Tech firms were fighting a war for talent. Now they are waging war on talent

  "In the years immediately following the dot-com meltdown, there was more tech labor than there were tech jobs. That didn’t last long. By 2005, the tech economy had bounced back on its own. After that, the emergence of mobile (a new and lucrative category of tech) plus low interest rate policy by central banks fueled demand for tech. Before the first decade of the century was out, “tech labor scarcity” became an accepted norm."

I this this could be better translated into "For years, tech firms were fighting a war on wages. Now they are waging war on talent because good talent costs more.".

>When labor is difficult to replace, management is hostage to labor

Fully true, salaries went up a lot during COVID and management had to do something. So they get rid of people.

This is kind of similar to what IBM did in the early 80s. Programmers at the time could demand and get any wage if they became individual contractors. IBM lobbied Congress and got a law pass making that illegal just for programmers. That law is still on the books. I was just starting to look into that based upon what people at work where telling me, but the law was passed.

People with better memories from that era could expand or correct me :)

When someone wonders why the company creates BS levels with arbitrary requirements that don't map to the way engineering works - it is because of this reason. They want an easy way to stack rank and restructure in perpetuity.

As an example, even though a lot of engineering work is collaborative aka work together else it won't happen, corporate decision-makers detest thinking about employees like this. They want to think that EVERY individual can be stacked against others at a similar role - and they can just pull the bottom x% for their margins and FCF. And that this will have ZERO impact on the production. They sincerely believe this and consultants make out like bandits peddling this exact model.

If this is still difficult to wrap your head around, imagine a basketball team where every player has a different role and they all work together to achieve the mission. Except the CEO has ordered the HR department to stack rank all the players based on points scored - which obviously is going to be different in different positions. It has also suddenly set up the team to not pass the ball even if passing the ball would yield a better outcome for the team.

The article frames this as a bad thing, but a shift towards standardizing and commoditizing roles isn't necessarily anti-labor—this is one of the major things that unions do, after all.

A workforce where every employee is a snowflake who falls or prospers based on subjective 'feel' of their superiors is one where divide and conquer tactics work well for employers and one where nepotism thrives and meritocracy is effectively impossible.

If roles are defined and standardized and salary bands are known and predictable, that can actually create an environment that is as much easier for employees to navigate as it is for employers. What starts out to benefit one party can actually level the field for everyone.