Ask HN: My YC company is hiring one engineer/day but there's not enough work | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: My YC company is hiring one engineer/day but there's not enough work

14 pointsta_jobstartup7 comments

I asked an AI to write this for me so my bosses can’t identify me based on my writing style.

I work at a YC company. It’s not really a startup anymore — we’re well past that phase. We’re hiring at an insane pace right now, roughly one new software engineer per day.

The weird part is… I don’t feel like there’s that much work to do.

I’m not saying there’s no work, but the pace of hiring feels disconnected from reality. I don’t see enough meaningful projects, clear ownership, or actual execution needs to justify this kind of growth. It doesn’t make sense to me.

I feel uncomfortable about it, but I also feel stuck. The job is good. The salary is good. Objectively, I’m lucky. And with the current market — especially with AI changing everything so fast — I’m scared to quit. It doesn’t feel like a safe time to voluntarily jump ship.

After seeing what happened with Bolt and similar companies that rapidly expanded headcount, I can’t shake the feeling that this is just a headcount inflation phase. Grow fast, look bigger, raise more, justify valuations. But with AI accelerating productivity, I keep thinking: what happens when leadership realizes they don’t need this many engineers?

It feels like we’re building up to a correction. And when it comes, it could be brutal. AI tools are already increasing individual output. At some point, won’t companies decide they can do more with fewer people?

I’m honestly lost and scared. I feel like we’re all pretending this makes sense, but deep down it doesn’t. I worry that sooner rather than later, a lot of us are going to be out of a job.

If anyone has advice — whether you’ve been through something similar, or you see this differently — I’d really appreciate it. Right now I feel stuck between staying in something that feels unsustainable and leaving into a market that feels even more uncertain.

You can either leave or stay. If you want to leave, start interviewing. It sounds like you want to stay, so optimize for that. Reduce unnecessary spend, increase savings, and ride it until it ends, either for them or you. Keep the job until you cannot. You can then look for another gig. You can only control what you control, don’t worry about that when you cannot. Optimize within what you can control.

I think you're spot on. They're hiring as much as possible to make numbers look better ("we're growing so fast!") and later on blame AI for layoffs ("we're way more efficient with AI now!"). That's the play in almost all VC funded companies. If you want to stay there, try to shift to a position that decides about the product and has a lot domain specific knowledge. Start looking for an enterprise job if stability is important for you.

Do you want to be one of the ones that survives the expected layoffs?

It seems like you should make yourself either irreplaceable or otherwise very marketable.

And be ready for the opposite of what you choose, just in case.

Ask to become a team lead, get some of those new engineers working for you. If you've been there awhile you're in a position to do that and there are several benefits: you might become privy to information that explains the hiring. You can keep your own team lean and demonstrate efficiency to protect yourself a bit. There would probably be a pay bump.

Senior leadership likely has an elastic workforce designed to contract (not renew contractors) and expand (hire contractors) based on market and business conditions. I would worry only to the extent that you save money due to uncertainty. Anything else is outside of your control/concern.

the correction you're describing is real. the timing is unknowable but the direction isn't.

two things tend to protect people in this scenario: domain knowledge that's hard to hand off, and a visible productivity multiplier with AI tools. engineers who can demonstrate 5-10x throughput are the last to go. the ones doing standard work at standard pace are not, regardless of seniority.

the actionable move is to close that gap now, while you still have access to good tooling and time to build the habit. the market can stay irrational longer than your job security can hold, but the productivity gap is something you can actually control.

You can look for a job without leaving this one. I don’t know what makes you think staying in this job is any safer than taking a different one — so long as you’re still employed while you look. Better that than looking in this economy _after_ a layoff.

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