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Comment by area51org | Hacker News Reader

I very much want you to be correct, but having been around for a good amount of time, it's not always as straightforward as you suggest. In many instances, companies are reluctant to hire people who have been laid off, because they imagine that if company A laid the person off, obviously something's wrong with the person. In some cases, someone can take a couple of years or so to finally find a job, and that's enough time to create financial devastation.

(I am not talking about myself, full disclosure, but I know people.)

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Eh, this is just anecdotal, but as a manager whose hired people laid-off in the past, IME they're almost always better quality than the usual candidates that come across your desk. So when I see these layoffs I'm like a shark who smells blood. (ok, bad analogy, but I hope you understand I mean no harm).

The most common reason for getting laid off is having the misfortune of working in a department or on a project that no longer aligns with the company's "vision" and that's no fault of the engineer.

While some people might be biased to think the laid-off are poor performing employees, these people are simply buying into the "just-world fallacy" -- why would a bad thing happen to a good worker? But the truth is, while a company might ensure a few "rockstars" survive a layoff, there's plenty of "A" and "A-" talent that gets cut without a thought.

Yup, spot on and pretty much explains everyone I know who’s been laid off.

We’re all lucky to land that great FAANG job, and just as unlucky to get laid off from it. This year should be a reminder to all of us to never take a day for granted.

Definitely not the case if you're a FAANG developer.

The issue is that a lot of these people may have to take pay cuts and make less than what they were previously earning.

Especially if you were L4+ at Google or something. Not many companies that'll pay $350k+ for a software engineer. Those that will are not currently hiring.

So FAANG developers traded long term stability for stock based comp and now that deal turned sour?

From a super lame C# dev at a boring company in a flyover state that's never gotten stock comp-- I used to fear a collapse in big tech that would cause an influx of skilled devs flooding into boring companies and displacing mere mortals like myself. Now that it's actually happening I'm very amused at how unemployable the SV cohort is to normal companies. To them you're all annoying overpaid assholes that whine about tools and process instead of just doing work. They've got 10 years of experience with ephemeral front-end frameworks, while the companies still hiring deploy Java and build UIs with XML.

No worries, even after these layoffs, there sure as hell isn't anyone willing to take a job in Minnesota.

You do not have to divulge the basis of your departure from a company. "Creative differences".

Many people would assume you got laid off if your creative differences happened to coincide with the layoffs.

hiring managers are not that dumb ... if you prior job is amazon, and you are applying for a new job 2 months after 18K have been laid off - they can put 2 and 2 together pretty easily. Even if you did leave on your own accord, they will likely assume you were let go.

It's almost always easier to get a new job, when you still have one.

Maybe. They also might see the opportunity to get some inside skinny on Amazon, and anything they pay you will be cheap compared to the value of the intel.

I've seen good people get laid off. So I certainly don't fault people for being laid off.

Plus, being an ex-FAANG is a huge bonus when applying for jobs at "normal" places or starts ups.

>Plus, being an ex-FAANG is a huge bonus when applying for jobs at "normal" places or starts ups.

YMMV on this one, depending on what you consider "normal" companies (non-tech, non-coastal, non-advertising).

Plenty of those hiring managers have their own opinions about FAANG employees

Any hiring manager who thinks that getting laid off in 2023 is some kind of black mark against you is dumb.

Some people are being laid off for performance. Most are being laid off because they were unlucky.

Well, they actually ARE that dumb (because they don't care), and it's none of their business. I had a 13 year track record building a series of apps with a user base of over 500K as a solo dev before I was laid off because of corporate mismanagement of funding. I interviewed with 9 companies, received offers from 4 before I stopped looking, and was still in the race for the remaining 5.

Hiring managers don't have time to be super sleuths. If your interview and reference process can't weed people out, then you shouldn't be in charge of hiring people. Either way, the person who gets laid off from Amazon is going to have already shown the capacity to jump through a dozen stupid hoops by sheer process of being offered a job to work there.

I agree with this as a hiring manager who has reviewed hundreds of resumes in the past. I'm not going to say that I wouldn't hire someone who had been laid off (good people get laid off too due to bad luck), it's a data point that could make me not want to hire them in light of other signs.

But if you're a big executive, "wanted to spend more time with my family" is a popular one.

"Need to explore other opportunities" is a little weaker but still works.

"This chapter in my life is over" is also popular.

I think I should make a bingo card out of these.

As a hiring manager, I wouldn't even ask a question around departing an old company, whether they were laid-off or not. I'd have questions that were more along the line: "what will you miss from your old company, work day, etc." "what do you imagine your new role/work day would look like." "What won't you miss", etc...

Every situation is unique, but I haven't seen this myself and I personally haven't had any problems finding a job after being laid off, twice in the last 20 years.

Context is important. If 20 out of 120k people get laid off then I might be suspicious of those 20. But if its 20k out of 120k then it's almost certain that whole departments and teams were cut, so it's hard to say anything about the individuals.

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