TLDR:
* most of the workers being laid off are not engineers
* the laid off engineers are either being hired by “old school” industries like John Deere or carmakers or are creating new startups, many around generative AI.
Honestly am impressed at how wasteful such articles are in how little content they actually contain.
I shouldn’t have an opinion on this because I don’t live in the Bay Area or closely follow its politics, but the most common refrain I see is that policies (e.g., zoning) prevent building more and higher density housing, thus artificially limiting supply.
It's refusal to allow housing construction all the way down.
This is a result of the fact that some resources do not have infinite space to increase supply. Land is one of those resources.
No matter how much someone demands it, we cannot simply wish more land into existence in SF.
So while we can increase housing supply by optimizing the usage of that land (more houses per unit area), this has adverse consequences for the people already using it...
It would certainly have some kind of consequences for the people currently using it. Whether they would be better or worse that the consequences already being experienced is a matter for debate. I don't live in the bay area but would assume more density would largely be a good thing for regular people -- either their rent will drop because the market isn't so tight, or the home they own would rocket in value because it can suddenly be cleared to make way for an apartment or condo building (that they might have a hope of affording a unit in).
There are other people "using" the land though: the rentiers who run the local (and state, and national) government.
Apple: $65.2B in 2010 vs $260B in 2019 Facebook: $1.97B in 2010 vs $70.9B in 2019 Netflix: $1.67B in 2010 vs $20B in 2019 Google: $29.3B in 2010 vs $160B in 2019
Facebook’s 4 largest purchases in the last decade were WhatsApp for $19B, Oculus VR for $2B, Instagram for $1B and Kustomer for $1B along with at least 5 other acquisitions for >$100M.
I don’t want to go down the whole list in detail, but Google has invested heavily into YouTube, Waymo and other bets this past decade and Netflix was up until very recently just pouring money into Hollywood and other media markets like Japan to acquire production and/or distribution rights and built up pretty much their entire streaming infrastructure in the post-2008 world. All of this was an also financed with cheap money and these investments allowed them to grow their revenue, maybe some more successfully than others.
None of that is really artificial inflation, but I guess this is why dollar inflation is called inflation?
I would definitely agree that the pricing is not artificial, but I don't think I would call it fair.
The response is normal, but the deep pockets were an aberration. No one was making $$ in cash; tech stocks floated to ~80 P/E for mature companies and higher for billion dollar _growth_ companies (aka a bubble).
That can't be the only one?
https://www.nar.realtor/newsroom/annual-foreign-investment-i...
Maybe I misunderstood you, but that article says out of house purchases by foreigners, 42% were by foreign buyers living abroad, and the other 58% were by foreign buyers living in the US.
US citizens buying property _vastly_ outweigh foreign buyers, in both numbers and dollar amounts.
EDIT: it should be noted, that foreign investment was down the last couple years do to covid, though.
It’s not. If an article says that, it’s using such an absurd methodology that renders it useless.
The number likely hovers around 2-3% depending on how you define foreign investor.
There’s no QA around these types of articles and every incentive to just come up with the biggest number possible to try and rile people up. Often these are press reports from people with vested interests in real estate.
The 42% number you're citing is the percentage of foreign buyers living abroad out of all foreign buyers. So 100k/6.1M or 1.6% of homes in the US were bought by foreign buyers, and of that 1.6% we see that 42% of those live abroad.
That is quantity of homes, if you'd like to look at dollar values of those purchases, it is also given as "International buyers accounted for 2.6% of the $2.3 trillion in existing-home sales during that time period."
The Economist isn't a tech publication. A lot of the context around tech layoffs is more familiar to HN than the average reader.
The article seems to be 100% content and context to me. No waste at all. You personally just happen to know a lot of the context already. But that doesn't make it "waste".
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"The article explores the job market for tech workers who have been laid off from their previous jobs due to the pandemic. Despite the high demand for tech talent, many of these workers have struggled to find new employment, and the article highlights several factors that may be contributing to this.
One of the main challenges is the way in which hiring managers are evaluating candidates. Many companies are now using AI-powered tools to screen resumes, which can lead to qualified candidates being overlooked. In addition, there may be biases in the hiring process that are preventing certain candidates from being considered.
Another issue is that many of the jobs that have been created in the tech industry during the pandemic are concentrated in certain geographic areas, such as the Bay Area and Seattle. This can make it difficult for workers who live in other parts of the country to find new employment.
The article also notes that many of the workers who have been laid off come from industries that have been hit particularly hard by the pandemic, such as hospitality and tourism. These workers may not have the same level of experience or technical skills as those who have been working in the tech industry for years, which can make it harder for them to find new roles.
Overall, the article suggests that while the demand for tech talent remains high, the job market is still challenging for many workers who have been laid off due to the pandemic. Companies and hiring managers may need to rethink their approach to hiring in order to ensure that qualified candidates are not being overlooked, and more support may be needed for workers who are transitioning to new careers in the tech industry."
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Big tech companies like Meta and Amazon have announced massive layoffs, with American tech firms having announced 118,000 sackings so far this year. However, techies have been mostly spared, and the axe has fallen mainly on business functions like sales and recruitment. These functions had grown steadily as a share of tech-industry employment in recent years, a sign of bloat. The recent layoffs may release talented tech workers back into the job market, which could benefit other sectors struggling with digital reinvention, such as industrial goods, carmakers, banks, health insurers, and retailers. Some of the laid-off techies are also helping fuel a new generation of startups.