Tech layoffs hurt Gen Z job prospects, could backfire for big tech | Hacker News Reader

Tech layoffs hurt Gen Z job prospects, could backfire for big tech

businessinsider.com

43 pointsgalaxyLogic87 comments

Waves of the market are just a fact of the business world. A whole bunch of folks graduating in 2007-09 walked into a massive dumpster fire of an economy that makes the current scenario look like nothing.

Some folks are in a bad spot at a bad time, and it’s a good reminder too that others are in a good spot at a good time and their “success” may have been more luck than skill. Over the long term these things tend to sort themselves out but in the short term yeah sometimes stuff is not “fair.” The “up” market in tech went on for so long that many forgot what a down market is and many have never experienced one.

Yeah. The article makes the point that, while it's true that in "tech" things may look a bit like dot-bomb with layoffs and offers being rescinded, it's (so far) a pretty good employment market overall. And going to work for the government or a big bank may be disappointing to many but it's not the worst thing in the world.

> A whole bunch of folks graduating in 2007-09 walked into a massive dumpster fire of an economy that makes the current scenario look like nothing.

Can confirm. I was putting myself through school and when my programming job went away it was a complete life reset. I didn't get back on track with my peers until about a decade later. It's also had the added effect that I'm very risk conscious and save aggressively. I am always looking for the next down market.

> Some folks are in a bad spot at a bad time, and it’s a good reminder too that others are in a good spot at a good time and their “success” may have been more luck than skill

After saying all that, I'm not a fan of this saying at all. There is something to being in the right place at the right time, but it's very difficult to luck yourself into top tech jobs. You do need to work very hard both for interviews and on-going work. You'll inevitably do some soul sacrificing whether you realize it or not.

All that to say, it's a bit of luck and a lot of hard work, but the luck isn't to be forgotten.

Luck favors the prepared and all that.

I have been very lucky at two particular points in my career where I really needed a new job and I found one both times with one email (including one in 2001!). Which was very lucky. But the emails were also to people I had worked with in the past and had a good relationship with.

Fair call out on the luck thing and yes the old adage of the harder I work the luckier I get is very true.

> it's very difficult to luck yourself into top tech jobs.

Not true. There are many avenues to it. The most important is deliberate training to be a top engineer. I know several who got into top tech jobs. All of them were no-brainers to hire, because of their track records.

I'm not sure if you realize how what you said looks, but I clearly cut the whole college thing early. Studying the required math for programming, even leaving out DS&A, is very hard. It's a lot of book reading, not a lot of hand holding, and self learners will probably have to learn the same thing many times over. That's to say, the deliberate training is exactly what I was speaking to from my own experience.

Perhaps I misinterpreted your statement. I inferred it meant that getting into a top tech job was due to luck, and so it's a long shot lucky chance (like winning the lottery).

The other meaning is it isn't luck to get a top tech job.

Ah, that is a misinterpretation. I said there's a little bit of luck involved, but it's mostly hard work. I even regarded it as a bit of soul sacrificing.

That doesn't make sense. Deliberate training to reach a goal sounds like the opposite of lucking into achieving a goal to me.

yeah, and then that was the start of the huge mobile, cloud, app boom that followed. So many people got hugely rich with ESOs from the bull market that followed, or with IPOs or other exits. A small setback in 2022 does not change the long-term picture of FANMG tech jobs having among the best prospects of probably any job or sector. A lot of people on reddit have retired 'FIRE style' with 7 figures with such jobs.

My job for the past 10+ years with a medium-sized tech company pretty much fundamentally changed my financial situation even given salary and stock appreciation that was nothing extraordinary.

I know two devs.

One changed 3 jobs in his whole career of 20 years and was genuinely interested in what he does, for whom he does it, which tools he uses and how to understand better the technology that's needed to achieve the goal. He is great to talk to, listens and never tries to interrupt with "but what about <technology X>, why didn't you use <latest serverless thingy>, who the f* is the ID-10-T that made you learn <language that does the job and people know it>", just in order to give himself credibility. Doesn't use popular social media.

