The Brutal Truth Behind Tech Layoffs

In the recent months companies like Unity, Amazon, Intel, IBM, Nokia, Samsung, and many more have fired hundreds of thousands of tech workers collectively.

In this video I dive into the dark side of the tech industry and what is fueling this current wave of mass layoffs, the whispers of "employee farming," and the hiring practices fueling a collapse within the industry.

Please like, subscribe, and leave a comment about your experience working in technology or a related industry doing layoffs.

[mrinalkrant]

🎯 Key Takeaways for quick navigation:

00:00 🤖 *AI Impact on Tech Layoffs*
- Layoffs in the tech industry are often linked to concerns about AI replacing programming jobs.
- AI is not an imminent threat to programming jobs, especially those involving complex logic and low-level languages.
- The fear of AI replacing programmers is a minor factor in the current wave of tech layoffs.
03:30 📉 *Preparation for a Looming Recession*
- Some layoffs in the tech sector might be attributed to companies preparing for a potential economic recession.
- Economic indicators, such as interest rates, are being monitored, and companies are making strategic decisions.
- The anticipation of a recession plays a role in the decision-making process, though it's not the primary cause.
05:09 🚀 *Hyperspecialization and Employee Farming*
- Tech companies are experiencing a trend of hyperspecialization in roles, creating jobs that might not be necessary.
- Employee farming involves companies artificially inflating their workforce to create an image of continuous growth.
- Massive layoffs occur when companies realize the need to streamline and eliminate unnecessary roles, impacting hyperspecialized positions.
09:44 🔄 *Negative Consequences of Hyperspecialization*
- Hyperspecialization leads to the creation of jobs that lack intrinsic value and do not contribute significantly.
- CEOs, at times, are not effective in managing resources, leading to the hiring of unnecessary positions.
- Employees in hyperspecialized roles often feel disconnected and uncertain, contributing to a cycle of layoffs and negative job experiences.
11:36 💼 *Value of Generalist Programmers*
- Generalist programmers, well-versed in various frameworks and languages, have intrinsic value.
- The stability of a job is higher for generalists, as they can adapt to different needs and bring a broader skill set to the table.
- Recommendations for programmers: focus on becoming a generalist with a deep understanding of core architecture.
14:59 🌐 *Catalyst Event: Elon Musk Buying Twitter*
- Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter led to significant layoffs, around 71% of the workforce.
- The event highlighted the efficiency gains possible by reducing unnecessary roles.
- Other tech companies are now considering similar approaches to streamline operations.
16:34 💡 *CEO Realization and Leaner Operations*
- CEOs are recognizing the bloated nature of their corporations and considering leaner operations.
- The influence of Elon Musk's approach is encouraging companies to reevaluate their workforce size.
- Layoffs are, in part, a result of companies realizing the need to shed excess employees and focus on efficiency.
17:43 🚀 *Company Layoffs Trends: Cloud Fair and Unity*
- Companies like Cloud Fair and Unity are laying off employees, reflecting industry trends.
- Cloud Fair seems to be mirroring Elon's approach by cutting hyperspecialized jobs, similar to Unity.
- Unity's mismanagement, highlighted by unwise business moves, is contributing to its layoffs.
19:48 🛡️ *Advice for Programmers: Avoid Hyperspecialization*
- Programmers are advised to avoid hyperspecialized roles for job security.
- Being in a more general role makes you less likely to be easily fired during layoffs.
- Companies often target employees in overly specialized positions during layoffs.
21:25 🌐 *List of Major Tech Companies with Layoffs*
- Numerous major tech companies, including Amazon, IBM, Dell, Microsoft, Google, Salesforce, Meta, Zoom, and more, are undergoing significant layoffs.
- The layoffs are attributed to companies vastly overhiring, engaging in what the speaker terms "employee farming."
- The overhiring trend extends to several dozen companies, all letting go of thousands of employees.
22:04 💻 *Impact on Tech Interviews and Hiring Practices*
- The speaker criticizes the current state of tech interviews, calling them painful and overly specialized.
- Predicts a shift in hiring practices towards valuing generalists more than hyperspecialized roles.
- Expects an improvement in tech interviews with a focus on fundamental knowledge and a resurgence of practical tests like FizzBuzz.
23:16 📈 *Potential Rise in Value for Individual Programmers*
- Anticipates that good programmers may become more in demand and see increased earnings.
- Expects the weeding out of overly specialized individuals to increase the value proportion of individual programmers.
- Highlights the historical shift where programming wages have become comparable to some blue-collar jobs and suggests a potential reversal in this trend.

Made with HARPA AI

[sinnombre]

I remember working at Google HQ, everyone was either eating free food, at a pointless meeting, looking for parking or in line to get free food…. Hardly anything ever got done… I always knew if they got rid of everyone and only kept the top 20% performers the whole operation wouldn’t skip a beat

[Sanguen]

"The jobs are fake, The Money is fake, the Economy is fake" - Luke Smith

[stanleyshannon]

I am the quintessential generalist with decades of experience successfully developing software. Being retired now, I've been easily picking up remote contract work for the last several years. I am suddenly not getting a single new offer. Something is going on.

