> Many people have gotten themselves in a situation where they need a large compensation package in order to live their life.
And then, apropos anxiety, there are those of us who could never believe our good fortune, living life parsimonious and low-key for decades because the rain of riches must clearly be unsustainable.
What more, dutifully interviewing and hiring youngsters who have no such doubts, but instead the infuriating temerity to throw caution to the wind and get promoted right past us in no time flat.
It's really great—for society and for karma—that the job market for digital tech engineers is normalizing.
Except, when those mundane institutions hire, they still want that bold now-accomplished still-almost-youngster that they can get at a steep discount, not yours truly Mr Gray Hairs. I may be free to retire, but what if I don't want to?
> “You have been in this industry for a very long time, you must be absolutely loaded.”
You're not alone...
The irony (for me) is that 30 years ago, I was living in a developing country and earning a real pittance compared to what I earn today, but I felt totally baller. I travelled overseas to UK and USA on my own dime (not at ALL common among my peer group in South Africa at that time), and could buy nearly anything I wanted (which, to be fair, was the latest and greatest hard drive when it was released [one of which is a Western Digital Caviar 21200 1.2GB drive which I hold in my hand as I type this in 2024]). Now, with a very different and much more mature situation, I don't feel anywhere near as accomplished, and I wonder if it's because of obligation (family, mortgages, kids education, aging parents, thoughts about our own retirement nest egg, etc), because of situation (bay area peer group where we feel solidly "middle class", and of course the notion of "comparison is the thief of joy", certain choices I've made where I left unvested/unrealized value for other opportunities that didn't materialize as anticipated, etc), the hedonic treadmill, the mental perspective and acuity of a 49 yr old vs a 20 yr old, etc ...
Having lived through 2 of these cycles before in Silicon Valley, (1992/3 and 2002) one of which i was unemployed for 6 months in, i can say that stupid hiring practices like giving job interviewers the opportunity to win a car... will be back, just give it a couple of years. This is a periodic power shift from employee to employer, and they last 3-5 years. we can see the beginnings of the next boom in the stupid money that all the big players are shovelling to NVDA now. Building data centers to consume 10% of the world's power is the next boom. Theres money to be found, people just need to be looking for it...
I think there is more to it than just "companies over-hired and over-paid in the race to get talent and grow". I think it might be a big turning-point in how the industry runs.
The FANG's that are doing the layoffs were fueled by the exponential growth of a new industry but have all now hit their market saturation point. There is no untapped market for their products to fuel more exponential growth left. They have been blundering around trying to find new products (AI) to fuel more exponential growth, but even if they find some something potentially as big again as the products they were founded on, that's not going to be exponential growth for the company as a whole. Continued exponential growth for the company would require an exponentially growing number of these products, which ain't going to happen.
The shareholders in these companies only profit when the share price increases, and only realize those profits when they sell their shares. This means it doesn't matter if the company is hugely profitable and can sustain those profits indefinitely, without the share price growing exponentially, shareholders just want a price-spike they can bail out on.
So there is pressure on directors to take actions that induce price-spikes, even if they are detrimental to the company long-term. This means things like share-buy backs, clawing more revenue out of existing customers for less, and cutting costs with layoffs. All of these boost the profits and share price in the short term, but harm the company in the long term. All the FANGS are well down this path of enshitification (https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys) and it's not yet clear what the end-state will be, but IMHO it looks like a long slow death that will drag the whole internet down with it until something can rise up to replace them.
Years ago I (foolishly as it turns out) thought that Google was a weird anomaly; a benevolent monopoly company that was and would remain altruistic. I thought that Google's survival clearly depended on positive public perception, because as soon as that was gone the political appetite for sharpening the regulators knives would rise, and Google would be in trouble. The only way Google could maintain the positive reputation to avoid that would be to stay genuinely altruistic.
What I missed is how much short term profits matter more than the company's long-term survival. Shareholders can easily move their investments elsewhere after milking the company to its death. Google has now thoroughly eaten through its reputation in the pursuit of more profits, and here come the regulators...
Yeah so it's called a market correction, but to be fair, Google was already overstaffed by a factor of 8 or so back in the 2010s. As I remember it, the excuse was to get 'em before Facebook would, or something.
