https://www.cnbc.com/2024/04/28/how-working-for-big-tech-lost-dream-job-status.html
Mass layoffs have eroded the shine of the tech industry.
Working for these companies lost any charm, when it stopped being about innovation, and working on cool things, and started being about min-maxing profits, at the cost abusing workers until they are suicidal
Most of the "fun innovations" are awesome ideas that would get a small startup a ton of business and make them widely successful. But the problem is that these companies are so large, that even those successful innovations barely make an impact on the company. So many initiatives at these companies have to be pitched as huge and game-changing in order to be funded in the first place. Which means they need to hire huge staffs, to justify their importance.
The managers make extremely optimistic forecasts: they have to, to get the project funded at all. Then, when the project is successful (but not as successful as promised) the bean counters scale it back to the size it should have been in the first place. So the headline is all these layoffs, when the real problem is that these companies are too darn big to operate efficiently.
I believe it also is for creating hype among investors. “Look at this new amazing product lineup we got! Self driving cars! Invest in us before those huge things turn into reality!”
And to get on the more conspiratorial side, it might also be to dry up the market of talent. It’s hard for competitors to make a product if all talent is already doing cool stuff elsewhere.
That's what happens, when the two grading choices in your language class are either 0%, or 100%
You always needed the money, but imo it seems like the culture has been shifting away from making tech products to gaming profits, in a way that seems more unrelated to the product than ever before.
Like my company has had two rounds of layoffs last year, mass exoduses, but all I see from the Bamboo HR emails is us bringing on enterprise partner managers, growth hackers, etc.
Meanwhile the actual product is maintained by an ever dwindling rosters of devs, many of whom are certainly at least soft looking for other work.
Depends on how you put it. Realistically, to a degree. The issue is that with any new business type, they are forced to prove their worth at first, so it's always ran by passionate people. Later on, it all slowly transitions into the clusterfuck we have today
And it's not from today, in the 90s a friend of mine was hired for IBM, imagine!!! I don't think he made a year there, it was already horrible.
Friend of mine had a heart attack in his early thirties working for AT&T in the nineties. I ended up in the ER with acute chest pains working for UBS.
These days, I'm generally able to weather the daily shit storms, but I'm mostly dead inside just waiting for the sweet, sweet relief of the real mortal deal.
I kinda wonder what the machine is going to have at its disposal to extract more out of me after I've left this mortal coil. Reanimated labor I suppose.
I got a pretty decent raise a couple weeks ago. As I usually do, I expressed my appreciation, but added the commentary that when a hundred percent of my time away from work is spent bedridden from exhaustion, what's the difference between an $X thousand dollar raise and an $X million dollar raise.
devs are such babies. I went to school and got licensed as an a&p (9 part proctored exam with written, practical, and oral components) and was working in the weather for $16 an hour, working my way up and dodging layoffs (which dont make it in the news because blue collar) to 25 an hour after years and years.
This is working as an aircraft mechanic, at various levels. This is a high hazard environment filled with carcinogens (solvents like methyl ethyl ketone), fall hazards, operating heavy equipment.
I got qualifications like engine run and taxi qualifications that result in $0.25 raises.
Mandatory overtime, busting knuckles, freezing in the cold, boiling in the heat, standing on concrete all day.
Oh and if I fuck up, planes crash, people die, and I go to jail.
I got a job as a software developer in the same area working for a medium sized company no one has heard of (300 person engineering department) and I work 8 hours a week, with no deadlines, at home, and make 3 times the salary. The worst I have to do with is identity politics and stupid meetings, 🤷.
These jobs are absolutely dream jobs for people who have perspective on what bad jobs actually are.
“I’ve had worse jobs, and my current job is unrealistically laid back for the field being talked about. Everyone else is a baby.”
This is what you sound like.
Here’s a thought: Different people have different experiences in similar jobs.
Here’s another: Different people experience things differently, because they are different people.
