures (blends of w2, 1099, stocks, bonds, real estate, etc etc), differentiate via the purchases:
- superyachts: very high tax - luxury cars: high tax - vacation homes: high tax - clothes: low tax - staple groceries: no tax
Derivatives would make what youre talking about not work. Or lead to very convoluted rules which is bad.
Funny enough, this is already a response to a tax. 174 capitalizes software and general unproven R&D as the default now… ruining the cash position of many businesses that “made taxable GAAP profits”
The rules of the game have changed. We were allowed to expense all employee compensation tied to software or R&D in the year in which we paid it. Now we can only expense a small fraction of that because we have to capitalize the expense. That means if you paid and developer $100 to develop a piece of software then sold subscriptions totaling $100 you now have a profit. The old model you have zero dollars in profit the new model says you have something like $80 in profit that you know have to pay taxes on… with what cash?
The rules of the game have changed. We were allowed to expense all employee compensation tied to software or R&D in the year in which we paid it. Now we can only expense a small fraction of that because we have to capitalize the expense. That means if you paid and developer $100 to develop a piece of software then sold subscriptions totaling $100 you now have a profit. The old model you have zero dollars in profit the new model says you have something like $80 in profit that you know have to pay taxes on… with what cash?
The company used the developer that year and made the profit that year. It doesn't make sense to me why they would they have to expense it over 5 years.
It's not like the developer is a plumber, where the company gets paid per toilet they can replace in a year. The IP that the developer developed is an asset that will keep earning a return in ensuing years; in every other field of business, yearly depreciation is how you account for the cost of your assets.
Not all but a good chunk of my career has been digital plumbing whether I'm in a developer or an ops role.
And then theres engineers devoted to maintenance of the systems full-time.
Do ops/infra people fall under this?
And then theres engineers devoted to maintenance of the systems full-time.
Do ops/infra people fall under this?
No, DevOps/SRE salaries are considered COGS (cost of goods and services) so they’re accounted for the same as a cloud hosting bill–i.e. _not_ a capital investment
Now we can only expense a small fraction of that because we have to capitalize the expense.
This is how other businesses have always had to treat the work product of their IP generated from R&D...
Software businesses were exploiting a loophole, which was fine when they were limiting themselves to their own turf. When they started encroaching into and destroying other industries, it no longer made sense to keep this loophole in place. So basically, the software industry has only itself to blame for this.
This is how other businesses have always had to treat the work product of their IP generated from R&D...
Software businesses were exploiting a loophole, which was fine when they were limiting themselves to their own turf. When they started encroaching into and destroying other industries, it no longer made sense to keep this loophole in place. So basically, the software industry has only itself to blame for this.
I can only compare it to expensing for purchases that are considered assets. The typical example is that you buy a car for 30k, the car is still mostly worth 30k, so even if you’re out 30k cash you still own a car. So at the end of the year when you’ve made 50k profit and you wonder if you can deduct the 30k from the car, the government will say that the car is still worth a lot of money, so you can deduct 10% of that 30k you paid.
I guess that the government isn’t considering the expense of the employee as much as they are considering the value that the company has retained. Say the developer creates some software that you turn around and license to your customers. That software now has a value, and it will have a value next year too. It probably won’t have a value forever, which is why you can expense a certain percentage of it every year for x number of years.
The money you spent on the employee is probably a direct expense that year, but the product they created still has a value. The simplest way of valuing the product, from the governments perspective, is just to consider it equal to the development cost.
I guess that the government isn’t considering the expense of the employee as much as they are considering the value that the company has retained. Say the developer creates some software that you turn around and license to your customers. That software now has a value, and it will have a value next year too. It probably won’t have a value forever, which is why you can expense a certain percentage of it every year for x number of years.
The money you spent on the employee is probably a direct expense that year, but the product they created still has a value. The simplest way of valuing the product, from the governments perspective, is just to consider it equal to the development cost.
Between Discord, Twitch, Amazon+Prime, and Google... what's the layoff pattern here? Are we talking about social community teams? Streaming/networking engineers? Or is there no connective thread between these four companies?
Are there other corporate layoffs that round out this intrigue?
Are there other corporate layoffs that round out this intrigue?
The connective thread is that tech growth has slowed/stopped and Wall Street is looking to make cuts, because salaries are expensive, and shit, if they have the option between more expenses and less expenses, they will keep taking 'less expenses', until it clearly and incontroversially affects the bottom line.
Right but where are Atlassian's layoffs, Asana, or any of the other hundreds of "lower" tier tech companies? It's unusual that they're all skating by, to me.
Atlassian had layoffs just last year.
The bigger companies used their cash during the pandemic to go on a hiring spree, both bloating their headcount and their overall salaries.
The smaller/lower tier companies did not have the cash to compete with this, and now do not have as much to fix.
Also the layoffs in smaller companies just aren't big news.
The smaller/lower tier companies did not have the cash to compete with this, and now do not have as much to fix.
Also the layoffs in smaller companies just aren't big news.
There's micro-scale reasons for why particular firms aren't affected by this, but that gets into the weeds of particular companies' roadmaps and balance sheets.
The macro-scale of 2010-2020 was 'growth, growth, growth', the macro-scale of 2020-2022 was 'hire, hire, hire', and the macro-scale of 2023 and 2024 is 'freezes, layoffs, cuts'.
The macro-scale of 2010-2020 was 'growth, growth, growth', the macro-scale of 2020-2022 was 'hire, hire, hire', and the macro-scale of 2023 and 2024 is 'freezes, layoffs, cuts'.
Just google it,
Atlassian, Asana all did layoffs in late 22/23
Atlassian, Asana all did layoffs in late 22/23
>Today marks a very hard day in our 20-year history. We have made the difficult decision to rebalance our team to better position Atlassian for the long term, meaning we will be saying goodbye to around 500 Atlassians, or 5% of our employees.
https://www.atlassian.com/blog/announcements/atlassian-team-...
https://www.atlassian.com/blog/announcements/atlassian-team-...
It's an "and me too" business fad despite profits being already at record levels. The entire point is to suppress tech worker wages if not by explicitly-agreed conspiracy then by independently-stochastic layoffs.[0]
0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...
Edit: One way out for both stability and fair compensation is worker-owned co-ops. Unionizing within publicly-traded or private-equity-owned corporations is still building a sandcastle in the tidal zone.
0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...
Edit: One way out for both stability and fair compensation is worker-owned co-ops. Unionizing within publicly-traded or private-equity-owned corporations is still building a sandcastle in the tidal zone.
It's more about inflation. The Fed has stated that they don't get those low interest rates back until they fire a lot of people and drive up unemployment.
EDIT: from the Chair himself
> We’re never going to say that there are too many people working, but the real point is this: Inflation—what we hear from people when we meet with them is that they really are suffering from inflation. And if we want to set ourselves up, really light the way to another period of a very strong labor market, we have got to get inflation behind us. I wish there were a painless way to do that. There isn’t. So, what we need to do is get rates up to the point where we’re putting meaningful downward pressure on inflation, and that’s what we’re doing.
https://www.federalreserve.gov/mediacenter/files/FOMCprescon...
This is hardly just his opinion either and has been pretty widely covered across the media.
https://time.com/6253699/federal-reserve-inflation-interest-...
https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/07/perspectives/inflation-jobs-r...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2022/10/12/does-the-f...
https://www.businessinsider.com/jerome-powell-fed-jobs-unemp...
EDIT: from the Chair himself
> We’re never going to say that there are too many people working, but the real point is this: Inflation—what we hear from people when we meet with them is that they really are suffering from inflation. And if we want to set ourselves up, really light the way to another period of a very strong labor market, we have got to get inflation behind us. I wish there were a painless way to do that. There isn’t. So, what we need to do is get rates up to the point where we’re putting meaningful downward pressure on inflation, and that’s what we’re doing.
https://www.federalreserve.gov/mediacenter/files/FOMCprescon...
This is hardly just his opinion either and has been pretty widely covered across the media.
https://time.com/6253699/federal-reserve-inflation-interest-...
https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/07/perspectives/inflation-jobs-r...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2022/10/12/does-the-f...
https://www.businessinsider.com/jerome-powell-fed-jobs-unemp...
Salesforce just announced a hiring freeze and word on the street is that in the next 30 days they are going to be cutting staff.
Word on the street is Angie's List is quietly firing. They already let go of their contractors and now they're looking at their employees.
The only suggestion I've seen that would make some sense is Section 174: https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/the-pulse-75
Very insightful - I didn't know about Section 174.
I feel sorry for the overseas labour that a US company startup would be now considering stopping for tax reasons. But I suppose they needed that 15 year amortisation clause (compared to 5 years for a US employee) to stop a flight-to-overseas labour effect of Section 174 (which is presumably 1/3 cheaper).
The framing I see it as is by comparison with the Gold Rush. In those times some made it big (finding Gold) but most of the (reliable) money was made by selling pick-axes.
Here the US is moving from a model where the successful startups cash out resulting in everyone getting paid: e.g. 40% California tax income comes from exits, to being one where the US government takes smaller cuts from medium to failing startups (due to gaining tax revenue of those companies making revenue in their first few years). The drawback is that fewer startups incubate long enough to have a chance of cashing out big.
Note also paying tax as an employee has a better fiscal multiplier to the economy than the owners paying a tax bill. (You buy products and services with your salary more so than wealthy owners on a proportionate basis.)
I find this all quite surprising for the US government, and US innovation culture.
I feel sorry for the overseas labour that a US company startup would be now considering stopping for tax reasons. But I suppose they needed that 15 year amortisation clause (compared to 5 years for a US employee) to stop a flight-to-overseas labour effect of Section 174 (which is presumably 1/3 cheaper).
The framing I see it as is by comparison with the Gold Rush. In those times some made it big (finding Gold) but most of the (reliable) money was made by selling pick-axes.
Here the US is moving from a model where the successful startups cash out resulting in everyone getting paid: e.g. 40% California tax income comes from exits, to being one where the US government takes smaller cuts from medium to failing startups (due to gaining tax revenue of those companies making revenue in their first few years). The drawback is that fewer startups incubate long enough to have a chance of cashing out big.
Note also paying tax as an employee has a better fiscal multiplier to the economy than the owners paying a tax bill. (You buy products and services with your salary more so than wealthy owners on a proportionate basis.)
I find this all quite surprising for the US government, and US innovation culture.
My guess is that these were supposed to happen in late 2023 but didn't due to the holiday season. So now almost three months of layoffs are happening back to back.
This might be wishful thinking, but looking at their size, these are fairly normal layoffs, and the worst part is over. (Remember 25% Meta and Google layoffs )
This might be wishful thinking, but looking at their size, these are fairly normal layoffs, and the worst part is over. (Remember 25% Meta and Google layoffs )
Intrigue? The economy is teetering on recession. These companies understand macro trends better than anyone, and can plainly see what is coming. Now the play is to protect the war chests they have amassed to weather the storm.