> Many people have gotten themselves in a situation where they need a large compensation package in order to live their life.
And then, apropos anxiety, there are those of us who could never believe our good fortune, living life parsimonious and low-key for decades because the rain of riches must clearly be unsustainable.
What more, dutifully interviewing and hiring youngsters who have no such doubts, but instead the infuriating temerity to throw caution to the wind and get promoted right past us in no time flat.
It's really great—for society and for karma—that the job market for digital tech engineers is normalizing.
Except, when those mundane institutions hire, they still want that bold now-accomplished still-almost-youngster that they can get at a steep discount, not yours truly Mr Gray Hairs. I may be free to retire, but what if I don't want to?
> “You have been in this industry for a very long time, you must be absolutely loaded.”
You're not alone...
The irony (for me) is that 30 years ago, I was living in a developing country and earning a real pittance compared to what I earn today, but I felt totally baller. I travelled overseas to UK and USA on my own dime (not at ALL common among my peer group in South Africa at that time), and could buy nearly anything I wanted (which, to be fair, was the latest and greatest hard drive when it was released [one of which is a Western Digital Caviar 21200 1.2GB drive which I hold in my hand as I type this in 2024]). Now, with a very different and much more mature situation, I don't feel anywhere near as accomplished, and I wonder if it's because of obligation (family, mortgages, kids education, aging parents, thoughts about our own retirement nest egg, etc), because of situation (bay area peer group where we feel solidly "middle class", and of course the notion of "comparison is the thief of joy", certain choices I've made where I left unvested/unrealized value for other opportunities that didn't materialize as anticipated, etc), the hedonic treadmill, the mental perspective and acuity of a 49 yr old vs a 20 yr old, etc ...
Having lived through 2 of these cycles before in Silicon Valley, (1992/3 and 2002) one of which i was unemployed for 6 months in, i can say that stupid hiring practices like giving job interviewers the opportunity to win a car... will be back, just give it a couple of years. This is a periodic power shift from employee to employer, and they last 3-5 years. we can see the beginnings of the next boom in the stupid money that all the big players are shovelling to NVDA now. Building data centers to consume 10% of the world's power is the next boom. Theres money to be found, people just need to be looking for it...
I think there is more to it than just "companies over-hired and over-paid in the race to get talent and grow". I think it might be a big turning-point in how the industry runs.
The FANG's that are doing the layoffs were fueled by the exponential growth of a new industry but have all now hit their market saturation point. There is no untapped market for their products to fuel more exponential growth left. They have been blundering around trying to find new products (AI) to fuel more exponential growth, but even if they find some something potentially as big again as the products they were founded on, that's not going to be exponential growth for the company as a whole. Continued exponential growth for the company would require an exponentially growing number of these products, which ain't going to happen.
The shareholders in these companies only profit when the share price increases, and only realize those profits when they sell their shares. This means it doesn't matter if the company is hugely profitable and can sustain those profits indefinitely, without the share price growing exponentially, shareholders just want a price-spike they can bail out on.
So there is pressure on directors to take actions that induce price-spikes, even if they are detrimental to the company long-term. This means things like share-buy backs, clawing more revenue out of existing customers for less, and cutting costs with layoffs. All of these boost the profits and share price in the short term, but harm the company in the long term. All the FANGS are well down this path of enshitification (https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys) and it's not yet clear what the end-state will be, but IMHO it looks like a long slow death that will drag the whole internet down with it until something can rise up to replace them.
Years ago I (foolishly as it turns out) thought that Google was a weird anomaly; a benevolent monopoly company that was and would remain altruistic. I thought that Google's survival clearly depended on positive public perception, because as soon as that was gone the political appetite for sharpening the regulators knives would rise, and Google would be in trouble. The only way Google could maintain the positive reputation to avoid that would be to stay genuinely altruistic.
What I missed is how much short term profits matter more than the company's long-term survival. Shareholders can easily move their investments elsewhere after milking the company to its death. Google has now thoroughly eaten through its reputation in the pursuit of more profits, and here come the regulators...
Yeah so it's called a market correction, but to be fair, Google was already overstaffed by a factor of 8 or so back in the 2010s. As I remember it, the excuse was to get 'em before Facebook would, or something.