As someone who has worked in fast food, warehouses, and woodworking: I know how privileged I am to be a software developer.
Ive seen kids right out of college get hired and make more than I did, despite my having 20+ more years of experience … just because I’m self taught with no college. And then they bitch about how bad the job is.
Insane.
There's also the little detail that I'm not a dev. But let the guy have his moment I guess.
I am so much NOT a dev, that it took me a minute to even register what you were trying to say. I thought of a college classmate whose name is Dev.
I too have had my time in hard physical labor.
But you do you. Enjoy your Internet sanctimony.
I wasn't attacking you, or even referring to you as a dev, though it would have been a fair assumption regardless given the topic at hand.
I also wasn't claiming 'hard labor' is better or anything, just that there is a large discrepancy between the quality of life and work of the jobs the article is referring to and the jobs that the majority of people actually work.
Many software developers need perspective on the privilege they have, this is coming from someone who has worked a variety of jobs in different industries, attended trade school and university, and is currently a developer.
Fwiw I was generally agreeing with you.
This. It used to be the dream because we believed in what technofuturism had to offer. We believed in instant access to knowledge and we thought we could all make it cheap enough that it would be an uplift across humanity.
We came up with so many cool things in the process. Little did we know we were simply building the foundations of our dystopian cyberpunk corpo future.
"We just wanted ice cream cones and fast cars" (South park).
I've always worked for small companies and moved to a big company a year ago, and I feel like I AM living the dream. Hard capped 40 hour weeks, 35 days vacation, plenty of perks like an on-site gym and free car charging. I didn't think that things like this could exist in the IT world. Unions really make a huge difference.
That is a lot of words to say "they found out that the big tech executives had been lying to them about being family, changing the world. etc" just as much as their last employer was.
News flash, working in big tech is every bit as soul sucking for the rank and file as it is working in big healthcare, or big law firm, or <insert large industry here>. Nothing special about it, they are large publicly traded companies that have shareholders and investors to answer to as the number 1 priority.
They lost dream job status for me when I realized I was facilitating some evil shit. Like "oh! great job in genomics! I can help cure cancer!" Then realize it's "oh, help China build population scale genomic sequencing, wonder what they're gonna do with that?"
And "oh, edge computing, sounds cool", then realizing "oh, edge computing is mostly useful for facial recognition, wonder what people will use that for?"
I started out my career as a traffic engineer because I hate traffic, but then realized I was just helping build more sprawl...
...now I'm a software engineer who refuses to work for FAANGs on principle.
It is extremely hard to find companies that aren't doing evil shit yet are still profitable enough to be able to hire people.
Did you ever work with or cover parking areas in your job/studies?
I have always wanted to know, when there are carparks (the open style rows of bays such as outside of grocery/big box stores) why do they never use angled bays? I figure it came down to the difference between something like 100 available parking spaces instead of 96 with losses in corners or something.
It baffles me that with how much easier it is for everyone to both pull into and reverse out of an angled bay why they dont just sacrifice a couple bays in return for increased traffic flow and less dings.
Also if they are in a herringbone pattern between adjacent rows it means that people cant just 'pull through' one bay into the next row and destroy any landscaping that may be between the two (i see strips of nicely mulched landscaping with small shrubs destroyed everywhere in my city from dickheads that dont give a fuck).
That is a good question. I feel like I probably asked that during my site design class in college, but I don't remember getting a clear/satisfactory answer. I think it might just come down to which design happens to work better on the particular site, or the preferences of the client (for example, it seems like Publix prefers their parking lots to have angled parking, while Kroger's parking more often tends to be straight).
Just an observation: The “square/right-angle” parking spaces are harder to park in, but do make it easier to pull-out/exit in either direction. The angled spots are easier to enter/exit, but it’s harder to exit in one direction than the other.
This might be desirable in order to influence cars to enter/exit in one direction.
