Also later in life having to suddenly switch jobs is neither easy nor desirable.
It’s business. It’s purely transactional. Why would you expect a company to “have a heart”?
A returning intern I mentored at $BigTech got an offer coming straight out of college that was twice the median wage in America and it’s a remote job.
They save a crap ton of money every month in case things go wrong.
Also, what the hell are you talking about about them "not demanding loyalty"? Big companies demand loyalty all the time. When I worked at an Apple, I had to sign a whole bunch of non-compete forms. Talk about "demanding loyalty"; I technically wasn't even allowed to open a Github issue on an open source project without permission. The only leverage you have as an employee is quitting.
Where did I actually say that companies do not ask for loyalty?
> Where did I actually say that companies do not ask for loyalty?
You didn't explicitly, but you did say "worker makes it fairer to demand loyalty but not reciprocate". I'm claiming that the non-competes already demand a lot of loyalty, but the companies do not reciprocate it.
Yes it's so self-evident that even you argument for it is moving the goalposts. Just to remind you, we are talking about an employee leaving affecting the bottom line of the company, not the company shutting down.
> You didn't explicitly, but you did say "worker makes it fairer to demand loyalty but not reciprocate". I'm claiming that the non-competes already demand a lot of loyalty, but the companies do not reciprocate it.
Loyalty is implicit, not some terms you sign on a contract. Duh, you have to follow those for legal reasons, not because of 'loyalty'. But let's indulge you.
If your contract has a non-compete and you want to see reciprocation of the loyalty, ask to add in your contract the terms that would made you feel it's a fair exchange of loyalty. Otherwise don't sign the contract. But of course you will sign it because you like that fat paycheck high-tech/finance is giving you - won't accept to work for those pesky companies that can't afford non-competes for a lower salary. You make it sound like non-competes are a common thing except for the ridiculously well-paid white-collar jobs.
At least in the United States, they're reasonably common even in startups. I don't know what to tell you.
I have never in my 25+ years in tech thought that any job was going to be “long term”.
I also sacrificed more compensation for the stability of my family until my youngest graduated and then I took a job at BigTech.
It didn’t require me to relocate. But it could have required extensive travel.
It's unclear whether that would be better. In control theory, underdamped systems are generally preferred as it allows you to reach the desired value rapidly even though you often overshoot.
Overdamped systems (IE hire in moderation) can be very slow to respond and often spend the majority of their time in the un-desired regime.
It's quite possible that tech over-hiring when people were forced to work from home yielded a net good for society even though many of those hires were let go a couple years later.
e.g. a one-half critically-damped system. something following a standard first-order ODE like:
\frac{dh}{dt} = K_p (h^\* - h) - K_i \int (h^\* - h) dt - f(h)
Is this a proper model for a human organization? Who the fuck knows but it's the model you're advocating for and I'm just re-explaining what the other guy you replied to was suggesting in the first place, but this time using your framing. Yes, he also mentioned they should consider a slightly over damped system but he 100% did advocate for considering an underdamped system.
The person you replied to was arguing that perhaps something a bit more mildly underdamped could get rid of the requirement for that extra complication (firing / layoffs).
In addition, what about the boom itself? What if you're cautious but, during that boom period, you get outcompeted in key areas as a result? This might put you in a worse situation during the bust phase than if you'd over-hired.
Hindsight is 20/20, so I prefer to avoid being judgemental over these types of decisions, while still holding people accountable to doing the right thing, even in tough times.
That's how you lose your culture and throw the dice again on market fitness. (Well, that and randomly firing people.) Knowledge work just can't scale that fast, and nowadays every work is knowledge work.
What those companies did is bad from every possible point of view.
Because it doesn't create unnecessary suffering for the unfortunate people who find themselves out of a job because some executive over-allocated for a particular role or department. Fundamentally, we want people to still participate in the capitalist system and not reject it because they're constantly treated like cattle.
Unnecessary suffering is going to happen either way. Keep in mind, at the time of hiring, there is real demand, and while "forever" is more than a bit ridiculous (and no doubt a misrepresentation of the executives' thinking), the truth is nobody knows exactly how long it will last, so you're getting it wrong no matter what you do.
> Fundamentally, we want people to still participate in the capitalist system and not reject it because they're constantly treated like cattle.
That some people don't always have a job is part of the capitalist system. What happens to them when they're not employed, that's not about capitalism.
That seems like a big claim for which I haven't seen any evidence.
Umm... the entire basis for the article was that there was a belief that market conditions at the time would remain true "forever". That's a very different delusion from thinking there isn't something there.
...and there's plenty of evidence that there was real demand. Real revenue grew significantly during that time. Streaming services saw significant increases in subscriptions. Computer sales were up. In tech in general, sales were up across the board. If you haven't seen any evidence of increases in demand during that time period, I don't think you'll ever see evidence of increases in demand.
You can have dramatic gains in revenue, increased sales, increased subscribers, etc., and less 'available cash'. What you do have is more demand.
However, if there is demand for your product, engineers are a good way to make it better. If you don't make it better, that demand will go to a vendor who does.
Either way, if you believe these companies never needed the engineers in the first place, it is an entirely separate claim from the claims in this article.
And I'm not presenting some amazing new idea. People have been discussing for years that these companies hire people just to have them, not for business goals.
"“They hire everybody, whether they need it or not, just to have a reserve of talent,” he says. “They can afford it.” " https://www.wsj.com/articles/these-tech-workers-say-they-wer...
""The worst part of working at Google for me was, as for many others, feeling under-utilized. " (7 years ago) https://www.quora.com/What-can-a-prospective-or-new-Googler-...
"Most people I know of who quit Google did so because they feel they were underutilized" (14 years ago! https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/9qeuq/i_quit_my_job_a...)
So is it safe to say then that you don't think tech companies fell for the forever fallacy?
As you have pointed out, there has always been stories that large companies have unnecessary hires, and engage in strategies of cornering the market for labour. From that perspective, there has NEVER been demand for resources, there is no rationale for hiring more or fewer people, and nothing would constitute as "evidence" that there is demand.
Now the stuff you cite is not really supporting evidence of that. It's evidence that large companies often are inefficient and under-utilize use of their workforce. That is definitely not a new idea, and is well supported both by evidence and simply by intuition about the challenges of efficiently organizing people.
My claim was that given shifting labour demands, it's not necessarily "less harm" to under hire because at some unknown point in the future you may not want to have those hires.
Now, when you claimed that there was no evidence of an increase demand for labour... which really had nothing to do with my point. In part of my response to that claim that there no evidence with a statement that if there ever was evidence of demand, it was at that time.
There was, in fact, evidence. Maybe not sufficient to convince you, but certainly enough evidence to convince hiring managers. What there wasn't evidence of was that this increased demand would sustain itself forever. There never is. The idea that there is less harm in not hiring people because there is reason to believe that demand might decline at some unknown point in the future is just wrong. Sure, if you know that you only need someone for a week or a month, you shouldn't hire them for a long-term position. Not only is it harmful to them, but it is harmful to your organization. However, even if you know that need might dissipate at some unknown point in the future, if you know you need someone until something changes, there is no harm reduction in not hiring.