The tech sector teardown is more catharsis than crisis | Hacker News Reader

The tech sector teardown is more catharsis than crisis

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134 pointspseudolus246 comments

I think this is just the correction that was inevitable as hiring had become a cargo cult.

Everyone was hiring so everyone felt compelled to hire, creating a feedback loop of insane wages and offers.

Now its time to pay the bills and many organizations realize the engineers they hired cannot possibly provide the value necessary to keep their job.

I know one individual who got hired as a Sales Engineer for a platform and they have almost no work lined up for him... for 4 months now... He just sits making north of 200k for monitoring slack and answering community questions.

You can tell which companies actually had a cost benefit analysis for their hires and they continue to hire for the roles they need, where as others over extended and have to layoff.

"cannot possibly provide the value necessary to keep their job."

It's actually very much possibly for software engineers, at least, to justify high valuations. As an example when I joined Reddit my first task was to remake a data engineering server in scala that cut down the needed AWS machines by 70%. That cost saving already covered more than my salary in perpetuity and I was only 3 months in.

The vast majority of startups aren't doing anything remotely complex enough to be able to save money on electricity by paying for developers to write more efficient software. Or if they can - the instances are few and far between.

The vast majority of startups are also heavily cash-flow negative - so anything you do likely won't pay for itself.

It's almost always a bet on a rosy future.

Not true. The vast majority of startups hemorrhage money with inefficiencies. I routinely cut tens of thousands of dollars a month off a startup’s AWS bill. It takes me 30-45min. Why didn’t someone else do it? Too busy, didn’t know about it, didn’t know how.

I keep expecting to find a place that doesn’t need some sort of efficiency cost-saving. I’ve yet to find it.

The fact is there’s a crap-ton of beneficial work to be done anywhere you look. It’s not hard to justify a good salary in the software world.

For example: what if your company could double the speed of your CI/CD system and halve the price? If you move your runners to spot instances in an auto-scaling group you can do that. What’s the return on increasing the productivity of your eng team? Maybe eng salaries times percentage productivity improvement? That number is probably… large.

The vast majority of engineers earning these salaries work for "startups" like Google minting huge amounts of money on software built by these engineers. They are underpaid if anything. Do you really think management or shareholders (that get paid more for doing less) are the underpaid ones in this equation? Where else would the money go?

The amount of revenue per employees at some of these companies is in the 7 figures.

The "vast majority of startups" is not a useful unit of measure. Look at where all the people and the money actually are (FAANG).

Define FAANG.

Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Google employ <1M engineers in the US. There are 4.4M engineers in the US.

That does not change the point that most of the engineers earning insane salaries are working for FAANG

There are 4.4M engineers in the US, but almost all of them make far less than the one working for FAANG.

Fair point.

I didn't know we were talking exclusively about engineers in the top 5% of pay or so.

I thought this was about engineers in general.

I was paid $165k a year by a neobank startup to.....build their bank. It's now responsible for over $200mm a year in revenue. I was the sole engineer on the project.

Good engineers are worth their weight in gold.

Yeah when I read takes like the guy you're responding to, I have to wonder: where should the money go if not to the people that built the product? Management? Shareholders? You can say that but those people are doing less work for more money already, so I don't buy it.

Engineers like many people that build useful things, provide orders of magnitude more value than what they get for their labor.

Well...op left the company, so why should he still get a cut of their current revenues ? That does not seem very fair to the current engineers who a currently able to manage the $200 MM. As far as we know, the company really started working well when they were finally able to replace his crappy code with a better implementation.

The money probably goes to management, who stuck during the entire story - which OP didn't. It also goes to current employees who, by their number alone require more money. And of course to stakeholder who paid for OP $165k when the bank was making $0.

Actually no. They replaced me with 9 engineers to do the same amount of work and had to delay the project 6 months because they had me working 100 hours a week and renegged on a raise and a vacation.

This one.

I did unimaginable things for one company, only to understand the value years later.

You know who else asked themselves that same question? Karl Marx.

The Workers control the deployment to Production!

By that logic, any salary < 70% of AWS cost is justifiable.

In reality there is a job market, and there are office politics. These determine salaries more than "marginal revenue of labour". This means that as long as someone who is employable by office-political standards will do the job cheaper, the salary can be contested.

I get your point. But to add to it, there is a labor shortage of good software engineers and that contributes to the high salary. We are still digitizing our economy, we are still disrupting non tech savvy businesses with tech first startups, and we are barely beginning to apply ML all the areas it could make gains. Please see more_corn's comment in this thread about how they haven't found a job yet where they couldn't immediately save the company 10k a month. There is no shortage of work to be done and a real shortage of people who can do it. So the reality is yes, any salary < 70% of AWS cost is justifiable in this example.

I has a phone screen at Coinbase and they just threw out 380k as the salary without me saying anything as far as expectations.

This reminds me of the dot com bubble. In 2000 people who had no software background and were making 50k would get offers for 80k, just for showing up at an interview and saying they know Java or HTML

I work at coinbase. We have standardized salary bands, this is just the salary at your level (comp plus equity, not sure if bonus is included). They are letting you know this up front to not waste your time.

One other thing that’s worth noting is that each year they give you a new equity grant. That grant I believe is priced based on the stock price over a period of 30 days in the first quarter.

Handy for limiting your downside if you are bearish about the economy.

The issue they are raising is specifically that, $380k standardized salary band, what role is this? That number seems unsustainable.

No. This is well paid but not out of the ordinary for someone working at a top tier tech company in NYC/SF Bay Area. Think Facebook, Apple, etc. see https://www.levels.fyi/ for levels and comparison.

Some of those companies are doing hiring freezes right now but many are not.

Salary bands are adjusted within the USA by zones where NYC/SF/Seattle are zone 1, zone 2 is 90% of base, zone 3 is 85%. With equity component staying the same.

Europe/Brazil/Canada are on a totally different lower pay scale.

This is extremely out of the ordinary- Levels.fyi lists a salary of $224,000 for a Staff level SWE at Google

No you are incorrect. That 224k is base at google not including equity. Staff engineers at google get a bonus and the majority of their comp is in equity, just like coin.

Source, I have a lot of friends who are former/current staff engineers at a variety of Bay Area companies. I also was a staff engineer at coin.

Also if you want to earn something like this in cash go work at Netflix when they start hiring again. They give you the option to be paid in cash.

It's not incorrect, salary does not include equity. Total comp would be a combination of salary, equity, and bonuses. The OP refers to salary, not total comp. I'm using their information to reply in their thread. Happy to re-asses conversation at total comp (a different conversation) if they are referring to total comp instead of salary.

Coinbase isn't paying $380k base either..are you just quibbling over the meaning of salary?

I don't think it is quibbling. It is a really important distinction. Salary is (mostly) guaranteed. Equity isn't guaranteed at all.

It’s a bit pedantic to be honest. Multiple times it’s been pointed out on this thread that the OP was referring to total comp so I’m not sure why this keeps being brought up.

While equity in a public company can go down and go down significantly it’s liquid. Especially in companies like coinbase that don’t have a 1 year cliff, are public, it’s a significant part of your comp and not funny money like you get in many early stage companies.

> Salary is (mostly) guaranteed

Truth

The salary I banked at the beginning of the month is guaranteed.

>Equity isn't guaranteed at all.

Especially not at coinbase, whose stock has imploded to the tune of -75% just this year, and more since IPO.

To quibble even more, it's much harder (legally) to take away unvested RSUs than it is to demote / reduce salary.

The OP is confused, I work at coinbase and that figure refers to total comp. Also levels.fyi is listing salary and not total comp for the google position he is comparing.

I wonder if this is sort of imposter syndrome, where an engineer thinks a year of my time is just not worth $380k to $495k. We all know plenty of examples where good employees are worth this and much more to growing or very profitable companies.

Ask for what you can get and realize that you are worth more than you realize in the right situation. And never begrudge a peer who earns a lot.

The coin base is almost certainly total comp, especially since they give annual (rather than the standard 4-year) equity grants.

Yeah, no way that Coinbase is paying $380k salary.

I’m guessing 380k is total comp, which is 498k for staff at Google.

Levels.fyi lists that number as base cash salary, yes. Total comp for a Staff SWE at Google is easily breaking $500k. It is also not a secret to anyone that cash salary at most tech companies tops out pretty low, because as you grow in levels, cash becomes a smaller and smaller portion of your total comp.

