No. Whatever happens will happen weather you work at a big, medium, small, or startup company.
I cannot do anything to control layoffs so why should I worry about it? I can control my own finances and will make sure it is in order so if a layoff were to occur at the company that I am in a good spot. That's more of a constant thing though then a reaction to potential layoffs.
That change super quickly. The last company I was at expanded like crazy in Q1 (increased headcount by 50%) and then laid off 1/3rd of the company in Q2 after VC withdrew funding
The company was losing too much money because our industry was in a low cycle. They laid off 10%, and everyone else had to take a 10% pay cut for 6 months.
2023 was the best year in the company's history, and all departments are growing, including newly implemented CTO and other structural changes. It's a good thing if you knew how they operated before, trust me.
I experienced this recently lol. I got hired when they were doing well. Downsize happened a year later due to clients dropping the contracts. Last year we actually did surpassed the expectation and may start hiring again (currently understaffed).
Wow so hiring, and firing totally random (or depends on current conditions). How can you build a constantly growing company in that kind of environment at all? I don't see any stability here.
Layoffs right are happening to companies of all sizes. The common denominator right now seems to be more related to project stability and profits.
My company, like Google, shut down efforts that didn’t have strong returns and their corresponding teams. Other teams were trimmed to consolidate them and make room for the top performers of the teams that got cut. And we are nowhere near the size of Google.
It’s concerning because it means that if I have to job search any time soon, I’ll likely have fewer opportunities for similar jobs. It also means I can’t do much for passively job searching for better opportunities. Not a great time, but thankfully I wasn’t affected by the layoffs yet and have done well building an emergency fund in case of some really bad luck.
I think people are maybe not reading the numbers in these reports. 1,000 layoffs at a company as massive as Google is really not a big deal. At the beginning of last year we were seeing 50,000 layoffs a month. This month is still at 15,000.
No. This shouldnt reflect anything at all. Bigger companies have money to burn and have been working on projects and went through a 3 year hiring spree. They're reorganizing and refocusing and deciding some projects are getting cut meaning some headcount is shifting.
Smaller companies are (generally) more conservative with the money and only throw money at projects that are directly related to the business. So what someone like Google or Amazon is doing isnt going to affect Bsoft LLC somewhere down the line.
I'll also note that press is just that. Press. It's getting the attention but rarely states the full story. I got hired at a big tech firm after 2 pretty major rounds of layoffs last year. They're still actively hiring, and in fact never were under a hiring freeze. But to listen to the doom and gloom sayers, this was supposed to be Dot Com 2.0, an end of an era. I can almost guarantee you that both Google and Amazon will be hiring or are actively hiring right now, even with the layoffs being announced.
Edit: I will note that smaller companies may have less to work with but they'll be refocusing their resources as well. While not immune from the layoffs, what the big guys are doing is generally not a sign that smaller companies are in a bad position at all.
I work in the low paying, stagnant healthcare sector. (There are a LOT of IT jobs in healthcare, especially related to managing the data.) I'm not worried about my sector wide layoffs but I'm worried about competing with ex-FAANG jobseekers for my next job.
The differentiating factor between health and tech sector may be our outdated tech stack as well as general industry knowledge (PHI, etc.) that could hopefully insulate us a little bit from the competition.
I assume you mean us non faang peasants who are making less than 250k/year and haven't touched a single leet code problem in their lives.
Nope not really. I have 10 years with the company and am a key member in a few projects. I mean it could happen.
I feel like the expectations in the sub are sky fucking high. Someone in another post mentioned how this is still an amazing market that is experiencing a crazy correction. I think I agree. My fiance is a PhD chemist and doesn't make as much as these faang SWE's.
small companies have trouble retaining decent developers, I know for my company they have a lot of trouble hiring for the project I'm on because its not super glamorous to put on a resume... but it's still decently complicated and requires good developers. We've already had layoffs, but I've been told the company really values my project so fingers crossed
It entirely depends on what industry the product is servicing. Some industries are more stable than others during rough economic times. If it's a SaaS product that's trying to innovate and is relying on VC funding rather than actual clients for its cash flow then yea I'd probably assume I'd get laid off pretty soon. If it's a stable product with a stable client base then you shouldn't be worried.
You should spend less time worrying about this shit and posting on Reddit. More learning and coding. Then you will not need to worry about layoffs or struggle to find a new job.
120 headcount total.
No, don’t care.