The other one always talked at people, knew all the buzzwords and changed 1 job every 8 - 12 months in the span of his 10 year long career, and never failed to mention it in social gatherings as if it's something to be proud of. His Twitter, LinkedIn, StackOverflow (with low score of answers and badly written questions that are borderline insulting when told to provide sufficient info), Facebook and TikTok are regularly updated multiple times in a day, mostly with phrases such as "In order to grow, you can only do so with an awesome team like <array of names from LinkedIn with similar social presence>" or other motivational phrases. He never skips the chance to mention that there exists choice of tech that does the job better and it's the one he happens to use, being the latest and shiniest in the toolbox of frameworks, SaaS or similar tools. Interactions with him are multiplayer monologue and most his social circle is similar - people who talk about themselves and how great they are, backed up with obscure, witty, wannabe-nerd words used for frameworks/libs/SaaS in their toolbox.

One of these two lost the job and blames the world and big tech. The other one kept it. And will keep it for forseeable future.

There is work to be done and there are people to do it.

One of these two is a rare find in world of engineering, the other is common occurrence. One of these two is economically viable while the other incurs loss.

As unpopular my comment will get, I'll let the downvoter (or upvoter) guess who kept the job and which person sounds as a more pleasant co-worker.

So, the nice guy you're talking about had job pay increases exceeding inflation at each 3 jobs over 20 years?

OK.

The second person sounds insufferable, but you're also indirectly preaching the praises of corporate loyalty that have been outdated and out of touch for over 50 years.

It's not about corporate loyalty - it's about passion to do good work without blaming others (colleagues, tech stack, corporate environment) for why you suck.

Look, I've been creating software for 40 years now in a wide variety of industries and many, many tech stacks. The people passionate about doing good work simply do good work. That other guy? He's all bluster. They eventually wash out. Nowadays their strategy is to get hired at a FAANG and have earned enough to retire by the time they wash out. It's really pathetic and frankly I say good riddance to those people. I've seen many of them come and go over the years and the team is almost as better off after they leave.

Meanwhile, if you're solving real problems real people are having and they're willing to pay for them to be solved then you'll remain employed.

> It's not about corporate loyalty - it's about passion to do good work without blaming others (colleagues, tech stack, corporate environment) for why you suck.

This.

I noticed many people talking about corporate loyalty, but you sir made my day, this was precisely my point :)

I wrote a wall of text trying to explain what you explained in that one simple sentence, your experience is visible. Thank you and have a great day!

You could have just said that. It distracts from your message.

I've worked at too many companies where hack job losers stuck around 5, 10, 15 years, insulating themselves with low enough pay and job security by not sticking out, keeping their head down, and creating an environment that breeds passive leeches.

These lifers would create enough mess that would eventually be cleaned up by people who could read a man page instead of a Medium article and who eventually left for greener pastures because they too were interested in creating good work.

You can be technically excellent and have enough brains to pay attention to the CPI-W. Records profits from corporates aren't for you and me, they're for the businesses themselves.

You're right - that is the other end of the spectrum. Those people make enough messes to guarantee continual employment - or so they think. Then they get RIF'd and they're screwed because their skills are obsolete.

I've never understood those people either.

I've had 4 jobs (one a short-lived one cut short by dot-bomb) over the past almost 40 years. I've done fine starting at a time when tech industry salaries were a far cry from where they are now.

> you're also indirectly preaching the praises of corporate loyalty

I didn't preach that, I purposely left out where the first one works and what the industry is. In all honesty, you have to admit you filled out that part yourself so you can have something to argue about :)

No, it's not about corporate loyalty at all but I don't have any means to dissuade you so you'll just have to trust me on this (or don't).

You purposely skipped the part where one person is honest and good at what they do while the other is the opposite.

> the nice guy you're talking about had job pay increases exceeding inflation at each 3 jobs over 20 years

The smart guy did not rely only on pay increases, you're thinking too small about financial compensation. Salary is not the only source of compensation. There are other, better financial models to keep the expert employee and to grow alongside said expert and to keep every party happy. Win for engineer, win for employer and win for customer _is_ a possible scenario.

> and never failed to mention it in social gatherings as if it's something to be proud of.

No, you did. You shouldn't be proud of sticking around at a company you have no plans of being a leader at or having meaningful equity. It makes you sound like an idiot. Who can't multiply 2% inflation by the number of years someone has been at a company and do a little math?

For as insufferable as this person sounds, they should be proud of not letting businesses screw them over.

Don't tell me I'm thinking "too small about financial compensation" when people literally cannot afford homes.

This boomer stuff has to go. You think these gen Z kids care? They're even smarter than millennials. They learned "FYPM" from the get go.