If the companies understood macro trends they would not have hired just to fire everyone later when their growth plans didn't correspond to reality.
Turns out macro trends change based on circumstances outside the control of any one company.
Which is the point: large companies do not have more control over that than me and you, nor do they interpret them better, which is the same reason hedge funds generally trail index funds.
Hedge funds trail index funds? What a hilariously and confidently incorrect take.
I guess that's why hedge fund managers have billions in assets and are paid millions of dollars, to deliver sub-market returns. Yep, makes total sense.
I guess that's why hedge fund managers have billions in assets and are paid millions of dollars, to deliver sub-market returns. Yep, makes total sense.
Not saying this is the reason at all, but personally speaking sell me something that is not a subscription based service. I will make a handful of exceptions but not more. All these companies relying on Nitro, Prime, Premium, Plus as if anyone wants to add yet another subscription to their bill. Meanwhile companies like Apple and Nvidia are releasing new high-end products that I can buy and not think about.
Apple sells six or seven different subscription services including tv, music, photo storage, and fitness.
They obviously don't think that selling subscriptions is a bad idea.
They obviously don't think that selling subscriptions is a bad idea.
[deleted]
"Not saying this is the reason at all"
But also, Apple is not relying on Fitness+ to survive unlike Discord with Nitro.
But also, Apple is not relying on Fitness+ to survive unlike Discord with Nitro.
R&D mostly getting the axe. Growth's off the table this year. Outside the AI bubble, companies are soley focused on paying down debt and remaining profitable.
The layoff pattern is rising interest rates.
People who make too much money for their role, or entire divisions that are wildly unprofitable
Hopefully the Chrome UI guys were in that thousand.
This is a company that makes about 18 billion dollars in profit per quarter.
It is still a business - not a charity.
It's still real people who suffer when the numbers tell a different story - not charity cases.
Wow, those poor ex-Google employees. Now that they have been laid off, they must be experiencing true suffering.
I don't understand the point of this comment. Are Google employees not workers as well? Do they not experience suffering or what exactly is the point you are trying to make here?
Your insensitive comment is probably showcasing the fallacy of relative privation, but these are real people you're talking about, some are on work visas or are from single income families. Their lives have changed in an instant and instead of empathizing, your reaction is a sarcastic 'those poor ex-Google employees'? Shame on you.
Your insensitive comment is probably showcasing the fallacy of relative privation, but these are real people you're talking about, some are on work visas or are from single income families. Their lives have changed in an instant and instead of empathizing, your reaction is a sarcastic 'those poor ex-Google employees'? Shame on you.
Losing an at-will employment position is suffering? It's unfortunate, maybe, even a little sad. But to say this is "suffering" borders on entitled lunacy. Especially considering ex-Google employees can land virtually any job with it on their resume.
The risks of working at-will are well known, and one would be well served to understand them to avoid disappointment. Actually, the shame is on them for failing to adequately prepare for an obvious inevitability, especially if others are depending on them for support.
The risks of working at-will are well known, and one would be well served to understand them to avoid disappointment. Actually, the shame is on them for failing to adequately prepare for an obvious inevitability, especially if others are depending on them for support.
> Especially considering ex-Google employees can land virtually any job with it on their resume.
Hilarious and false.
Hilarious and false.
It is false that working for the 4th largest company in the world does not give your resume an advantage?
What evidence will you present in support of this conclusion?
What evidence will you present in support of this conclusion?
I don’t disagree that you get an advantage, I disagree with the conclusion that you’ll be able to land virtually any job as a result.
It’s simply false.
It’s simply false.
So you're just contesting the meaning of the world "virtually"?
Sounds like a "fun" discussion. Enjoy!
Sounds like a "fun" discussion. Enjoy!
What evidence are you presenting to support this?
> Especially considering ex-Google employees can land virtually any job with it on their resume
It's only fair to present your evidence before asking other people for evidence when they contradict you.
> Especially considering ex-Google employees can land virtually any job with it on their resume
It's only fair to present your evidence before asking other people for evidence when they contradict you.
Common sense and reason, to name two.
Now it's your turn!
Now it's your turn!
> Losing an at-will employment position is suffering? It's unfortunate, maybe, even a little sad. But to say this is "suffering" borders on entitled lunacy.
How would you define "suffering?"
Merriam Webster includes "to endure death, pain, or distress" or "to sustain loss or damage" as part of the definition, which definitely seems to include getting laid off.
How would you define "suffering?"
Merriam Webster includes "to endure death, pain, or distress" or "to sustain loss or damage" as part of the definition, which definitely seems to include getting laid off.
So suffering is a binary dichotomy? Or are there perhaps varying degrees of it?
If I stub my toe and claim I'm "suffering", any intelligent person would laugh at the proposition, because relative to a starving person, for example, it could not be considered a hardship or even mild distress.
I posit getting laid off from at-will employment at one of the most prestigious companies in the history of the world is not suffering, and characterizing it as such is tone-deaf and entitled.
If I stub my toe and claim I'm "suffering", any intelligent person would laugh at the proposition, because relative to a starving person, for example, it could not be considered a hardship or even mild distress.
I posit getting laid off from at-will employment at one of the most prestigious companies in the history of the world is not suffering, and characterizing it as such is tone-deaf and entitled.
I've seen ex-Google employees passed on the resume pile based on assumptions about what that experience means and what sort of salary they may demand. There are no guarantees in this job market.
Google employees are just like any other tech sector employee. They are neither "lucky" nor "unlucky". There's not much difference, even if they managed to land a job at Google. After Google, their struggles are similar to other tech sector employees. At this point, many of them are uncertain about the future. Layoffs are demoralizing regardless of where one works.
Google employees are just like any other tech sector employee. They are neither "lucky" nor "unlucky". There's not much difference, even if they managed to land a job at Google. After Google, their struggles are similar to other tech sector employees. At this point, many of them are uncertain about the future. Layoffs are demoralizing regardless of where one works.
I didn't say they're lucky.
I said they're not suffering, in the true sense of the word.
I am beginning to suspect the coddled and entitled readers of this forum are quite ignorant of what it really means to suffer. A trip to India or any other third-world country would quickly change that attitude.
I said they're not suffering, in the true sense of the word.
I am beginning to suspect the coddled and entitled readers of this forum are quite ignorant of what it really means to suffer. A trip to India or any other third-world country would quickly change that attitude.
> I am beginning to suspect the coddled and entitled readers of this forum are quite ignorant of what it really means to suffer.
I am beginning to suspect that readers of this forum don't know how to read, considering I called you out on this fallacy in my original comment. Here's a lesson about it: https://s28543.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2020/04/F...
I am beginning to suspect that readers of this forum don't know how to read, considering I called you out on this fallacy in my original comment. Here's a lesson about it: https://s28543.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2020/04/F...
Unfortunately, there is no originality in your comment, here or elsewhere in this thread. Just sad and meaningless self-flagellation (now also with weird condescension) with no actual regard for what suffering means to billions of other people.
I sincerely hope you find the maturity required to expand your worldview outside of the sheltered, entitled microcosm it presently is.
I sincerely hope you find the maturity required to expand your worldview outside of the sheltered, entitled microcosm it presently is.
> A trip to India or any other third-world country would quickly change that attitude.
I don't suggest telling someone who just lost their job that they should keep a stiff upper lip. I certainly don't suggest you tell them that they should spend some time in a "third-world country" because, well, for one thing, that's rather crass.
But, also, I don't think you quite understand what "third-world" means. It's not based on economic status. It's based on NATO / Warsaw Pact neutrality. Any use beyond that is pejorative at best. Perhaps you mean a "developing nation" or an "economically disadvantaged" nation. Even then, it's complicated.
I don't suggest telling someone who just lost their job that they should keep a stiff upper lip. I certainly don't suggest you tell them that they should spend some time in a "third-world country" because, well, for one thing, that's rather crass.
But, also, I don't think you quite understand what "third-world" means. It's not based on economic status. It's based on NATO / Warsaw Pact neutrality. Any use beyond that is pejorative at best. Perhaps you mean a "developing nation" or an "economically disadvantaged" nation. Even then, it's complicated.
I love that you manage to insult an entire country by implying that it's a shit hole nobody would want to live in then use it as an excuse to tell us we shouldn't demand better conditions from our employers because you personally think we're "coddled".
> Losing an at-will employment position is suffering?
Yes. https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/updates/upd-11-18-21.html
At-will employment has nothing to do with anything. Losing your job is a very stressful event.
Yes. https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/updates/upd-11-18-21.html
At-will employment has nothing to do with anything. Losing your job is a very stressful event.
The linked reference does not support your argument, only that losing healthcare equates to worse health outcomes. Care to try again?
The dude is a troll.
"I have no counter-argument, so I'm just going to call the person I disagree with a silly name, because I'm upset and it is all I can do"
I agree, but the mission of private business is not to keep as many people employed as possible.
That's weird, that's not what they tell our politicians when they ask for more leeway through new and improved labor and business laws.
Seems like you should vote those folks out
It's also not to only serve shareholders each quarter. It's none of those extremes: like everything in life, we must balance multiple stakeholders and responsibilities.
It’s the government’s job to provide support in the event of loss of income.
, i.e. a floor for quality of life.
Which in turn, corporations including Google, lobby to make sure that taxes are as small as possible, and we aren't reasonably funding unemployment benefits. They haven't even kept up with inflation, let alone substitute a standard of living that's even approximately close to middle class. Unemployment is a hell hole of despair in the US. Its not some "blip" or something, like in other countries that have better safety nets, people lose their homes, get kicked out of their rentals and all other things. It can be really damaging for people, even FAANG engineers
Half of the voting populace seems to agree with not increasing taxes in such a way too.
But the point remains that it is only feasible and efficient for the federal government to be tasked with this responsibility.
But the point remains that it is only feasible and efficient for the federal government to be tasked with this responsibility.
Over half support higher taxes on corporations (particularly large ones)[0].
If the observational basis for this is simply that roughly half of the votes tallied in most elections are split between democrats and republicans, I posit to say that its a gross simplification of voters and their motivations.
[0]: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/07/top-tax-f...
If the observational basis for this is simply that roughly half of the votes tallied in most elections are split between democrats and republicans, I posit to say that its a gross simplification of voters and their motivations.
[0]: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/07/top-tax-f...
In my study of US politics over the last 2 decades, a candidate that campaigns on higher taxes and lowering/simplifying barriers to receiving benefits will always lose to one that advertises benefits, but in reality it is debt underwritten by future federal taxpayers and/or they have numerous requirements to minimize the number of recipients.