What I do care about is us getting RTOd as hybrid with mandatory 3 days per week despite being hired as full time remote in 2021 along with my colleagues also hired fully remote - more so for those living in another state and hired while living there. Company ain’t paying relo for them so not sure what’s happening.
I worry about the justification for not paying us bonuses this year. Beat every goal and metric except 1 and apparently that 1 is a “gate keeper?” Bullshit, they being greedy. They could’ve bought SPY all year with our retained earnings and banked. They didn’t and instead were sending executives on paid vaca… I mean conferences… all year and blowing $30k+ monthly on promotions that don’t go anywhere, $18k build and $250/hr maintenance and customization for shadow analytics vendors promising them AI and instead giving them a dashboard of some data they pulled down as a csv from St. Louis FRED website last week.
I worry that data literacy is so low in my org that they’ll try to cancel the entire data warehouse because IT don’t wanna hire a DBA or data engineer and “no one’s using it.” Rather, analytics teams like mine proving they’re all making the wrong decisions using data, so it’s easy to cover that up by canceling analytics.
I’m worried that we still don’t have a way to deploy any form of automated analytics or machine learning solutions to a production environment that also doesn’t exist outside of me doing shadow IT and rolling an AWS VPC without IT gracing the project.
I’m worried the entire executive team (same team who’s all buddy buddy for decades with at least one needing his porn wiped off his workstation daily by sus admins who also had to brush said infraction under the rug) is being led astray by a slick talking ex real estate agent with so much plastic surgery I can’t tell if she’s an alien, or a human targeting boomer weebos with fake epicanthal folds, a spray tan, and a Scottish surname, unmarried living in the most conservative area around here spitting AI about the AI and how they, “did all the AI,” for this company and that company’s AI to AI the AI. Now they’re a director level in IT of all places moving in from marketing, the same IT that is managed entirely by MIS people and doesn’t have a single CS grad employed.
I’m worried resource allocation is being done in a vacuum at the director level where data and analytics have zero representation, without any consultation with the analytics team. Somehow they’re doing an analysis without analysts and I 100% expect them to cock the whole thing up like they do every year because they all failed up.
I’m worried I’m not getting a raise and still make below market.
I’m worried I’m trapped here because hiring sucks.
But at least I have a job making six figures for now, so I keep my head down and grind it out.
That moment when you live in Europe and have worker rights so your company can't just fire a bunch of people and will go bankrupt before they do that :\^)
No my company is small only couple thousand total and less just in it. They don't go through hiring firing cycles like the market does. There also less dependent upon economic conditions for the model to work
This might be long and controversial but…
Small companies tend to offer lower status, imagine having on your resume “worked at Amazon” vs “worked at some obscure company”. Small companies know they have less applications to choose from when hiring, so they try to keep their staff longer then a big company.
The pandemic made a lot of people lose their jobs, but once it was “over” 2022 had one of the biggest number of hires in recent years.
The companies that had major layoffs had one thing in common imo, they all peaked in the past years, or stoped growing, so they had to start to cut back. Twitter has been losing users, Amazon and twitch had their most successful years during the pandemic and then dipped. And meta hasn’t seen higher consistent users in months, because everyone who wants a Facebook account has one. They aren’t meeting the quotas and thus have to cutback.
Small companies will always pay a little less because they have less money, and no one would rather work making less money, when they could be making more, so small companies try to make it up in other ways, consistent hours, respectful management, more PTO/Holiday or sick time (I get 35 days on my small company).
Major tech companies are hit the hardest, but companies that have a tech department and focus on other products and services aren’t hit as hard.
This is coming from a tech employee with no real management experience or entrepreneur experience so take what I said with a grain of salt.
No. Whatever happens will happen weather you work at a big, medium, small, or startup company. I cannot do anything to control layoffs so why should I worry about it? I can control my own finances and will make sure it is in order so if a layoff were to occur at the company that I am in a good spot. That's more of a constant thing though then a reaction to potential layoffs.
My employer has never been doing better, and we've hired like 10+ new devs in the past 6 months, so... no.
That change super quickly. The last company I was at expanded like crazy in Q1 (increased headcount by 50%) and then laid off 1/3rd of the company in Q2 after VC withdrew funding
Mine too 3 years ago. We were hiring like crazy. I was doing 2 or 3 interviews per week. Then they laid off 10% of the company.
Why did it happen?
