Hacker News Reader

Comment by jaxomlotus | Hacker News Reader

Here's the flip side: I was hiring (at a stealth vc-funded startup).

I reached out to every designer and coder laid off from Twitter and Amazon (one of my investors sent me a spreadsheet that those laid off folks added their contact info to).

I didn't receive a single interested response to my reach outs. Now granted, I'm sure they were bombarded with lots of startup offers and being picky what company/stage they were responding to, or were still in grief mode and not ready to start looking, or maybe (probably!) my reach-out finesse was lacking.

But I'm just pointing out that their are definitely companies like mine who are hiring and it's not all doom and gloom for laid off folks.

I ended up hiring via ads on LinkedIn and job posts on eng message boards.

Being real for a minute: There is definitely a perspective among hiring companies that regular lay offs are sometimes packaged alongside bottom performers, but I think that is something they would just do diligence on during an interview process.

View on HN

My observation is that recent layoffs affect engineers with different seniority very differently.

Senior devs I know who got laid off are just enjoying their time off (with pay! if you consider the severance) after the rocketing market in 2021 (and maybe even H1 22) made them whole and financially secure. And they won't be entertaining a startup unless significant equity or big leveling up (eg Principal or Director).

On the other hand, fresh grads who got laid off are in such a panic mode (esp those on visa) they'd be willing to take anything.

Furthermore, some very senior employees are in this boat: They kinda have enough savings to just retire, but were hanging on to their jobs to save maybe 10% more or whatever. Now that they're out of a job they are simply saying "Whelllp, I guess I'm now retired." and not really feeling the need to look anymore. I know someone who refused a forced return to office, and when his company tried to call his bluff, he just said "I guess I'm retired now!"

I've definitely seen some of that. Drag their feet through another vesting event. Maybe see if they can snag a severance package.

>> were hanging on to their jobs to save maybe 10% more or whatever

The amount of wealth all people need is constant. It is 1.5 x whatever they have today.

Crap, this fits me exactly.

Quite a broad generalization. Sounds like people who don't have an actual plan for their money other than to have more of it. The kind of person who retires and realizes they don't even know what to do now that they aren't striving for that $$$.

Sure, there are all kinds of people with all sorts of ideas about what retirement will be like. And from my observations, more often than not, two people with different ideas about retirement will get married to each other.

Different ideas about retirement—such as retiring with different amounts of security, different standards of living, different amounts of money donated to charity, different locations, downsizing or not downsizing the house, living in the countryside or the city, traveling a lot or a little, etc.

My impression as someone who’s not retired is that you are signing up for a new relationship with your partner once you retire, and it’s hard to know what that new relationship will be like.

I don't know. It's a big and somewhat irreversible decision from a pay and career perspective. I can certainly see people hesitate to make the plunge and maybe stretch things out a bit further even though they're pretty sure they're fine finacially.

Irreversible? If Tom Brady can come out retirement your typical tech worker will surely find it possible.

I think it sort of is unless someone is a real name that lots of companies would fall over themselves to hire. For most tech workers--not limited to developers--if you decide to hang up your cleats in your late 50s or 60s, it's probably going to be difficult to change your mind a couple of years later. Part-time consulting is probably easier though. (Probably less so at the moment.)

Lifestyle creep is a thing. You may think you have a plan, but then get a slightly nicer house and slightly nicer cars and slightly nicer vacations…and suddenly now you need 1.5x the money you planned for.

The people going after "wealth" are a minority. The majority of us are salaried people who go to work in order to have a roof over our heads, to pay the bills and put food on the table and maybe to have enough money to have some kids.

The majority of us don't actually know what we "have", because it isn't that much anyway. We do know though what we need to pay in the next 10 to 15 days(and if we somehow forget there's where anxious dreams come into play to help us out with that).

Given that the average mid level developer makes a salary and stock grant putting them well into the 1% (in USA) I find it questionable that the majority of people are "just" trying to keep a roof over their heads.

Looked to me like the OP was talking more generally, about all people.

And back to developers (I am one, but not living in the US), I don't think most of them own their place of living. I know I don't, so, yes, I have to work in order to have a roof over my head.

