Topic: Tech Layoffs (Read 883 times)

I have seen the strategic policies of some companies. They sometimes lay off some employees to boost the company's profits. Again I have seen many companies lay off their employees due to the economic crisis. The current information and communication technology advancement has reduced the workload of many. I believe that artificial intelligence will very soon pose a threat to the human race and take over the human workplace but I doubt that this will be the only reason right now.

But that's not that actual point. Those tech lay-offs are caused by lower economic activity because of the Federal Reserve's Quantitative Tightening/Rate Hikes, which, truthfully, is NOT that high compared to what Paul Volcker did during the 1970s. Paul Volcker was more aggressive, and caused a recession on purpose to curb inflation, and reset the economy. If Jerome Powell followed what Volcker did, then the crash would probably have happened during 2022, killing demand/lowering inflation, and the Federal Reserve might currently be in Quantitative Easing today.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

AI might not have taken over the workforce yet, but technological advancements are making companies to need lesser workforce everyday, example is Fintech banks in my country, they don't have physical branches all over the country and they're having as much customers as the traditional banks that do. This online banks don't need physical branches, so they don't need a large workforce, technology has made it possible for them to have only one office and staff for the whole country. Machines can effectively be programmed do the works human workforce, they only need a few operators for them to carry out the task of a multitude of people.

tech jobs wont be 45year careers with one company. but contracted seasonal work..
so lets all stop assuming the career with one company+pension plan model, and just accept the reality, 6 month contractors outbidding each other

its much lick brick laying. once you built the suburb/estate. thats it, next project. if your not willing to move to the next project your not re-hired.
dont treat it as being laid off.. treat it as contract expired

the only option to get a 'career' is to attach yourself to a professional agency, that finds you regular work. much like how actors move from movie to movie(production companies) but are retained by the same agency

I worked as a developer for a few years myself and the trend is actually going in that direction. Low-code was already a topic in recent years (before the AI hype began), i.e. tools with which even non-developers can easily put together software themselves. More and more customers asked for this, so that simple software could also be created by business analysts to solve tasks, for example. Individual software development was and is on the decline and with it developer jobs. The possibilities that AI already has today to create simple and medium complicated software (I sometimes use it myself to quickly create scripts for which I previously had to invest 1-2 hours of time) will make more and more developers superfluous. All the hiring over the last few years has been a blip because of Covid.

I am skeptical on the market being full of opportunities for the people being lay off because of the implementation of the artificial intelligence withit all kinds of industries, just look of the generative AI has already been impacting the market of digital art, it has been reported those how work in the business of concept art for videogames, movies and novels have been going through tough times because of how companies have decided to opt for generating their own images for free.
What scares me the most is how some people could believe giving artificial Inteligence a full hardware body or the ability to code by itself could be a good idea, by any means it should be prohibited to give the capability to this technology to code itself, otherwise it would grow outside of our control and could do very bad things or even turn against us.

It would be very ironic if programers are tasked by big companies to make AIs able to code and then they all get fired when the first version of such AI is ready to code/progam by itself.  

I think this will be a long-term trend in the use of AI, although not immediately but slowly it is starting to appear, but in my opinion after many jobs are replaced by AI, there will be new job opportunities, isn't that usually the case?
There will always be opportunities in every closing.

US isn't yet to announce that they're in recession while the other counterparts they have and allies have already did.

These massive tech layoffs are signs that the economy isn't doing good. 

AI plays a big thing on these layoffs but it can just be a reasoning for what the actual economy and these companies are going through. Most of the employees of these companies have good salary ranges and they don't have to find another job to stick with because they're too confident.