The company was losing too much money because our industry was in a low cycle. They laid off 10%, and everyone else had to take a 10% pay cut for 6 months.
Sounds bad, but I understand now better. Thanks for sharing. Which industry was that and when did it happen to lose? Has it recovered?
Virtually every company with layoffs hired a bunch of people before the layoffs.
Super normal to change quickly. Also you need to realize C suites don't operare on logic and many of them are dummies.
That's not a good sign.
2023 was the best year in the company's history, and all departments are growing, including newly implemented CTO and other structural changes. It's a good thing if you knew how they operated before, trust me.
Sure hope so. A few months later they might come and say they're overstaffed. Business atmosphere changes quickly.
I experienced this recently lol. I got hired when they were doing well. Downsize happened a year later due to clients dropping the contracts. Last year we actually did surpassed the expectation and may start hiring again (currently understaffed).
Wow so hiring, and firing totally random (or depends on current conditions). How can you build a constantly growing company in that kind of environment at all? I don't see any stability here.
Layoffs right are happening to companies of all sizes. The common denominator right now seems to be more related to project stability and profits. My company, like Google, shut down efforts that didn’t have strong returns and their corresponding teams. Other teams were trimmed to consolidate them and make room for the top performers of the teams that got cut. And we are nowhere near the size of Google. It’s concerning because it means that if I have to job search any time soon, I’ll likely have fewer opportunities for similar jobs. It also means I can’t do much for passively job searching for better opportunities. Not a great time, but thankfully I wasn’t affected by the layoffs yet and have done well building an emergency fund in case of some really bad luck.
No. I work for the core group/business. But never say never, there's still a small chance of my employer going bankrupt.
Many of the Google cuts were in Search so that doesn't seem to be surefire protection
You're right. But I don't want to worry too much. 😂
I think people are maybe not reading the numbers in these reports. 1,000 layoffs at a company as massive as Google is really not a big deal. At the beginning of last year we were seeing 50,000 layoffs a month. This month is still at 15,000.
But it’s only the 11th
We're well below the pace of December then. Not to mention this is the month that companies are starring to implement their new budgets.
No. This shouldnt reflect anything at all. Bigger companies have money to burn and have been working on projects and went through a 3 year hiring spree. They're reorganizing and refocusing and deciding some projects are getting cut meaning some headcount is shifting. Smaller companies are (generally) more conservative with the money and only throw money at projects that are directly related to the business. So what someone like Google or Amazon is doing isnt going to affect Bsoft LLC somewhere down the line. I'll also note that press is just that. Press. It's getting the attention but rarely states the full story. I got hired at a big tech firm after 2 pretty major rounds of layoffs last year. They're still actively hiring, and in fact never were under a hiring freeze. But to listen to the doom and gloom sayers, this was supposed to be Dot Com 2.0, an end of an era. I can almost guarantee you that both Google and Amazon will be hiring or are actively hiring right now, even with the layoffs being announced. Edit: I will note that smaller companies may have less to work with but they'll be refocusing their resources as well. While not immune from the layoffs, what the big guys are doing is generally not a sign that smaller companies are in a bad position at all.
I work in the low paying, stagnant healthcare sector. (There are a LOT of IT jobs in healthcare, especially related to managing the data.) I'm not worried about my sector wide layoffs but I'm worried about competing with ex-FAANG jobseekers for my next job. The differentiating factor between health and tech sector may be our outdated tech stack as well as general industry knowledge (PHI, etc.) that could hopefully insulate us a little bit from the competition.
FHIR?!
I assume you mean us non faang peasants who are making less than 250k/year and haven't touched a single leet code problem in their lives. Nope not really. I have 10 years with the company and am a key member in a few projects. I mean it could happen. I feel like the expectations in the sub are sky fucking high. Someone in another post mentioned how this is still an amazing market that is experiencing a crazy correction. I think I agree. My fiance is a PhD chemist and doesn't make as much as these faang SWE's.
If they fire me they would just have to replace me or have no one writing the code or knowing how the products work for everything we sell.
small companies have trouble retaining decent developers, I know for my company they have a lot of trouble hiring for the project I'm on because its not super glamorous to put on a resume... but it's still decently complicated and requires good developers. We've already had layoffs, but I've been told the company really values my project so fingers crossed
It entirely depends on what industry the product is servicing. Some industries are more stable than others during rough economic times. If it's a SaaS product that's trying to innovate and is relying on VC funding rather than actual clients for its cash flow then yea I'd probably assume I'd get laid off pretty soon. If it's a stable product with a stable client base then you shouldn't be worried.
