So, after Twitter and Meta layoffs there will be around 15,000 people looking for the job. In one moment. With other layoffs it can be counted over 20,000 people IMHO.
Will this over flood the market and bring expectations and salaries down?
If anything this just means these people will be working on more different products, and that means more opportunities for even more programmers in the future.
You'd be earning about 50 000 USD per year as a senior developer, but that's plenty enough to live a very good life here. Outside IT people earn about 10 000 USD per year, food and services are very cheap, and there's a comprehensive welfare state.
That’s already a good salary for a mature dev in France (Paris +20%), and going above requires being intrapreneur/team lead/low manager. Americans usually say it’s shit pay.
Impressed to hear that Poland pays well for developers compared to other jobs. 50k for a senior role would definitely be a good salary even in other EU countries
Low Cost of living is true if you find a cheap enough place to live, but due to Russia's invasion, housing just isn't that cheap unless you know where to look for and are from Poland. I called 20 people just to be able to check a single apartment out.
50k isn't good for a senior role either; new grad salary in Germany in 2020 was around 60k gross.
Doubt it. Everybody in my current team has several offers to change jobs with 5-15% increase in salary. Some from the same (American) company for which we work right now (but they don't know that cause we're hired through 2 subcontracting companies ;) ).
It's very hard purely on cost of living to match a salary of 500k anywhere in the world, because at some point the extra items / investments all cost the same regardless of geography.
With 100K in Prague you can retire/never needing to work for money after 3 to 10 years Depending on your habits. Not sure how many Bay Area employees can do that staying there.
I am somewhere close and earn 300K which is about 30 times of what you need per year. One year of works covers all my expenses living like a local for the rest of my life in capital returns even at a modest 3.5% SWR.
I take that over 500K Job (of which over 30% goes to US Gov, while i pay max 10%) any time, heck I take it over a 1000K Job in SF/NY etc.
And it is not as expensive as it seems. If you live in a country with strong social safety nets hiring someone is crazy expensive.
The few contractors I know that work normal software jobs have lower rates, but they still make good money.
https://www.reed.co.uk/jobs/react-jobs?contract=True
In the UK the rate is between 400 and 600 (450/650 euro) and is one of the market that pays the most in Europe. Many other countries are offer half that amount for a "react" guy
Something similar happened in Ukraine. I had friends in Europe that were running companies in there till when the wages became comparable to the original country. They still kept the Ukrainian office but eventually reduced the growth in favour of other locations
My brother moved from FAANG to Atlanta to work for Home Depot. His comp went down from 400k to 140k. Which is still great for Atlanta, but there is no situation where a move from FAANG to any other company comes without wage deflation
As an aside, you're talking about switching from a company that supposedly makes revenue selling ads but really is inflated with free money to one that makes revenue from selling hammers. People who made this switch before the free money are going to be fine. Now that 11,000+ people are going to try to make this switch, they're going to wish they had.
The other thing that happens with this is your job becomes much more practical and less oriented to whatever fads are sweeping SV and HN. Some like it, some don't.
Is this ignoring finance, promotions, or (until recent layoffs) private/public big tech/unicorn-like companies?
Like, even within FAANG the pay bands are huge for the same level.
I don't notice any request for sympathy in the GP comment.
If prosperity distribution had kept track during the last 50 years (wealth has increased dramatically due to tech), the average salary would be 6 figures, so it’s actually better for wealth distribution to have tech folks making higher 6 figures to put pressure on the 8+ figure class.
Compare that to a new grad at Google Germany making 130k€. Somebody with ten years of experience there would be making closer to 300k€.
Use profit margins to determine what wages should be. I wouldn't be surprised if the wages are fine on that basis, actually. But let's draw the right conclusions for the right reasons.
EU - esp. Germany and some other European countries - have abysmal salary compared to rest of the developed world and a poor wage growth over the last 10 years or so.
Heck, even countries like India have experienced faster growth: netto, a senior tech professional in India can earn more than what what they'd get in Germany. And that's not even accounting for 3-5x difference in cost of living.