As much as they might want to tax corporations, the voters (since they are older) don’t want their 401k/IRA/defined benefit pension plan balances to go down.
Another signal is there is never any mention of implementing a wealth tax (property tax). Politicians will keep knocking around increasing earned income taxes (which affects workers), but because the older people are the most important contingent of voters, touching property of wealthy people who do not need to earn income is off the table. In the most recent tax legislation, they even specifically left the 1031 real estate exchange intact, and got rid of other 1031 exchanges.
As much as they might want to tax corporations, the voters (since they are older) don’t want their 401k/IRA/defined benefit pension plan balances to go down.
Another signal is there is never any mention of implementing a wealth tax (property tax). Politicians will keep knocking around increasing earned income taxes (which affects workers), but because the older people are the most important contingent of voters, touching property of wealthy people who do not need to earn income is off the table. In the most recent tax legislation, they even specifically left the 1031 real estate exchange intact, and got rid of other 1031 exchanges.
> It’s the government’s job
It's your job (and mine).
The world doesn't divide roles that simply. Any community needs much more than 'government' contributing.
It's your job (and mine).
The world doesn't divide roles that simply. Any community needs much more than 'government' contributing.
18 billion. An incomprehensible number.
I hate this “they’re not charities” bullshit.
I hate this “they’re not charities” bullshit.
"I can't comprehend how a successful business generates such a large profit margin, therefore this entitles me to a share of it."
It should be very difficult to fire people, especially if you're making a massive profit. The idea that a company making that much money in pure profit needs to "trim the fat" is callous in the extreme, and probably deeply harmful to company morale. The employees of a company are absolutely entitled to a share of the profit they personally helped create.
> It should be very difficult to fire people, especially if you're making a massive profit.
What is the basis of this opinion, though? What gives you this entitlement that companies must employ people if they're well off (according to you)?
> The idea that a company making that much money in pure profit needs to "trim the fat" is callous in the extreme, and probably deeply harmful to company morale.
Who cares? You think business isn't callous or even cutthroat? You think businesses care about "morale" over the bottomline? You would be so wrong.
> The employees of a company are absolutely entitled to a share of the profit they personally helped create.
According to ... the petulant ranting of HN readers? Or do you have a more authoritative or objective reason to believe this?
What is the basis of this opinion, though? What gives you this entitlement that companies must employ people if they're well off (according to you)?
> The idea that a company making that much money in pure profit needs to "trim the fat" is callous in the extreme, and probably deeply harmful to company morale.
Who cares? You think business isn't callous or even cutthroat? You think businesses care about "morale" over the bottomline? You would be so wrong.
> The employees of a company are absolutely entitled to a share of the profit they personally helped create.
According to ... the petulant ranting of HN readers? Or do you have a more authoritative or objective reason to believe this?
They probably didn't get to the point of making $18B a quarter by keeping on a bunch of organizational dead weight.
Google never had layoffs before 2022, so maybe they did?
It's a failure of creativity and leadership if they can't think of something productive to do with their world class talent and infrastructure.
Regardless of anything else a layoff at Google is an admission that the leadership team have nothing for those people to do that's worth keeping them around for. They're 'dead weight' because Google's ideas, ambitions, and taste for audacious ground-breaking projects have died as well. We should all be a little sad about that.
Maybe Google never had the ambition or ideas to employ 200,000+ people. How big were they in the golden era that you're imagining?
There are a specific handful of people I genuinely hope are part of this layoff…
The only person that I'd like to see go is Sundar Pichai.
It seems like all these corps laying off people are trying to self fulfill a recession.
I imagine they’re just doing their best to adapt to a non-zero interest rate world.
Why do people zero interest rate? Wasn't it just low before?
So, when the interest rates go up, you shrink the production because it shrinks your gross earnings which makes it easier to pay off the interest— wait, it doesn't. And usually the interest on the loan already taken doesn't change, does it?
The interest rate isn’t about loans you’ve taken. The interest rate on Treasuries is essentially the price of money.
The value of an enterprise is the sum total of its discounted future cash flows. If interest rates are at 0% then a dollar in 10 years from some pie in the sky AI is worth about the same as a dollar today. If interest rates are 10% for a risk free Treasury bond, then a risk free dollar in 10 years is worth about $0.38. You invest accordingly.
The value of an enterprise is the sum total of its discounted future cash flows. If interest rates are at 0% then a dollar in 10 years from some pie in the sky AI is worth about the same as a dollar today. If interest rates are 10% for a risk free Treasury bond, then a risk free dollar in 10 years is worth about $0.38. You invest accordingly.
And to further explain, if you don’t increase your near-term profits/shift priorities from future growth to present returns as interest rates increase, under the discounted FCF model your current value decreases. AKA the price of the stock goes down, which shareholders and executives tend not to like.
When a company's existing debt is at 3 percent and they have to roll it over at 6 percent (they are rarely going to pay it off) their costs go up without anything else changing. They will have to cut expenses somewhere else. For forty years, the US (and much of the world) had the opposite phenomenon: 12 percent debt rolled into 11, rolled into 10, and more and more money was seemingly made through no extra effort.
Overpaid FAANG techbros losing their jobs wont cause a recession. Wake me when housing in Nashville, Raleigh, or Boise corrects then we can talk about a recession.
Did they also hire a bunch of offshore engineers?
Google makes me kind of sad. They used to be so cool, pushing technology forward, making it accessible to the masses, doing things that seemed almost impossible and making it mainstream. Ads were the money stream but they did it tastefully. Now the main page is all ads, dark patterns are everywhere in everything Google does. They've basically become one of the ethically worst technology companies around.
Is it inevitable? Will the allure of short-term profits kill every good company? IANAL but it seems to me it should be possible to have a company "constitution" that prevents it, somehow. "If the profit margin of operations exceeds 10% the CEO has to be replaced" or whatever.
So far I've only seen companies be decent until an idealistic founder leaves or dies, then the MBA's take over and the worst possible way to make the most money takes over pretty quickly.
Is it inevitable? Will the allure of short-term profits kill every good company? IANAL but it seems to me it should be possible to have a company "constitution" that prevents it, somehow. "If the profit margin of operations exceeds 10% the CEO has to be replaced" or whatever.
So far I've only seen companies be decent until an idealistic founder leaves or dies, then the MBA's take over and the worst possible way to make the most money takes over pretty quickly.
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> until an idealistic founder leaves or dies
At which point they're more interested in maximizing the value of their shares, so they can do other things.
Therefore, they specifically leave their company in charge of profit maximizers.
It just takes a subsequent decade or so for the track record of decisions to finally make that unavoidably obvious to employees and the general public.
At which point they're more interested in maximizing the value of their shares, so they can do other things.
Therefore, they specifically leave their company in charge of profit maximizers.
It just takes a subsequent decade or so for the track record of decisions to finally make that unavoidably obvious to employees and the general public.
I'm beginning to believe that it's just impossible to do advertising ethically. The hypothesis is that an advertising firm that attempts to do so will perform worse than ones doing unethical things, and eventually lose customers.
All business is inherently unethical and relies on hiding and externalizing costs of production unto the environment, a vulnerable population, or other forms of legal/tax trickery.
Advertising is no more evil than the for-profit healthcare system in the US, or the food industry, or really any other industry, when you really stop to consider it.
People who think they are operating or working for an "ethical" business are simply unaware or willfully ignorant of its costs. Typically it is the latter, or as Upton Sinclair beautifully put it — "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
Advertising is no more evil than the for-profit healthcare system in the US, or the food industry, or really any other industry, when you really stop to consider it.
People who think they are operating or working for an "ethical" business are simply unaware or willfully ignorant of its costs. Typically it is the latter, or as Upton Sinclair beautifully put it — "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
what's the ethical alternative? everybody must produce everything they want/need without any sort of trading, and without owning any land? or does the government just force people to work and distribute everything anybody needs?
Must there be an alternative? What if the world is not ethical by design? What does the evidence say about it?
Fair point, but if we're stretching the definition to the point where nothing can be ethical, then there isn't any meaning to the word "ethical" as it relates to a binary "is" or "is not."
If we agree that nothing can be fully "ethical," there still should be some continuum on which to place the current system, unless you contend that every system and/or action is ethically equal, which I would further contend erases any meaning of the word rendering the premise moot.
So that said, is there any system that is more ethical than the current?
If we agree that nothing can be fully "ethical," there still should be some continuum on which to place the current system, unless you contend that every system and/or action is ethically equal, which I would further contend erases any meaning of the word rendering the premise moot.
So that said, is there any system that is more ethical than the current?
We're not "stretching" anything.
I made a simple assertion: business cannot be ethical, but it is inherently exploitative.
I asked for examples of businesses where this is not the case.
Instead of examples, I got back screetching, whining and whataboutism. People would rather bury their head in the sand and think they're acting virtuously in this world. The cognitive dissonance here is frankly alarming, if it weren't so expected for entitled first-world engineers.
I made a simple assertion: business cannot be ethical, but it is inherently exploitative.
I asked for examples of businesses where this is not the case.
Instead of examples, I got back screetching, whining and whataboutism. People would rather bury their head in the sand and think they're acting virtuously in this world. The cognitive dissonance here is frankly alarming, if it weren't so expected for entitled first-world engineers.
> I asked for examples of businesses where this is not the case. Instead of examples, I got back screetching, whining and whataboutism.
Please, point out where I did any of that sort.
And I asked for an example of a system that is more ethical, and got nothing but dodging and bitching. I don't think you have any ground to stand on to demand examples (certainly from me, who if you care to read again I'm not disputing your position that business can't be ethical, so it makes zero sense to ask me for an example). It seems unreasonable to expect of others what you aren't willing to give yourself. Dare I say that's ... unethical?
If you want to complain about the real world, then offer solutions that work in the real world. We can then consider and debate them and maybe get somewhere. If you just want to make philosophical contemplations, I'm actually up for that, but not if you aren't going to even bother getting your arguments straight. You just look like a troll in that case.
Actually I changed my mind. I am disputing your contention and here is my example. Please point out where the unethical parts are.
Person a and person b are stranded on an island in the South Pacific. There are no other humans around. Person A gets pretty good at catching fish, while person b gets pretty good at harvesting coconuts. Individually, person a can catch six fish and harvest two coconuts. Person b can catch one fish and harvest eight coconuts. Person b is concerned about not getting enough protein, so they approach person a and offer to trade two coconuts for one fish. Person a Agrees, and a mutually agreeable business transaction has taken place. Both parties are better off than they were before. What part of this is unethical?
By the way, please don't take offense by any of this. You seem to have thick enough skin to trade barbs, and honestly this has been an interesting discussion (minus some unneeded name calling but that's a minor detail between friends like us)
Please, point out where I did any of that sort.