$224k/yr is below what a midlevel/L4 SWE would make at Google in total comp.

That’s low. I don’t think they’re using “staff” right.

Also, Total comp in 224k is more like $400k. 15% bonus target is normal with a possible 2x performance multiplier. 100k/yr gsu stock. 50% 401k match. To say nothing of the perks. On-site gyms, fantastic food, free shuttles.

Not that I’m advocating for working for goog, just saying.

levels.fyi shows $498,910 in total compensation for a staff level SWE at Google. Different companies compensate using a different blend of cash and equity. At a public company like Google, it's all liquid. Similarly, an E6 at Facebook gets $576,886.

These are also roughly speaking first-year salaries. You can expect a refresh grant equal to 1/4 of a new-hire equity grant each year vesting over 4 years, plus a staff-level can get a signing bonus of $50-100K.

After 3-4 years in a staff role you can easily be making $1-2M/yr.

It's probably not 380K base, which is very high, it's likely 300K base + 25% bonus target = $375K, give or take. That's not hugely more than any of the mega-caps have been paying in cash comp for staffie's for like 5+ years.

> After 3-4 years in a staff role you can easily be making $1-2M/yr.

Refreshes exist but this is a total lie. I'm staff at Google. Nobody at L6 is making $1M in annual compensation, even if they have their sign-on equity and three refreshes. Let alone $2M.

Ok so I'm speaking from personal experience and network.

The point is that 3-4 years tenure is enough for significant appreciation in equity, especially in the earlier grants. Let's work an example, for someone who started 3 years ago.

- May 2019. -

Base: $225K.

Equity: $880K grant = 785sh @ 1120/share = 220K.

Bonus: $60K.

Total: $500K.

- May 2020. -

Base: $236K.

Equity: 196sh @ 1428/share = 280K.

Equity: $220K grant = 154sh @ 1428/share = 55K.

Bonus: $63K.

Total: $634K.

- May 2021. -

Base: $247K.

Equity: 196sh @ 2411/share = 473K.

Equity: 39sh @ 2411/share = 94K.

Equity: $220K grant = 91sh @ 2411/share = 55K.

Bonus: $66K.

Total: $935K.

Trust me, if they've been there for 3-4 years, they're making more than 1M in total comp. If you back my example out to someone who started in 2018, those refreshers easily push them into 1.2-1.4M, and factor in promo grants?

Okay if the stock price more than doubles in two years then yeah you can end up making a lot of money. This is why it is foolish to use vest price rather than grant price when discussing compensation. It isn't actionable information.

And Google wasn't giving $880k sign-on equity grants for L6 in 2019. You can't use todays numbers for past cases. And then you are choosing a peak pay before it drops dramatically after the sign-on grant ends. And after all that, you aren't even at 1M, let alone "easily 1-2M". With literally everything being used to pump numbers up, you don't get to where you cite.

So yes, there are people at loads of companies who make way more money than advertised because the stock ballooned. But this is a completely useless way of analyzing compensation.

> So yes, there are people at loads of companies who make way more money than advertised because the stock ballooned. But this is a completely useless way of analyzing compensation.

I couldn't disagree more. If half your total compensation is derived from stock, then you better be looking at yourself not just as an employee but as an investor. And part of that means making projections.

The point is that it isn't repeatable. Saying "oh I made bank investing in Tesla" is not useful information for another person making a decision now. Similarly, "Google stock went up dramatically between 2018 and early 2022 is not useful information for somebody who has offers in hand today from various corporations because they have absolutely no way of predicting future stock growth.

It's not about assuming that past performance equals future performance. With that attitude, nobody should invest in anything.

It's about bringing an investor mindset. Do your own analysis, make your own projections. It's literally half your paycheck, you owe it to yourself. It won't perform the same, sure, but your job as an investor is to analyze the quality of that investment. Will it go up or down? How much?

Whatever you vest is ordinary income. It's your compensation. Just because it's not fixed in advance doesn't mean it's not total comp! Don't pretend otherwise! :)

An effective investor mindset is to buy the whole market and forget it. Doing your own projections and trying to choose a particular company based on your belief that it’s stock will go up 150% over the next few years is a thing that virtually zero people can do effectively.

Except that you are literally investing a large chunk into the company you are going to work for. So while you may take that approach with your discretionary income, you are taking a different stock-picking approach joining a company that offers equity compensation. Unless you join Netflix.

So while you're saying one thing here, you're actually doing another.

I don't have data to prove you otherwise, but I don't think 880k would be not possible as the initial stock grant for L6. FB gives that to E5 now so I am not sure why you think L6 can't get that even in 2019. The initial stock grant bands haven't changed that much. I even got 400k as the initial grant in 2017.

Disc: Googler.

> And Google wasn't giving $880k sign-on equity grants for L6 in 2019.

Note that Facebook certainly was.

The original grant runs out after 4 years. You don’t just infinitely accumulate a higher annual comp through refreshers.

L6 @ Google, personal AGI last year (not counting capital gains or spouse's income) was just over $900K. You forget the massive stock-price appreciation between 2020 and the end of 2021. If you were granted $400K/year in stock compensation in March 2020 it was worth over $1M/year in Dec 2021.

As I mentioned in the other thread, I do not think it is useful to use grant price when discussing comp with other people because it is not actionable. People joining Google today cannot rely on another 200% stock growth.

And even if you managed to hit your sign on grant at just the right time, you still were below the proposed “easily 1-2M”.

Totally accurate and valuable information based on people in my network.

You can make a lot of money working as a staff engineer at a top tier company.

Why? Because it’s higher than you’re used to seeing? You don’t even know what role that person was applying for. Is your position that 380k is just “too high”, period?

That number (or higher) has been the norm at a huge swath of stable and profitable tech companies for a decade+.

I am making an assumption that 380 is total comp and not base salary. I don’t believe that Coinbase is paying 380 base salary for any non-executive position.

I asked what the role was in the comment you are replying to. Do you have data to back up the "huge swath" assertion? Certainly there are a few individual companies that have been able to provide specialized roles a $380k base salary, and companies who have been able to provide that and above on total comp thanks to an amazing run on equity value over the past 10 years. I don't think anyone is arguing that there are situations when this happens, that's not the point. It's irregular, it's naive to think that is the norm.

The OP specified salary- if they're referring to total comp, that'd be an important distinction for them to make in the future. Its anybodies guess what the actual value of equity in a total comp package will be a year from now. As an example, if you took a $380k TC package at Shopify 6 months ago and 40% of that was equity, it's now looking like $280k.

OP has clarified that it’s total comp and not base salary, as I had assumed. This is absolutely not out of the norm for engineering compensation at publicly traded companies. Levels.fyi has all of that data readily available.

"I asked what the role was in the comment you are replying to. Do you have data to back up the "huge swath" assertion? Certainly there are a few individual companies that have been able to provide specialized roles a $380k base salary, and companies who have been able to provide that and above on total comp thanks to an amazing run on equity value over the past 10 years. I don't think anyone is arguing that there are situations when this happens, that's not the point. It's irregular, it's naive to think that is the norm."

It's basically what the salary looks like in the USA at a top tier company in a top tier city. Go look at https://www.levels.fyi/ for base salary excluding equity. Equity goes up by level.

As for this role, it sounds basically like a mid career engineers salary. i.e 5-12 years of relevant experience. Hard to know exactly because geography impacts salary bands at Coin.

I can't remember what HR tells us, but I think we are targeting pay for the top 25% of companies/engineers in the USA.

"The OP specified salary- if they're referring to total comp, that'd be an important distinction for them to make in the future."

I work at Coinbase, it's not salary, it's total comp. I'm assuming the OP was a bit confused. At least half that figure is equity.

"Its anybodies guess what the actual value of equity in a total comp package will be a year from now. As an example, if you took a $380k TC package at Shopify 6 months ago and 40% of that was equity, it's now looking like $280k."

As I mentioned earlier, each year Coinbase give you a new equity grant priced at the start of the year. I.e thirty day average, I believe.

So if the equity tanks one year, the next year you will be reset to 380k total comp. Assuming of course we are not in a multi year bear market and you don't get laid off, which is always a possibility in tech.