But i don't see that being necessarily true and largely depends on type of software you build and the culture of the company. A lot of people are decent engineers and are not interviewing for FANG for a variety of reasons are for no reason in companies that may or may not deserve them. I think its hard to build street cred to get people to work for less, but interviews should always have a good bar.
You don't need some Google genius to do a lot of this work, and sometimes a regular person will do a better job than some wonderkid who spends too much time and effort trying to automate it
Small and Central European would be Hungary, Slovakia, Czechia, Austria, Slovenia, Switzerland based on the most widely used definition of Central Europe [1]
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Europe#/media/File:Cen...
Every country changes their belonging to a region based on the perceived value bias of what is being discussed.
A user here humorously put it that Slovenians see themselves as Western European when it comes to how honest and hard they work, Southern European when it comes to weather and food, and Eastern European when it comes to drinking, partying and having fun.
But geographical location however is immutable, so let's stick to that instead of the other more biased definitions.
Proceeds to using precisely biased, political, definitions.
Have you seen the second map in the introduction?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_Union_member_...
If they're willing to move to anywhere in the US and/or take a 50+% pay cut then they'll have no problem getting a job. If they all want to stay where they are and get paid within 20% of their current salary then lots of people will end up without a job.
EDIT: I mistakenly first wrote "each day" instead of "in each direction".
When I roll on to a new project and it is more/less work than my previous one, I don't think of it as a pay increase or decrease.
No, a FAANG employee probably isn’t suffering (although consider the pay outside of the prestige jobs) but everyone just got a multi-year reminder of those indirect costs.
If you somehow forced someone to sit and practice drawing a hand for eight hours a day, they would get surprisingly far as an artist.
Being a founder isn’t too dissimilar. Determination tends to be decisive.
If you spent eight hours a day trying to make a small group of users love you, you’d get surprisingly far.
I think that’s what they mean about potential founders at Stripe. There’s a lot of potential energy that a layoff might release.
There's certainly less demand for Facebook's style of social media, for sure.
It depends on how you define "startup." They don't necessarily have to keep staring at screens for their living.
It was mass layoffs of real estate and banking workers in 2008 that kick started the food truck industry.
I don't think a recession with low demand and high interest rates is a good time to start a company at all.
Why would they perform better in another industry where presumably they do not have qualifications either (nor ability)?
They really need some economy lessons. If I were a true capitalist, I’d teach them socialism for free.
You shouldn't take these governmental reports at face value. In my country, we see a lot of these reports too, and for all kinds of professions. Most of the time it just means that the corporate want more people willing to work for less.
If i put out a job ad: Need a software develioer with skills in COBOL, latest react and assembly, to lead a team of 10 for $30k
And I cant hire anyone
It will still end up in government statistics for shortage.
This is lile if we all put out ads on Gumtree/craiglist 'will buy a Toyota, brand new, for $1000", and someone counts thise ad and concludes there is a shortage of Toyotas.
Not all organizations get lots of value from developers.
It also means they're not losing a lot by not having a developer, so they're perfectly ok with having the position open until someone takes it.
If I want to hire a top proffeshional for minimum wage, its not a job offer, its just wishfull thinking.
Demand elasticity makes any report on the volume of demand irrelevant unless it also covers the pricing of that demand.
Meta was hiring aggressively at the beginning of the year, as were many other companies.
Seriously, under current law, H1B workers will be even more locked-out of US jobs until these newly RIFed US workers land somewhere, but India doesn’t really depend on H1B contractor revenue like it did during the mass RIFs of the “Dot Com Bust.” No, now Indian citizens can work comfortably, efficiently and economically from India, like many of the far more expensive (and now RIFed) US workers had been doing from their US homes. For those RIFed US workers to compete with more economical India-based workers, they’re going to need to either get very small and crawl under the door to struggling US employers (by lower their salaries while abandoning remote work) or maybe they’ll need to cut expenses by moving to a “small central EU country” and get paid in Euros.
just like we saw in the 80s, 90s, 00s, and 10s
Most of meta enigneers won't be working for 120k midwest coding job if they can avoid it. So spread will be focused on similar pay positions vs distributed unifromly.
So really what needs to happen is companies need to be reaching out URGENTLY to those have been kicked to the curb.
