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Comment by bunbunbun | Hacker News Reader

If anything I think those being laid off right now will be sought after in areas that want tech sector quality but have not been able pay tech sector wages. Government jobs, education, nonprofits, all have lots of openings right now.

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There's also a very long tail of businesses that are not "big tech", but still have significant IT departments and pay well for "boring" work.

That's my impression as well. I don't understand the perspective of "is software engineering over because I can't make a quarter million base salary anymore?". I've always preferred smaller companies and never wanted to work at a large tech company - don't foresee much change in my future unless I willingly change industries for personal reasons

Yeah I mean what's so bad about half that pay and living somewhere affordable?

Expect they don’t pay all that well. Just ok ish

I have trouble buying this, having seen the salaries being offered by local government agencies looking for devs. I guess if the layoffs depress wages across the board some of it might start to look a _little_ more reasonable, but even in a market that's nowhere near the insanity of big tech salaries, the government salaries on offer are laughably low.

I know people that work in tech at decent companies that can't buy a house.

Every non major metro area mechanic, school teacher, city employee I know has a nice home.

People should really consider doing lower paying boring work in places your mortgage can be $2000 a month.

>places your mortgage can be $2000 a month.

This is shockingly major metro-area-centric. I want you to know that, and I feel like people on this board really need to understand how HIGH urban and suburban costs are.

In many areas of the country, $2000/month is a seriously frighteningly massive home. For reference - in the middle of rural flyover, our 4 bedroom, 2.5 bathroom, 1800 square foot, full basement, 2 car garage, 1100 square foot full workshop home mortgage is 15 years at $750/month. We pay that, plus another $400 /month for the 70 acres the home sits on as well.

I don’t think that’s still true.

In Spokane, WA 10-15 years ago you could get starter homes for under $100k. Now that price is at least $300k (after cooling off for the last 12 months).

If interest rates hadn’t risen it might be somewhere in between though.

My 1911, 3br/1ba in-city Spokane house cost me about $90K in 2003, currently appraised+taxed at around $300K as you say. I've no idea how ordinary people [that is, those w/o high incomes and/or high levels of wealth], and especially renters, are getting by. From what I read in it the local forums and see at the food bank every week, a lot aren't getting by.

OPs comment is true of minor metro areas as well from what I’ve seen. For example, Spokane, WA.

Yikes, even $2k is a lot more than what I'm paying. Living in a city has its benefits but RIP bank account.

Est. payment: $1,601/mo, 4bd, 2ba, 2,478 sq. ft. -- https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/801-14th-St-Stanton-NE-68...

Est. payment: $953/mo, 3bd, 2ba, 3,192 sq. ft., 1.31 acres -- https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1950-River-Rd-Forest-City...

Est. payment: $1,097/mo, 3bd, 2ba, 2,326 sq. ft. -- https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/301-S-Warren-St-Watertown...

Est. payment: $1,139/mo, 4bd, 2ba, 2,148 sq. ft. -- https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/522-Clifty-St-Harriman-TN...

Est. payment: $887/mo, 4bd, 2ba, 3,123 sq. ft. -- https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/172-Nebraska-Ave-SW-Huron...

Est. payment: $1,107/mo, 3bd, 2ba, 2,957 sq. ft. -- https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/415-W-Parrish-Ave-Owensbo...

I have a friend who is basically an extremely "toxic capitalist" (to put it simply).

He "called" that it wouldn't last that a lot of people were making "big" tech money + not really working 8 hours a day.

Maybe that's what this whole "big tech layoff" is. A reset to lower overheated wages. Make 500,000 unemployed programmers compete for paycuts.

Not quite sure why you're getting downvoted. Might be due to your friend's unsubstantiated claim tech workers (on average) are overpaid while underdelivering. However, the core observation is reasonable. Layoffs create desperation in the labor pool which is likely to drive median tech wages down. This benefits companies opex long-term as they restart the hiring cycle over the next couple quarters. Doubtful we're seeing market-wide collusion on these layoffs but it certainly creates an institutional hiring advantage.

Agreed but also it’s weird how a lot of lay-off %s are 7% +\-1 though?

It's like one CEO did it and it opened the door for it to be socially acceptable climate wise for everybody to follow suit.

So, a fad?

I would say fad is probably a poor choice of words given the perspective "if one CEO thought it was appropriate (they let headcount + salaries creep up too high" and deemed it was in the realm of "action needed to correct", it probably wasn't baseless.

Have you taken a look at the year over year headcount growth of some of these companies? If anything, you could make the argument that 7% isn't enough :/

I’m not really in the business of sympathizing with CEOs for poor past decisions

> Might be due to your friend's unsubstantiated claim tech workers

In his defense, he does own a small tech startup ($1m/yr I think?) and that has like 10 employees (3-4 engineers), so he has his finger on the pulse (or at least he thinks he does) when it comes to tech hiring.

That's a big problem, right? You think his claims are unsubstantiated, he thinks he knows it all and he's seen it with his own eyes. Who is telling the truth?

Your friend has bought into the hype, as a lot of people have. There are very few people making "big tech money" who are not also putting in very long hours. They exist, but are often/usually in the (long) process of being "managed out."

There's no doubt in my mind that a lot of this is a power-play by profitable companies to push back against developers who've collectively gained more power at the negotiating table. Paying dividends and doing stock buybacks while saying "tough economic headwinds require us to lay off 6-8% of you" can only be a power move, as far as I'm concerned.

Dividends/buy-backs and layoffs are derived from the same concept. The company has excess resources they do not plan to use in the future. If you have excess cash, return it to the shareholder. If you have excess employees, reduce head count. It means the company doesn't want to build anything at the moment (for various reasons include prep for a downturn).

You should read this article,

https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2021/08/the-value-of-noth...

> The idea of comparing the expected return from a project to a risk-free rate, such as the return on a Treasury bond, is a common method used in finance to assess the riskiness of an investment. This is known as the cost of capital, which represents the minimum rate of return that an investment must generate to be considered economically viable.

How would you breakdown the distribution of projects inside of Apple from a return perspective?

Some will be 0% or negative due to R&D.

Some will be massively profitable (net 20-40% margins).

How do you decide what the right amount of loss-leading R&D projects to have is?

When companies trying to make cost cuts see an employee making $500k I don't think they go 'oh that's okay because they're working long hours'.

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