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Tech layoffs, have you been impacted?

Have you been impacted by the recent tech layoffs?

  • yes, very recently. I.e last month

    Votes: 45 3.7%

  • Recently, but still looking

    Votes: 15 1.2%

  • Yes, but found a job

    Votes: 25 2.1%

  • No, but worried

    Votes: 256 21.1%

  • No, and not worried

    Votes: 552 45.4%

  • Not in tech

    Votes: 323 26.6%
  • Total voters
    1,216
julian

julian

Member
Oct 27, 2017
17,720
I'm very fortunate my current job's main product is cash. So we are doing very well. Oddly enough though, my last job has had recruiters reaching out to me saying they are going on a hiring spree and may want me back. Very weird since I wasn't under the impression things ended well there but maybe they just reach out to all former employees.
 
SonicXtreme

SonicXtreme

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,737
3.5 years in a fortune 50 company and i've never seen a developer fired or anything close here. always have been hiring too. good for peace of mind but also makes me not want to test the waters, pretty much every other company i've interviewed for has had visible layoffs at some point. in a hybrid role for the record. i'd like to move further south but i'd feel kind of dumb ditching my current company in this economy.
 
RadzPrower

RadzPrower

One Winged Slayer
Member
Jan 19, 2018
6,383
No, but I'm not in Silicon Valley variety of tech either though. I just got a promotion in fact.

I'm in an older, smaller company and my specialty in particular is a legacy system that doesn't have a highly competitive hiring base and it's only shrinking due to retirements. Eventually, there may no longer be any of these systems out there in the world, but that time does not seem to be anywhere on the horizon considering my company is considering pulling in people straight out of college and teaching them this archaic system just because they can't find any more experts to hire.
 
iareharSon

iareharSon

Member
Oct 30, 2017
9,065
squeakywheel said:
This is why I work in the public sector. Life is short and I don't need the added stress of boom/bust cycles as I creep closer to retirement.
Good luck to all those impacted. I hope they gave a decent cushion for a bit.
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Public Sector isn't immune to this. I'm a long time public sector worker and unless you're tied to a revenue stream outside of the general fund, your job can potentially be in danger during times of economic hardship as cuts are made to budget to balance city, county, state or federal budgets.

Although I suppose seniority is a thing with a lot of public sector work, if you're lucky enough to have been there a while.
 
P-Bo

P-Bo

One Winged Slayer
Member
Jun 17, 2019
4,405
No, but it's starting to feel like the Sword of Damocles over my head. Supposedly my sector in the company is secure (and we are pretty short-handed as it is), but one can never tell these days.
 

mrmoose

Member
Nov 13, 2017
21,886
iareharSon said:
Public Sector isn't immune to this. I'm a long time public sector worker and unless you're tied to a revenue stream outside of the general fund, your job can potentially be in danger during times of economic hardship as cuts are made to budget to balance city, county, state or federal budgets.

Although I suppose seniority is a thing with a lot of public sector work, if you're lucky enough to have been there a while.
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Public sector unions also help a ton, I'm sure.
 
TarpitCarnivore

TarpitCarnivore

Member
Oct 25, 2017
20,314
My company had a growth goal to go from 8K to 25K employees by 2025 and promptly but the brakes on that. They did no lay offs during COVID. So I'm hoping to be "ok" after dealing with a layoff in July.
 
TeraDax

TeraDax

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,461
Québec
We literally have shortage of video game dev for the past 3 years in Montreal and company still has trouble hiring Unity dev... so should be okay, but can't say I'm not worried.
 
haxan

haxan

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,434
They have my team doing that thing at work where we're effectively training other people to do core responsibilities of our job so we can focus on other things that are frankly ill-defined and nebulous, so I think they're readying us for the chopping block, or strategically preparing in case they decide they do need layoffs in the future.

The job market is flooded and a mess, and the interviewing/hiring process has gotten insane over the past few months since good jobs in my field know that they could take their time driving people crazy as they carefully make a selection. I'm feeling kind of hopeless and feel fucked. The last time I was let go I tried to kill myself. I have no support system. I'm losing sleep and it's affecting my performance. I won't even mention how much the stress of impending doom has affected my personal life :(
 
m_shortpants

m_shortpants

Member
Oct 25, 2017
12,431
12,000 at Google.

finance.yahoo.com

Google parent to lay off 12,000 workers - memo

(Reuters) -Alphabet Inc is eliminating 12,000 jobs, its chief executive said in a staff memo shared with Reuters. The cuts mark the latest to shake the technology sector and come days after rival Microsoft Corp said it would lay off 10,000 workers. The layoffs are global and impact U.S. staff...
finance.yahoo.com
 
MechaMarmaset

MechaMarmaset

Member
Nov 20, 2017
3,794
Welp, I'm losing my job. The pandemic screwed the company and we just lost our largest client, so the company is dead. Just had the meeting this morning.