Also some companies, such as Netflix allow you to take a cash only salary that would be comparable to this.

>Why? Because it’s higher than you’re used to seeing? You don’t even know what role that person was applying for. Is your position that 380k is just “too high”, period?

Perhaps because the company lost half a billion dollars last quarter and is in a controversial space facing regulatory scrutiny?

>That number (or higher) has been the norm at a huge swath of stable and profitable tech companies for a decade+.

Yeah, stable and profitable.

> Perhaps because the company lost half a billion dollars last quarter

So what? Last year COIN made $3.62B earnings. They may need to shift at some point, but I think it's incorrect to act like 1-2 bad quarters means a company should completely shift their plan. If anything, it's more important than ever to hire top people - which requires a decent salary.

>If anything, it's more important than ever to hire top people - which requires a decent salary.

These are not "top people", they are average people. This isn't Lake Wobegon, where all the kids are above average.

>So what? Last year COIN made $3.62B earnings.

Only in Silicon Valley do people say "so what" to profits and quote revenue numbers. We're literally talking about high costs. Selling dimes for a nickel is simple, but not sustainable.

Not revenue. In 2021 COIN earned 3.62B profit on 7.84B revenue. People are acting like COIN is one of these companies that has never made money. Last year they had a $14.50 EPS.

2021 Fiscal Year https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/COIN/key-statistics?p=COIN

Of course past results are not indicative of the future, but in 2020 and 2021 COIN had positive earnings.

They actually made that in profits last year.

https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001679788/8e5e050...

What do you mean, so what? Have you not read the article under discussion?

Sure, an article where COIN wasn't mentioned. Given that COIN made a profit in 2020 and a very large profit in 2021 it's hard to place it as a VC cash burning company.

COIN had a bad quarter and expects to have another. Are we seeing a shift away from crypto and tech or repricing which things will continue again? I think it's too soon to tell, hence my so what. COIN needs tighten up and plan for what's next. It doesn't mean they need to assume crypto is going to zero and the company is over - yet.

"Perhaps because the company lost half a billion dollars last quarter and is in a controversial space facing regulatory scrutiny?"

Wouldn't you expect people to be paid more for working in a risky space? Also, please not Coinbase just announced a hiring freeze.

https://blog.coinbase.com/employee-note-an-update-on-hiring-...

Even if they were paying it as cash, it's likely $300K base + 25% bonus target = $375K.

That's not insane for a staff engineer. A little high, but not impossible at any big tech company.

6 figure wages were common for successful professionals in the 90s, why would you believe that inflation, economic growth, and increasing income inequality hasn’t driven comp to roughly 4x that for successful professionals over the last 30 years?

This is the average salary of someone Senior - Staff in the Bay area. Coinbase indexes on the Bay for salaries, as many other companies do.

It'a pretty typical for higher level engineer roles and senior director and above manager roles for people in high cost of living markets.

Nope this would be a standard band at staff+ level swe at a successful company

And they gave that number out before they assessed candidate level. But maybe that was recruiting BS as the pay for the max plausible level.

Usually positions are based on reqs rather than who walks through the door. The req will have a level attached, the level will have a salary band attached. I don’t understand what you’re trying to say here.

It also lets the candidates talk about it even if they aren’t extended an offer - someone they mention it to might be the candidate the company is looking for.

380 isn't even close to the max possible level. If this was an Engineering role, that a mid level salary.

Your past experience can be a proxy for the role and level you're targeted for and thus, the comp target.

Mid-level salary where? That is an insane salary _anywhere_, no wonder the market is beginning to correct for those inflated "mid level" numbers.

Mid level in SF, Seattle, and the bay, at any tier 1 paying company. You also have places like Amazon and MS up here in the Seattle area who target more like the 70th percentile for pay, where as an L6 senior SWE new offers are still topping 500k/yr.

The market is hot, and might be in a bubble, but these are comp numbers that you could have seen even five or six years ago at the FB, Snap, Lyft, even Googles of the world.

Well yeah, that’s what they think the candidates pay level will be. If the candidate doesn’t perform well in the interview they won’t get that offer.

Did they offer you the job or did they just state the expected compensation? b/c those are two different things. They could have told you the position paid $380k, and then assessed you were not qualified for the position and not extended an employment offer.

And when I say you, I don't actually mean you. I mean anyone they held interviews with and stated the expected compensation.

Just for comparison, I work at a Non-FANG (SWE >10 years) in a expensive COL area and I make less than half that.

I say, you take that offer.

Actually just had a discussion about this and putting the dollars out in front in the hiring process is something that more canidates are looking for in this competitive market. I'm sure it was said something like "this title (grade) pays 380k, is that's what you're hired at". Since levels.fyi has this all documented it still comes down to the interview and your ability to pass the interview and meet expectations for the level.

What they're trying to do is get you to continue with the process and potentially slow down any other interviews by putting the total compensation out there at the start.

Also notably CB doesn’t allow salary negotiation [0] so they just throw out high sounding number up front.

[0]: https://blog.coinbase.com/how-coinbase-is-rethinking-its-app...

> "so they just throw out high sounding number up front"

Weird way to phrase it, makes it sound like they just make it up on the spot

They have fixed salary per level, so they tell you exactly what you will make if hired

The difference is today, they are subjected to a battery of interviews, tests, and rudimentary psychological evaluations to make sure they know Java or HTML, and are a "culture fit", meaning they have the personality of a smiling Alegria person from the company's advertisements and not that of a living human being.

Huh, I guess this explains why so many otherwise-sceptical and intelligent engineers are so motivated to pretend 'web3' is a thing.

It also explains why people go into tech instead of becoming a teacher or nurse.

> This reminds me of the dot com bubble. In 2000 people who had no software background and were making 50k would get offers for 80k...

I accepted a $54k SW Eng job offer in 2000. To be fair, I had a Masters, but only 6 months work experience. I didn't break $80k until late 2003. Now I feel bad. ;)

I believe they quoted me the same number recently. From what I recall this was dual purpose - letting you know up front this is the comp range, but I believe the recruiter also let me know that because it was algorithmic(75th percentile for my market/zip code) that it was also a non-negotiable offer.

I think you're misunderstanding the theory. Hiring without fixed length contract is just interviewing. It's somewhat expensive interviewing, but given the legend of the 10x developer, it is worth risking paying people more than what they are worth to try to identify them.

True, I’d claim that the 10x people exist but would be impossible to spot based upon resumes and many of their resumes would fail to hit the checkbox requirements of the organizations looking for them. Also, in general I’d claim that 10x people aren’t necessary for most projects and tend to get stifled by bureaucracy.

10x deba exist for a given project. The same dev can be amazing in one environment and suck on a different one.

There’s a whole generation of tech employees that have never seen a down market. All indications are that these folks are woefully unaware of what’s on the horizon now.

It’s going to be all about cash flow. If you’re burning cash and not making much of it from operations then it’s going to be a bumpy road ahead. Buckle up.

>There’s a whole generation of tech employees that have never seen a down market.

Indeed. I lived through both the 2008 financial crisis and the 2000 dot com implosion (also graduated high school and went off to college right during the 1991 recession). People who entered the job market after 2015 and know nothing except recruiters constantly hitting them up with mid six figure+ job offers are in for a rude awakening IMO.

What advice would you give to people who've not been in the tech industry during a recession yet?

Save money and have enough to live on for awhile. If you don't have savings then immediately cut your cost of living down. If you do lose your job then don't just accept anything (remember, you have savings + unemployment + severance to live on for awhile) and use this time to sharpen skills and learn new things. Make yourself more valuable.

I can't see the future but I don't think it's going to be a bloodbath like the .com crash. Engineers in particular are valuable assets for a company and expensive to recruit. Expect companies to cut back on perks and possibly raises for awhile if it gets bad. But I don't think we're going to see massive layoffs across the board.

There's still a ton of money in the VC world. They just aren't spending right now.

> "I can't see the future but I don't think it's going to be a bloodbath like the .com crash."

The world has gone ever more dependent on tech since then. Tech is used everywhere now, pervasively.

They're not re-introducing cash in cash-free economies. People aren't going back to carrying physical documents around and stashing them in high cabinets. Shopping online has only gotten more popular. Hanging out online, too. Agriculture, warfare, industry, you name it... it's not all "Uber, but for %s" out there. Somebody has to keep the lights on, right?

none of that requires current levels of investment

> I can't see the future but I don't think it's going to be a bloodbath like the .com crash.

