Seems like some companies are hoping to get great talent on the cheap (and pieces like this are trying to fan the flame of reduced employee costs), but I don't believe most of these layoffs affected large numbers of software engineers.
Would love for some numbers regarding this, but until I see stats on number of now-available software engineers I don't see any reason to believe this piece.
It's the whole "people think there's gonna be a recession, which causes a recession" thing all over again.
Although in this case tech talent is still a supply issue in the US. I don't think 10k (albeit exceptional) software engineers on the market will sway it when there are 4 million positions in total, and the market grew by 100k in the past year alone. Just my 2c.
According to this[1], there are 3.85mm tech jobs and 193,900 jobs added this year, so overall the industry grew. It reminds me of the people expecting house prices to fall 30% because interest rates went up a little -- there is still a ton of demand compared to the slightly increased supply on the market, so prices won't shift that much.
[1] https://www.computerworld.com/article/3542681/how-many-jobs-...
I expect many of these candidates will be laughed out of the room during the negotiating stage for asking for $300k total comp. The good times are over!
> For moral reasons, I don't want to hire someone who worked at Facebook.
That's quite a hostile and closed minded take, but an understandable cope for someone who could never hire a FAANG engineer in the first place.
I get what you are saying, but the worst performer at Facebook is most likely going to be a MUCH better engineer/programmer than a mid-level or low-level technician at YOUR company. Maybe it is true that they don't measure up any more at Facebook, but they might not measure up by 1 or 2% so they got cut. But that is still WAY better than anyone at someone else's company. The workers that get cut are the "A-" GPA employees. The ones with a 4.0 stay.
What is going to happen is that the high-end "A-" employees at the "A" companies are pushed down to the "B" level companies, and the "B" level employees will now be pushed down to "C" level companies. And the "C" level people are going to be pushed out the door. The lowest level workers are going to have the toughest time overall and especially "C" level new hires most of all.
As the saying goes, shit flows downhill, and "C" level employees and new hires are always at the bottom of the totem pole.
No ethical consumption, etc.
Meanwhile, the workers who took those jobs deluded themselves into thinking they deserved those salaries based purely on merit, and that their salary would keep increasing throughout their career.
I don't know, maybe I have the wrong view, but it always seemed like that to me. I just do business software development because all it has is addition, subtraction, division, and muliplication, and percentages every once in a while. No way could I create a program for a hardcore physics app. Because you have to know physics. To some extent, anyways. Anything more than basic math, forget it. And I think most people at organizations like facebook, netflix, etc are more like me. Maybe I'm wrong, but that would be my bet.
The questions I suppose are whether there are enough jobs to absorb the newly laid off workers with minimal disruption and whether mechanisms exist to move the workers into those jobs. Your 4 million includes irrelevant positions like IT help desk at a doctor's office in Omaha, which would be a bad match on both sides and even if it weren't would be hugely disruptive to the employee and others.
This also says nothing of the (what I would consider) tier 2/3 companies still offering over $300k TC for senior (5+ yr experience) technical talent. There are _even more_ more well-funded, semi-unicorn startups offering base salary $200k+ plus equity in their startups. In my last job search alone I found 3 of these companies which you've probably never heard of.
The competition for _technical_ talent is fierce.