And I asked for an example of a system that is more ethical, and got nothing but dodging and bitching. I don't think you have any ground to stand on to demand examples (certainly from me, who if you care to read again I'm not disputing your position that business can't be ethical, so it makes zero sense to ask me for an example). It seems unreasonable to expect of others what you aren't willing to give yourself. Dare I say that's ... unethical?
If you want to complain about the real world, then offer solutions that work in the real world. We can then consider and debate them and maybe get somewhere. If you just want to make philosophical contemplations, I'm actually up for that, but not if you aren't going to even bother getting your arguments straight. You just look like a troll in that case.
Actually I changed my mind. I am disputing your contention and here is my example. Please point out where the unethical parts are.
Person a and person b are stranded on an island in the South Pacific. There are no other humans around. Person A gets pretty good at catching fish, while person b gets pretty good at harvesting coconuts. Individually, person a can catch six fish and harvest two coconuts. Person b can catch one fish and harvest eight coconuts. Person b is concerned about not getting enough protein, so they approach person a and offer to trade two coconuts for one fish. Person a Agrees, and a mutually agreeable business transaction has taken place. Both parties are better off than they were before. What part of this is unethical?
By the way, please don't take offense by any of this. You seem to have thick enough skin to trade barbs, and honestly this has been an interesting discussion (minus some unneeded name calling but that's a minor detail between friends like us)
It is telling the only example of an ethical business is a contrived hypothetical scenario entirely removed from objective reality.
What makes it epically hilarious is it is also based on a completely false assertion "person b" needs protein from fish, because they cannot get it from coconut. Be sure to check the following links before you start clamoring about amino acids, too.
https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/fdc-app.html#/food-details/170169/n...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK234922/table/ttt00008/...
What makes it epically hilarious is it is also based on a completely false assertion "person b" needs protein from fish, because they cannot get it from coconut. Be sure to check the following links before you start clamoring about amino acids, too.
https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/fdc-app.html#/food-details/170169/n...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK234922/table/ttt00008/...
It's not entirely removed from objective reality. Firstly, there is no such thing as objective reality for humans. Secondly, the principles that underpin this scenario are highly active in the world today. Things like specialization, efficiency, division of labor, etc.
Not too long ago my neighbor cleaned the carburetor on my lawn mower, and I fixed his router config in exchange. He would have had to spend tons of time figuring out how to do it himself, but it took me 5 minutes. I could have cleaned my own carburetor, but he already had the cleaner and had freshly done one, so it took him 5 minutes but would have taken me 30 minutes plus a trip to the store. The same principles from the example are at play here.
And whether Person B can get enough protein from coconuts is entirely irrelevant. All that matters in this scenario is that Person B was concerned about it and wanted to trade.
Not too long ago my neighbor cleaned the carburetor on my lawn mower, and I fixed his router config in exchange. He would have had to spend tons of time figuring out how to do it himself, but it took me 5 minutes. I could have cleaned my own carburetor, but he already had the cleaner and had freshly done one, so it took him 5 minutes but would have taken me 30 minutes plus a trip to the store. The same principles from the example are at play here.
And whether Person B can get enough protein from coconuts is entirely irrelevant. All that matters in this scenario is that Person B was concerned about it and wanted to trade.
> Firstly, there is no such thing as objective reality for humans
What? This is just silly. You don't know the difference between hypothetical fantasy and real life, or are you just being hyperbolic?
> Secondly, the principles that underpin this scenario are highly active in the world today
Still, it is irrelevant since I asked for a real world example.
> Not too long ago my neighbor cleaned the carburetor on my lawn mower, and I fixed his router config in exchange
Another contrived example which excludes the entire world. Who made the lawn mower? Who made the router? Literal slaves in a third world country. Surely you are not so ignorant you know this?
> whether Person B can get enough protein from coconuts is entirely irrelevant
It is not irrelevant; it is hilarious you don't know this simple nutritional fact.
What? This is just silly. You don't know the difference between hypothetical fantasy and real life, or are you just being hyperbolic?
> Secondly, the principles that underpin this scenario are highly active in the world today
Still, it is irrelevant since I asked for a real world example.
> Not too long ago my neighbor cleaned the carburetor on my lawn mower, and I fixed his router config in exchange
Another contrived example which excludes the entire world. Who made the lawn mower? Who made the router? Literal slaves in a third world country. Surely you are not so ignorant you know this?
> whether Person B can get enough protein from coconuts is entirely irrelevant
It is not irrelevant; it is hilarious you don't know this simple nutritional fact.
Do you think you act virtuously in this world?
It does not matter what I think; objectively and indisputably my existence in the world, especially in a first-world country, has an enormously negative impact on the planet. And I'm an individual with a conscience - now imagine a business with diversified shareholders!
> I made a simple assertion: business cannot be ethical, but it is inherently exploitative.
> I asked for examples of businesses where this is not the case.
It doesn't work that way. You made the assertion, so the burden of proof is on you.
> I asked for examples of businesses where this is not the case.
It doesn't work that way. You made the assertion, so the burden of proof is on you.
But you only quoted the first part of my statement and not the proof, which I did state:
> All business [...] relies on hiding and externalizing costs of production unto the environment, a vulnerable population, or other forms of legal/tax trickery.
Are you aware of a business which does not have any externalized costs of production which have a negative impact on someone or something?
> All business [...] relies on hiding and externalizing costs of production unto the environment, a vulnerable population, or other forms of legal/tax trickery.
Are you aware of a business which does not have any externalized costs of production which have a negative impact on someone or something?
> But you only quoted the first part of my statement
Yes, the part where you made the unsupported assertion.
> not the proof
Nonsense. Your "proof" relies on a non-standard definition which you have pulled straight out of your ass.
Yes, the part where you made the unsupported assertion.
> not the proof
Nonsense. Your "proof" relies on a non-standard definition which you have pulled straight out of your ass.
So you're not aware of an ethical business, and cannot provide examples here. I understand, thank you for helping me drive my point home!
Funnily I agree with this. But where you go with it sounds like a stubborn “iam14andthisisdeep”.
Language and values should be useful for us to make decisions on. Saying everything is bad and there’s no alternative can be true in a sense but it is not useful, and in most discussions just sounds inane.
Language and values should be useful for us to make decisions on. Saying everything is bad and there’s no alternative can be true in a sense but it is not useful, and in most discussions just sounds inane.
Yet the true mental adolescence and gymnastics through this post is the abject failure to furnish even one example of a business which can be considered ethical, instead choosing to believe the false notion we can live, work and shop without consequence.
Maybe you’re missing the point. This is like having a conversation with a nihilist. Yes objectively there is no meaning in the universe. It’s all made up. Now what? We have to move on from that. We live in fictions and narratives that are useful for our success. Just calling everything unethical isn’t useful beyond a dorm room mental exercise.
Why does recognizing cruelty and injustice the world have to be "useful"?
I don’t think it does! But you shouldn’t be surprised when people are operating under a different framework when engaging with the world. And discussions won’t go anywhere trying to get different conclusions out of different starting points and motives. If everything is unethical then nothing matters, but people don’t want nothing to matter so they construct shades of grey to make choices and judgements on. Your “um actually everything is unethical” is irrelevant to the game they’re playing.
Not to mention it’s absurd a conversation this long hasn’t pointed out the relativity of ethical judgments or event attempted to define what ethical even means.
Not to mention it’s absurd a conversation this long hasn’t pointed out the relativity of ethical judgments or event attempted to define what ethical even means.
> Not to mention it’s absurd a conversation this long hasn’t pointed out the relativity of ethical judgments or event attempted to define what ethical even means.
I did, but GP dodged it by switching to ad hominem: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38960797
I did, but GP dodged it by switching to ad hominem: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38960797
I don't think you know what "ad hominem" means, which somewhat accounts for the difficulty you'd had following this thread.
> But you shouldn’t be surprised when people are operating under a different framework when engaging with the world.
The majory of people are idiots, so this part is almost certainly expected and acceptable.
> If everything is unethical then nothing matters, but people don’t want nothing to matter so they construct shades of grey to make choices and judgements on. Your “um actually everything is unethical” is irrelevant to the game they’re playing.
Where did I say everything is unethical? Where did I say nothing matters? This is the way people want to re-frame the conversation because it is too difficult for them to break through their conditioning to apprehend how the world works.
The majory of people are idiots, so this part is almost certainly expected and acceptable.
> If everything is unethical then nothing matters, but people don’t want nothing to matter so they construct shades of grey to make choices and judgements on. Your “um actually everything is unethical” is irrelevant to the game they’re playing.
Where did I say everything is unethical? Where did I say nothing matters? This is the way people want to re-frame the conversation because it is too difficult for them to break through their conditioning to apprehend how the world works.
I can’t be bothered to look back up the convo tree. But I remember you saying or implying all commercial activity is unethical and refusing to discuss alternatives among other comments with similar thrust. Other people are trying to do comparative ethics and you’re not playing the same game so makes me wonder what you’re trying to accomplish with short comment bombs.
It’s like you’re walking onto a baseball field trying to play football. You should either surrender the field or undertake a much more in depth education session on the rules of the game you want to switch to. Else it’s just madness.
It’s like you’re walking onto a baseball field trying to play football. You should either surrender the field or undertake a much more in depth education session on the rules of the game you want to switch to. Else it’s just madness.
The ethical alternative is one that balances innovation and entrepreneurship with ecological and social responsibility.
You can use resources, invent stuff, and organise people to work on it, but you only get to do it if Reality-Based Accounting rates the project as a net positive for the planet, and you have to share some of the benefits.
And if you can't make it happen without being consistently cruel and exploitative to some individuals, groups, or locations, you don't get to do it again.
This is not trivial to organise. But it's far more likely to lead to an R&D explosion than the current myopic and manic-depressive comic book version of "the economy" we're all supposed to have irrational faith in.
You can use resources, invent stuff, and organise people to work on it, but you only get to do it if Reality-Based Accounting rates the project as a net positive for the planet, and you have to share some of the benefits.
And if you can't make it happen without being consistently cruel and exploitative to some individuals, groups, or locations, you don't get to do it again.
This is not trivial to organise. But it's far more likely to lead to an R&D explosion than the current myopic and manic-depressive comic book version of "the economy" we're all supposed to have irrational faith in.
nothing to spur innovation like panning every idea through a global counsel of magicians who know what's best for the planet.
aside from global consensus on ideas like 'the planet', it'd require mass labor force control and government assignment, two ideas i'm not thrilled about.
I could see it working in a sci-fi novel, but I have a hard time closing the gaps between them and us.
aside from global consensus on ideas like 'the planet', it'd require mass labor force control and government assignment, two ideas i'm not thrilled about.
I could see it working in a sci-fi novel, but I have a hard time closing the gaps between them and us.
