Uber/airbnb/lyft were considered in the same tier as facebook/google before corona. With google also slowing hiring, are the engineers laid off all going to be absorbed by facebook?
For most younger people here this may come as a shock but tech jobs can disappear, for years.
The job market in 2019 felt a lot like the job market in 1999, people rushing to get upskilled so that they could get into software and make ridiculous money. After the dotcom burst huge number of people left tech, or at least left the world of software development. Salaries also went way down for nearly a decade.
A common comment here on HN with layoffs is "well they're just getting rid of superfluous employees, so this is no big deal". This assumption is both ridiculously callous about real people losing job, it also underestimates how much work is superfluous in SV.
It is very possible that tech will take a serious hit this time, and that the total number of software engineers, data scientists, dev ops people etc will go do... for years. And likewise salaries will also drop (TC automatically does this thanks to the magic of RSUs).
Certainly people will need software and software engineers, just likely not nearly as much as they do now. Once FAANG realizes there's no longer a need to keep talent off the market, expect salaries to take a dive.
Wariness about the future, spiced with a tinge of schadenfreude.
One obvious counterpoint to this argument is that this recession was not caused by markets realizing that many publicly listed tech companies actually had no market and no path to profitability.
Also, non-tech companies took on a large number of engineers in the late 90s to address Y2K - many of whom got laid off afterwards. Not an issue here.
I'm guessing I, as a lowly, humble, SWE from an investment bank, would be easily looked over in favor of those aforementioned veterans/alumni of highly regarded Silicon Valley companies. Unless if I make a lateral jump to another bank or hedge fund, which I have no desire to do so.
- before Coronavirus, there was a shortage of people to work in software (if you believe BLS)
- software employment represents a very small portion of the labor force
- there are many problems that have just happened that will require software to solve
- while there are undoubtedly industries that will be hard hit, there are many software-intensive sectors that will see growth as a result of the crisis (ecommerce for one)
- the world in 1999 was much different. the internet was a curiosity, now it's essential.
- and finally, companies that are looking to implement efficiencies (read: lay people off) turn to .. software
edit, one more:
- many software positions over the past decade+ have been filled by immigrants. Going forward the US is going to be much less friendly to immigration, so competition for jobs will go down for US workers
So was wework by many. Facebook/google cannot be more different from uber/airbnb/lyft.
FB/G are in high margin business, operating largely in virtual space, where scaling to new markets has low marginal costs.
Uber/airbnb/lyft are in historically low margin, capital intensive space, where scaling to new markets has very high marginal costs. Same as wework is an office rental with an app, so is uber, a taxi with an app. App part is cool, and gives them meaningful advantage, but it's still a taxi business, and they were not able to change that.
I got rejected by Uber, was too scared of rejection to try Airbnb or Lyft. But I considered all three a tier (or more) above WW.
I'd have hands down, without hesitation, accepted a job from Uber even if I would have been laid off at some point down the road. Having Uber (or Lyft, or Airbnb) on the resume would open doors I imagine having WeWork (even disregarding the whole scandal) would not.
However, that's just a short-term hit. FB and Google may very well increase their own spending so they can capture the huge amount of people who are now using their platforms.
FAANG internships always sounded weird, considering, y'know, Netflix doesn't do internships.