Tech Companies Coddled Their Employees. Now They're Firing Them | Hacker News Reader

Tech Companies Coddled Their Employees. Now They're Firing Them

bloomberg.com

30 pointsitbeho12 comments

I feel this article made a mistake by using Musk. His companies are notoriously frugal and demanding despite the market or how well they are doing. I presume the SpaceX coffee story isn’t even all that recent.

It’s trying to use that to make a more general argument about the tech industry changing how they’re treating employees. That may be true, but Musk is a poor example of it.

This article would’ve been better titled “Musk Treats Employees Like Crap” and didn’t try to group the tech industry in.

Anyone who has worked for a company that has gone from “fat and happy” to “how are we going to stay afloat” has seen this.

It’s easy to keep employees happy when the money comes in hand over fist.

Once the gravy train stops that’s when you see the no non-sense “yeah, you’re not getting free dry cleaning, and no we don’t care if you quit because of that”.

Nothing quite clarifies the mind than the threat of bankruptcy.

Edit: now reading the article it seems like some weird criticism of Musk and completely irrelevant to the broader tech space.

And the next step after "how are we going to stay afloat" is usually "oops we're not". The first people to leave are the ones who can easily find jobs elsewhere, and who are smart enough to see the business writing on the wall. Cut perks and you end up retaining only only the bottom X% of your workforce.

As someone who works at big tech company, the reality couldn't be further from the truth. This is one of the hottest job markets I've seen. Amazon, who are known to pay worse than other FAANGs, recently increased their compensation massively to attract new hires. Microsoft is going to give a one time lump sum to everyone to stop attrition. I don't know where the author is coming from tbh.

Tech companies don't just employ software engineers though.

They’re coming from the land of clickbait. It worked.

> one time lump sum to everyone to stop attrition

How does a one-time lump sum payment reduce attrition? As soon as you receive the payment, you're back to seeking a better salary.

It usually comes with an agreement saying you will stay another year or whatever. In other cases, it would at least make a dent in people's satisfaction levels.

Wasn't Amazon's increase over a year ago?

And I have never heard of Amazon being a low payer. I guess the people I know worked at AWS and maybe that was an outlier in terms of their payments, because they are paid as much, if not more, than people in similar roles in MS/Google.

> Several high profile companies have already announced layoffs in recent weeks

Which companies are these exactly?

What do long tenured developers see in this latest new cycle? Are Bloomberg just stirring up drama is or there a strong possibility of a genuine, long lasting drought in developer salaries?

Seems I missed the "Great Resignation". I've stayed at the same company for the last few years, making a mediocre salary because they let me take a "senior" role with fewer YEO and I'm buildings skills faster than if I'd started over at another company.

On the other hand, I know people who've moved for a significant raise to companies that are more sensitive to their stock performance, with less job security.

https://layoffs.fyi/

A more unfiltered version of Twitter would be great

It is kind of sad that it’s 2022 and I still have to go to 4chan to find the backups of a violent livestream or manifesto, its already on someone’s computers

But sure, 4chan, just mess up my site history why not!

Yeah I’m pretty down for everyone else leaving twitter

Journalists will find something else

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