How is aggressive centralized gating supposed to lead to R&D when history shows freedom leads to innovation and prosperity? You don’t need to have faith in anything. The economy exists and is all around us providing great value.
This is so theoretical it will never work in an acceptable way.
Because of who will decide is responsible and on what grounds?
What will come of it will most likely be analogous to the Communist system where just a central committee was in charge of making all the decisions. and to be quite clear: this system failed utterly and completely. Without the capitalist west there would have been famines in DDR and the east.
On what I agree is, that we need a strong state factoring in stuff like ecological consequences via taxation- so the decision to buy or make stuff is distributed.
What will come of it will most likely be analogous to the Communist system where just a central committee was in charge of making all the decisions. and to be quite clear: this system failed utterly and completely. Without the capitalist west there would have been famines in DDR and the east.
On what I agree is, that we need a strong state factoring in stuff like ecological consequences via taxation- so the decision to buy or make stuff is distributed.
My furnace broke after 15 years. I called a business to fix it. They replaced the dead pump motor and it worked again. The repair guy was paid well and I was happy to pay. What exactly is inherently unethical about this?
How about the cost of producing and shipping the new motor pump, and the cost of disposing of the old one?
And do you think the individuals who made the motor pump are treated and compensated fairly, or are they likely exploited in third-world dystopia to bring you (but mostly the business) cost savings?
And this is saying nothing of the actual use of the furnace and all the energy it requires.
And I have yet to see ONE example of a business which does not exploit someone or something, only cognitive dissonance.
And do you think the individuals who made the motor pump are treated and compensated fairly, or are they likely exploited in third-world dystopia to bring you (but mostly the business) cost savings?
And this is saying nothing of the actual use of the furnace and all the energy it requires.
And I have yet to see ONE example of a business which does not exploit someone or something, only cognitive dissonance.
So any lack of ethics in the supply chain (which presumably goes back to raw materials) means the entire thing is unethical? I am not sure what definition of ethics this is, but it is so strict as to render everyone and everything unethical, so perhaps not a very useful definition.
If you honestly believe the product is separate from the production and supply chains, you are either woefully misinformed or under the disillusionment of modern capitalist economics.
What a load of rubbish... Your entire argument hinges on what you consider 'fair compensation' and your value judgement about energy cost. Guess what--living your life and using resources is not unethical
If it is rubbish, how come you cannot offer a counter-argument, or even an example of an ethical business, as I have asked for?
You don't get to make up your own definition of "ethical".
What will stop me, or anyone for that matter?
Nothing will "stop you"
Nothing will make other people accept your incongruous and intellectually dishonest definition, either.
Nothing will make other people accept your incongruous and intellectually dishonest definition, either.
> How about the cost of producing and shipping the new motor pump, and the cost of disposing of the old one?
How about ensuring that other human beings don't freeze to death?
How about ensuring that other human beings don't freeze to death?
That is precisely my point though. Just to exist in this world is to have a negative impact on other humans, animals and the environment. The effect is magnified when you live outside of humans' ecological tropical niche as well. While I'm not judging or condemning humanity, I believe it is important to recognize it for what it is.
>All business is inherently unethical
Ethics are not a law of nature, it's basically an opinion. Your opinion may be that all business is unethical, but most people disagree.
Most people consider it to be ethical to trade money for goods and services at an agreed price, for example.
Similarly I think most people would agree that hiding the truth from people in order to have them do things they wouldn't do if they knew the truth, is unethical. Tracking people's activity without telling them that you are doing it would be unethical by that standard.
Ethics are not a law of nature, it's basically an opinion. Your opinion may be that all business is unethical, but most people disagree.
Most people consider it to be ethical to trade money for goods and services at an agreed price, for example.
Similarly I think most people would agree that hiding the truth from people in order to have them do things they wouldn't do if they knew the truth, is unethical. Tracking people's activity without telling them that you are doing it would be unethical by that standard.
I've come to this conclusion a long time ago. If consumers have perfect information about a class of product from different producers then advertising would be completely useless and the market for that product would be completely efficient (on the consumer side). Of course consumers don't have perfect information, and that's what the marketing industry claims their purpose is to address.
But really the role that the marketing industry (at least for typical products and services) actually plays is to selectively give information to consumers to influence their buying decisions against how they would behave in an efficient market. And then it's a very short and slippery slope to just straight up lying about products and manipulating consumers through their insecurities, which we see happening all the time with how the marketing industry has developed for the last few decades especially with online advertisements.
But really the role that the marketing industry (at least for typical products and services) actually plays is to selectively give information to consumers to influence their buying decisions against how they would behave in an efficient market. And then it's a very short and slippery slope to just straight up lying about products and manipulating consumers through their insecurities, which we see happening all the time with how the marketing industry has developed for the last few decades especially with online advertisements.
It's corporate behaviour modification and social engineering. Perhaps not a surprise to anyone familiar with Bernays and his Propaganda.
I don't see it as information asymmetry, so much as mostly mediocre products and services designed to a budget trying to look more exciting and life-changing than they could ever hope to be.
The weird thing is we take it for granted instead of being repelled by it.
I don't see it as information asymmetry, so much as mostly mediocre products and services designed to a budget trying to look more exciting and life-changing than they could ever hope to be.
The weird thing is we take it for granted instead of being repelled by it.
>The weird thing is we take it for granted instead of being repelled by it.
Yes, exactly this right here. It was straight up bizarre to grow up with near 0 advertising in commie Eastern Europe and get hit with a shockwave of fairly disgusting ad bullshit when we moved to the US. I was shocked at people putting up with it as if it is something to be tolerated instead of burned to ashes. I continue to be shocked.
I don't think is socially acceptable in the West to mention the good parts of the other side of the Iron Curtain. You must always mention the Stasi.
Even though the Berlin wall came down 30 years ago, the End of History ethos remains.
Even though the Berlin wall came down 30 years ago, the End of History ethos remains.
I mean, the Stasi was pretty bad. Soviet political prisons were pretty bad. I'll take advertising as the cost of doing business if that's the alternative.
But is it? Was the Stasi responsible for the lack of advertisements?
I would argue it's completely orthogonal. You can selective adopt other cultural practices. Resistance to advertising does not imply mass surveillance, it's actually the opposite.
I would argue it's completely orthogonal. You can selective adopt other cultural practices. Resistance to advertising does not imply mass surveillance, it's actually the opposite.
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It might be possible, were it not for the fact that the advertising industry has their customers so convinced that the stalking they do is truly effective compared to a mix of scatter-gun approaches and simply advertising in relevant places. No one will buy advertising services from a company that says “yeah, we don't do that thing that everyone else says is essential”. It doesn't actually have to be effective, those buying advertising services just have to be somewhat convinced that it might be.
(I'm separating the ethical matters in advertising from those in selling here, even if spreading awareness through advertising was made less unethical by removing the stalking and other irritations, that still leaves a lot of room for unethical sales techniques)
(I'm separating the ethical matters in advertising from those in selling here, even if spreading awareness through advertising was made less unethical by removing the stalking and other irritations, that still leaves a lot of room for unethical sales techniques)
It's true for pure capitalism. What we need is strict regulation, but some regulation make situation worse.
Advertising, the entire industry, exists to convince you to buy something you don't want, hence why you have to be talked into it, through psychological manipulation, preying on your insecurities, repetition via repeat ad exposure, and insane amounts of money and testing to build brand recognition and create biases to certain companies dubbed "brand loyalty"... so, there is no such thing as ethical advertising.
Advertising is psychological manipulation at scale and it's effective. How does one ethically manipulate someone into doing something they wouldn't do if not influenced to do so? Ethical advertising can't exist, the same way two masses can't occupy the same point in space at the same time.
Advertising is psychological manipulation at scale and it's effective. How does one ethically manipulate someone into doing something they wouldn't do if not influenced to do so? Ethical advertising can't exist, the same way two masses can't occupy the same point in space at the same time.
Thats a bit of a pessimistic if realistic take. Advertising in its ideal form is meant to inform you of something that could improve your life (happiness, productivity, health, etc...). It could conceivably be "let the consumer know that our product solves their problems that competitors can't solve or for a cheaper cost." Of course, cutting corners leads to more profits for less effort, so that's what often happens.
Ethically speaking, ads simply shouldn't be manipulating us at all, just informing us of something that might be useful.
Ethically speaking, ads simply shouldn't be manipulating us at all, just informing us of something that might be useful.
> Ethically speaking, ads simply shouldn't be manipulating us at all, just informing us of something that might be useful.
Sure, if that existed in a vacuum, and not in a capitalist economic system where you are rewarded by doing unethical things to generate more profit. In reality, there is no way to successfully deploy ethical advertising. Even if one tried, it could never compete with the ones not being ethical, since they will have higher returns, and infinitely more budget as a result, to make it so your ethical ad is never even shown to a single human eyeball
Sure, if that existed in a vacuum, and not in a capitalist economic system where you are rewarded by doing unethical things to generate more profit. In reality, there is no way to successfully deploy ethical advertising. Even if one tried, it could never compete with the ones not being ethical, since they will have higher returns, and infinitely more budget as a result, to make it so your ethical ad is never even shown to a single human eyeball
Although, the sharing of useful information is different than an advertisement, entirely, so such a thing wouldn't be called an ad.
Wikipedia exists to share information and inform us of something we might find useful. It doesn't need to be pushed on anyone. It just needs to exist in the open.
Anytime something is brought to you that you didn't ask for, demanding your attention, there is motive behind why it's being done, be it a coworker pitching a tool to you trying to get buy-in and force a decision they want to be made in their favor, a flyer of sales happening at the grocery store that's delivered to your door on Sunday, or the blinking square ad impression telling you that if you just give up some of your money, they will provide you with a service that will make you feel like you're making progress on something (and then you'll convince yourself that's true even if it's not because nobody likes to admit they made a mistake and wasted time and/or money).
Ads are forced upon us, telling us something, and there is so much motive behind why it's being done, people will spend millions to make sure you see it. Even if it's just a tidbit of info, selling no product, whoever is motivated enough to pay a lot of money for you to see it, has motive to push an agenda which you seeing that info stands to benifet from. It's still manipulation. It's not possible to be ethical.
The only example of real world ethical advertising I can think of, would be the million dollar webpage. A webpage of pixels purchased to show an ad, that you have to willingly make the decision to navigate to and look at, and that website no longer exists, which proves my point pretty well imo
Wikipedia exists to share information and inform us of something we might find useful. It doesn't need to be pushed on anyone. It just needs to exist in the open.
Anytime something is brought to you that you didn't ask for, demanding your attention, there is motive behind why it's being done, be it a coworker pitching a tool to you trying to get buy-in and force a decision they want to be made in their favor, a flyer of sales happening at the grocery store that's delivered to your door on Sunday, or the blinking square ad impression telling you that if you just give up some of your money, they will provide you with a service that will make you feel like you're making progress on something (and then you'll convince yourself that's true even if it's not because nobody likes to admit they made a mistake and wasted time and/or money).