These layoffs are going to give them the idea that whether they're tenured, trusted and have in the industry for a long time, no one has mercy on these times when the company decides to layoffs a bunch of them.

people in tech are normally on the young side,no experience of having a career but have been told at university their degree=lifetime career
what they are not told is in certain industries there is no such thing as a lifetime career in the same company

they have to assume there is going to be changes to a business on short notice and be ready for it

this includes not spending all their funds frivolously but to stash some cash to cover an immediate change/incidence to avoid panic (savings for 1-6 months essentials) and invest some for longer term/wealth generation

we are not in the era where people inherit a farm from parents and work the farm all life..
we are not in the era where people learn a skillcraft/speciality work all life..

we are in a era of job shuffling, especially in retail and tech where there is an abundance of candidates. where things change

things do change, projects change, tech changes.. so expect changes.. expect businesses to change their employee to meet a businesses updated needs.

Currently, most people only depend on one source of income for their livelihood, and depend on the company where they work. So advances in technology and AI will be of particular concern, because their position could be replaced by robots. However, it is not easy for an individual to let go of his dependence on the company where he works. Being able to invest and have an independent business is a solution to facing this problem, but again this is not something that is easy enough to realize because the economic situation is not good. -Okay, where income is not balanced with expenses, it makes it quite difficult for a person to be able to start investing because let alone starting an investment, to be able to meet his daily needs, sometimes it is still lacking and he even has to take out a loan. And the same goes for when you want to start a business, where currently people's purchasing power is declining, so it will be a challenge in itself when someone wants to start their business.

point was.. stats are meaningless without context..

Tech industry is not a industry where someone stays in one workplace creating software for the same company for 45 years
most techbro's know they have to go where the next big thing is.
one year they are at netscape, then at AOL then hotmail, then yahoo then google, then at facebook then at twitter then at [insert new trend of social media platform]

lets take the gaming section of tech
once rockstar(GTA) has devs developing the back end engine, they then work on front end graphics engines, they then employ story writers to design missions and then bug testers. requiring different skill sets meaning different teams
the dev team of GTA1 for the gameboy is different to the dev team for GTA6


once a product is made the company dont need a big team to keep developing the product, they only need a small team for bugs/patches and adding new missions, features occasionally.
its dead money to keep people on the payroll twiddling their thumbs for months/years, whilst the other team do other things

heck look at the bitcoin core github. different people are lead maintainers of different sections and even they have seen people move out and be replaced. different people specialise in different things, some have full recall knowledge of the cryptography code, some are back end wallet maintainers some are UI, some are mempool maintainers, etc

heck when there is a new OS on a phone EG everyone shifted from blackberry to iphone decades ago, then google made a phone OS(android) so tech had to adapt and people upskilled and changed roles to follow the money

tech is an ever evolving industry. its not a monopoly of one product that remains a blue chip for 45 years
yep even microsoft windows 11 is not the same vista, nor that the same as windows 98 nor that the same as windows 3.1
those now employed at microsoft have a completely different skill set compared to those of windows 3.1 (30 years ago) and lots of different skill sets inbetween

its not like a baker who makes bread everyday where bread has a recipe that lasts for centuries thus secures his skillset for his entire life

..
having a degree in computer science/coding does not = job security with one company. it mean certified display of knowledge to be higher than that of some script kiddy when if comes to interviews. thus higher change of getting re-employed by another company when the project ends with a previous company

Well, not really! I don't google these things, they are part of my job, or better lets say, I deal with such news on a daily basis. There are a certain number of layoffs at any given time, that's quite normal, but it becomes noticeable when the news of layoffs - especially in tech - pile up and that's one of the reasons why I opened this thread here. By the way, this week alone there have been many more layoffs of well-known tech companies such as Expedia, Bumble (didn't know the dating market is also being hit so hard), Sony, Electronic Arts and many more.