In the common US box store layout, the end of the parking lot nearest the store is often highest in pedestrians. I find it easier/faster/safer to avoid that end of the parking lot. So I try to enter/exit using the side of the parking lot opposite the store. Angled parking slots make this strategy harder.
Undoubtably there are more factors than this involved in parking-lot design.
Source: Not a pro. Just a parking-space user.
Thanks for your response anyway!
I cynically feel like it may come down to the red-pen signatories who say "why 47 bays when we can squeeze in 50?! make it 50"
I think Big Tech is still pretty much a dream job for most people. High pay. Perks. Work/life flexibility. It's certainly not as dreamy as it was 5 years ago perhaps, but realistically I'd take it over pretty much anything else.
Not anymore. Middling pay, constant threat of fire, constant degradation, most perks went away a loooong time ago, zero work/life balance. You can get that same bullshit working for Company X.
Eh. I work in tech. I have friends who work or worked at almost every big tech company you'd recognize. These are still jobs, dealing with layoffs, annoying bosses, etc. has always been a fact of life. But from what I can see the average techie still has it very good compared to most other jobs. My friend who is a nurse would certainly like to earn a tech salary, not have to deal with hospital politics, and not work night shifts all the damn time, and take time off whenever they want to not whenever there's availability...
I work these same companies. It's not about bad bosses, it's the C-Level people in your news feed degrading their entire workforce via the press. It's hearing your job is going to be "phased out" if you don't start reporting to an office hours away after being hired for remote work. It's having your pay slashed and being told to "deal with it, or find a new job" via email on Monday, then hearing about it all over the news on Tuesday to really hammer it home that you have to fear for your job, and they'll absolutely replace your ass if you say anything about it.
This was all done by Amazon, Google, and Microsoft in the past year at various different times as if it work from a guidebook on demoralizing your workforce.
Yeah. Tech has gotten worse. But you really think it's better in any other sector? I'm sure there are a few highly-compensated lap-dance-inspectors out there but the vast majority of workers deal with the same shit techies are dealing with, for significantly less pay and respect, if you can believe that.
The biggest obstacle to unionizing in tech, none of the unions know how to represent technology work. I have been in a couple unions as a tech worker, but those unions were historically representing different classes of workers.
I mean just represent programming for starters and go from there? It's the stuff that's most engineering like, or do I misunderstand the issue?
The senior staff at most unions are people who have thought about physical labor and the skilled workers who do production work. Programming as a profession is still relatively new career path.
My first union tech job was in the medical industry and we had to jump in with the nurses to find representation. It was good enough but our jobs were dramatically different. And our pay and benefits were much better than the nursing staff. The union had a hard time being able to deal with both of our different problems.
So it sounds like we just need to start a union from the ground up built for tech workers?
I think that Hollywood provides an example: cast, crew, writers, and directors are all unionized, and there are so many different types of jobs at such different rates of pay within those unions.
Middling pay? At FAANG-tier companies?
These are some extraordinary claims in need of some extraordinary proof.
Not a claim, just a fact. Everyone walking around thinking we're making an easy $300k, and taking vacations all the time, and have the best of everything. Absolutely nothing resembling that type of compensation exists anymore. Easy to Google, but just read this headline from today:
I work in medium tech. Since they have to compete for talent. We get the high pay and work life flexibility. It’s much better than large tech. I would never go work for a Microsoft , Amazon or Google. Not worth it.
I would too, but it really depends on the company. If I can do it, I'm WFH for the rest of my career for companies < 1000 people.
FAANG (or whatever it is these days) are awful fucking people to work for. One of the developers I respect most in my career walked out on .5M in bonuses on Amazon because of their ranking system for his employees. I was shocked.
But depending on the employer it's still a very good gig. But if you're at the wrong place, it's like the upper circles of hell.
One of the developers I respect most in my career walked out on .5M in bonuses on Amazon because of their ranking system for his employees. I was shocked.