Ads are forced upon us, telling us something, and there is so much motive behind why it's being done, people will spend millions to make sure you see it. Even if it's just a tidbit of info, selling no product, whoever is motivated enough to pay a lot of money for you to see it, has motive to push an agenda which you seeing that info stands to benifet from. It's still manipulation. It's not possible to be ethical.
The only example of real world ethical advertising I can think of, would be the million dollar webpage. A webpage of pixels purchased to show an ad, that you have to willingly make the decision to navigate to and look at, and that website no longer exists, which proves my point pretty well imo
That isn't right. When the Wright Brothers went on tour to advertise their new contraption called the airplane, that was advertising, and it wasn't manipulation. Maybe someone could have argued they were just selling snake oil back then, but in retrospect.
Ideally speaking of course, there is room to advertise stuff. Like advertising a vaccine so you don't get sick or die; sure the vaccine maker is also going to make money on giving you that vaccine, but it is still an ad that might be "ehtical."
Ideally speaking of course, there is room to advertise stuff. Like advertising a vaccine so you don't get sick or die; sure the vaccine maker is also going to make money on giving you that vaccine, but it is still an ad that might be "ehtical."
Sure, no motive or financial incentive to do so at all...
> The brothers contacted the United States Department of War, the British War Office and a French syndicate on October 19, 1905. The U.S. Board of Ordnance and Fortification replied on October 24, 1905, specifying they would take no further action "until a machine is produced which by actual operation is shown to be able to produce horizontal flight and to carry an operator."
> The brothers turned their attention to Europe, especially France, where enthusiasm for aviation ran high, and journeyed there for the first time in 1907 for face-to-face talks with government officials and businessmen. They also met with aviation representatives in Germany and Britain. Before traveling, Orville shipped a newly built Model A Flyer to France in anticipation of demonstration flights. In France, Wilbur met Frank P. Lahm, a lieutenant in the U.S. Army Aeronautical Division. Writing to his superiors, Lahm smoothed the way for Wilbur to give an in-person presentation to the U.S. Board of Ordnance and Fortification in Washington, DC, when he returned to the U.S. This time, the Board was favorably impressed, in contrast to its previous indifference.
> With further input from the Wrights, the U.S. Army Signal Corps issued Specification 486 in December 1907, inviting bids for construction of a flying machine under military contract.[90] The Wrights submitted their bid in January,[b] and were awarded a contract on February 8, 1908
> In May they went back to Kitty Hawk with their 1905 Flyer to practice for their contracted demonstration flights.
> The brothers' contracts with the U.S. Army and a French syndicate depended on successful public flight demonstrations that met certain conditions. The brothers had to divide their efforts. Wilbur sailed for Europe; Orville would fly near Washington, DC.
They just wanted to spread the good news though
> The brothers contacted the United States Department of War, the British War Office and a French syndicate on October 19, 1905. The U.S. Board of Ordnance and Fortification replied on October 24, 1905, specifying they would take no further action "until a machine is produced which by actual operation is shown to be able to produce horizontal flight and to carry an operator."
> The brothers turned their attention to Europe, especially France, where enthusiasm for aviation ran high, and journeyed there for the first time in 1907 for face-to-face talks with government officials and businessmen. They also met with aviation representatives in Germany and Britain. Before traveling, Orville shipped a newly built Model A Flyer to France in anticipation of demonstration flights. In France, Wilbur met Frank P. Lahm, a lieutenant in the U.S. Army Aeronautical Division. Writing to his superiors, Lahm smoothed the way for Wilbur to give an in-person presentation to the U.S. Board of Ordnance and Fortification in Washington, DC, when he returned to the U.S. This time, the Board was favorably impressed, in contrast to its previous indifference.
> With further input from the Wrights, the U.S. Army Signal Corps issued Specification 486 in December 1907, inviting bids for construction of a flying machine under military contract.[90] The Wrights submitted their bid in January,[b] and were awarded a contract on February 8, 1908
> In May they went back to Kitty Hawk with their 1905 Flyer to practice for their contracted demonstration flights.
> The brothers' contracts with the U.S. Army and a French syndicate depended on successful public flight demonstrations that met certain conditions. The brothers had to divide their efforts. Wilbur sailed for Europe; Orville would fly near Washington, DC.
They just wanted to spread the good news though
This whole thread is classic overthinking. Advertising isn’t a binary good/bad morality thing. It is in many ways subjective. There have been times an ad helped me learn about something that solved a problem or need I have. There have been times where an ad was pushing something that I personally (subjectively) consider to be useless junk.
It depends. Ads aren’t inherently good or evil. Step back from dogma for a second.
It depends. Ads aren’t inherently good or evil. Step back from dogma for a second.
I agree with you on the large scale, but once I zoom in, my thoughts get murkier. I can't think of any ethical digital advertising, but have a harder time condemning all advertising. How would you evaluate these kind of ads:
- Asking customer to place yard signs on their property
- Small businesses putting physical ads in other small businesses
- Printing shirts, hats, pop sockets, etc. . . and handing them out for free
- sponsoring local events/athletes/scholars
- Parade floats, community bulletein boards, festival/event booths
- wrapping company vehicles
I guess, after typing out this list, none of this is targeted advertising; maybe that's what separates them in my mind.
- Asking customer to place yard signs on their property
- Small businesses putting physical ads in other small businesses
- Printing shirts, hats, pop sockets, etc. . . and handing them out for free
- sponsoring local events/athletes/scholars
- Parade floats, community bulletein boards, festival/event booths
- wrapping company vehicles
I guess, after typing out this list, none of this is targeted advertising; maybe that's what separates them in my mind.
You're kidding right? Everything you listed is being done with because of a motive where they stand to gain somehow. They are not providing a public service. While the definition of advertisement does include "just telling someone something", in practise in the real world, advertisements exist because someone has motive to make them because they stand to gain from doing so, where as "just telling someone something" is never called an advertisement it's called an announcement or a broadcast.
> - Asking customer to place yard signs on their property
They don't ask the customer to do so out of the kindness of their hearts, they offer a discount on the bill for doing so. Another way to look at that same situation, is, extortion - "run our ad on your lawn for a month or you'll pay more for this work"... And, the discount compared to the length of time they get an ad spot on someone's lawn is probably very much in the favor of the company. Charging someone more money unless they advertise your business, not out of satisfaction, but because the other option is to pay more, isn't very ethical to me, as the customer basically is given a choice that isn't a choice unless they want to knowingly spend more money for nothing.
> - Small businesses putting physical ads in other small businesses
They share ads between each other to try to leach of off each others customers. Maybe even closer to "participate in our shared cartel or we'll send folks to some competitor who does.". Either way, it's not being done to inform folks of something, it's being done to profit and these users are already out, spending money, and close by, so it's the cheapest costing acquisition funnel.
> - Printing shirts, hats, pop sockets, etc. . . and handing them out for free
That merch given out is paid for by the company's marketing budget and that's because what they are buying is ad space with potentially unlimited and extremely cheap display time. You see a nice company giving you a shirt for free. What they see is a sucker who is happy to become a walking billboard that will go to packed concerts, bars, tv shows, friend groups, etc for the price of a cheap t shirt and silk screen, for the life of the tshirt, gaining brand recognition if nothing else the entire time. Manipulating a person into thinking the free shirt they were given is ethical advertising when they are actually being used to freely advertise their brand, not something I'd consider ethical.
> - sponsoring local events/athletes/scholars
All done to get a giant banner on the fence of the field, have your branding stamped on every helmet, bike, bat, glove, shirt, said in every annoucement, etc. They aren't "sponsoring" those things, they are paying for advertising space, and saying it's not that isn't very ethical. They aren't doing anything for the good of the community, they are doing it for mindshare. Redbull on every extreme sport for instance.
> - Parade floats, community bulletein boards, festival/event booths
Parade floats are so the company gets a mention or airtime or mindshare as it passes by people. Festivals and event booths, please see my free tshirt reply. That booth they purchased or conference they sponsored is advertising budget and used to push their product on attendees.
- wrapping company vehicles
> I used to do fleet vehicles for corporations. Company branding applied to company fleets is not advertising. It's so when those service vehicles arrive to a customer, they are recognizable by those expecting them (UPS, FedEX, DHL, Geek Squad, etc). They inevitably get used to advertise, because of course they do, but the only thing they can do is steal mindshare and force through repeat exposure a bias for the company just because you see their name more often. It's manipulation, and hardly ethical.
I'm not going to reply to example after example. No matter the application, no matter they given benifets or percieved value you think they are giving, the end result is for you to give them money, and the fact that so many forms of ads exist that people don't see as exactly that, companies talking you out of your money or otherwise using you to make money (walking billboard), shows that it's not possible to be ethical advertising. Ethical advertising is build a good product, let it speak for itself by being a good product, and let happy customers spread word when they want to, if they want to, and for no other reason than because of the product they are impressed with. If you're not selling garbage, or shit people don't need, you shouldn't have to spend money to manipulate people into thinking they need it.
> - Asking customer to place yard signs on their property
They don't ask the customer to do so out of the kindness of their hearts, they offer a discount on the bill for doing so. Another way to look at that same situation, is, extortion - "run our ad on your lawn for a month or you'll pay more for this work"... And, the discount compared to the length of time they get an ad spot on someone's lawn is probably very much in the favor of the company. Charging someone more money unless they advertise your business, not out of satisfaction, but because the other option is to pay more, isn't very ethical to me, as the customer basically is given a choice that isn't a choice unless they want to knowingly spend more money for nothing.
> - Small businesses putting physical ads in other small businesses
They share ads between each other to try to leach of off each others customers. Maybe even closer to "participate in our shared cartel or we'll send folks to some competitor who does.". Either way, it's not being done to inform folks of something, it's being done to profit and these users are already out, spending money, and close by, so it's the cheapest costing acquisition funnel.
> - Printing shirts, hats, pop sockets, etc. . . and handing them out for free
That merch given out is paid for by the company's marketing budget and that's because what they are buying is ad space with potentially unlimited and extremely cheap display time. You see a nice company giving you a shirt for free. What they see is a sucker who is happy to become a walking billboard that will go to packed concerts, bars, tv shows, friend groups, etc for the price of a cheap t shirt and silk screen, for the life of the tshirt, gaining brand recognition if nothing else the entire time. Manipulating a person into thinking the free shirt they were given is ethical advertising when they are actually being used to freely advertise their brand, not something I'd consider ethical.