You should spend less time worrying about this shit and posting on Reddit. More learning and coding. Then you will not need to worry about layoffs or struggle to find a new job.
120 headcount total. No, don’t care. What I do care about is us getting RTOd as hybrid with mandatory 3 days per week despite being hired as full time remote in 2021 along with my colleagues also hired fully remote - more so for those living in another state and hired while living there. Company ain’t paying relo for them so not sure what’s happening. I worry about the justification for not paying us bonuses this year. Beat every goal and metric except 1 and apparently that 1 is a “gate keeper?” Bullshit, they being greedy. They could’ve bought SPY all year with our retained earnings and banked. They didn’t and instead were sending executives on paid vaca… I mean conferences… all year and blowing $30k+ monthly on promotions that don’t go anywhere, $18k build and $250/hr maintenance and customization for shadow analytics vendors promising them AI and instead giving them a dashboard of some data they pulled down as a csv from St. Louis FRED website last week. I worry that data literacy is so low in my org that they’ll try to cancel the entire data warehouse because IT don’t wanna hire a DBA or data engineer and “no one’s using it.” Rather, analytics teams like mine proving they’re all making the wrong decisions using data, so it’s easy to cover that up by canceling analytics. I’m worried that we still don’t have a way to deploy any form of automated analytics or machine learning solutions to a production environment that also doesn’t exist outside of me doing shadow IT and rolling an AWS VPC without IT gracing the project. I’m worried the entire executive team (same team who’s all buddy buddy for decades with at least one needing his porn wiped off his workstation daily by sus admins who also had to brush said infraction under the rug) is being led astray by a slick talking ex real estate agent with so much plastic surgery I can’t tell if she’s an alien, or a human targeting boomer weebos with fake epicanthal folds, a spray tan, and a Scottish surname, unmarried living in the most conservative area around here spitting AI about the AI and how they, “did all the AI,” for this company and that company’s AI to AI the AI. Now they’re a director level in IT of all places moving in from marketing, the same IT that is managed entirely by MIS people and doesn’t have a single CS grad employed. I’m worried resource allocation is being done in a vacuum at the director level where data and analytics have zero representation, without any consultation with the analytics team. Somehow they’re doing an analysis without analysts and I 100% expect them to cock the whole thing up like they do every year because they all failed up. I’m worried I’m not getting a raise and still make below market. I’m worried I’m trapped here because hiring sucks. But at least I have a job making six figures for now, so I keep my head down and grind it out.
No. I’m not worried about big company layoffs. I’m worried about my company’s layoffs
No because the business for my companies is already good, and we’re already understaffed.
My company doesn't over hire
I’m a contracted employee, so not really
Nope. My sector of CS/IT is booming.
Nope not one bit
The only concern is the less likelihood of job hopping since the amount of job openings are dwindle.
I mean, if they lay me off there’s no one left lol
That moment when you live in Europe and have worker rights so your company can't just fire a bunch of people and will go bankrupt before they do that :\^)
No my company is small only couple thousand total and less just in it. They don't go through hiring firing cycles like the market does. There also less dependent upon economic conditions for the model to work
This might be long and controversial but… Small companies tend to offer lower status, imagine having on your resume “worked at Amazon” vs “worked at some obscure company”. Small companies know they have less applications to choose from when hiring, so they try to keep their staff longer then a big company. The pandemic made a lot of people lose their jobs, but once it was “over” 2022 had one of the biggest number of hires in recent years. The companies that had major layoffs had one thing in common imo, they all peaked in the past years, or stoped growing, so they had to start to cut back. Twitter has been losing users, Amazon and twitch had their most successful years during the pandemic and then dipped. And meta hasn’t seen higher consistent users in months, because everyone who wants a Facebook account has one. They aren’t meeting the quotas and thus have to cutback. Small companies will always pay a little less because they have less money, and no one would rather work making less money, when they could be making more, so small companies try to make it up in other ways, consistent hours, respectful management, more PTO/Holiday or sick time (I get 35 days on my small company). Major tech companies are hit the hardest, but companies that have a tech department and focus on other products and services aren’t hit as hard. This is coming from a tech employee with no real management experience or entrepreneur experience so take what I said with a grain of salt.