I agree. I've went through .com and the gfc, and key to both times was to make sure the company I was with was making money. While I think tech will see downward pressures on salaries, each company will be in a different situation. For example, if you're in a company that needs a runway, assume it may get cut short at any time. I expect the big techs who are making money to start scooping up some of the people cut from VC companies which is where the downward wage pressure will come from.

The other side that is very different from both .com and the gfc, is that engineers are seen as assets even outside of tech companies now. Almost every company views tech as a competitive edge, and that is simply not going away. Salaries may level off and/or pull back some, but there is too much technology deployed to stop hiring completely.

>Almost every company views tech as a competitive edge, and that is simply not going away.

I hope you're right. In my experience, most large companies see tech as a cost center.

the entire point of large scale technological literacy is to replace the tech sector. no web app you write is going to be more useful to an organization than an administrative staff that just knows SQL and can use it on the fly for queries, reports, and analysis. software developers are working against the tide: think about how much simpler dev tools are than user tools. as users become more sophisticated then you expect them to need simpler rather than more complex tools.

"as users become more sophisticated then you expect them to need simpler rather than more complex tools."

That sentence seems inherently contradictory.

...and yet all the stuff being built by and large makes users less sophisticated as consumers and their 'technological literacy' questionable. At no point in the last 3 decades, and no one moving forward currently, has shown any interest in making the masses use SQL for anything at an administrative level, and users have shown ever less interest in how any of the tech works, or what it can do, as long as it fulfills whatever prima facie use case they care about.

enterprise software isn't built for users, it's built for the upper level administrators who contract the software, and for the amusement and profit of the engineers who are paid a large multiple of the salaries of any of the people who will be forced to use their systems and consume their ads at work. the result is developers getting paid a lot, not improving anyone's life, and then spending their earnings on our labor time, when we become available as food service workers, sex workers, and so on. the categories of technical competence and social awareness are not supposed to intersect.

as a developer you know perfectly well that as you become more sophisticated you can do much more using much simpler tools.

i don't think you people have any idea of the kind of environment into which your software is deployed. you're mostly happy to ship any crap that will superficially justify the infinite expansion of bloatware that you get paid to produce.

"enterprise software isn't built for users, it's built for the upper level administrators who contract the software, and for the amusement and profit of the engineers who are paid a large multiple of the salaries of any of the people who will be forced to use their systems and consume their ads at work."

That might be generally the case (and certainly historically true) but that has been changing for the last decade (disclosure, I worked in CRM for a decade and that was very much position taken internally, "focus on actual users at least as much as any upstream stakeholder" especially as mobile started to really take off).

"the categories of technical competence and social awareness are not supposed to intersect."

Not supposed to, or avoided by certain folks in order to expand a customer base to the biggest L in the LCD acronym possible?

no, it's not changing, i'm sorry to say, and thank you for your disclosure, but i'm afraid you are not in a position to see the problem clearly.

not supposed to, as in, a majority of industry stakeholders have (apparently, based on their behavior) strong motivations to mystify technology to themselves and others, to represent maintenance as innovation, and so on, because disruption and innovation are the standards we've set for ourselves.

in the meantime, we have such disasters happening as js-dependent archive.org. how can this be tolerated?

i certainly believe that your company's internal position was to "focus on users" but the truth is that managing the flaws of overengineered systems in practice takes up a huge amount of administrators' time, and they develop no competencies as a result, so it is pure wasted time. most of them have no idea that there exists a relatively simple language for looking up student data. no one has ever told them "there exists a simple way of saying 'give me a list of all the students who failed calculus last year'" or whatever. lots of them still have to navigate ancient terminal applications, and all the people who could theoretically be helping these organizations reorganize themselves and use technology better are making very big salaries just selling them overengineered software instead.

since the software is bloated and breaking the web, the organization also ends up upgrading its hardware frequently, so all the ancient contracts with dell and cisco and whatever keep grinding, and as a result video games look prettier and the military has more targeting computers and surveillance devices, and the developer class gets paid to… what? invest in real estate, vr equipment, and an illusion of progress?

"i'm afraid you are not in a position to see the problem clearly."

Actually I am. I've worked both sides of the problem (and in that regard I agree its a problem), and see deficits on both, hence a different opinion, but thanks for the condescension and presumptive dismissal, as I now know about what further effort to devote to this conversation, which ends at the following period.

convenient, enjoy your "both sides". truly, you can have it all.

> I can't see the future but I don't think it's going to be a bloodbath like the .com crash

I think you're right, but I also think that we'll see a more general downturn than the .com crash was. Most people outside of tech didn't feel the .com crash. I suspect we're in for a recession that's closer to the '08 crash which means it's going to take a while to come back.

> If you do lose your job then don't just accept anything (remember, you have savings + unemployment + severance to live on for awhile) and use this time to sharpen skills and learn new things.

This is terrible advice. An employment gap will make you radioactive to hiring managers during a recession. Even a terrible job will keep you in better standing for negotiation.

It could be but I’m not sure. Your CV displays your pedigree much like the name of your university. You’ll also be very unhappy just jumping into a bad situation you are not enthusiastic about.

I’d rather have a 4-6 month gap than taking on a bad job right away.

But you do have a valid point that it’s easier to find a job when you have one.

The standard 6 months of emergency fund, updated resume and just go about your life as normal. If you are a software developer, you'll be fine. Maybe it'll take you 3 months to find a new job rather than 1 month. Don't let fearmongering on forums and especially the news affect you or force you to make rash decisions.

1) Save money (get your expenses under control)

2) Keep some of your portfolio liquid

3) Prepare to hunker down at your current job for awhile (lose the job hopping mindset for the time being if you have it)

On the other hand, consider that the time immediately after a recession passes can be a great time to do something new, start a business, etc. as you will be getting in early on the next business cycle.

> 3) Prepare to hunker down at your current job for awhile (lose the job hopping mindset for the time being if you have it)

I just got a pretty good offer and I don't know what to do - I am a bit worried I will be the first to be downsized if things go south. The company seems to be doing well and has IPO'ed so there's that. On the other hand no one can guarantee that my current startup won't struggle in the coming year or two.

I think you hit on the two key points. LIFO is definitely real, and the last to be hired are often the first to be fired. OTOH, you have to look at the financial stability of the new company vs the old, if the newer is on substantially better footing it may outweigh the LIFO effect.

1) Make sure your spending is well below your income. Pay down any debt that you have and try to avoid taking on more.

2) Set aside some cash as an emergency fund: 3-6 months worth of spending is a good idea.

3) Set up automatic monthly investments in an index fund (ideally in a tax-advantaged account such as an IRA or 401k if you're in the US)

To counter these answers a little...

I saw the dot com bubble burst, and then made it through a round of layoffs in early 2k, and again near 2008.

I saw people lose their homes, go bankrupt, and end up in bad positions. It really scarred me, to the extend where I won't work at a company that doesn't actually make something of value, or doesn't have an existing line of profit. I don't consider stock options when taking a position, since it's very rare they actually end up being worth anything significant, even with a buyout. I live well within my means so I can take a salary that's 1/2 and be ok, if needed.

But, as the counter, you could easily, and rightly, claim that this has caused me to not make a significant amount of money by taking these less risky positions. Those risky positions pay more because they are risky, and everyone knows it.

It's kind of telling that "after 2015" (so 7 years) is considered a whole new generation of people in tech.

Pretty much, that's the time horizon for entry-senior in a lot of places

I wonder, what's the age/tenure distribution like in FAANGs these days?

I vaguely recall a factoid from a recruiter during a round of interviewing at Google about 15 years ago, where some crazy percentage of the current employees had been fresh-from-college hires in the last 2-3 years. I understood there was some churn in the valley, but could not quite imagine how many were fresh hires from school versus more senior folks on their next stint.

In the dotcom boom in Canada there was a sub-boom in fiber optics and related stuff in the Ottawa area. Nortel et al were hiring and paying big salaries right out of school, and people got used to it and thought that was how much money they could earn.

For years afterward there were people who had mentally anchored themselves at a certain salary bracket that couldn't find anything (especially in Ottawa) that paid anywhere close.

