It's the end of the boom times in tech, as layoffs keep mounting | Hacker News Reader

It's the end of the boom times in tech, as layoffs keep mounting

npr.org

27 pointspseudolus26 comments

If it weren't for the boom, it'd still be fine for the kind of people in tech that would go for the less glamorous engineering disciplines.

When I talk to people struggling to get in for the first time, it's always people wanting cushy pay and social status - not in it because engineering is fun.

I'm the kind of person that has FUN taking a day off to screw around with pytorch and try to at least understand a little of that field, or doing something goofy with GPIO pins on my rasppi. If it was a decade ago and I didn't know better, I'd be worried, but now I realize there's always room somewhere for the true nerds, even if you have to dig around for it.

My boss has told me that he specifically aims to find the nerds and put them on his team - I imagine he's not the only one that does that.

I used to think like you. Then I realized, it's perfectly fine not living and breathing code every waking moment of your life. As I got older my priorities changed. Why is it that I need to do this stuff in my off hours as well? I'd like to ideally be a balanced human being with various interests, physical fitness, a good social life and romantic life. Isn't that better in the long run not only for a company but for society as a whole?

I started programming as a hobby in 1986 in 6th grade. By the time I graduated college in 1996, I had been a hobbyist programmer in 4 different assembly languages. I haven’t written a line of code “for fun” since then. The last thing I want to do is open an IDE after work after doing for my job.

I was a part time fitness instructor from around the time I graduated until I was 35, dabbled in real estate for a few years, got (re)married at 35 and raised two (step)children and now my wife and I just started traveling and doing the “digital nomad” thing - staying in hotels and flying mostly to different cities in the US with a few stops in Canada and Mexico.

There are a million of things I would rather do with my free time.

To add: I love coding. It is fun. But after work, I close the work laptop and enjoy time with family, some games, getting house work done, etc. Coding then coding and then coding some more is a surefire way to burn yourself out. I've done it. It is bad.

> Why is it that I need to do this stuff in my off hours as well?

The comment you're replying to says they do it for fun. If you don't find it fun, of course you won't do it for fun outside work, at best you'd do it for more money or something.

I don't know if I'd go as far as "living and breathing" but at work I write boring code, at home I write fun code. Different languages, different problems, no deadlines, actual fun rather than work.

I interpreted GP differently, but I don't disagree with you. There is room in between the externally motivated strivers and intrinsically motivated nerds he refers to, and well-rounded persons like you describe can occupy it.

Agreed, but I'm in a position where I have to code (or study) at leisure if I want to be marketable in the near-term. Really makes me realize I would not do this on my own, "for fun".

I completely agree that you shouldn't have to do it for fun, but I'd say A) it's still possible to balance 'code as a hobby' and the other parts of your life and B) I think OP's comment is more about having a much larger skill gap because you're spending more time practicing and exploring things outside your typical work things. It really sets you apart from your peers and helps you be more valuable to your peers. This is how I got my current job, exploring interesting ideas while working my previous one.

> it's always people wanting cushy pay and social status - not in it because engineering is fun

I keep hearing this “social status” thing about working in tech. Outside of the tech bubble - no one cares that you work for BigTech. It’s just another job at a company people have heard of.

Yes I work at a “FAANG” remotely. It’s just another one of the eight jobs I’ve had over 25+ years.

> My boss has told me that he specifically aims to find the nerds and put them on his team - I imagine he's not the only one that does that.

Yes because he can under pay them.

Not reflected in the data. The "nerds" are more unhireable - lack of connections. This is not and never has been about actual skill, leetcode and broken hiring proves this time and again.

Problem is, nobody wants to pay us to "screw around with pytorch and try to at least understand a little of that field, or doing something goofy with GPIO pins on my rasppi" anymore

The capital owners are like "Hey where's that yield you promised" and were out popping Teslas open with our Flippers

This is clickbait. Just because FAANG sees an opportunity to cut some dead weight with the convenient excuse of "inflation" doesn't mean jobs are hard for find for competent engineers.

How many are actually engineers? I’ve been through bloat reducing layoffs and not many were engineers. Lots of unknowledgeable “process” people like BAs and PMs.

There are many "engineers" today who learned Python for six weeks and got good at interviews but have very little real world experience, and an army of contractors that are worse. They sound competent at a high level but their work requires googling everything and they don't know what decisions are good or not.

When management says "cut all staff by 10%", those 'engineers' go too.

What I don’t understand about all these doom and gloom articles of the end of tech is that net employee counts are still up compared to 2018-19. Would we have seen all these articles if over-hiring hadn’t happened? No we wouldn’t.

News companies get paid by getting attention. Reframe everything you read by someone who’s fulltime job is to make news and you will see a whole lot of these articles a whole lot differently.

If all these companies had a hiring freeze for 3 years, that would be newsworthy, although it might not be reported on due to a lack of a punctuating event.

There didn’t need to be any freezes, just regular hiring. Facebook doubled in size since 2018, doubled!

Employee counts still being about 2018 is pretty cold comfort for someone looking for a job right now, especially if it's their first job. And if you think the wave of cuts has come and gone you are more optimistic than I am.

Nevertheless, it's unclear what your complaint actually is. That since the industry recently went through a surge in hiring (ie, a boom), it's not newsworthy that there are widespread layoffs for the first time in more than a decade?

My complaint is that tech is still super strong and these articles are giving people a false sense of anxiety.

Unless perhaps the FANG type jobs, don’t really know about those.

But if you are looking to get a good tech job with a reasonable salary there are tons of open positions. We can’t hire enough people.

Writer sits at desk, reads a few press releases and posts by pundits, and pounds out a puff piece that adds little information and draws broad conclusions. NPR should be ashamed.

the media is always going nuts over one topic or the other, if its a boom, then its talking like everyone and their mother are making millions through crypto, or stocks, if layoffs happen then its doom and gloom, the apocalypse is upon us. The truth is always somewhere in the middle.

Nature abhors a vacuum. So where are the boom times going to go? Unless there s some kind of explosive growth in bioengineering , i doubt the old economies of banking or energy will boom back.

The economy is not nature. The Great Depression showed us the economy can simply tank and stay down if nothing is done about it.

> For more than two decades, the U.S. tech industry has been a reliable source of booming stocks and cushy, high-paid jobs.

NPR already forgot about 2008.

I swear I've heard this same thing 2 or 3 times a year for the past 3 years. I'm not too sure, though maybe 9th times the charm

When I think of "boom times", I now think of boomers.

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