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Comment by twblalock | Hacker News Reader

Most companies overhired and would have been punished if they didn't. Now they will be punished if they don't shrink. Public companies have to follow the market or their shareholders will slap them down. The real villain is the Federal Reserve, because their policies created a bubble.

We should also keep in mind that quite a lot of the people who are being laid off never would have had jobs if it wasn't for the massive hiring spree in the past few years.

The industry is not unraveling. It's just reeling from an economic bubble. Despite the layoffs few companies are shrinking back down to the size they were in 2020.

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> Most companies overhired

how is it possible for most companies to overhire? where did all those hires come from? maybe facebook doubled by poaching non-faang people, but where did the non-faang companies get all these extra hires from?

> a lot of the people who are being laid off never would have had jobs

since tech layoffs mostly affect eng, pm's, hr and a bit of management, it seems strange that these mostly well-trained people were just idling around without a job until a couple of years ago by tens of thousands.

Did you not notice the explosion in bootcamps and online programs? Not to mention the huge expansion of existing CS programs. Tens of thousands joined the industry.

I admit I don't know the industry-wide data for that. I have not encountered a bootcamp person in a professional setting in over 5 years, but maybe im not a part of most companies.

Agencies are completely full of them.

Next week I've got a call with an applicant to an open position in our company. He did one of those bootcamps, too, that's all he got as experience. I'm really curious how that will turn out...

Depends on the boot camp, but in my experience the juniors that come out of them have been considerably better than other applicants when it comes to things like TDD and security. That’s been drilled into them.

Where they typically fall down compared to juniors with CS degrees is a couple of years later, when the practice doesn’t make up for less fundamental knowledge. But that can be easily overcome with good management.

Have recently worked with a bootcamped guy (although I should admit he had an engineer degree first) but my impression of that boot camp program at least is very good:

They had worked on some serious case studies with real version control, real databases, real bugs and he basically came ready to solve real life problems.

And yet we know for sure that many companies doubled in size in the past few years. Including really big companies.

I interviewed several people that had switched from the travel and hospitality industries during the lockdowns.

Most companies with lots of cash during the inflation years overhired, those workers left smaller or less profitable companies that do not pay as much. The population of engineers did not grow that significantly IMO.

Yes the offers going around in the last few years for developers has been bullshit. It forced a lot of smaller shops to overpay to retain engineers, because of bullshit VC money backed competition. Then the VC money washes away and suddenly the market crashes... This isn't a good way to operate as an industry, and all that money produced what in terms of actual innovation?

This is actually the second half of OPs comment. Fed greases the wheels, distorting the market. Those who can take advantage of it (VC funded companies) do so, which propagates the distortion. Everyone else pays up to find / keep talent, or closes shop. Fed reverses trend, the bubble bursts. Now we watch the market slowly correct.

The worst part here is a lot of companies were making real products, that customers really wanted and really paid good money for. But if those customer companies were VC reliant / vaporware, then even that strategy won't pan out. Only by predicting that and actively working to skip easy money and find more durable businesses, pivoting quickly, or having extra cash reserves.

A lot of startups probably didn't get founded. And CS enrollment has probably been up (haven't checked).

And a lot of startups that shouldn't exist got financed.

Haven't seen a mention for immigration and work visas.

Obvious answer - unemployed.

so you go from perpetually unemployed to engineer at Atlassian for a couple of years, then back to perpetually unemployed? ("never would have had jobs" according to the parent) is that typical, for most companies?

Everyone moved up a pin, and the lowest ranked company got a bootcamp grad. Now everyone moved down a pin, and the bootcamp grad wont get a job. That is roughly how this works, not as clean but the end result isn't far off.

A lot of the lay-offs were senior technical staff though, at least at my company.

Like C++ Staff engineers, etc.

It seems more like a realignment to shift those jobs to cheaper subsidiaries like India, Pakistan, Mexico, etc.

It's a shame that many companies could have benefited from utilizing these talented employees more effectively, rather than overhiring.

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