Well, there are property taxes, insurance, maintenance, and other things that can add up even if you have a paid-off mortgage on a house.

Perhaps your assumption that all "mid level developers" make FAANG income is a bit inaccurate? There are tens of thousands of developers across the US not making big bucks. And to be in the 1%, you need to be making north of $800K. The company I work for employees roughly 100 developers, and not one of them makes more than $150K (we don't award RSUs either).

The median income in king county WA is 100k, we can deduce that Amazon devs make quite a bit more than that from levels.

I was more inaccurate or perhaps outdated with the 1% figure, turns out it's 600k.

But in every possible universe, the devs at your "small shop" not making "the big bucks" are making two to three times the median income in the country with the most disposable income per person - which means your counterexample is very weak to the argument that you and your team are making more than enough to be doing more with your finances than "just" keeping the lights on, and to compare that to people in the US who make regular wages for sympathy is kind of egregious.

Incorrect, it was 320k$ in 2021

You can filter out by other characteristics here: https://igotstandardsbro.com/

Just shy of $600K in 2022, based on data from IRS and BLS: https://smartasset.com/data-studies/what-it-takes-to-be-in-t...

A 1% wage with a 0.1% cost of living is still poor! Its all relative. Stocks dont mean nothing to me. Watch the stock price plummet when founders sell their stock.

There are jobs out there, I've turned down 3 (2xUS, 1xUK/CH) last year I enquired about just to keep in touch with whats on offer and gain insight into projects underway or commencing. Paying 6 figures, US onsite, UK/CH offered remote, working as many hours as I wanted. Turned them down. I think US/Canada remote is rare because of the poor internet infrastructure once you get outside of the cities, Europe has better internet infrastructure so can offer more remote work. Management styles are generally different in the US compared to Europe, with the UK somewhere in between the two regions as usual.

I think people need to understand the different parts of a global economy and realise some sectors some countries wont be or will hardly be affected by the social media downturn especially if they are prepared to work abroad and broaden their horizons.

Plenty of money in China.....

The average mid level developer has zero stock grants or equity. Most of the developers I know work for a salary and benefits and that’s it.

Top 10ish%? Yes. Top 1%? No

Double.

But sometimes that number goes to == on layoff. I’ve seen this in real life.

As a counter example, I need about 100x what I have today.

Man I need about -15x the net wealth that I have today.

FWIW in my experience the first retirement never sticks for these folks.

Sounds like my grandpa. He retired from the US Air Force when he got passed up for a colonel->general promotion... only to eventually become a high school teacher. He's since retired again, though with the multiple volunteer jobs he's doing it doesn't really feel like it lol

Moreover, the typical interview process is so ridiculously energy sapping (and poorly predictive), many of us senior devs are just done with it.

When I bail (or get axed) I’m gonna just do some indie hacking or maybe scratch up some 1099 work.

I guess if you are used to the security (or lack thereof) and coast-ability of large tech companies, you might be inclined to stick to the big names. However, I've recently discovered how fulfilling startup work is. Ironically, I feel more secure in my current role at a startup than I ever did at big tech. That's thanks a lot to the industry I'm in, but regardless senior devs are missing a lot if they completely discount startup roles.

Happy for you. Unfortunately, with VC money currently drying off, I know of many startups that are laying off. And I'm not talking about 10% of workforce layoffs, but more around 30%.

Just a word of advice for readers who are working at a startup: you will never be wrong by getting as close to the money as possible.

If you are at a startup and working on support tools or platform infrastructure or whatever, maybe you're indispensable. But you'd still be better off if you were doing support tools or platform infrastructure that involves revenue.

(The obvious corollary is that if you work at a startup that doesn't make money, you should find a way to make money, or move to a startup that does make money. I feel like a lot of engineers don't know this.)

I can testify to that.

Of course, your team can be considered strategic one day, then disbanded the next.

I've definitely seen some "strategic" people being shown the door over the past few rounds of layoffs, and at least two boomerangs (laid off, then rehired).

These are very confusing times.

You can always be laid off. The chances are much higher if you work on things unrelated to the core business at a startup that is losing money (or worse, not making money).