There is thousands of years of experience this population carries.
MANGA companies pay ridiculously well.
I suspect a lot of "Reality sh*t sandwiches" will be in people's lunchboxes.
So, this would be huge financial setback for impacted people akin to losing half of their wealth and cutting down their future income as well in half.
Are you assuming a 4 year cliff or why would one lose 4 years worth of stock?
Interesting point you're bringing up. Personally I wouldn't count unvested stock as part of my wealth.
Basic things like the KISS principle have been thrown in the garbage can, almost all that matters is how the tech we’re now using can further increase our career prospects.
If you can do the work, awesome, no one cares how you feel about it. But that's the keyword: *IF* you can.
People who went into IT for the love of it are diligent by default (from my personal experience) and CAN do the work. Then you get people who enter IT for the money (nothing wrong with that) and not all of them can do the work.
Those are the show-stoppers usually which incur various debts (from tech-debt to actual financial debt) because you end up having to carry them.
Let's not pretend as if they don't exist, there's so many of them.
A person like that was moved off of my team recently, and the general lift on the team from just having them gone has been astounding. Everything is up: velocity, stability, even just the vibe of technical planning sessions.
> We've known since the early sixties, but have never come to grips with the implications that there are net negative producing programmers (NNPPs) on almost all projects, who insert enough spoilage to exceed the value of their production. So, it is important to make the bold statement: Taking a poor performer off the team can often be more productive than adding a good one. [6, p. 208] Although important, it is difficult to deal with the NNPP. Most development managers do not handle negative aspects of their programming staff well. This paper discusses how to recognize NNPPs, and remedial actions necessary for project success.
Weinberg, Gerald M. The Psychology of Computer Programming (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1971)
Dunn, Robert H. Software Quality: Concepts and Plans (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1990)
Christenson, D. A. et al, "Statistical Methods Applied to Software", collected in Schulmeyer, G. Gordon & McManus, James I. Total Quality Management for Software (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1992)
And while one can certainly debate the "is the advice given in something that is 30 or 50 years old still valid" - that debate itself is interesting in considering what was going on in the minds of managers back then and how they tried to solve these problems.
There is a certain lack of institutional knowledge and a desire to throw much of it away with the phrase "we're agile" or some other management buzzword of the day... and yet Brook's Law is still as valid today as it was nearly five decades ago (gotta keep an eye on that... I wonder if they'll do a third edition in 2025).
Years ago when interviewing people I didn't have to wonder as often how passionate the candidate actually is towards the field, or whether they're just looking for a high pay job.
These days I get those doubts a bit more. I think most people are still at least somewhat passionate though (bad/awkward programmer tooling which we've gotten used to are somehow great filters....)
He said he hopes people voluntarily decide not to work in tech. Why suggest he wants to disallow?
So it's not the end of the world. It really is a pretty minor set back so far.
https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=56878
so double the numbers for a sense of how many people G actually employs.
> Recruiting will be disproportionately affected since we’re planning to hire fewer people next year. We’re also restructuring our business teams more substantially.
In addition, we go from a phase where people new in the job market (students etc) were being hired quickly to no one hiring them. So there are both laid off people and new entrants added to the pool.
I don’t think that’s necessarily true. Hiring students is much cheaper so companies may still hire them whilst letting go of other expensive employees at a cost of quality.
Well I predict two things:
One, the days of $200-500k TC being common and widespread are going to end. If you're in this bracket, or about to break into it, yeah be worried, it's probably going to evaporate.
Two, the CV value of Meta, Snap, Stripe, etc. is also going to end. I don't think they will command the same premium in the jobs market from now(ish) onward.
If bay-area comp drops, what do you think will happen to developer comp in the midwest? (refer to programmer compensation before 90s+ SV was a thing)
Nonetheless, I don't think the point changes. One group getting less doesn't usually mean that it's going to transfer over and some other group will get less. Most likely, everyone is going to get less.
Rising tide lifts all ships as they say (and the opposite is true as well)
Expect the median to go down, doubtful the top 25% will change much.
