I wonder if this has any effect on the deposit sweeping programs run by firms like robinhood, betterment and wealthfront. They promise 4%+ yields with freedom to take out your cash any time. A quick look at their partner program banks suggests they more or less transfer the deposits to the same set of banks.

This is basically a frontend person looking for some validation that they are so smart.

Each man for himself. I'm seeing a dog eats dog mentality.

Here (Israel tech scene) there are a ton of initiatives to help people who were impacted by the recent layoffs. Lots of mixers with companies that are hiring, free tutoring/help and meetups. Certainly not perfect but it's very far from "dog eat dog".

Without going as far as "dog eats dog", I don't know if I would feel the need to socialize with laid off people if I got laid off. What would that serve? It's not like one of them is gonna be like "hey, we're hiring at my company!".

Socialize with people who have a job.

On the other hand, when you are laid off and looking for people to socialize with, your other laid off friends will be the most available. Nothing like taking advantage of things like discount matinee rates, happy hours you never were able to make on time with a job, or speedy efficient trips through town without traffic when you are already generating no income.

Other people laid off are looking and might find something for you. They are looking for companies actively hiring.

People who have a job 1. don't have time during the day and 2. only know about their company since they aren't looking.

I would guess that even if someone had my exact skillset, I would be better off teaming up with them in the search than avoiding them. We could identify more jobs and there is a good chance one of those is looking for more than one person.

People have networks. It’s important to leverage different networks and get help.

Such is the way in an unorganized labor market.

Perhaps we should organize....

Right. The weird American manufactured distaste for unionism has progressed to the point where y’all can be working for some of the most rich and profitable companies in the world and somehow convince yourselves that unionising will make you LESS money. Frankly you get what you deserve at this point.

Do you have any examples of where labour organisation has led to lower pay?

I seem to recall companies closing stores that voted to unionize. /s

That definitely wasn’t the case for me. I was laid off with 30% of my company several months back and the support was absolutely enormous. Tons of people reaching out on LinkedIn, leads being passed around from coworkers both laid off and still employed. I went through the interview process and had offers from 4-5 companies within 2-3 weeks. Many of my colleagues had similar experiences.

One thing I appreciate about our industry is people tend to be generally helpful or atleast give you parting advice with no strings attached.

So like it’s always been in the job market?

Being laid off does not equate to doing poorly. Some people just get cut because some people who wear suits to work seem to not care.

Or maybe too many people got hired by some guy in a hoodie because they were afraid any talented people they didn’t hire would work for a startup that puts them out of business or that they feel they need to spend $15 billion to buy so they don’t face competition.

Said “guy in hoodie” and his close buddies “guy in khakis” and “athleisure gal” have just materially increased the likelihood that they’ll be spending $15B (or whatever the going rate is in 5 years).

Support groups are common for all kinds of things, so there seems to be some kind of value in it.

If your buddies are going through a stressful time in their life then you should be spending even more time with them if possible.

I completely agree... My comment was based on the assumption this conversation isn't about helping your buddies through a tough time, it's about who to network with when you've been laid off.

This is like comparing the code written by an experienced 20 year veteran to the code written by a fresh graduate. Give it time, India will catch up. Lot of people in the comments taking a dig at the work ethic of people in India when most of them will cry a river if asked by their employer to RTO 2 days a week.

Either they will adapt to working with a demanding global company or they won’t.

Apple won’t accept any other outcomes. And they have the leeway to abandon projects this size easily.

And if they don’t; it would be very damaging to India’s reputation (and GDP) for decades. I feel like they’ll figure out how to make it happen.

Apple might have the resources to make it happen. Anyone else probably doesn't want to hand-hold and threaten for years until they get it right.

Do you expect the CEO to tell his employees that they are more likely to be laid off if they are paid more compared to their peers?

Yes. There was transparency about hiring plans and how low CoL areas were targeted. I would expect transparency on the other end of employment.

Running teams is management. Not everyone wants to be doing the roles involved in managing teams, so it's a designated job title. If you get rid of the hierarchy entirely, then what happens is that they form implicitly and everyone is completely confused as to who leads what, and that only gets worse as teams grow and the number of projects grow.

Some management is bullshit, but literally "run teams" is the important part. But if you get big enough, you do wind up with departments. It grows like a fractal.

Managers are an organisational necessity past a certain scale. If you have not felt the need for them I can only guess you've not been in a company big enough.

Think of it as trying to run a big country with direct democracy. Can it be done? Maybe. But there are good reasons why democracies become indirect after a certain scale.

Not quite. If i'm a CEO, my manager is required to know coding first. It's nonsensical and ineffecient to hire a non-coder to manage real coders ?

I don't think I was claiming that. Managers should definitely be able to code. That does not mean that we don't need managers.

"Managers are an organisational necessity past a certain scale." That sounds like a dubious claim, I'm sure there are exotic ways to run an organisation that doesn't need managers.

For example, Pirate ships ran with a Battle Commander, Accountant and Crew.

Pirate ships frequently had crews of about 50, and the biggest ones never exceed a couple of hundred. Do you have real world examples of large organisations (in the thousands of employees) being managed in a flat hierarchy? Because I don't.

Please note I'm not saying you can't be overprovisioned in managers. I'm replying to the parent comment that sees no need for managers.

Resolving interpersonal disputes and guessing how much you have to pay someone to get them to stay, and software architecture, are two (three?) totally unrelated skillsets.

You don't need to "guess" how much to pay someone. The market dictates that. HR has pay bands. Raises are always in a narrow band. I don't know what kind of disputes you're talking about. If you ask any manager - describe your responsibilities succinctly, they will most inevitably fail to do so.

I can imagine a company that had pay bands so narrow and bonuses so small that managers had no tools to reward high performers, and although I agree that it would take away a lot of what allows managers to do their jobs, I don't think that is the usual situation.

> Then give them the autonomy to run teams.

"running teams" is literally management

Run teams by being hands on. Just don't sit in endless meetings and help "manage" people's careers. It's all a bunch of bs.

Those are the same things.

It just means they're trying to get a counter offer to improve their negotiating ability.

Should have loaded those shares a couple of months back, smh. Up 70%+ since Nov last year.

I think the first thing that comes to mind is that there's too many programmers.

I would negate 50% or more of those.

Google enjoys a cult like status in people from a certain south asian country which idolizes "prestige" and also produces millions of software engineers a year. I don't think they will have any trouble recruiting people.

But out of those millions how many are Google material or can be decent devs by western standards?

From my experience the working culture of India stays in direct opposition to the working culture of the US.

So even the best devs might be often not good enough due to cultural differences unless they’re naturalized or truly exceptional in one way or another (a few out of every 100k?).

Google's "standard" till L4 is just leetcode. Average college students in that country are cramming 1000 leetcode questions. Even if 5% are decent, however you define decent to be, that's 50K engineers.

I agree the cultures are different and I think more Indian people are driven into the field of software who perhaps shouldn't be there based on natural inclinations, but I disagree strongly as to the degree to which this is an issue

When people idolize things, they put that thing on a pedestal, and as soon as that thing slips up, they quickly abandon it. Google's first layoff probably isn't enough to damage its image, but if they don't keep that mystique and aura of prestige, they could find their fanbase drying up.

Unless they’re expecting to repatriate to that certain south asian country, they’re going to need to protect some reputation at home.