Every day there’s more big job cuts at tech and games companies. I’ve not seen anything explaining why they all seam to be at once like this. Is it coincidence or is there something driving all the job cuts?
A few things happened pretty quickly.
During the pandemic, tech profits soared which led to massive hiring sprees. For all the press about layoffs at the big guys, I think most still have more workers than they did pre-pandemic.
Interests rates soared. Before the pandemic interest rates were ludicrously low, in other words it cost almost nothing to borrow money. This made it easier to spend on long term or unclear projects where the hope seemed to be “get enough users, then you can monetize.” Once interest rates rose, those became incredibly expensive projects, so funding is now much more scarce. Companies are pulling back on bigger projects or, like reddit, trying to monetize them faster. Startups are also finding it harder, so fewer jobs.
And of course, AI. No one is quite sure how much that’ll change the game but some folks think most programmers will be replaceable, or at least 1 programmer will be able to do the work of several. So, rather than hire and go through everything severance etc might entail, I think a lot of companies are taking a wait and see approach and thus not hiring.
I want to offer my perspective on the AI thing from the point of view of a senior individual contributor at a larger company. Management loves the idea, but there will be a lot of developers fixing auto-generated code full of bad practices and mysterious bugs at any company that tries to lean on it instead of good devs. A large language model has no concept of good or bad, and it has no logic. It’ll happily generate string-templated SQL queries that are ripe for SQL injection. I’ve had to fix this myself. Things get even worse when you have to deal with a shit language like Bash that is absolutely full of God awful footguns. Sometimes you have to use that wretched piece of trash language, and the scripts generated are horrific. Remember that time when Steam on Linux was effectively running
rm -rf /*on people’s systems? I’ve had to fix that same type of issue multiple times at my workplace.I think LLMs will genuinely transform parts of the software industry, but I absolutely do not think they’re going to stand in for competent developers in the near future. Maybe they can help junior developers who don’t have a good grasp on syntax and patterns and such. I’ve personally felt no need to use them, since I spend about 95% of my time on architecture, testing, and documentation.
Now, do the higher-ups think the way that I do? Absolutely not. I’ve had senior management ask me about how I’m using AI tooling, and they always seem so disappointed when I explain why I personally don’t feel the need for it and what I feel its weaknesses are. Bossman sees it as a way to magically multiply IC efficiency for nothing, so I absolutely agree that it’s likely playing a part in at least some of these layoffs.
I’m pretty excited about LLMs being force multipliers in our industry. GitHub’s Copilot has been pretty useful (at times). If I’m writing a little utility function and basically just write out the function signature, it’ll fill out the meat. Often makes little mistakes, but I just need to follow up with little tweaks and tests (that it’ll also often write).
It also seems to take context of my overall work at the time somehow and infers what I’ll do next occasionally, to my astonishment.
It’s absolutely not replacing me any time soon, but it sure can be helpful in saving me time and hassle.
Those little mistakes drove me nuts. By the end of my second day with copilot, I felt exhausted from looking at bad suggestions and then second guessing whether I was the idiot or copilot was. I just can’t. I’ll use ChatGPT for working through broad issues, catching arcane errors, explaining uncommented code, etc. but the only LLM whose code output doesn’t generally create a time cost for me is Cody.
Are we great again yet?
I’m here to repeal and replace good things, and I’m all out of “replace”.
Let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water. AI had the potential to alleviate a lot of pressures of society, to free up much of our time spent doing tedious mindless tasks. We just need to make sure to use it for the benefit of the many rather than the profit of the few. I don’t want a union that wants to keep labor busy and well compensated, I want a union that keeps people safe, happy, and compensated properly
We’re like a century past innovation making our 40 hour work week into a 20 hour one
I fully believe we’ll get a standardized 60 hour work week before we get a 20 hour one. Hell, I’m pretty sure we’d relegalize slavery before we get a 20 hour work week. Your average American will bend over backwards for a chance to please “the boss” and actively rat on their colleagues for avoiding work because our cultural understanding of loyalty is functionally equivalent to boot licking.
It’s interest rates.
Loans are more expensive, but critically, so are eggs.
Tech workers like eggs, and see no reason to buy fewer, so they’re asking for more money, unionizing, or hopping jobs to increase their salaries.
Notice how the big players are releasing press releases each layoff? No attempt at secrecy. No payouts to NDA the laid off employees. It’s an intimidation tactic.
It’s working at the moment, but tech workers get over their job change discomfort fast when there’s a 100% raise on the table. The market rate vs curent pay gap just creates pressure to change jobs until they do, even if they’re scared.
And the shareholders are all fucked.
Every tech layoff is a lottery ticket toward a company ending event. And then every employee who leaves because they realize the company is incapable of loyalty. Then every worker who leaves because their suppressed wages aren’t keeping up with their expenses or hobbies. Another chance to end the company. Nobody knows which perl script is the lynchpin of their company, or which random person will leave with all knowledge of it.
The CEOs are positively aggressively collecting chances to bankrupt their shareholders.
But the CEO will get a nice payout next quarter. So that’s nice.
eggs?
eggs?
Eggs.
I read it as an allusion to the price of everything going up. But yes, eggs.
Eggs.
Spam.
Eggs, eggs, spam.
Eggs.
Weirdly, my first thought was eggs as in trans people who don’t know it yet. I really didn’t expect eggs in the literal meaning in that sentence…
Is that a real metaphor that people use? I’ve never heard of it referring to trans people before. But that’s not my community.
Yeah! We use it to lovingly refer to those of us who haven’t come out to ourselves yet. Their shells haven’t cracked yet.
The memes out of egg_irl are pretty fire if queer memes are your thing
The memes out of egg_irl are pretty fire if queer memes are your thing
I’m a cis-(mostly)het guy and absolutely agree. I get a special kind of joy from people discovering themselves and being accepted.
Yes it is. For example, /r/egg_irl was a fairly popular subreddit.
Employees aren’t afraid anymore so companies are trying to reinstate fear.
The Federal Reserve raised interest rates in order to cause layoffs. The capitalist class wanted to enlarge the reserve army of labor so that workers would be too worried about losing their jobs to demand raises.
‘You Are Gambling With People’s Lives’: Warren Rips Powell Over Job-Killing Rate Hikes
Which is ironic because one of the Fed’s chartered purposes is to maximize employment. I guess maximizing profits is more important, even though it’s not on the list.