> - sponsoring local events/athletes/scholars
All done to get a giant banner on the fence of the field, have your branding stamped on every helmet, bike, bat, glove, shirt, said in every annoucement, etc. They aren't "sponsoring" those things, they are paying for advertising space, and saying it's not that isn't very ethical. They aren't doing anything for the good of the community, they are doing it for mindshare. Redbull on every extreme sport for instance.
> - Parade floats, community bulletein boards, festival/event booths
Parade floats are so the company gets a mention or airtime or mindshare as it passes by people. Festivals and event booths, please see my free tshirt reply. That booth they purchased or conference they sponsored is advertising budget and used to push their product on attendees.
- wrapping company vehicles
> I used to do fleet vehicles for corporations. Company branding applied to company fleets is not advertising. It's so when those service vehicles arrive to a customer, they are recognizable by those expecting them (UPS, FedEX, DHL, Geek Squad, etc). They inevitably get used to advertise, because of course they do, but the only thing they can do is steal mindshare and force through repeat exposure a bias for the company just because you see their name more often. It's manipulation, and hardly ethical.
I'm not going to reply to example after example. No matter the application, no matter they given benifets or percieved value you think they are giving, the end result is for you to give them money, and the fact that so many forms of ads exist that people don't see as exactly that, companies talking you out of your money or otherwise using you to make money (walking billboard), shows that it's not possible to be ethical advertising. Ethical advertising is build a good product, let it speak for itself by being a good product, and let happy customers spread word when they want to, if they want to, and for no other reason than because of the product they are impressed with. If you're not selling garbage, or shit people don't need, you shouldn't have to spend money to manipulate people into thinking they need it.
I disagree.
I’m in no hurry to defend advertisers but it’s easy to think of non abusive, morally neutral advertising.
Local grocer has a sign hanging in the little league outfield, etc.
I’m in no hurry to defend advertisers but it’s easy to think of non abusive, morally neutral advertising.
Local grocer has a sign hanging in the little league outfield, etc.
Google ads used to be great. Just include some ads based on the content you’re looking at. Not based on some weird history and cookies.
I don’t mind those ads. But just keep them small, light, non interesting, and don’t sell my data.. be the platform that protects my data when matching up advertisers.
I don’t mind those ads. But just keep them small, light, non interesting, and don’t sell my data.. be the platform that protects my data when matching up advertisers.
"Currently, the predominant business model for commercial search engines is advertising. The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users. For example, in our prototype search engine one of the top results for cellular phone is "The Effect of Cellular Phone Use Upon Driver Attention", a study which explains in great detail the distractions and risk associated with conversing on a cell phone while driving. This search result came up first because of its high importance as judged by the PageRank algorithm, an approximation of citation importance on the web [Page, 98].*
It is clear that a search engine which was taking money for showing cellular phone ads would have difficulty justifying the page that our system returned to its paying advertisers. For this type of reason and historical experience with other media [Bagdikian 83], we expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers."
— The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine, Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page, 1998
It is clear that a search engine which was taking money for showing cellular phone ads would have difficulty justifying the page that our system returned to its paying advertisers. For this type of reason and historical experience with other media [Bagdikian 83], we expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers."
— The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine, Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page, 1998
It's just Goodhart's law. Our economy is profit centric. The way public companies are structured, the only metric anyone cares about is profit. Everything else just sloughs off over time.
Patagonia is an example of a company that is trying to be "decent" even after its founder is no longer involved. So far, it seems to be working.
In tech, I am not aware of any good examples. I feel like Apple is one of the less bad compared to others. They are at least making efforts to be good about privacy, even if their motivation may be less than pure.
In tech, I am not aware of any good examples. I feel like Apple is one of the less bad compared to others. They are at least making efforts to be good about privacy, even if their motivation may be less than pure.
Apple might be less bad than, say Oracle, but it's still an evil mega corp.
Their privacy angle is little more than mere marketing. Authoritarianism is in their DNA.
By no stretch of the imagination is it an ethical company, and people really need to stop treating it as such.
Their privacy angle is little more than mere marketing. Authoritarianism is in their DNA.
By no stretch of the imagination is it an ethical company, and people really need to stop treating it as such.
> Their privacy angle is little more than mere marketing. Authoritarianism is in their DNA.
Do you have any evidence to support your statements? Any arguments or just conclusions?
Do you have any evidence to support your statements? Any arguments or just conclusions?
They cracked down on ads talking about privacy, to the applause of everyone. Then they launched their own ad tech service. It's obvious privacy was used as an excuse to make more money.
I hope you're not asking for any evidence of their authoritarianism, it should be apparent to anyone who knows anything about the company. They readily cooperate with authoritarian regimes; look at their behavior in China, or how they assisted the totalitarian regime in Belarus to the detriment of pro democracy protesters. "Obeying local laws" is not a valid excuse for unethical behavior, but is very convenient if all you care about is profit maximization.
I hope you're not asking for any evidence of their authoritarianism, it should be apparent to anyone who knows anything about the company. They readily cooperate with authoritarian regimes; look at their behavior in China, or how they assisted the totalitarian regime in Belarus to the detriment of pro democracy protesters. "Obeying local laws" is not a valid excuse for unethical behavior, but is very convenient if all you care about is profit maximization.
> Then they launched their own ad tech service. It's obvious privacy was used as an excuse to make more money.
Is their ad technology invading user privacy like Meta or Google? I have come across nothing discussing this.
Is their ad technology invading user privacy like Meta or Google? I have come across nothing discussing this.
You'll find plenty of links here, for example: https://proton.me/blog/apple-ad-company
I would agree with you on most points; however, having worked within the fruit company directly on its chain of trust, I will tell you that the privacy angle runs extremely deep and is genuine. Regardless, that angle is obviously different and independent about being authoritarian within its privately-owned monopolistic marketplace.
I think the issue, though, is that people should realize that a company's "values" only go so far as to support the profit motive - thus, they're not really values at all, as the second they become an obstacle to profit, they will be jettisoned.
For Apple, who sells their own hardware and OS and has always desired tight ecosystem control, privacy usually helps their profit motive, but not always - look at their approach to iMessage. I mean, iMessage already, and always, has degraded to SMS when sending to non-iOS users. But SMS has zero encryption features and is pretty horrible for privacy. And the presence of a single Android user in an iMessage group chat means nobody gets encrypted messages. If Apple truly cared about user privacy, they could easily provide an Android iMessage client, or publish a spec. Not only don't they do that, they specifically broke the one client that worked around their intransigeance, which, despite Apple's spin, was way worse for privacy, even for users that only use iOS (assuming they ever talk to an Android user).
The whole point of having values is they provide guidelines of how to behave even when behaving that way is hard. Corporations are simply unable to commit to anything that could threaten profit growth, so we should stop pretending they're capable of having durable values.
For Apple, who sells their own hardware and OS and has always desired tight ecosystem control, privacy usually helps their profit motive, but not always - look at their approach to iMessage. I mean, iMessage already, and always, has degraded to SMS when sending to non-iOS users. But SMS has zero encryption features and is pretty horrible for privacy. And the presence of a single Android user in an iMessage group chat means nobody gets encrypted messages. If Apple truly cared about user privacy, they could easily provide an Android iMessage client, or publish a spec. Not only don't they do that, they specifically broke the one client that worked around their intransigeance, which, despite Apple's spin, was way worse for privacy, even for users that only use iOS (assuming they ever talk to an Android user).
The whole point of having values is they provide guidelines of how to behave even when behaving that way is hard. Corporations are simply unable to commit to anything that could threaten profit growth, so we should stop pretending they're capable of having durable values.
Apple being a less bad company must be some alternate reality.
A "B-Corp" designation provides precisely this kind of framework for execs to have formal obligations beyond profit-seeking.
> company constitution
IANAL either, but I feel like the closest we had to something like this was the non profit part of OpenAI, which should’ve had the power to fire the CEO. Reality was a bit more messy than that, and profit won over ethics.
I can’t imagine Google shareholders not throwing a fit for not being allowed their cash cow to grow, and eventually finding a way to bypass the constitution.
IANAL either, but I feel like the closest we had to something like this was the non profit part of OpenAI, which should’ve had the power to fire the CEO. Reality was a bit more messy than that, and profit won over ethics.
I can’t imagine Google shareholders not throwing a fit for not being allowed their cash cow to grow, and eventually finding a way to bypass the constitution.
A "company constitution", just like every constitution, is just a bunch of paper where someone drawed some letters. If there's something to be gained by changing it or trowing it out altogether, it will happen eventually.
> "If the profit margin of operations exceeds 10% the CEO has to be replaced" or whatever.
They would find a way around that, for example by buying other companies in order to not make a profit.
They would find a way around that, for example by buying other companies in order to not make a profit.
> Is it inevitable? Will the allure of short-term profits kill every good company? IANAL but it seems to me it should be possible to have a company "constitution" that prevents it, somehow. "If the profit margin of operations exceeds 10% the CEO has to be replaced" or whatever.
It's possible. Of course hard to imagine the kind of investor that is going to want to invest in a company like this and SV pretty much runs on VC money.
If given a choice, I'll take 1st percentile salaries at company w/o profit cap constitution over taking a pay cut. It's like, if you make $350k+ a year...just sort of budget that you might one day lose that job.
The vast, vast bulk of the country pays all their expenses, cares for their children, elderly family members, sick relatives and so on with <$100k salary. You can insure yourself against any hardship in unemployment with a top 1% salary.
It's possible. Of course hard to imagine the kind of investor that is going to want to invest in a company like this and SV pretty much runs on VC money.
If given a choice, I'll take 1st percentile salaries at company w/o profit cap constitution over taking a pay cut. It's like, if you make $350k+ a year...just sort of budget that you might one day lose that job.
The vast, vast bulk of the country pays all their expenses, cares for their children, elderly family members, sick relatives and so on with <$100k salary. You can insure yourself against any hardship in unemployment with a top 1% salary.
IBM used to count Jews in the ghetto.
This is corporate America. it's your cool uncle when you're young and it's the same uncle when you realize as an adult that that's just not how adults should behave.
This is corporate America. it's your cool uncle when you're young and it's the same uncle when you realize as an adult that that's just not how adults should behave.
If you're taking, say, the Google of 2014 as a reference point, they appear to have had a relatively small fraction of their current headcount at the time.
The allure of short term profits is largely the point of all companies. Google in particular was never decent, they struck data harvesting gold with Search and Maps, then used the infinite money they were making off of advertisers to ensure that no other option besides Google could ever be viable, through manipulation of search results, manipulation of business customers, regulatory capture, etc. Now they are free to let the quality of their products slide into the abyss without fear of users jumping ship. Where would we jump to? This is what every tech company you've ever heard of has been striving to do for a couple of decades now. It's either that or create hype -> pump valuation -> sell the business to a larger entity before they have to answer for long-term stability.