Obviously, if you're the junior hire on a team of 1,000 people doing third-derivative things that relate to revenue, YMMV.

It's also the case that things change to the point where "strategic" people become less strategic for any number of reasons (the company changes, they're "rich and tired" to use a marvelous phrase from a colleague, etc.). Under what's been normal circumstances at Big Tech until recently companies often keep such people around anyway because they're probably the sort of people who can be pretty effective fixers with a half-day of work and such people may be happy to keep collecting a bunch of money. But a lot of companies are scrutinizing more today.

Yep, you should definitely be wary about joining a startup in a drying industry, like B2B. Ask yourself if the customers/clients of said startup are still able to afford spending money on the product. If the customers themselves are another tech company that is struggling due to their VC money going away, probably not the best choice.

Why is B2B dying now, as opposed to previous tech recessions?

Not dying, just drying up and I'm sure there will be a resurgence. If you look at the companies doing layoffs, the majority of them cater to other tech companies who all seem to be pulling the purse strings tighter.

The best move is startups that are profitable while being small. I went to a 13 person company out of college that was profitable when I joined. Rode that train till we got bought by a company that isn't profitable and is now doing layoffs to try and fix that. Now even so I'm still in the division that brings in more profit per programmer than almost any part of the company, but I still don't feel as safe as when we were a 50 person company that was still profitable after almost quadrupling in size.

Different strokes for different folks. I would rather the excitement in my life didn't come from my job as much as possible.

> "and coast-ability of large tech companies"

Is this really broadly true? I worked for a FAANG for a ~year and half and was constantly over-burdened (rarely with enjoyable or challenging technical work).

I assumed outside of the TikTok "Day in the Life" PMs most folks were grinding away on build issues 50hours a week.

"they'd be willing to take anything."

That would apply to me too. I have 10 years in the industry but have been underpaid and have a family. My current plan if I get fired is to work at Walmart or Lowes until I can find another job.

If you're underpaid and employed the now is the time to look for that new job, not after you're fired and working at Walmart

I was underpaid. Now my skills have atrophied to match my low pay. Only about 17 years until I can "retire". I'll probably end up working at Walmart in retirement anyways.

Hate to say it, but this fits me a lot right now (sans the family part). I really need to skill-up and start looking for a new gig.

pretty sure unemployment pays better than walmart.

If you're fired, unemployment doesn't pay you anything. My company generally won't layoff and instead finds reasons to fire people.

This isn’t true in California, and I don’t think it’s generally true in other states either.

A fired employee is still eligible for unemployment as long as they were not fired because of specific misconduct. Poor performance does not constitute misconduct. Misconduct must be “willful and wanton.” (Regularly missing work or being late, stealing, fighting with coworkers, etc.)

The CA guidelines are long, but contain some useful examples and guiding principles: https://edd.ca.gov/en/uibdg/Misconduct_MC_5/

Good point. My company generally finds "misconduct" reasons to let someone go, like long lunch breaks, being late, computer use like logging into personal accounts etc. They are very lenient about a lot of stuff in practice, but the official policies are much stricter. They basically have enough policies that they can get almost anyone for violations. It's all about having many rules and unequal enforcemnt - it's much like the regular legal system that way.

You can still fight misconduct claims to UI by asserting problems with the work environment. Specific advice would vary by state. There is no reason an employee shouldn’t try.

If how the company acts in practice is different from their written rules, then anyone fired can sue the company for wrongful dismissal. Check with a lawyer.

The tough part is solid evidence supporting it.

It's incumbent on the employer to provide evidence to the UI board proving their case.

A fired employee can sue for wrongful dismissal. If this happened to your check with a lawyer, if you can show that the company had a pattern of overlooking such things, then you can get big bucks in court.

I know of people who should have been fired who were talked into quitting instead just because quitting means they can't sue. In turn the company gives the official answer "X worked here between these dates and left in good standing". Since the company always said the same thing when asked if someone worked there it wasn't a negative to the next employer, while if they fired they would have to say left in bad standing.

Of course since getting fired is a sensitive issue I won't say who. Reading between the lines in conversations and how the company acted though I'm sure that is how it worked.