Thank you for the polite insults. I hope you feel good after this wonderful display towards a stranger online. The education you provided is invaluable. Your moral compass is high and you defeated me and defended an entire generation of people. I think this is the first of its kind in the history of internet, you must feel like a hero :)

Sadly, you didn't read what I wrote but I'm still grateful for being called an idiot, and since I value your opinion I am gravely hurt.

Why reply?

I called out your comment because it too is rude. You think you're making a statement about character and moral building, but then you slip in some archaic statements about work ethic and job tenure and seem to expect that the false dichotomy you're building is universally applicable to all distributions of laborers.

It's the weird regurgitation of concepts that managers and leaders say in order to prey on people.

Have you heard of strawman argument?

Look it up.

You're worked up and are taking it out on me because you created the narrative in which it appears I'm sending some kind of subliminal messages about corporate loyalty. You've been told multiple times it's not the case but you refused to accept it. The same way you can imagine you're a billionaire and refuse to accept the reality of that you aren't.

The story you made up has nothing to do with mine, but you refuse to read so that's where our multiplayer monologue ends.

The good guy in your story got INCREDIBLY F*** on money. There's no way he was making anywhere near the market rate for most of his career. Your advice is dangerously misleading. Like the other guy said, it's an attitude that allows sociopathic managers to exploit honest people.

There was no advice.

There was no mention on compensation.

There was no mention of the revenue model of the 1st person.

You came up with a narrative and argued with me based on story and arguments you made up.

It's just silly and not remotely professional, especially coming from a grown up person.

Here's the story of the first dev: his compensation model depends directly on how much his employer (partner) helps their customers achieve higher revenue. Their software is related to subset of financial industry.

You are right, he didn't make near the market rate for most of his career. He made so much he never has to work any more. But he still works because it's what he finds fulfilling.

Your attitude is dangerously misleading. You assumed too much in order to paint someone sociopath.

It'd be a lie if I said "I wonder what prompted you to behave like this", except I can tell you recognized yourself in the story I wrote and felt the need to discredit the narrator. Think about it, it's for your sake.

You posted a super long, rambling parable that strongly implied a noble, dedicated, hardworking person was rewarded for his diligence. Then you launched into a bunch of snide personal attacks against anyone who disagreed

I think the reason you're pissing people off is because we were all like the hero of your little story. Except instead of being rewarded handsomely, we all got fucking screwed over by faceless megacorps' middle management. Now it pisses us off when we see people spewing misleading bullshit.

So who lost their job? Is it the first or the second?

I'm guessing the first one lost his job, because I'm a pessimist.

First one kept the job.

> because I'm a pessimist

Shoot for the worst, hope for the best type? :)

No, more like: I've had too many red pills.

The irony is dev #2 projects a textbook definition of 'passion' with their public displays of knowledge, name-dropping, and fancy job at an elite institution. But when circumstances change, the house of cards falls over. They'd staked their identity on something brittle: the appearance of an elite tech worker with the proper taste who is a member of the Inner Ring (per CS Lewis).

How dramatic! If only the world worked in such a just and fair way. From what I've seen of the recent layoffs, it was totally uncorrelated to how virtuous your career has been. People got laid off from Google that had been there like 15 years. Likewise people get huge payouts from startups after joining the bandwagon at just the right time.

The whole thing seems like a false dichotomy. Most people I know (including myself) fit into neither category. Some job hops, with stretches of stability. Keeping up with the latest tech/trends, but mostly realistic about applicability to their day to day problems. And someone being annoying at parties is hardly relevant. You'll find those people everywhere.

In the story I posted, there's an expert who's diligent, disciplined and aware of the area his expertise is valuable. The other one has none of that.

First one never worked for FAANG, the other one aimed only for that level.

One lost the job, the other kept it.

There is a deeper meaning to the story, it's not for no reason that the first one managed to get through 2 economic crises, pandemic and yet again - round of layoffs.

Take what you will from the story, but maybe it's not as shallow story as it seems.

Sure the second person sounds awful to be around, but correlating this with corporate loyalty is disgusting especially in times like these.

I'm sorry, but if I implied anything about loyalty then I apologize.

I don't think loyalty or trust are needed in an environment where all parties adhere to agreement(s) and have the process that lets everyone win.

The current zeitgeist is zero sum in thinking, believing that there can only be one winner in an employment arrangement. And if they aren’t winning, then it is inherently exploitative. This can be seen on both sides of the employer/employee relationship, and seems to be a bit of a prisoners dilemma, where the negative vibes of one side incite the other and the animosity intensifies.