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I don’t think you can have a company both be public and ethical in the way you’re describing, at least in the US where you’ll get sued for giving some profits back to employees instead of to the shareholders, for example. Though if the company stays private, they’re subject to the “benevolent dictator” problem where the company is only ethical because the leader is. At least with a public company (or a non-profit), the CEO is subject to discipline by the board of directors.
Yes it is inevitable, unless some luck charm happens to hit the company, it is no accident that most companies in mankind's history, never survive beyond the third generation since they were founded.
The company never had any integrity^1 and has always lacked a moral compass.^2
1. Paper at TREC announcing the search engine cited harmful influence of advertising and promised a search engine "in the academic realm". They never delivered. Sold out. That was before they even went public.
2. "Don't be evil". Given the amount of highly personal data it collects, and the lack of regulation, the company truly needed some sort of ethical code. But they never even tried. Instead they let their senior management engage in harassment, settled every suit brought against them for privacy violations, paid off the competition, and routinely accepted enormous regulatory fines. Pure, unaudulterated greed.
The Google playbook is the furthest thing from "keep the margins less than or equal to 10%". It's the work of SillyCon Valley. It's the same playbook adopted by Facebook to keep Zuckerberg from being ousted. Keep reasonable people from having any ability to change anything.
There is nothing "cool" about it.
1. Paper at TREC announcing the search engine cited harmful influence of advertising and promised a search engine "in the academic realm". They never delivered. Sold out. That was before they even went public.
2. "Don't be evil". Given the amount of highly personal data it collects, and the lack of regulation, the company truly needed some sort of ethical code. But they never even tried. Instead they let their senior management engage in harassment, settled every suit brought against them for privacy violations, paid off the competition, and routinely accepted enormous regulatory fines. Pure, unaudulterated greed.
The Google playbook is the furthest thing from "keep the margins less than or equal to 10%". It's the work of SillyCon Valley. It's the same playbook adopted by Facebook to keep Zuckerberg from being ousted. Keep reasonable people from having any ability to change anything.
There is nothing "cool" about it.
>There is nothing "cool" about it.
Not now of course, but I think that they lost their way mostly after the first decade.
For the first decade they launched a bunch of services that were so much better than anything else it seemed like sci-fi, and they did so without obtrusive advertising or shady tracking.
Even Chrome was cool, to outcompete Microsoft's browser on Microsoft's OS seemed impossible back then but chrome was just so much better than anything else that they managed to do it.
I think the extreme money-fountain from ads started the corruption, and the threat of Facebook created a paranoia inside Google that removed all the floodgates.
Not now of course, but I think that they lost their way mostly after the first decade.
For the first decade they launched a bunch of services that were so much better than anything else it seemed like sci-fi, and they did so without obtrusive advertising or shady tracking.
Even Chrome was cool, to outcompete Microsoft's browser on Microsoft's OS seemed impossible back then but chrome was just so much better than anything else that they managed to do it.
I think the extreme money-fountain from ads started the corruption, and the threat of Facebook created a paranoia inside Google that removed all the floodgates.
You can prevent this by bringing democracy into the workplace. Right now the workplace is like a dictator ran country or monarchy. Its a very top down tiered system In a co-op structured company it is owned and operated by its employees. You vote as a collective on how much the CEO makes, if you even need one. How the work is done, how much everyone should be getting paid, etc.
As a user of many Google products and an old timer who legit appreciates how Google actually made it possible to search the internet effectively, I am no longer a Google fanboy.
I used to dream about working there while knowing that I'd have to study up for several months (I have a family, full time job + I do some consulting) and still probably get rejected.
I'm not dreaming about that anymore. Google has jumped the shark.
I used to dream about working there while knowing that I'd have to study up for several months (I have a family, full time job + I do some consulting) and still probably get rejected.
I'm not dreaming about that anymore. Google has jumped the shark.
“I swear communism is going to work this time guys!!”
What happens to Google when Larry and/or Sergey decide to give up control? I feel like there's still possibility for a curveball from one of them.
Google doesn't innovate anymore. The last attempt at an innovation I saw was Stadia (RIP). But, most Google products have a replacement now; Google can finally die.
> The last attempt at an innovation I saw was Stadia
What. This was a product that had many prior failed predecessors from other companies.
What. This was a product that had many prior failed predecessors from other companies.
What was innovative about Stadia?
The controllers connected directly to Stadia servers over WiFi, avoiding an unnecessary roundtrip via the device displaying the video feed.
That's... not that impressive imo.
Onlive did Stadia in like 2009. Not really innovative.
You seem to define innovation as having no replacement. What’s innovative then?
Tangent to this: do you remember the rumor a long time ago about GCP having a deadline to become "something" (I don't remember if 'relevant' or 'profitable' or else). Have it got to that "something"?
Programação
> "Google parent firm Alphabet employed 182,381 employees"
I'm always sad to hear when someone loses their jobs, but the headline borders on being click-bait.
If Google laid off ~3k of it's 182k employee base, that's only 1.5% of it's workforce.
It wasn't long ago that companies had a standing rule to let go it's bottom 5% annually.
I'm always sad to hear when someone loses their jobs, but the headline borders on being click-bait.
If Google laid off ~3k of it's 182k employee base, that's only 1.5% of it's workforce.
It wasn't long ago that companies had a standing rule to let go it's bottom 5% annually.
Google has a (deserved) reputation for cancelling projects. This will hurt them at some point if it hasn't already. People will be unwilling to start using a Google product because they expect it to be cancelled. Interestingly, Netflix is having the same issue.
Here's where this will backfire first: Google has studied team success and discovered psychological safety is a key component. Laying off people working on Google Assistant tells employees that if their project is canceled, you may be fired. Employees will respond by simply not working on anything that risks being canceled. Previously, employees had trust that they'd simply move to other projects.
The counterargument is that employees should be invested in the success of their project. That's a nonsencial argument. The average IC has zero impact on whether or not an SVP 6 levels above them wakes up one day and decides to cancel their project in favor of [latest hot thing] that day.
In fact, the very people who are responsible for the failure of a project are the least likely to get fired. They're the leaders who should be responsible for this. These VPs and above will simply move on to other projects.
As always, layoffs here are to suppress wages and create fear in remaining employees.
Here's where this will backfire first: Google has studied team success and discovered psychological safety is a key component. Laying off people working on Google Assistant tells employees that if their project is canceled, you may be fired. Employees will respond by simply not working on anything that risks being canceled. Previously, employees had trust that they'd simply move to other projects.
The counterargument is that employees should be invested in the success of their project. That's a nonsencial argument. The average IC has zero impact on whether or not an SVP 6 levels above them wakes up one day and decides to cancel their project in favor of [latest hot thing] that day.
In fact, the very people who are responsible for the failure of a project are the least likely to get fired. They're the leaders who should be responsible for this. These VPs and above will simply move on to other projects.
As always, layoffs here are to suppress wages and create fear in remaining employees.
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Google's biggest problem is lack of good strategic decisions at higher levels of management, their higher up management are not committed to anything and the company is run as chaos without any clear goals.
They are often late to the game and then they try to do a rip off of the other tech companies services and they fail.
Those that are really good services, they don't have the vision to stick with and improve until it works. They expect to get to a billion users in 2 years else the project goes on resource deprivation and then cancelling.
They are starting to hit the cap on advertisement market, filling Search results and YouTube with crappy ads, hurting user experience. YouTube had turned into a house of pain because of the number of ads. You cannot keep growing Ads revenue year after year by 20% indefinitely.
Their Deepmind folks overpromise and underdeliver. Their Gemini model is not even as good as GPT3.5 in benchmarks, let alone GPT4. And their folks don't really care about the products, they want to work on cool AGI stuff instead. They have been promising AGI next year for the last 10 years if not more, yet their model cannot even compete with GPT4.
Bard has few daily users, and no paying users, while OpenAI has over 100 million daily users.
No one is really responsible to user experience, the company is built from a bunch of dysfunctional silos don't their own thing competing with other got resources, no one knows how many chat apps they have launched to users and then killed. People get promoted through a dysfunctional system by hoarding resources and growing org sizes without delivering value to users.
Internal incentives for engineering and project folks are set towards launching new things, not delivering value to users.
They don't execute well because of mismanagement at higher levels and they are trying to address execution problems by laying off people who ended up working on the wrong project that the upper management was highlighting a while ago in their earnings call.
Their Cloud is doing ok, but they are far behind AWS and Azure from market share perspective and Azure seems to be growing much faster.
Their CFO is stepping down after cutting a lot of projects and investing and losing billions of dollars in real estate during covid and doubling the number of employees in 2020.
There are rumors that Sergey Brin came back to help Sundar Pichai deal with challenges but it doesn't seem to be working so far.
The relationship between their higher management and general employees seems broken and dysfunctional. The employees do not believe in the upper management.
Overall Google seems to be in big trouble. The future for Google doesn't look bright. They are likely going to end up like Yahoo!
They are often late to the game and then they try to do a rip off of the other tech companies services and they fail.
Those that are really good services, they don't have the vision to stick with and improve until it works. They expect to get to a billion users in 2 years else the project goes on resource deprivation and then cancelling.
They are starting to hit the cap on advertisement market, filling Search results and YouTube with crappy ads, hurting user experience. YouTube had turned into a house of pain because of the number of ads. You cannot keep growing Ads revenue year after year by 20% indefinitely.
Their Deepmind folks overpromise and underdeliver. Their Gemini model is not even as good as GPT3.5 in benchmarks, let alone GPT4. And their folks don't really care about the products, they want to work on cool AGI stuff instead. They have been promising AGI next year for the last 10 years if not more, yet their model cannot even compete with GPT4.
Bard has few daily users, and no paying users, while OpenAI has over 100 million daily users.
No one is really responsible to user experience, the company is built from a bunch of dysfunctional silos don't their own thing competing with other got resources, no one knows how many chat apps they have launched to users and then killed. People get promoted through a dysfunctional system by hoarding resources and growing org sizes without delivering value to users.
Internal incentives for engineering and project folks are set towards launching new things, not delivering value to users.
They don't execute well because of mismanagement at higher levels and they are trying to address execution problems by laying off people who ended up working on the wrong project that the upper management was highlighting a while ago in their earnings call.
Their Cloud is doing ok, but they are far behind AWS and Azure from market share perspective and Azure seems to be growing much faster.
Their CFO is stepping down after cutting a lot of projects and investing and losing billions of dollars in real estate during covid and doubling the number of employees in 2020.
There are rumors that Sergey Brin came back to help Sundar Pichai deal with challenges but it doesn't seem to be working so far.
The relationship between their higher management and general employees seems broken and dysfunctional. The employees do not believe in the upper management.
Overall Google seems to be in big trouble. The future for Google doesn't look bright. They are likely going to end up like Yahoo!