[HyperdriveRecruiting]

As a tech recruiter for the past 12 years, this is worst market I've ever seen. The jobs we do have to fill are all ultra niche hyper specialized with picky hiring managers and/or have undesirable characteristics such as low end under market pay ranges or firm onsite requirements. The roles seem to go unfilled indefinitely because the people who actually want the job are rejected and the people the clients want to hire are declining the offer. We never come across the "generalist" jobs you're encouraging people to find unfortunately. Great video though - appreciate your insight.

[bobbrian]

The reason companies hire so many programmers is all about power. If you have a team of 5 programmers, then those 5 people have huge power over the fortunes of the company, they can just leave and make the enterprise fail, or demand any level of salary. By having large teams, and none of those people responsible for anything more than a small aspect of the whole a company protects itself from having to deal with powerful workers. The workforce can be shed whenever cost cutting is required, no problem, and workers can be disciplined by the fear of being laid off

[keyone]

I'm a software engineer, and I've been through multiple rounds of layoffs at a big tech in the Bay Area. Believe me when they cut for layoffs, the decision between who stays and who goes comes from very high up leadership, they have absolutely no clue who's the high performers or not. I've seen teams where all the senior high performers were let go, typically leaders look at the quarterly planning and they decide which projects they want to deprioritize, which one they want to keep their focus on. Based on that they do the layoffs. Sometimes you see senior engineers they were on a major overhaul of a platform project to save on infrastructure costs for the long run, they are the experts. But the average engineer has a tiny feature to work on, but that tint feature has more value to leadership short term, so byebye the seniors 😢 Leaders only think short term for their own career path

[lyl]

During the pandemic, some tech workers have 4 “full-time” jobs simultaneously (making over $600K/yr); it shows some hires are excessive.
Infinite “fake” growth is unhealthy and unsustainable.

[jesseburgoon]

I didn't look through all of the comments, but many managers at companies over hire because they are working towards their next promotion. I have seen things like "you need to manage a team of X to get promoted" or "you need to be a manager of managers to reach the next level" so many times.

[KirelRed]

I highly specialized in the 2000's. In 2016, I was laid off because my specialization was no longer needed. I've had to change my entire career because of hyper-specialization.

[stonesfan]

All in all, we're all just bricks in the wall.

[itsacookie]

Honestly the tech industry needs salary adjustments. Paying fresh out of college students 150k+ to basically train them to not be a total detriment to any project for the next year or two is wild.

[dustinsoodak]

Add unnecessary employees: company is growing so stock price goes up.
Mass layoffs: company is becoming more efficient so stock price goes up.
I forget what video it was but I once saw a description of how the influence (and thus salary) a manager in a bureaucracy is proportional to how many people are under them.

[raymond_sycamore]

I am so burnt out by this industry. I'm all but done. If my position actually goes away since they are doing RTO, I doubt I'll ever get another job in the field. I have no debt, a paid off house, and low living expenses.

[alichamas]

The tech industry was started by people who were passionate about tech, then it was flooded by people who "wanted to work in tech", it's just a natural correction to get back to the essentials. I've worked as a developer in tech for over 25 years and am glad we're finally over the period where people were living their best lives in tech, without doing any real tech. There's been way too much bloat and bullshit over the years.

[Cybercolascorner]

Im glad you said, 400 people working on UI for snapchat? how is that even possible, like you said, it is by far THE worst UI of ANY comparable social media app

[aliquewilliams]

There’s a couple of things he’s mistaken about.

#1: The layoffs has nothing to do with how good a software engineer you are. Like he mentioned, entire teams “that shouldn’t exist” are being eliminated. Whether or not you’re are good at your job within the team is irrelevant.

#2: Total compensation has already dropped. There’s no reason to believe that the layoffs will result in higher compensation. There is a far greater supply of unemployed software engineers now than previously.

[aaronbono]

It's not just the ceos, managers are compensated based off of how many people report to them and so they want as many people under them as possible.

[mattlawrence]

I've been in IT for decades. I've been unemployed now for several months and have decided to retire because of how bad the market has become. I'm a former developer who moved into IT operations a couple of decades ago. Unfortunately, companies are often deciding that since everything is running they don't need ongoing maintenance, which leads to debacles like the MGM Grand ransomware disaster.

[_observer_-xkhb]

Another reason why tech companies hire so many programmers is that software these days is crazily over engineered. In the 90s software systems were developed simply and efficiently with emphasis on good code design and good code quality. These days it's all about daily's, scrum, Jira, meetings, meetings about meetings, complex test frameworks, automation test code taking 5 times longer to write than the actual functional code and which generally provides little value, greatly complicates development and refactoring and distracts from the actual code design. Programmers these days often don't even know the difference between using an array and a linked list. All they're interested in is the latest testing framework or whatever they think is the latest rage. There is also often a lot of over engineering of distributed systems. Companies using every kind of event backbone, database, etc merely because the programmers think it will look good on their resumes.