IMO: more people should consult or work for themselves. You learn a lot in a short amount of time and get a good understanding for the pros and cons of salaried employment.

I've recently been talking to a friend working at a large multinational for the last 10 years. They called him into office and presented him with a wooden plank with the number 10 inscribed on it. It almost pushed him to the edge to quit. Almost. Meanwhile, I've spent the last 10 years out in the world, helping companies grow, running my own stuff, learning, traveling, exposing myself to new technologies. I love it. I also make a lot more money than he does. I understand where you're coming from, but the ability to pivot doesn't end with a downturn, and after all is said and done, it depends on the individual. I'd grow bored out of my mind working for 10 years on the same thing, regardless of compensation.

I may be misreading your post, but if I'm not, you seem to be claiming that people who got laid off had it coming?

I think this maps roughly to the idea of some people being "introverts" and others "extroverts".

Extroverts are good at selling themselves, they enjoy that activity. Introverts are interested in how to do good work, not in selling themselves. They don't like to go to job interviews, because that to them is not solving the interesting problems they are working on.

Isn't "tech", specifically software, in perpetual meltdown? I'm gen X. My first job out of uni, the company collapsed 2 weeks before I'd finished my internship. The next one lasted 8 months before going into administration.

If you started your career in 2000, Tech has always been a dumster-fire of meltdowns. 2000-2003, 2008-2009, etc.

If you started your career 2012, for the last 10 years, Tech has always been going up and up, (compensation, job opportunities), etc.... this is the first time many have seen a true tech downturn.

And this is a serious one. It is starting to look a bit worse than 2008-2009 slowdown, and getting closer to the 2001 one. (it is somewhere in between).

Looking worse than 2008? What are you looking at? Doesn’t seem like that at all from what I’ve seen.

2008 started in 2006 when the housing bubble started to burst. It was a slow burn through to 2008 when Lehman Brothers collapsed and revealed how bad things were. These things are always cascade failures that start slow and isolated, and no one has been able to predict each domino before it falls. It could be years before anyone can draw a line back to the stage-setting events of the next collapse.

I don't know what they're looking at, but I suspect there will be some fallout as we find out how many complicated investment vehicles were wrapped up and set on top of cryptocurrencies.

2008 everyone thought they were some sort of property wunderkind. Just using cheap loans from banks who were investing employee pension funds into complex derivatives. 2023 government put the brakes on cheap loans. Mortgages are highly regulated and aren't the money pump they used to be up to 2008. And private equity is no longer throwing money at dumpster fires hoping to turn it into unicorns. There is money to be made if you aren't completely dependent on ad revenue.

There are jobs out there, just not in the 100x P/E companies. Infrastructure, green energy, construction, and labor are still hiring like crazy.

2023 started in 2020 when the world shut down because of a pandemic.

I mean that’s not really an argument. That’s just saying “I feel like there will be a collapse because it happened before in unrelated circumstances. No I can’t tell you why it will happen “

Yeah, this honestly feels to me like a fake recession that leaders are trying to drum up in order to reel in salaries and punish their internal enemies

I'm putting my money where my big mouth is and loading up on stocks, we'll see how it goes

> If you started your career 2012, for the last 10 years, Tech has always been going up and up, (compensation, job opportunities), etc.... this is the first time many have seen a true tech downturn.

Agreed. The job market was growing remarkably since 2012, especially in tech.

> And this is a serious one. It is starting to look a bit worse than 2008-2009 slowdown

Not sure if I agree with you there... at least not yet.

The first dip in tech that I saw was around 1996 I believe, definitely remember another blip in 1998... then after 2000 it was a real shit show.

I'm getting so tired of it. I just want to find a place where I can put in good work with kind, collaborative people, not be nervous all the time, and actually get things done without tons of bureaucracy like a big company. I'm ok if it's not the best paid thing out there.

You're a lot more likely to find stability with a big company than some small business much less a startup.

Like, Google, Meta, Microsoft, etc...?

Snark aside, yes, that's true to some degree. It's also stifling to not be able to get stuff done.

Sounds like a national lab?

Because government is so well-known for not being bureaucratic?

I'm being a bit snarky. I've known people who mostly liked working for a national lab but, like academia, it's not really a panacea.

Over the last 3 years, large tech companies have 2x, 3x in size. And now people are spooked by a 15% layoff? Boggles the mind.