I always assumed this will happen any time with machine learning, I don't think it will be as bad for software overall though.

> and thought that was how much money they could earn

But they were right.

Until they were wrong. There is an implicit “forever” - or “they would always be able to earn” - in the statement you reply to.

They sure were! No need to read the rest of the comment!

I've heard the argument that the dotcom crash was so catastrophic because the Internet as a market wasn't proven at that point. That'd mean a dotcom like crisis is the lowest point this industry can reach. Which in some way is reassuring.

That was a factor, but more fundamentally it was companies with wild valuations and no realistic prospects of becoming a profitable and self-sustaining business. There is some of that out there right now. Market corrections exist in part to flush those companies out of the system.

Some of that? There are a lot of companies that raised 20m+ without any hope of ever paying that back and actually heavily depending on new rounds of funding to survive at all. This was all wrapped up as ‘pump everything in growth’ which works as long as it works and that was no different in 1999 when companies were also just buying users (one of my clients at the time gave away free groceries the first month of your membership; guess what the retention was after that month) with investor money. When that dried up, all users left in a a few months and the companies were gone. This will happen again. Everyone I know (business and personal) uses a lot of freemium services from startups they will never pay for; they will simply leave the second they have to pay or when ads appear. And that has to happen for these companies to have a chance at all.

Not sure that follows. If (big "if") interest rates go up a lot, then a lot of investors might not reach for VC or PE to enhance their returns at even close to current allocation (and growth would be heavily discounted).

Look at how the telecoms industry looks now compared to the heights of 2003 or so.

>If (big "if") interest rates go up a lot

It's not a "big if" at all. Zero nominal rates and negative real rates are an anomaly in economic history over the last few centuries. Rates are headed higher, much higher. The Fed has been holding off in the hope that inflation would be "transitory" but it's now been a year and a half of >7% CPI increases with no sign of abating.

Agreed on the long history.

I'd still argue there is sizable "if" as one way to reduce government debt would be to use inflation (just like in the 1950s). So while rates will go up, the question is how much they will go up and if the level they reach will be high enough to cause substantial portfolio reallocations.

Agreed. It's not only government debt - everyone is indebted (people, businesses) at a historical high. How much can you raise interest rate without crushing them I don't know. On the other hand how much can you let inflation go up without crushing the working class and emerging markets indebted in USD? It's an impossible situation.

If interest rates go up and inflation stays high then real returns stay low.

I don’t see VC/PE investment dropping as a percent of investments since it’s a unique high risk/high return investment than 5% bonds can’t match.

Beating 5% can become harder and harder when everyone is running away from risk, its not always rational if you're in a tech recession.

Quite a few large institutional investors have surprisingly low nominal target returns, so 4-5% can be enough (in mainland Europe, for example)

If any fund has a nominal return target, then I’d question their abilities.

Nominal means nothing.

This.

What happened in 2000 was that interest rates got up and money became scarcer, so there was nobody willing to put any money into more risky investments like VCs.

Today we are in a completely different realm of money availability, but it is becoming scarcer again.

My biggest question behind all of this is how interconnected is the tech bubble, and how self-perpetuating will a downturn be?

The venture-backed startups that I’ve worked at have themselves utilized tools built by other venture-backed startups. It seems like there’s an entire cottage industry of SaaS tools designed to make it easier to scale up small companies. What will the effect of a startup downturn be on companies like Carta (high revenue but no profit from what I could find, and whose revenue likely comes from other companies with no profit…) How many Cartas are out there, whose customers are primarily unprofitable startups?

I definitely think there's an advertising bubble and it's popping.

Lots of startups' "business model" is "growth and engagement" - pump up user and "engagement" numbers and VCs will throw money at you, and maybe you even get a bigger sucker that outright buys you out. Spend all that money on advertising & marketing to keep these "engagement" numbers going up, all while having no actual product users pay for.

This in turn means there are other startups that specialize in providing advertising/marketing services. For example, there are dozens of startups out there who try to reinvent push notifications, even though in practice they make a lot of tasks harder in exchange of features most probably will never need. Those are overvalued and are only propped up by the aforementioned companies' VC money being spent on them to keep the "engagement" coming. Same with analytics which are used by these companies to measure (with dubious degrees of accuracy) the "engagement", which become less necessary if you have a profitable product and the main analytic becomes "how much $$$ has landed in my bank account today?".

Once the music stops, all of that crap will come crashing down.

> I definitely think there's an advertising bubble and it's popping.

This is something I’ve been thinking about a decent amount over the past few years. Advertising is the cash cow that underpins a good chunk of tech firms’ value. But the purpose of advertising, ultimately, is to drive sales of real goods and services.

Are those tech firms really driving actual consumption to a degree that justifies their value? I suppose it’s possible, but the massive growth in tech firm valuation doesn’t seem to be paralleled by massive growth in the “real” economy.

"I definitely think there's an advertising bubble and it's popping."

And Twitter is the tip of the pin popping that bubble. Going to be fun seeing Facebook and Google in particular get reset too. I've long considered online advertising to be barely above modern day snake oil.

>"I definitely think there's an advertising bubble and it's popping."

Isn't online advertising mostly just two companies though - FB and Google? And they have very deep pockets no? Or did you mean more that there's an ad tech bubble?

>"Lots of startups' "business model" is "growth and engagement" - pump up user and "engagement" numbers and VCs will throw money at you, and maybe you even get a bigger sucker that outright buys you out. Spend all that money on advertising & marketing to keep these "engagement" numbers going up, all while having no actual product users pay for."

I believe this is what the article referred to as "capital as a strategy."

> Lots of startups' "business model"

and what is the share of startups in Ad tech comparing to behemoths like Walmart etc?

The idea that there’s money to be made not in industry X, but supporting industry X has been taken to the extreme in spaces like crypto where that’s pretty much all the space consists of.

I can’t think of more than a few examples of successful, scaling companies that are actually using blockchain as a means to an end that doesn’t come back to “building the infrastructure for the use of blockchain” in some way.

We’re experiencing a glut of shovels.

It's like selling shovels to miners who are mining iron that is only used for manufacturing more shovels.

Yeah, the same applies doubly-so for crypto markets (the other area where VCs have been going crazy). A drop in the price of BTC and ETH has massive ripples in the rest of the crypto ecosystem.

There are many B2B SaaS which have been negative gross on the theory that they are LTV positive.

If their customers start cutting expenses, we may see the LTV theory break.

I’ve learned that B2B SaaS are actually a way to scale your company, there aren’t enough really good people to go around, so think of it as outsourcing good skills

I think the market is just normalizing. The overall climate was pretty insane. Free money (interest rates), stimulus money etc. I found it pretty fascinating that during a time that was pretty tough overall (global pandemic + supply chain issues) the stock market was basically saying we are in a golden age. That felt "wrong" to me but if I had acted on it, I'd be broke now because the market certainly outperformed my wildest expectations.

As a value investor at heart, I still cannot rationally fathom some valuations (Tesla >100 PE). However, most tech companies seem pretty solid fundamentally and not close to .com bubble times. I cannot speak for crypto since I live in a bubble were I ignore it completely.

It's really about interest rates. The idea was that there's no way the Fed will be raising rates anytime soon so everything went on sale. Yes, an over extension is a lot of things is probably fair. Snowflake is not a 100B company today, for example.

"Following a series of “super clarifying” meetings with shareholders, Uber’s chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi emailed(opens a new window) employees on Sunday night with an arresting message: “we need to show them the money”."

So the stockholders finally got fed up with Uber's "lose money on every ride and make it up on volume" approach. No surprise. Uber's stock is at an all-time low since the public offering.

This isn't really about the "tech sector", though. It's about Uber. Uber is an over-funded cab company. It's not a tech company. It's a labor-intensive service company with a huge number of low-skill workers.

Uber is the epitome of modern day sharecropping - shift all the risk and expense - many of which are hidden because they are long term or rolling expenses (insurance, maintenance/car replacement/physical security, etc) - to drivers. Waive the allure of immediate cash at people and damn the longer term consequences.

If they get the self driving cars working, they become a tech company.

Of course, then they won't be able to shift expenses to drivers.

If they get the self driving cars working, they become a tech company.