Any company that states that an employee left "in bad standing" either has an idiot for counsel, or poor HR practices. Providing any information other than employment dates opens you up for lawsuits.

Which is why the company works hard to convince someone who should be fired to quit. If they fire someone and don't mention that fact they can be sued for withholding information, but if the person quit on their own terms.

Note that there is a difference between being sued and losing in court. Even if you win you still need to pay your lawyers. I've had one lawyer tell me about spending nearly a million dollars in court for a case that was about $100,000 in asked damages that the lawyer knew based on facts they would lose - but [I can't talk about this part] made it impossible to figure out how to settle out of court.

Hard to say. Unemployment has some weird rules which vary from state to state. I got laid off a few months after starting a new job, and since I hadn't been working there long my total pay wasn't very high, WalMart would have been as good. Fortunately I got a new job quick that time, but when you are out of work and don't have a lot of savings compared to your bills... Even if you have 6 months savings, seeing savings fall month by month while you just pay bills is demoralizing.

I wasn't trying to be cheeky with this. I was saying sometimes the ~40% that unemployment pays would be much better than walmart. and working there could stop your benefits.

Also, you can focus on a finding a job in your field. If for some reason you didn't want to get unemployment while you look for a job I would try to find any type of contracting job even upwork or fiverr so you can at least put Self-Employed Consulting on resume.

The company I worked for the last 7 years closed year end, and I'm a single dad with a weird schedule and self-taught (no college). I thought my prospects were bad but I got a better job for better pay at a better company, and I was totally honest with them about my skills, experience, etc during the hiring process so there were no surprises.

If you feel like you could lose your current, underpaid job I encourage you to start looking around. I wish I would have before waiting til the bitter end.

This is very similar to where I'm at. I feel like I do have skills that could be used somewhere, but i don't look great on paper, and I'm not very good at selling myself.

That feels like a very US thing to assume. EU layoffs have different contexts.

I’m a low-senior engineer recently laid off. I got lots of emails like that and politely declined. I have a bit over four months of severance pay. For the moment, I’m enjoying other fulfilling activities as well as spending some time upgrading my tech skills through independent study.

I’ve considered some startups, but it seems like it’s often difficult to enforce boundaries on work… I benefit a lot from being able to go offline completely on evenings and weekends. That was always possible in my last job except during the occasional oncall and maybe one or two major launches per year. Also, the pay offered is usually half of what I made in my last job, or less. If the current market situation persists for another six months I’ll probably relax my standards. Or if I get contacted by a startup that’s especially impressive or interesting, or someone I trust tells me it’s a great place to work.

Pay isn’t the most important factor, but I don’t want to get locked in at low comp and have to change again in six months. Also, I have a hard time getting objective information about the work culture at startups. With Google or whatever I can always find contacts who work there and ask them how they feel about their job; with startups every person I talk to is trying to convince me to join and is incentivized to downplay the problems.

> Also, I have a hard time getting objective information about the work culture at startups.

Yes this is a big problem as you have no idea what you're signing up with startups. Maybe the founder expects you to work 12 hours/day and constantly be available, maybe they will fire you a month before your equity vesting, or just randomly fire you one day despite having never given any negative feedback. I've seen all of this at startups, and there is zero accountability. Last time it happened to me I wasn't even offered any severance.

If anyone is considering working for a startup, please do your due diligence. Do not be naive and think that because the founders are very friendly and their startup is backed by YC that they are a good place to work and won't fire you the second they have any doubts about you (personally I'll never work as a full-time employee for a startup going through YC ever again, but that's a story for another day).

Going forward if I'm ever thinking about working for a startup, I will reach out to employees, and ideally ex-employees, to get the inside scoop on what the founders are really like behind the smoke & mirrors.

So true.

I know a friend who led product at a startup (YC). One fine day he shared concerns on how company is narrowly focusing on just one parameter. 10 mins later, he got employment termination letter.

Not just startups - even established non-tech companies reaching out can be _very_ opaque, since their tech staff essentially exists in a parallel dimension…

Curious if there could be repercussions are of joining a startup, enforcing your boundaries, and if they don't respect them, quitting early (just leaving them off your resume).