I'm sad. I've been here for over a decade and really loved my job. Not exactly helping the depression.
 
Dre3001

Dre3001

Member
Oct 28, 2017
1,898
Was told I was being laid off right before Thanksgiving but the company gave me several months severance since I had been there a while. I looked around and ended up going back to my previous employer. While I enjoy the work and am happy to be employed, I feel like I took a step back.
 

mrmoose

Member
Nov 13, 2017
21,886
Dre3001 said:
Was told I was being laid off right before Thanksgiving but the company gave me several months severance since I had been there a while. I looked around and ended up going back to my previous employer. While I enjoy the work and am happy to be employed, I feel like I took a step back.
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Well on the bright side it's easier to find another job if you're already employed (instead of having to answer why you're not working). The downside being it's harder to find time to do all the interviews, and it is probably a very crowded market at the moment.
 
Joe

Joe

Member
Oct 25, 2017
8,977
No, and I'm not really worried about it. I do work in tech, but I work for the federal government, and they really seem to operate on their own separate ecosystem from the rest of the tech world.
 
medinaria

medinaria

Member
Oct 30, 2017
2,598
saw a message from one of our hr/recruiting people last week saying that we're "not just not laying people off, but still actively hiring", so I think we're good for now. we didn't really increase hiring in our games division significantly over the past few years, so there's not really much adjustment to be done to get back to pre-pandemic levels. (this is not the case in other segments of the company, which is why there have been very high-profile layoffs in other sectors I work at wbd, you've seen the threads lol)

anecdotally I know my area's hiring is frozen but doesn't appear to have any expected layoffs, there's been a few teams that got headcount reduced slightly but that was for failing to make targets last year after hiring more people. so that's much more of a "normal business" thing than a bad signal.
 

Superman00

Member
Jan 9, 2018
1,140
Tech and big tech definitely getting hit hard. On the other hand, tech working with gov is still going full steam. I have had over a dozen recruiters reached out the past 2 weeks looking for cleared engineer.

Problem with working with big tech is that it's hard to go back to smaller companies, especially dealing with gov. It can be a big step down.
 

mrmoose

Member
Nov 13, 2017
21,886
Duck Sauce said:
If my company starts laying off, I'll probably be one of the first to go. I'm one of the newest members and I have no idea what I'm doing...
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Part of that depends on what your initial salary was. If it was pandemic-bloated, then maybe, but sometimes they like the newbies who are relatively cheap and still susceptible to "do it for us, your family" type of motivational tactics.
 
Rodney McKay

Rodney McKay

Member
Oct 26, 2017
12,890
Thankfully no.

The company I work at is in cloud security and we're doing OK at the moment. We were hiring quite a bit over the last year, but so far all that's really changed recently is that we aren't hiring anymore.

Apparently there were a few contracts that were being worked on that were delayed, but not canceled.
 
The Albatross

The Albatross

Member
Oct 25, 2017
40,450
My company is cutting back hiring, after hiring about ~700 people last year (about 10-11% growth), we're going to be aiming for 350 next year (roughly 5%), but we're a slow growth, boring, private tech company and so while layoffs will have some affect on us (other tech companies are top customers of ours) and there will be downward pressure on salaries with more abundance of workers looking for opportunities, I'm not expecting anything for us. We didn't do any layoffs back from 2008-2012 when the finances were much weaker than they are now, so we'll see.
 
Dr. Nothing Loud

Dr. Nothing Loud

Literally Cinderella
Member
Oct 25, 2017
10,218
Getting nervous since I graduate from my program in a year and will be looking for a tech job. But hopefully I'm more competitive since I'll have my PhD.
 

Deleted member 4212

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
9,872
Survived a couple rounds over the past couple years. I really don't want to be in the job market right now. I just got a new, more standard title that should help if worse comes to worse at least.

My whole team was just reorganized into other teams, and now there are only 3 left on this team including me, but we're each in pretty different roles that are really only part of this team because we don't fit into the broader product teams. I'm not really sure what to make of it, but I'm kind of afraid of being pigeonholed into an area that might just get cut or restructured again and getting sacked just for not being in an area that is retained.


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67SDQQipZJc

This guy recommends focusing on your core value add and not trying to branch out during times like these, but I'm kind of nervous about it. I'm thinking about grabbing some spare work from other responsibilities on the weekends just to get my hands into some other engineering roles. Tough times
 
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mrmoose

Member
Nov 13, 2017
21,886
Nothing Loud said:
Getting nervous since I graduate from my program in a year and will be looking for a tech job. But hopefully I'm more competitive since I'll have my PhD.
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Depending on the field and whether you have any work experience at all, it can be a double edged thing. Of course if there's rampant demand or limited supply in the field you'll be fine though.
 