Uber sold off their self-driving operation years ago.[1] They still issue press releases once in a while, and do some stuff with self-driving startups, but it's not serious.

[1] https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/07/cars/uber-sells-self-driving/...

There’s nothing being funded right now. If you didn’t raise before earlier this year (and really late last year) and your runway is < 2 years then you’re in a very precarious position. If you’re hunting for a job, it has gotten very tight over the last month. Lots of pausing on hiring plans as companies adapt.

Reminds me more of 2016 than 2k though.

I switched jobs this month and found it to be the hottest job market I’d ever encountered. That can change quickly but it hasn’t (hadn’t) happened as of a few weeks ago.

I think a month ago was a totally different time than today. I know of a few companies that froze most hiring (including in cases where an offer was about to go out) temporarily with the last couple weeks.

Of course I haven’t sampled every company. Just a very sudden defensive position springing up more and more.

I'm interviewing right now, and thus far still plenty of interviews. It probably matters what kind of thing you're looking for: I mostly prefer small outfits but stay away from SF-style "venture-backed" setups in the first place. Turns out that outside of the "bubble" the economy is just churning along as usual. The position I'm most excited about now is just a small self-funded company making something useful and is making a profit (shock and horror).

That said, I did have a job offer that was rescinded at the last moment (which is why I'm out of a job, since I quit my previous position – probably not the smartest move but I really hated it there, so...) but that could just be coincidence as well.

> That said, I did have a job offer that was rescinded at the last moment

At what point in the process was it rescinded? Had you already accepted or even started the process of getting your equipment / Onboarding?

After third interview on Friday: "I'll send a contract this afternoon, let me know what you think and when you can start". "Great, looking forward to starting!"

Next Monday: "Oh sorry, no".

But by then I had already quit. As I said, perhaps not the smartest move, but I hated it so much and I feel a lot happier since I quit, so shrug. It's all good; no hard feelings. These things happen.

Also, should be pointed out I didn't reply to a job vacancy, but applied via an "open solicitation" through a connection. So they weren't specifically looking for someone to fill a specific role, and it was more "hey, this looks like a good developer I heard good stories about, so let's talk!"

Meta very publicly announced a hiring slowdown, Netflix is introducing levels and slowing down hiring, Coinbase is slowing down hiring, etc..

Even with the above names slowing down hiring, I would guess big tech uses this opportunity to stockpile even more engineers to come out of this stronger. I don't see the competition for engineers that can pass those interviews slowing down.

Startups? Yes, the cohort that raised 20+ million Series As in the last two years and spent lavishly at the height of this bull run will start being much more defensive.

Meta ran into signs of trouble months ago, when the report in February announced they were shedding users for the first time. They’re ahead of the curve. Netflix use has also dropped, and the stock price has followed. Coinbase is experiencing a crypto crash.

Not that any of that are disconnected from larger economic trends, but they’re also unique to each business’s segment.

Coinbase has frozen hiring, and even if Netflix is still actively hiring they just laid ~2% of their workforce earlier this week.

> Coinbase has frozen hiring

The blog entry said they are slowing hiring. While that is a big change from originally wanting to triple the size of the company this year, nothing that I've seen said they froze hiring.

> Meta very publicly announced a hiring slowdown

their revenue may just go to other companies (tiktok, google?) which will hire those engineers.

NFLX may be slowing down hiring, but they also laid off 150 full-time employees, in addition to part timers and contractors: https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/netflix-announces-more-layof...

Twitter is in a freeze, so combined that puts a lot of slowdown into the market.

There may be smaller/other companies running to pick up the crème of the crop before the music stops, however.

I would wager Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, et al. all are more than happy to take in the supply slack. They compete for the same engineering pool.

Would love to see data to the contrary vs. us guessing at this putting a lot of anything on the overall market.

I think we will need another 3-6 month to see full effect of whatever happened in last month everywhere.

I would say things have changed noticeably just in the last 2 weeks (in terms of recruiter engagement, news about funding rounds, news about hiring freezes). If you started interviewing in early April it's a lot different than now.

not really, freelance platform I worked on briefly announced $55m series A yesterday, it's slowed down, but there are still money for the right companies I guess

I think I know what platform you are speaking of. Mind if I ask why your experience there was brief? I have been thinking about applying there later this year.

If announced yesterday, it’s likely that deal was done months ago.

The macro economic setup doesn’t look good for small tech or growth stocks in general. Big tech I’m less worried about.

We have central banks rising interest rates to fight inflation, caused by wars and massive monetary and fiscal stimulus to fight Covid. these hikes impact valuation multiples used to value tech and unprofitable startups.

We have a supply chain shock caused by war in the Ukraine, the aftermath of Covid and Chinas second lock down which could lead to stagflation.

The only silver lining I see is that big tech prints money, is in many areas essential for cost reduction and has excellent balance sheets.

In summary Im more worried about the general economy tear down than the tech tear down, especially in the later half of this year and 2023.

What teardown? Why do newspapers all parrot each other and spout the same fearmongering nonsense? Stock corrections happen. Life will go on.

Someone needs to dig out the VC letters from 2007-8 and just change the date and re-publish them.

Here is the republish without the paywall https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/05/the-t...

Thanks!

People are calling this a correction... I don't understand the first thing about economics. Over the last quarter, the Nasdaq is down 25%. That's a correction? Seems pretty serious

People have called Tech bubbles since 2012, There have been at least 2-3 similar sell-offs over the last decade that simply lead to higher tech valuations within a year or two. Hence the term "correction" is used, this also helps assuage nervous retail investors that another '01 or '08 crash isn't around the corner.

The difference between then and now is that interest rates are blasting through the roof along with inflation. The underlying question that CEO's need to think through is whether this is a long-term shift in the funding environment, or a short-term blip. If the latter, actually taking the foot off the gas instead of saying that you will could lead to missed growth relative to competitors.

Now, in the event that its a long-term shift - there will certainly be firms who run into the wall from not taking their foot off the gas.

> The difference between then and now is that interest rates are blasting through the roof along with inflation.

The effective federal interest rate is 0.33% today. It was 2.4% before COVID...

The absolute number doesn’t matter so much as the change.

If valuations rose because interest rates fell, then rising interest rates will do the opposite

> The effective federal interest rate is 0.33% today. It was 2.4% before COVID...

I believe it is actually over double that and sits around 0.84

https://www.newyorkfed.org/markets/reference-rates/effr

The current fed funds rate is 1% (0.75-1.0)

the next 2 meetings they plan to raise it by 0.5 each meeting. and then 0.25 each meeting after that until inflation is gone.

in 2019 they started lowering it because they crashed the market by raising it to 2.5. which proves the point

trajectory matters alot.

Unless we believe in magic monetary fairy dust, it’s reasonable to assume that the fed cannot wish economic growth into existence.

Without real growth, we cannot have wage increases and asset price increases - one must take from the other. So far the fed has chosen asset appreciation over wage increases, we’ll see how things play out this cycle.

Look at the average mortgage rate...

It's not, actually. People are just using the wrong term. Finance uses "correction" to mean an at least 10% but not 20% index drawback, with the correction period lasting until a new high is reached. When an index declines by 20%, they call that a bear market. It's just colloquial usage not matching the industry jargon.

Ultimately probably. There's a lot of "value" that isn't linked to any work someone is actually doing. Eventually the price of companies depending on that illusion has to come down to reflect the reality.

Because over the last 3 years just prior to this correction, QQQ (since we're talking about the tech sector here) had a CAGR of around 30%. Had it been climbing up at a CAGR of 10%, we'd be having a different conversation.

And the Nasdaq is still up 116% over the last five years. So some would argue, that yes, it was and maybe still is overvalued.

There's been a lot of posturing here over the years about how <insert famous tech company> doesn't do layoffs, but we're starting to see that not even they are immune anymore. I hope everyone has some savings put aside if things really do turn to shit.

I predict that some of these companies will try to avoid the taint of layoffs by doing them in sneaky ways. One classic method is using "performance" reviews to reduce/deny bonuses and equity awards, or in some cases simply terminate people whose objective performance is fine. Another is to cancel projects or reorganize, offering the "opportunity" for an internal transfer except that many will be surprisingly unable to find a "fit" before time runs out. Zealous (but selective) enforcement of previously ignored policies is a third. If you currently have a "handshake deal" for a 10-on/4-off schedule, or "business" travel that's really about getting to see your girlfriend more often, or an exemption to some IT policy, watch out.