Here's what I'd add: Its extremely difficult to hire really talented senior engineers. Its easy to look at layoffs as "great, we should be able to find senior talent now"; but the opposite may actually be true. Layoffs, at least in otherwise "fine" companies, will predominately not impact senior engineers, and they'll also be less likely to leave. Moreover, the industry is effectively building a wall to breach into seniority; the pathway from junior to senior is harder and harder, even going back a year or two, and many of these junior/normal devs were massively compensated at these roles.
My heart goes out to the junior devs right now; there really are two industries and job markets.
| Apple | Google | Meta
market cap | $2.245 trillion | $1.163 trillion | $261.8 billion
revenue | $387.5 billion | $278.1 billion | $117.9 billion
employees | 154000 | 174014 | 71970
revenue / employee | $2.517 million | $1.598 million | $1.639 millionI make ~$300k/yr and could probably swing $200k/yr if I didn't save anything (I save ~$100k/yr currently). I just can't imagine it being reasonable with housing + other costs.
1. Housing costs are elevated here more than anywhere else in the world. 2. Cost of goods is drastically higher here than other parts. The (roughly) same amount of groceries from a local Sprouts here (we spend ~$100/wk), is almost always $30 less everytime we go back home for some durations of time to be with family. 3. Cost of services like daycare or anything else necesary to let the work happen take note and charge enormously.
As it stands, between housing + utilities, our spend is about $8000/mo (factoring in the odd things as well like car repairs over time). To accomodate that, I'd need $100k/yr after-tax, and that assumes that nothing drastic ever happens, and factors in no savings at all.
We could downsize and save $10k/yr, but that's not really making a substantial dent long-term.
$200k realistically feels like a minimum to keep any kind of young families in the area. I could definitely do with less salary if I could move, but companies are very wishy-washy about remote work.
Until that is solved, or the Bay Area calms down, these salaries aren't going anywhere. But if remote work is embraced even more, than returning to say $150k is completely reasonable.
Anyone who tells you otherwise is living in Lalaland.
The main thing is figuring out what's the full impact. If it's 10%+ of tech workers, the golden days are over for the vast majority of tech workers.
This letter says mainly recruiting and biz depts.
At the end of the day, businesses have to generate profits. You can only defer that so long. And most tech companies have been deferring it for a decade now.
Proportionally these numbers would not make a difference in a small European country.
Now all that easy money is going away.
The current numbers don't mean much, but they're just the start.
If recovery starts taking a few years, quality of life drops a lot.
For instance, Amazon in Seattle benefited as thousands of engineers found themselves out of work in 2000 and 2001.
In addition, AWS was largely inspired by the fact that Sun Microsystems refused to cut their pricing. Amazon was using a lot of Oracle databases and Sun hardware, and when Sun wouldn't negotiate their prices down, Bezos began to figure out A Better Way.
Bezos was particularly irked because there was a flood of practically new Sun hardware available (due to the crash) but Sun wouldn't negotiate on price, despite the market being awash in high quality used hardware.
Basically Bezos didn't want to spend $80,000 on a new Sun server, but he also didn't want to run hardware that was used.
Shit, I get messaged about a thousand software jobs per year and I'm just one guy.
According to the companies that's all that's happening here.
As for unemployment figures; apparently they are very low right now. Which suggests companies actually need to offer more to be able to fill open vacancies. A few tens of thousands highly employable people leaving the fang companies is not going to change that.
Will it disturb the market for engineers expecting to make $500k/yr 2 years out of school? Absolutely. But most tech stocks being down 50%+ YTD had already done that.
I think there's going to be a lot more layoffs announced from far more companies over the next 6-12 months. I think all of those people will be able to find jobs, but I think many of them will have to settle for significant pay cuts. The insane TCs driven by an inflated stock market that were seen in certain markets/from certain companies are certainly going away for a long while.
Personally, I wish that people in our industry would push for a larger base salary-based comp and less stock-based.
There's jobs for everyone who was laid off, but unclear if they're as good/lucrative.
source: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/09/02/heres-where-the-jobs-are-for...
Keep in mind it's always about people, not about soulless entities.
1. Apartments can be perfectly fine for a happy life, everywhere across the world.
2. Conception and child upbringing do not mandate having a house.
Welcome to most of Europe.