You get a bit more cash, and I can't see it impacting your career negatively (though you do end up trading some of the time you could be resting and collecting severance to see if the company might be a good long-term fit)

If you're interviewing with an early stage (read: pre-series B) startup, the founders believe you're a good fit, and they have seeded a good culture, they will be happy to let you interview every person they've hired so far.

I like to ask these people "Why did you choose this company versus any of the other ones?" and "What were your expectations about [thing I'm uncertain about], and how did your experience differ from that?"

Startups actually have more signal to offer than most big tech companies. However, the onus is on you to scuttlebut, and it's true that the risks of not doing it well are more severe.

Re: compensation, if you are able to demonstrate competence and efficacy, early stage startups will offer you a cash basis comparable to that of big tech. Of course, if your expenses have inflated to the expectation of selling big tech RSUs every year, you should expect a pretty significant "real" cut in annual income unless you walk in to another public company.

You're right that the cash compensation is often similar. But estimating the value of options is really hard! One of the better (seed) companies I considered working at was able to tell me what my options would be worth given various exit scenarios. In that particular case the company would have had to exit with a $5B valuation in order to match my FAANG compensation. The company was worth $100M at the time. When I pointed this out, the founders reassured me that they were very confident that their company would exceed that valuation :)

Wild guess says you're not paying Amazon/Twitter compensation. And thats fine, they shouldn't be your target

It would not be smart of them to accept a lower paying job immediately. A lot of them have life expenses directly tied to the amount of money they're making. Maybe those who haven't found anything for 3 months can join your company, move to a new place, change their childrens' daycare, and do a lot of life changing decisions based on their new income

It’s wild that this isn’t the top response.

I get a ton of emails from random startups in stealth mode, early funding, whatever.

You know where they all go? Spam folder. As far as I’m concerned, they pay the equivalent of dog shit and are mostly full of extremely entitled founders. They rarely offer equity that’s even remotely worth the risk. I’m way better off joining a company at Series B/C. I can often get a very similar amount of stock that even seed or series A folks have with having avoided a huge amount of risk. Tbh - I find joining pre-IPO probably has close to the best reward+risk for non-public entities.

There’s just no benefit to joining early startups as a non-founder. Maybe when founders start offering serious percentages of stock that isn’t going to be diluted into nothing - I’ll be more inclined. Until then - no way!

It depends a lot on the company. Pre-funding/pre-pmf is hard to judge. But there are plenty of companies with arguable PMF at the seed stage, for whom raising an A vs going alone is an actual choice.

If you're filtering for B/C, you're filtering for companies that need investor money post-supposed-PMF (A is generally considered the anointing of PMF).

That behavior was fine pre-2021, but it's a bit more suspect in 2022. Joining the median pre-IPO tech company within the last year or two would have left your initial option grant completely in the red, today.

In short, there's a continuum between "stealth mode" and Series B that's more lucrative than you're giving credit for, provided one chooses them wisely. The problem is it's hard to choose. There aren't good incentives for educating people on how to choose well.

The issue with ones that are "profitable" at seed or Series A and don't pursue more funding is that I don't think they ever go public. The founders will find a way to get their payday but as an employee - you're SOL.

If I was laid off I would, unfortunately, avoid startups at all costs.

It's not just the comp difference (though I do expect most people with severance are hoping to get something close to their old TC), but startups are notoriously fragile and at the same time wildly over optimistic about their futures in down markets.

I've talked to a few startups about interesting roles over the past few months and no matter how obviously in trouble they are if the market continues the way it is, they all deeply believe that they have an infinitely bright future.

A shocking number of post-seed but still awaiting series A startups have started reaching out to me and none of them have sane business models. On top of that it looks like VC funding is way down.

Any senior engineers who just got the shock of being let go from what they thought was a very stable job with great comp simply aren't going to be excited to jump onto a high risk startup just to relive the whole experience again only this time with less severance.

I saw this as well for most of 2022. Our company was hiring, and my founder friends would pass me the layoff lists, but I'd never hear back from the people I pinged.

If anyone is struggling and is on the mid/senior/director side of their career (3+ yrs), I'm helping place people at my friends Seed and Series A companies.