Driving "natural" attrition isn't hard, as companies like IBM and DEC realized long ago. Anyone working at a FAANG or similar company should get used to watching their steps very carefully, and consciously aligning with the "in" crowd even more than was already the case.

Given the rapidity which people move around at FAANGs just slowing down hiring can be enough to be an effective reduction in force.

The problem with people leaving voluntarily is that they’re often your best performers (and so have the best outside prospects) whereas the people who “have it good” are less likely to rock the boat.

A hiring freeze isn’t pausing to stand still - as people continue to leave normally. So Meta’s ‘hiring pause’ is really shrinking the company rapidly.

Hiring pause/freeze are not strictly defined terms. Some firms mean true freezes with no further hiring, others allow back fill for any position and still others allow backfill for nominated positions.

I don’t know what Metas rules are but generally speaking strict hiring freezes are the rarest form.

Meta’s is so hard they’re revoking promised offers I’m hearing.

I don’t think that’s true, that’s based on one LinkedIn post that had some extenuating visa issues. Also hiring is still open for E5+ ML and E6+ generally.

Wasn't singling out Meta specifically, but based on how relentless they had been with their recruiter spam there must be a lot of disappointed folk out there.

Someone needs to explain to me why our tech companies are so tied to interest rates. Are VCs borrowing with home mortgage equity??

A lot of this is because VCs are in bed with the media, especially tech news sites. They've been publicly and loudly unhappy with the prices of rounds for several years now. They raised an enormous amount of capital over the last few years that they are expected to deploy as soon as possible. This is all coordinated with a drop in public markets and, yes, somewhat of a tech bubble, to force valuations down and make them more palatable for VCs.

Source: Former SV startup CEO currently helping with a raise at an AI company. We aren't getting pushback on anything except our valuation which they constantly use the news of the day to try to lower.

It's not like VCs don't have capital on hand and it's not like they will all have big paydays if they don't invest it. They just want better returns and have for a while.

I think the VC who runs this site wrote an essay about this tactic a while ago: http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html

The whole economy is intertwined. This is a very simplistic way of looking at it, but if you can park risk-free capital somewhere which generates high interest, the opportunity costs of investing in tech become higher, so VCs stop investing. Also - you're committing money in a business with a higher risk of not returning them given the economic outlook of their customers and revenue. Tech isn't isolated from the world.

>"This is a very simplistic way of looking at it, but if you can park risk-free capital somewhere which generates high interest, the opportunity costs of investing in tech become higher, so VCs stop investing."

But if the funds are not investing, that money is not doing any work. How long are investors willing let that cash sit idle before they ask for redemptions?

When interest rates are low, there's a lot more money sloshing around in search of better return, instead of just comfortably getting a high, low-risk return. When more money sloshes around, higher-risk investments like VCs get more money.

Most of these tech companies build business models around giving away money, with a plan of eventually making a profit. They are affected by interest rates because the higher interest rates you have today, the more attractive it is to have money today instead of tomorrow. Interest rates available today are the discount rate for those future cash flows (profit).

This. Historically, a company is fundamentally valued by the discounted rate of its free cash flows into the future. The discount rate is decided by several factors including the risk free rate.....which is frequently tied to interest rates. So interest rates go up, the risk free rate goes up, cash flows become worth less, and corporate valuations go down.

Discounting is a fool's game, IMO.

We only have data for the present and the past. Prediction is hard, especially for the future.

I prefer using nominal quantities, known values, and ignore people's predictions. Not that they are always wrong, or never right. But because I like to make decisions based on facts.

>" Historically, a company is fundamentally valued by the discounted rate of its free cash flows into the future."

Could you elaborate on this, is this a metric that VCs use in their valuations? How is the discount amount determined?

in addition to the article mentioned by the replier, also, keep in mind that the way that equity markets work: it's all about the ratio of buying to selling. if there's even a small skew in buyers to sellers it can send prices up or down by quite a bit. IE: a 10 Billion$ fund, doesn't need to see 2B sold in order to go down 20%, a much smaller amount sold can affect the price quite dramatically, depending on the ratio. So, if a few buyers turn into sellers, it can cause quite the correction.

also, keep in mind that markets are forward looking to about 6 months. right now they're starting to price in a mild recession.

here are the basics

https://www.investopedia.com/investing/how-interest-rates-af...

I think the dynamic for private (VC) money and public markets are different

VC money will dry up as endowments look to shift more money into safer asset class when interest rate is high

public markets company valuation models change with interest rates changing. when rate is close to 0 investors are willing to buy asset with a very long term view for expected future profit (say 10 years). when rates go up that time frame shortens since opportunity cost of buying that stock today is now much higher.

DCF

The only reason there is a recession is because people believe there is a recession

I'm not sure how you can belief this terrible cliche to be true.

Without even bringing up money or inflation:

Oil and other products are in much higher demand compared to the supply than the current system can handle right this moment. You can get less of what you used to get and its obvious for everyone.

This has immediate consequences, but also compounding when slower/lower trade directly effects the ability for people to earn enough to stimulate more trade.

The immediate stuff would cause a recession in itself. Period. Nothing about economic beliefs. ( except if you include a desire to nationalize certain parts of the economy ). The compounding stuff can be mitigated in many ways. Personally I don't think its prudent to mitigate it with consumer debt. i.e. the only way I'm able to interpret your suggestion to not belief in a recession.

"Oil and other products are in much higher demand compared to the supply" You mean when you arbitrarily cut off supply to satisfy a fringe element it has repercussions? Who knew?!?

The Fed is hitting the breaks on demand in order to slow down inflation. If they slow the demand side too fast then we enter a recession, if they manage to do a soft landing the pull back demand enough that supply can catch up bringing inflation back down to a 2% range with many a small downturn or short recession.

The goal is too slow down the aggregate demand in the market - whether or not we believe that it is a recession is irrelevant. Money will get more expensive, companies will be more shrewd on their spend & hiring. Whether the economy contracts and enters a technical recession - doesn't really matter - there are actual physical realities to the world and we can't just will our way into a bull or out of a bear market as nice as that sounds.

> The Fed is hitting the breaks on demand in order to slow down inflation.

Are we watching the same news? The measure to slow down demand is to increase the VAT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value-added_tax I don't remember what the Fed/SEC did the last months but it was a measure that had for effect to reduce investment in stocks (would appreciate if you could point out the name of the tax fee) Deincentivizing/diminishing investment in companies result in what? In a reduction not of demand but of production.. Enterprises will downscale their productions and are subject to auto amplifying panic hysteria. The panic sentiment do reduce demand from people (non linearly).

The gap between demand and production, which is an absurd inertia that should have been anticipated during covid, is mild and most importantly is reducing quickly as time passe, unless of course media hysteria induce panic buys.

most importantly, the salient absurdity of the thing is the non-locality of the discourse and of the measures. Only a limited set of companies have a deficient offer/demand ratio, e.g. a company can distribute 1 billion software copies just fine. However the panic mediatic fear of market subinvestment affect even the enterprises that have no issues matching demand, which are in fact the majorities of companies (although yes some key fundamental companies might be limited), moreover the FED/SEC measures affect them equally, and therefore the VAT measure I propose to reduce demand ( which seems incredibly more logical) should be applied locally and proportionately to how much a specific company demand/offer ratio is affected.

either I'm wrong either the system is just doing absurd suboptimalities and I'm betting more on the latter than the former but please share your thoughts.

FED / SEC are completely different entities with completely different roles and market functions. It's like apples and oranges. And has nothing to do with a VAT tax.

I am sorry, but your comment is almost incoherent - so my response is more of a broad general definition of what the Federal Reserve is doing to help you understand the macro context a bit more. As the Fed actions are intentionally moving the markets / economy at this point.

Short form - the Federal Reserve increasing the cost of money slows down demand in the entire economy as a function of the cost of money goes up. I am not talking only hard goods - we are talking services, investments etc. They want to slow down the demand side of the economy by increasing the cost of money. It's a blunt tool but it works - if it works to well we enter into a recession which is why they are in the hot seat right now. Very challenging as they have a simple lever where there is a considerable amount of factors (geopolitics, other countries central banks etc).

