There are other things to look at such as how resilient their business model is, their price/ earning ratio, etc. But in general, I would say those tech companies that have huge price swings during the pandemic are most likely to going have some sort of layoff. They are the ones that most likely over-hired.

> Does that count for tech?

Financial debt kills because free cash flow gets squeezed. For most tech companies, operating expenses constrain free cash flow.

Quick ratio [1] and free cash flow (or alternatively, operating cash flow) as a fraction of cash on hand (or less conservatively, current assets) would be my go-to acid tests.

[1] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/q/quickratio.asp

Which Google layoffs are you referring to?

They should -- if they are not willing to answer on the runway you probably should not join/prepare to head out.

For a publicly traded company, that information would be publicly available, if that's what you're asking.

And at a startup, particularly an early-stage one, I would feel pretty uncomfortable if they wouldn't tell me that information in an interview.

My skillset was “really old” in 2008 at 34. I was still doing VB6 (7 years after it had been discontinued) and C++/MFC (Windows). What I did have is a level of maturity and the ability to talk to customers and knowing how to get things done.

I went to a company that used modern technology and learned how to talk the talk and built my resume.

But if I were in that position today instead of 2008, I would spend as much time as it took to study data system and algorithm style interviews - ie “grind leetCode and work for a FAANG” (tm r/cscareerquestions).

I fell into a remote role at $BigTech through the cloud consulting department specializing in enterprise application development where that wasn’t necessary.

Right now it’s cloud application development, deployment consulting - “cloud application modernization”. I started specializing in that five years ago.

Before that it was regular old C#/Javascript “full stack development”. I could throw my resume up in the air and have a job offer in less than a month.

5 years before that I was just coming out of an “expert beginner stage”.

Invest in crematoriums! :)