MechaMarmaset

MechaMarmaset

Member
Nov 20, 2017
3,794
Imposter syndrome is really hitting me hard the last couple of days. Looking for a job is going to be so shitty this year. I thought this year would be looking up after all the shit I went through last year, but 2023 is like

fetchimage
 
Brokofiev

Brokofiev

Member
Jun 20, 2019
400
I, very fortunately, didn't get laid off, but my company (e-commerce platform) laid off about 40% of employees across two rounds of layoffs. It was rough. Morale still hasn't completely recovered.
 
TooBusyLookinGud

TooBusyLookinGud

Graphics Engineer
Verified
Oct 27, 2017
8,585
California
Nothing Loud said:
Getting nervous since I graduate from my program in a year and will be looking for a tech job. But hopefully I'm more competitive since I'll have my PhD.
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You should be fine because cuts usually happen every year but during COVID, most tech companies were hiring instead of firing the bottom 3%. Companies are still hiring for skillsets that are needed but will be more selective going forward. The COVID spike hiring threw an unfamiliar wrench in the system and now it's coming back to bite them. Once they shave off head count and do some reorgs, companies will see where they need more engineers and hire. Also they may perform more cuts due to program trajectory.

So far, I've had 5 acquaintances hit with layoffs. Some were low hanging fruit and some not. One I was completely caught off guard by. He was extremely technical and my go to person for my program. The selection process for his company was a strange. He was an absolutely amazing engineer.
 
AMAGON

AMAGON

Prominent Member
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
7,519
Austin, TX
MechaMarmaset said:
Imposter syndrome is really hitting me hard the last couple of days. Looking for a job is going to be so shitty this year. I thought this year would be looking up after all the shit I went through last year, but 2023 is like

fetchimage
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Bro, I can related. Been depressed af since I survive two rounds of layoffs so far. I don't even think my company is doing raises or bonuses this year which will kill me as I needed it to resolve some debt. Fuck
 
MechaMarmaset

MechaMarmaset

Member
Nov 20, 2017
3,794
AMAGON said:
Bro, I can related. Been depressed af since I survive two rounds of layoffs so far. I don't even think my company is doing raises or bonuses this year which will kill me as I needed it to resolve some debt. Fuck
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That really sucks. Thankfully I was already scheduled for some therapy before I got notice of my layoff, so maybe it won't crash me as hard. Depression sucks.
 
sfedai0

sfedai0

Member
Oct 27, 2017
10,693
Brokofiev said:
I, very fortunately, didn't get laid off, but my company (e-commerce platform) laid off about 40% of employees across two rounds of layoffs. It was rough. Morale still hasn't completely recovered.
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Whoa, 40% company wide or a department? Your company must have been on a massive hiring spree during pandemic?
 
Brokofiev

Brokofiev

Member
Jun 20, 2019
400
sfedai0 said:
Whoa, 40% company wide or a department? Your company must have been on a massive hiring spree during pandemic?
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Company-wide, sadly. Yeah, they aggressively overhired during the pandemic. They also went about the layoffs in a really shitty way (which they later admitted they handled really badly). I'm an engineering team lead and I had zero input or warning; I just woke up one day and noticed that one of my team members' Slack accounts had been deactivated, so I pinged my boss (engineering director) and was like "hey, what's going on?" and he was like "yeah, this fucking sucks, just wait until our all-hands meeting later and everything will be explained." At least they gave everyone laid off an incredible severance package.
 
mugurumakensei

mugurumakensei

Elizabeth, I’m coming to join you!
Member
Oct 25, 2017
11,687
If by impacted, you mean laid off. No and not worried. If by impacted, you mean having to deal with the fallout (reprioritizing and unexpected project plan changes) then yes.
 
steejee

steejee

Member
Oct 28, 2017
9,443
Strange upside of my company being terrible about resources last two years (personnel and pay wise) is that our headcount has barely budged in that time. So don't have enough people to even try the "Over hired" excuse.
 

ElNino

Member
Nov 6, 2017
3,981
mugurumakensei said:
If by impacted, you mean laid off. No and not worried. If by impacted, you mean having to deal with the fallout (reprioritizing and unexpected project plan changes) then yes.
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Yeah, this is my position as well. I'm not concerned at all about being laid off myself (besides sometimes wishing I would be) but I am often dealing with the fallout of other department layoffs.
 
smisk

smisk

Member
Oct 27, 2017
3,165
I work in the defense sector and we seem to be pretty safe so far, though I'm actively looking for a new job and I'm sure all the layoffs will make the job search much harder.
There seem to be a ton of smaller companies still hiring though, so I'm not convinced we're seeing a downturn across everywhere equally.
 
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