Agreed, this is more of a small correction instead of a "meltdown," at least for now.

Not to minimize the effects of getting laid off early in your career, but almost everyone will likely be fine.

While true, it's not a lot of consolation to someone graduating in June that many of those companies aren't hiring or are only hiring experienced people for very specific roles.

I graduated class of 2007 (when companies stopped hiring due to the GFC), I did not get much consolation either. Got the opposite, in fact - everyone telling me I was being a spoiled millennial and everything was my fault. I couldn't get a job for a year.

All of my peers made it through, so will the class of 2023.

I graduated in 2001 and it was extremely difficult to break in. Minimum wage programming jobs that were so competitive other candidates were left crying when they couldn't land a position.

Just keep pushing.

Doom and gloom for clicks. Sensationalism means more clicks. Perspective is lost.

Although where did those 2x, 3x increase come from? Did big tech grab employees from other companies who have been short handled for a couple of years? Not like all of a sudden we got 2x more engineers ready to go.

To improve employee gender ratios, AAAMM hired a lot of project managers and recruiters.

Every bootcamp was churning out "production-ready" coders....

Depends on who was hired and who is now fired. The pools may have no correlation.

Graduated in ‘09, things were still chaotic post-crash, but I did find work in the end.

I joined a small local company, they had a codebase dating back to the 90s and they’d succeeded in becoming the dominant solution in a niche space. It was a far cry from the nifty places I read about on hacker news.

It wasn’t flashy, weird proprietary tooling, ancient version of .NET, little to no version control, no testing infrastructure, but man I learned so much. I was fresh out of school, everything was a learning experience!

I think it’s easy to forget that these stable, smaller, more “humble” options exist out there and they’re not necessarily slashing massive proportions of their staff.

I think commenters here are missing the point. The issue is that between the layoffs and things like Musk's Twitter meltdown, there's a reevaluation of priorities by the folks entering the workplace. FAANG is no longer attractive by default because they're now perceived to be absuing their employees.

Good! The last thing we need is to centralize brainpower among 5-6 too-large companies.

There's also the dirty secret that there are lots of hard problems out there, and you probably have a better chance of working on one of those hard problems than you would at Google, where you'd come up against people with decades of experience and lots more credentials than you. We should be warning grads that getting into Google could mean you getting paged to keep Gmail running at 4am in the morning, rather than figuring out a sweet graph analysis problem.

I worry that the grasping for status for some is actually a cover for, "I don't know what to do but I would like others to validate me."

if "abuse" = 300k salary + cushy office + free meals, gym, on site medical, flexible working hours, then the word had lost all meaning and reached escape velocity.

this is some bizarre loss aversion fallacy going on. Please, don't give me a top 0.00001% best job in the history of mankind because there's a 15% chance I might lose it. What!?

I agree with most of what you said except for flexible working hours (they might not be 5 8-hour shifts, but they'll get it in some other capacity) - they usually want your soul.

2000 dot-com crash, 1992 recession, the 1970's were horrible.

The issue right now is 'education and housing' costs which at least in part have something to do with our much longer than planned life expectancy and built up housing equity among those people, who vote and are very well organized as well as having deep ties into the system. I don't know what the answer is but I don't see anyone with great answers. Maybe 'decentralized' workforces will help out a bit, because affordability is reasonable in many places and frankly the supposed 'cool spots' just are not that cool.

So, I finished up with college in 2008 right before the worst part of the financial crisis hit. I also went to a no-name school in the middle of flyover country, and I didn't graduate. At no point in my career did I ever feel like I was having difficulty with finding a job.

I would argue that the biggest challenge graduates in 2023 face is a battle inside themselves between their expectations, their delusions of grandeur, and the reality of the world. I didn't work properly for a "tech company" for more than 2 years after I finished school, and I started in a lower level role than I was qualified for, but the entire time I was learning things, working with people I respected and admired, and was paid decently for my time and efforts. The domain knowledge I gained from outside of "tech" at various points in my career has been incredibly valuable during all the times I worked in tech, because most of the "tech" companies make their money selling products to non-tech companies. Knowing your customer and their domain is actually crucial.

If you're willing to work as a software developer at a health insurance company maintaining eligibility processing and claims processing systems, or at a manufacturing company writing automation tooling to help process engineers convert prototypes into mass producible widgets, or working on plugins for the unwieldy "enterprise" software used in the back office at a global trucking and logistics company, you'll never want for work, and you'll learn a lot and earn a decent wage compared to the market you find yourself in. No, it's not $300k TC right out of school with free lunches and trendy swag packages, but it's also not purgatory and destitution.

