Bay Area tech workers thought their jobs were safe | Hacker News Reader

Bay Area tech workers thought their jobs were safe

latimes.com

18 pointsaxiomdata3169 comments

Nobody goes into tech for job security.

I mean… Maybe not job security in this current job but I feel like if my company were to go belly up Id have something else even before getting bored of unemployment

People have been suggesting learning to code for most of the century due to job security. Not with a single company, but rather with the assumption that if a startup failed or a big company did some layoffs they’d easily find a new job.

Now everyone is getting a stronger reminder of the danger of correlated failure than even the dotcom bust, because back then people could bail out into the boring business world where all of the companies who’d been failing to hire web developers were finally able to get sufficient numbers but now it’s different because companies are much further along their digital transitions and since the market risk is intentionally created by the President there aren’t any safe sectors.

TL;DR: People in big tech companies in the Bay Area are surprised when they get laid off. Several companies that had layoffs are listed. People miss their big paychecks when laid off.

You have my permission to skip this one.

> A career in technology seemed like a natural and safe path after his service in the military

No shade on military folks, though I don’t remember the last worthwhile thing the US military did, maybe the Spanish American war?

But anyway, I have met precisely 0 high end developers with a military background. If you are a person with that sort of brain, military just does not really make any sense for you to do. It’s way too much work for way too little money and you are going to be surrounded by people who can’t understand what you are thinking at all.

Oh I have met a few from countries with compulsory military service, but I don’t count that since they didn’t have a choice.

I feel like people forgot the insane hiring spree everyone went on after 2020. That didn’t seem sustainable at the time, and it wasn’t. Surprise?

Am I in a weird bubble? Are there actually a lot of Iraq veterans in Silicon Valley?

I don't know about a lot but there are many veterans in tech that did extremely advanced stuff when they served. After all, Silicon valley used to be for defense

There are a decent number, yes, although the last major deployment in Iraq specifically ended 14 years ago. Either you're in a weird bubble or the people you've met who are in the military picked up on some signal not to share that information with you.

Lol are you for real? Even if you want to give more credit to the USSR than the west usually does the WW2 US military directly and indirectly did a lot for technology. But you skip over that to go to the Spanish American war?

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