now i think you are scraping google search for stats... for the sake of scraping google for stats
.. so here is one

ask google what the average turn-over/churn of employees is..
it will tell you 30%+

good turn-over/churn is under 10%

people no longer stay in careers for 10 years they change jobs every 1-2 years by choice. (mainly to improve income) but especially in the under 30yo's not ready to settle into a "career"
because employers yearly pay reviews dont always offer payrises by standard, so need to swap jobs to get better pay and not get stuck in a rut
employee/employer loyalty is low

in tech this can be over 50%
its because new projects require new skills.. so they recruit per project.
EG one season of the year they are concentrating on back-end.
next season front-end/ui.. next season debug and product testing
so can go through 3 teams of skills in one year

we are no longer in the era of microsoft that keeps people around for decades regurgitating the same 'word' software with a new fancy UI every couple of years

so when there are stats that show under 10% turn-over... its not news, or worthy stats.. thats just business norm

mozilla 60 of 700 = 8.5%
cisco 4200 of 85000 = 4.94%
instacart 250 of 10,000 =2.5%

so yea, when good turnover/churn is 10%.. it appears your looking for stats just for looking for stats. without understanding employment in any economy is not where everyone stays in the same job for 45 years, nor 10 years

Tech layoffs continue.

Mozilla (Firefox) laid off 60 people this week. Cisco Systems 4200 people and Instacart round about 250 people. And these are just the better-known companies. This does not include many small start-ups that no longer receive follow-up financing and go out of business completely.

Tech companies are striving so I doubt that their reason for layoffs is because of its declining overall performance. Also, IT related jobs are getting more in demand, especially that we are relying more on technologies with our day-to-day stuff. So I agree that perhaps they are cutting off jobs with minimal tasks or importance wherein in can be done with the help of technology. In this case, it'll be more convenient for these tech companies since it means less employees to pay and they can save money. And with technology, those tasks can be done faster and more efficiently.

Based on what I've searched, AI is really one of the factors of it. And most likely, admin and sale related jobs are affected by it. Since with AI, they can minimize their expenses and at the same time improve the performance in admin related tasks.


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Job cuts like that are very unfortunate, but maybe it just means that we'll see more decentralization (tech giants getting smaller, and smaller companies getting bigger), I don't know. According to the World Economic Forum report on the future of jobs, IT jobs are actually expected to grow, and some positions are among the fastest-growing across the job market (big data analytics, encryption, cybersecurity, AI and machine learning specialists, information security analysts). Perhaps lay-offs are in tech companies, but they're firing people who are doing mundane jobs?

I think the tech layoffs are a concern for the economy because most of these individuals are young and rent expensive apartments, lease expensive cars, buy ridiculously priced clothes and food...  Then suddenly they get laid off and it's unemployment.  High end retailers, apartment buildings, foreign cars...  I would think sales of all those things would take a pretty big hit as the cash flow stops pouring in.  It remains to be seen how widespread this crisis will get, but if we're in for a repeat of 2008 it would be wise for everyone to start tightening their belt as if they were the ones who just got laid off.

Tech companies are not immune to having to adapt and survive. In fact they are often at the forefront of taking risks and trying new things, which may not pay off and need to be scrapped later down the line. What you will find however is that most of those people who were laid off will have a premium company listed on their CV, enabling them to have an advantage when trying to secure new employment elsewhere. I'd even say we're past the Covid effect, these are just regular expansion and tightening that takes place, these companies just have the largest workforces but it will be happening all throughout the economy. It's the sign of weak leadership if companies do not change over time and redundancies are often part of such change.

To be honest, it's pretty expected from the massive expansion that we saw during COVID. People were hired left and right, Computer Science graduates were getting paid ridiculous sign-on bonuses, and employees were pushing for WFH hard.

The unwinding of the low interest rate environment is what has caused these layoffs for the past 2 years. This year is just a continuation.

I don't anticipate it to be sustained much further though, given that rates are starting to come off again and central banks around the world will probably be more dovish following lower inflation reports. It sucks to be involved in one, that's for sure.

AI definitely plays a role into this there is no doubt about that but also you have to remember someone has to use that AI, it is not going to be the boss, there will be employees who will figure out a way to use the AI to make the product, and fix stuff.

I think it is mainly because the money isn't coming in as much as it used to. What we need to look at is the fact that during pandemic and even before, the rates were low, so people didn't want to put their money into savings, certainly not super rich people, so they invested into tech companies, startups and so forth, now that the interest is high, they don't take that risk, which left many companies without fund, which caused a lot of them to fire their employees who are getting paid a lot, the developers.