VC money is still there but pumping into Seed/Series A companies with more upside now rather than insane B, C, D companies that have no profitability in sight. email me at j{at}markovmanagement.com if interested :)

> Being real for a minute: There is definitely a perspective among hiring companies that regular lay offs are sometimes packaged alongside bottom performers, but I think that is something they would just do diligence on during an interview process.

Not sure what you mean here. I know of companies that lay off entire teams, irrespective of performance. I suspect that it's the same everywhere.

I know many companies that do select whole teams, but it's also cleaning house time and the lowest performer from a previously non-impacted team will be included as laying off is easier than firing depending on where in the world you are.

Regardless, in absence of information, you cannot conclude that someone who was laid off was an underperformer. It can just as well be a member of a team who was considered lower-priority and disbanded.

He's describing a general bias that absolutely exists, whether it's always accurate is unrelated.

Fair enough.

If you're laying off people, you're going to also get rid of the low performers. Maybe you don't have enough low performers (or just don't know who they are) to make up the quota and you have to remove whole teams or use arbitrary metrics, but there will be an overrepresentation of below-average workers compared to the survivors. Source: wife is a manager at a company that had single-digit percent layoffs.

Does that say more about the hiring market, or about your startup though?

The point is if the market is bad enough than people can’t have standards. And people still have standards so the market isn’t that bad.

One note from personal experience -- it'll likely take about 12 weeks or so for a laid off dev to come back up to speed with interview prep to feel confident to start the interview grind again. One thing that can likely help is being upfront with the evaluation process.

If they can afford to wait three months (!) to start looking for work because of "feelings" they they deserved to be laid off.

Not everyone lives from hand to mouth and need a job ASAP. Additionally, most people I know in (US) big tech do not take adequate time off from work - it appears the unspoken rule is to take substantive breaks between jobs, rather than annually like they do in Europe.

I've found this to be true, looking at the course of my own career. Just told a German tourist over breakfast that some US workers get as little as two weeks' vacation when starting a job. You should have seen his reaction— his eyes bugged out and he almost choked on his eggs and sausage.

It's an estimate based on both the average severances coupled with how long it takes to work through the Blind 100 LC grind with a bit of reset time thrown in. If you're in a position where you can handle 2 LC-hard questions in about an hour with near perfect execution, good for you! But most folks need to prepare for that.

How much are you paying? I might have been in that group, most of these companies I find don't have an interesting problem or aren't paying enough. Maybe don't allow for remote work.

Indeed, not allowing for remote work is a considerable blocker for many candidates.

Or they are looking at those juicy severance checks and deciding to take a 6 month vacation before applying anywhere again, using state of the economy as an excuse.

why does taking a six month vacation that you can afford need an "excuse"?

Gaps in a resume aren't usually looked upon favourably.

> stealth vc-funded startup

If I just got laid off, I might not want to take another huge gamble like this.

Especially in this economic / VC climate. We're not where we were a year ago, and credit/investment is a much different proposition.

I just want to point out that it’s quite horrible that this sort of lists are floating around.

EDIT: As other commenters are pointing out, this appears to be a list of voluntarily added people. In such case the lack of replies is indeed puzzling.

> that those laid off folks added their contact info to

Hopefully that's actually true but, regardless, it seems to be what's believed. If it is true, it's reasonable to assume they knew what the list would be.

There is a list that can be bought for literally anything you can imagine.

why?

> that those laid off folks added their contact info to

They seem to have added their info to the list for it to be floated around.

Is there anywhere I can get more information or how may I contact you for a job position if you are still hiring.

You’re not paying enough. Or maybe you are but people are of getting lowballed by shit tier startups that have raised at zero upside valuations.

Supposedly people have lots of savings and don’t need to rush to settle for a downgrade. Especially when coming from top tier places like faang

what eng message boards did you post to?

LOL. Yeah, I'm sure these people are enjoying their severance and unemployment benefits.

How was your experience with job boards compared to LinkedIn? Was it effective?

May I know what these eng message boards are? :D

Be careful because a lot of smart people from FAANG may not be a good fit for startups.they are more corporate types nowadays and are probably used to easy money with not much pressure. Startups on the other hand are nothing like that

Reply on news.ycombinator.com