Realistically, I think social media has created a completely unhinged set of expectations amongst people, in general, and especially young people. Everyone has to pay their dues, and what you learn along the way and the relationships you build will set up the rest of your career.

There's plenty of jobs outside tech right now. It's the lower expectations that kill people internally. They just can't go from that fancy big tech salary to something merely above average.

What would kill me the most wouldn't be the lower salary, it would be working at a company that treats tech as an expense to be minimised, where non-technical people are calling the shots, working on 10 year old tech with no plans of upgrading ever.

Yeah that too. Funny, I'm in that situation right now. Side note, does anyone really enjoy working with Kafka/Kubernetes? I mean the tech sounds cool, but working with these tools...

The pendulum can swing too far the other way as well. All I ask for is working with an up to date language and frameworks.

We've seen this before in smaller waves, or institutionally woven, in big tech. Standard operating procedure has been to hoard a bunch of cheap new grads, grind them out with your culture or small RIFs, and keep the most productive.

It boggles me that this is acceptable and the norm for new grads. This, from the article, should be the norm:

"The job prospects in Big Tech are so grim that career counselors at even the most elite universities are urging students to consider positions at smaller companies and in less sought-after sectors, such as manufacturing or government."

This problem is actually somewhat similar to (or a result of) the inflation problem.

Normally the market distributes demand in a continuous and predictable fashion so it's easier to plan for the future. This includes demand for toilet paper, eggs, and tech jobs.

When the market is manipulated excessively, the results are hard to predict as the feedback is delayed and noisy. Like steering a huge ship with siri voice commands and an antagonistic crew.

So when averaged over a long period of time, the steering does kinda-sorta align to a desired path, but like a fishtailing car, it causes a lot of collateral damage and is never really in control.

E.g. demand for tech jobs was pulled forward causing long term planning (multi year degrees) to fail since supply is now being dumped onto a market with no demand. (and the previous excess demand just creating bloated orgs and salaries).

This disrupts career paths b/c it delays the the ability to compound wealth/network/skills/etc...

This has further negative effects b/c the difference between two individuals compounding at the same rate but with a different X axis start time is also an exponential function. (https://www.desmos.com/calculator/88s8c2uus2)

This increasing inequality drives up the prices of assets that are used to absorb excess wealth like stocks and real estate (considered a 'necessity' for life scripts like starting-a-family)

Newcomers are forced into either starting over in some overlooked blue ocean leveraging new innovation, forced into negative expected return but high volatility strategies like robinhood/wallstreetbets, or forced into new life scripts that don't rely on clinging to a wealth sponge. *

* Crypto has elements of all of these including new kinds of wealth sponges that are completely useless (unlike a house) so for many it seems like the only path to an acceptable future.

Tech in last 10 years be like: Move fast, break things and get drown. Legacy softwares are everywhere that needs new generation of devs to maintain. Wait, in order to maintain legacy softwares, one needs to be an experienced tech worker.

Seems like a chicken-egg issue.

Not sure if I agree. My first job out of university was on a team maintaining a legacy Perl application with 400 KLOC. I believe those were two of the most impactful years of my career in what habits they formed wrt. clean coding and building maintainable stuff.

Legacy software requires much more x10 efforts to new ones. Because you must at the same time support bug fix, refactor, new features implementation, and also migrate to new systems for the same functionalities.

Define “tech”? It’s almost as if it stopped meaning “technology” and now means… what?

No one is going to want to invest in an economy that never pays out. Gen-Z and gen-whatever is already fed up. We are all one moment away from, "Screw it, I'm not doing this anymore." We may all choose of life rigid frugality and minimal participation in the market economy. We will buy only what we need and nothing more.

> the college and graduate students who dreamed of getting lucrative tech gigs once they completed their degrees

many (most?) of us who have been at one of the prominent high-tech companies for a long time didn’t start there. it was a non-linear path with some non-glamorous work along the way.

Being young almost always involves paying your dues. It ain't fun but you get experience and figure out what you want. You usually don't have your choice of where to work from.

I realize you can't make TikToks about that but it's reality.

You'll see plenty of college to FAANG/whatever coveted startup paths on LikedIn profiles.

It’s worth mentioning Apple didn’t resort to layoffs, unlike the other Big Tech companies.

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