Hope that helps.

You are not addressing the fact that their lever deincentivize investment and therefore production, an argument worsening inflation and you are not addressing my point saying that VAT is obviously a direct measure to reduce demand, without impacting investment as directly, finally my VAT locality on the most critically underproducing sector yet non affecting the unaffected companies that produce just fine, is a third argument. This is pretty basic. The answer is more likely to be that the U.S never had a VAT and creating one has tragic political inertia and hence the FED use the wrong tool but the one it dispose.

I didn't respond to you argument because it was incoherent and unrelated:

Why are you even discussing VATs? Politically infeasible and not a tool at the disposal of the Fed - its at the disposal of the legislature. Also it doesn't solve the problem that the Fed has - which is reducing money supply / offloading its balance sheet and reducing inflation without tanking the labor market.

We have that. They’re called automatic stabilizers. There are a ton of them. For example, when people make more money, they pay a higher tax rate.

Is this the sort of analysis that led to the invention of social credit by C.H. Douglas?

No, recessions happens when the economy is out of balance and corrects. Look at this graph for example, there was a huge correction happening in 2008. Currently the graph is much more out of line than it was in 2008, so it would make sense that we would need another recession to turn it back again.

https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/balance-of-trade

I wish I can create money for myself from my belief.

you can certainly destroy money by stopping consumming as a group, which will make enterprises downscale or even go bankrupt, resulting in net losses and autoamplifying effects. Why do I even have to explain that..

I want to consume but I don’t have enough money in my bank account.

That is a ~good thing, inflation is when there is too much money.

Yes, we were told there was not going to be any consequence of shutting down the entire economy followed by massive QE artificially bringing markets to ATH. And now we are in a QT environment with a few rate hike scheduled, while awaiting a demand crush ... all is fine, there shall not be any recession :-)

Fact is, these last few years have been entirely emotionally and panic driven by old people caring mostly about themselves

Ppl believe there is a recession bc of specific macroeconomic conditions. Iirc you specifically described them a few days ago!

the base reasons do not matter much, the effect we will observe is order of magnitudes higher than the original reasons, because of the self fulfilling prophethy of autoreinforcing feedback and mediatic echo chambers. Every media that amplify the fear is responsible for an amount of suffering on earth. The 2008 crisis was mostly an absurdity that hurts the brain in retrospect. Thankfully I will make some money by buying now, afterall under those circumstances, economy is an intelligence market.

>the base reasons do not matter much, the effect we will observe is order of magnitudes higher than the original reasons, because of the self fulfilling prophethy of autoreinforcing feedback and mediatic echo chambers

Ah... but this goes both ways. That's why we're in a bubble to begin with. Those same base reasons didn't matter as much because prices were way higher than you could really justify without those feedback loops on the positive side.

The base reasons matter a lot. Inflation could mean the government won't be able to provide more liquidity in a downturn so the downturn will be more severe. Vs 2008 where at least the cause of the recession didn't preclude the govt from providing liquidity.

This goes for any social construct, and is just about meaningless to say.

The only reason you have a family is because you believe you have a family.

The only reason you have a manager is because you believe you have a manager.

The only reason you're in a soccer team is because you believe you're in a soccer team.

The only reason you have a grocery store is because you believe you have a grocery store.

And so on.

While stated like fact, you're espousing a relatively radical philosophical perspective about reality. It might drive radical social change (or desire to), but most people don't think like this.

I fail to see how it's anything other than a logical consequence -- much less radical.

I know from first-hand experience that if a team don't believe they have a particular person as their manager, that person is, in fact, not their manager. It's impossible for that person to be their manager.

I also know from first-hand experience that once a group of people no longer believe themselves to be a soccer team, they stop being a soccer team. (Well, actually, this is not about a soccer team but the real example is too fresh and personal to be detailed about so let's pretend it's about a soccer team.)

Similarly, I know from second hand experience that once people don't believe a person is part of a family, that person is, in effect, not part of that family anymore.

I have third hand experience of people not believing a grocery store to be such, and indeed it ceased to be such very quickly and tragically to its former owner.

And so on. I can't think of any social construct that does not require buy-in from the affected parties.

This is essentially nonsensical though. You can internally reject social consensus or even objective measurement, but you cannot choose the frame in which you are evaluated by others.

> I can't think of any social construct that does not require buy-in from the affected parties.

"Prisoner", "slave", and "taxpayer" spring to mind (but I repeat myself). These are artifacts of social consensus, enforced by people with stronger-than-usual opinions about the correctness of their evaluations.

Viktor Frankl, Nat Turner, and Warren Buffett, as exceptions, do not disprove the larger point.

I think I see where the misunderstanding comes from!

I did not mean to say that you, as an individual, can disappear the grocery store by ceasing to believe in it, any less than you can wish away a recession by choosing not to believe in it.

These social constructions (recession, manager, grocery store) are the product of the belief of a majority of the relevant people. One person believing this way or that way changes nothing. Only when most people stop believing do we see change.

Slavery is a great example of a type of social relationship that ends when people stop believing in it.

This goes for the recession just as well as the other examples I gave.

wtf you are totally 100% missing my point, the current recession is a self-fulfilling prophety that is auto-amplified in mediatic echo chambers and by sell feedback mechanism on stock values.

What goes up must come down (at least a little bit).

Stocks ran up A LOT during covid, it couldn't continue forever and it didn't.

People who felt rich because they made a ton of paper profits on the stock market now feel poorer because they have paper losses in the stock market.

That and inflation of course is really taking money out of peoples pockets.

Real world things that effect the way people act have occurred.

Yep, I feel it. I was about to impulse buy a deck, and then after looking at the market decided not to. I'm not alone in tightening spend.

this is those kinds of mob behaviours that induce crisises, the self-fulfilling cause of a crash of consumption that will then actually make you need to tighten spending. The first initiators are the most responsible.

It's cause and effect. You can't convince people not to worry about things they're worried about.

Well if you actually convince them you solve the crisis. Since this mindset is not taught in public education it is left as an individual responsibility. I would promote autocratic censorship/tamming down of hysteric/fear mongering mediatic reporting on this specific topic but our government are not ready for that.

It might be the case that I just haven't communicated my point clearly enough. To a surprising extent, "self-fulfilling prophety that is auto-amplified in mediatic echo chambers and by feedback mechanism on X, Y and Z" describes a large portion of the human social condition.

I think it's clear from the pandemic that stock values do not correlate with the economy.

They do correlate with the economy, they just don't correlate solely with the economy.

off-topic: Since you made idealmedtech, you should be interested in publicising the effect of ALCAR on glycemia/insulin. Since it nudge the mitochondria to increase the ratio of lipids/fatty acid consumption and reduce the consumption of glucose, it is very positive for the protection of both kinds of diabetes, in a side effect free manner. The number of lives/quality of life that could be saved if this information was more widespread is astonishing, especially since your website help to measure the impact.

We're not really in the business of drugs/supplements, so unfortunately I can't comment on the efficacy of ALCAR and other drugs on the treatment of diabetes. If you have any papers on the topic, feel free to email me (linked on my profile) and I would be happy to discuss when there's time!

Also, as much as I wish we had any sort of platform through idealmedtech.com, our traffic is quite low, mostly from investors and people pitching SaaS products

well take a look at this for example https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19620516/

That's fascinating! Insulin sensitivity is an incredibly complex mechanism, and is always in flux. Hyperinsulemic clamps are one way to measure the boundaries of insulin sensitivity, but doesn't really help you understand the day to day individual dynamics very well. Like I said, drugs are _not_ our area of expertise, so I can't comment much more than that.

State of the art treatment these days (at least in artificial pancreas land, where I spend all of my time) is more focused on sensitivity-agnostic treatment; figuring out the insulin sensitivity dynamically rather than trying to control the sensitivity itself (it's much more multifaceted than a few hormones, we're talking hundreds of possible ways it can change).

Also, and I'm sure the authors would acknowledge this, n=32 is enough to demonstrate a possible effect, but not nearly enough to show this effect in the population at large. You usually need n~5000 or more for such effects to be shown generally, though the actual number depends a lot on the drug and what you're trying to treat.

We're conducting our first human study at a world renowned US diabetes center soon, I'll see what our PI thinks of this work. Thanks for sharing.

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