This also shows what an incredibly privileged position techies have in the job market. I totally understand quitting Amazon. Really, I wouldn't want to work there either. But ask one of their warehouse workers if they'd ever quit and forfeit a 0.5M bonus...
Companies like Amazon can pull this off because of stock grants. (And I don't think they give out stock grants to warehouse workers, but I could be wrong.)
When they hire a developer, especially one who already has the relevant experience they for, they will say "On top of the salary and bonus, we will also give you $200k worth of stock". But that stock can't be sold right away; it goes into an account where it vests over some number of years, every 6 months. Your only condition for vesting the stock is being employed. If you leave for any reason, or even get laid off, you give up the rest.
Sometimes you also get smaller awards with your yearly review, subject to the same terms. They do this so that if you are a key developer, leaving would mean you forfeit this large account you have accumulated on paper. But in the back of your mind, you know that if your project gets canceled and you don't find a new one in the company, that money goes poof also. So it's play money until it vests, anyway. And there is always another vesting event coming sometime in the next few months.
And I don’t think they give out stock grants to warehouse workers, but I could be wrong.
Yeah. That's my point. And still people take these jobs and work very hard indeed. Try explaining "limited bathroom break time" to your average tech worker.
Average Amazon .com Warehouse Worker hourly pay in the United States is approximately $16.96, which is 7% above the national average.
People don't seem to understand the average worker would kill to make $80/hour and $200k in RSUs. Not a dream job, right.
My point is that while it seems insane to leave half a million in RSUs to leave a company, if the person thinks their job is in a precarious position, it's extremely unlikely they would ever have vested them all anyway. So the money was never really theirs to begin with.
Now, is that DevOps engineer worth that much more than the warehouse guy who picks the item to send to you? I doubt it. But it seems like that's the going rate for a competent DevOps engineer with the relevant experience. While the qualifications to be in the warehouse are not quite so stringent.
If they could pay less for a dev ops, they would.
So yes, the dev ops guy has higher market value than warehouse guy. It's basic stats.
Practically anyone can be warehouse guy. I can't be dev ops guy, even with 35 years years in IT.
The big difference between IT and Devops is that IT fixes a problem, Devops solves it. In IT roles, I'm usually stuck pissing on the same fires over and over. In Devops roles, I'm given the time to go get a hose and put the fire out.
leave half a million in RSUs
I'm not sure if it's intentionally being left out here, but if you have half a million in unvested stock, any competing offer from another FAANG company is likely giving you a stock match, or at least somewhere close to match.
The golden handcuffs aren't as tight as people make them seem.
That's no guarantee, though, it would have to be negotiated. And let's face it, most devs aren't the best at negotiating....
Now, is that DevOps engineer worth that much more than the warehouse guy who picks the item to send to you?
This is going to make me sound like a prick, but yeah the DevOps guy is worth more than the warehouse guy, maybe not 500k more but still alot more.
It all comes down to how many package deliveries 1 warehouse guy can facilitate vs 1 DevOps guy. Speaking as someone who worked at a warehouse (package distribution fedex) for a short period of time, moving boxes is nowhere near as valuable.
Not to say it's not crucial, but the ratio of engineers:package handlers needed is really high
Each year this trend will accelerate. My dream job will not inevitably lay me off in 3 years...
Remember that it was Musky that did the first tech layoff that started this whole thing
Family pushed college as the only possible way for me to lead a happy life and make money.
The kids from my high school who went into the oil fields are making double my salary.
And yet they keep making that money. I don't see them "shooting themselves in the foot" (as much as I hate the way they operate, too). The metrics used by the bean counters drive these decisions.
I worked at on place where an HR bean counter realized they weren't firing as many people as they could be. So they told management to increase the firing rate. The BS I saw....incredible senior management folks getting fired over made-up bullshit. Saw entire teams disappear.
The company saw an increase in profit that year.
