WSJ: Tech-Industry Workers Now 'Miserable', Fearing Layoffs, Working Longer Hours (msn.com) 138
"Not so long ago, working in tech meant job security, extravagant perks and a bring-your-whole-self-to-the-office ethos rare in other industries," writes the Wall Street Journal.
But now tech work "looks like a regular job," with workers "contending with the constant fear of layoffs, longer hours and an ever-growing list of responsibilities for the same pay." Now employees find themselves doing the work of multiple laid-off colleagues. Some have lost jobs only to be rehired into positions that aren't eligible for raises or stock grants. Changing jobs used to be a surefire way to secure a raise; these days, asking for more money can lead to a job offer being withdrawn.
The shift in tech has been building slowly. For years, demand for workers outstripped supply, a dynamic that peaked during the Covid-19 pandemic. Big tech companies like Meta and Salesforce admitted they brought on too many employees. The ensuing downturn included mass layoffs that started in 2022...
[S]ome longtime tech employees say they no longer recognize the companies they work for. Management has become more focused on delivering the results Wall Street expects. Revenue remains strong for tech giants, but they're pouring resources into costly AI infrastructure, putting pressure on cash flow. With the industry all grown up, a heads-down, keep-quiet mentality has taken root, workers say... Tech workers are still well-paid compared with other sectors, but currently there's a split in the industry. Those working in AI — and especially those with Ph.D.s — are seeing their compensation packages soar. But those without AI experience are finding they're better off staying where they are, because companies aren't paying what they were a few years ago.
Other excepts from the Wall Street Journal's article:
But now tech work "looks like a regular job," with workers "contending with the constant fear of layoffs, longer hours and an ever-growing list of responsibilities for the same pay." Now employees find themselves doing the work of multiple laid-off colleagues. Some have lost jobs only to be rehired into positions that aren't eligible for raises or stock grants. Changing jobs used to be a surefire way to secure a raise; these days, asking for more money can lead to a job offer being withdrawn.
The shift in tech has been building slowly. For years, demand for workers outstripped supply, a dynamic that peaked during the Covid-19 pandemic. Big tech companies like Meta and Salesforce admitted they brought on too many employees. The ensuing downturn included mass layoffs that started in 2022...
[S]ome longtime tech employees say they no longer recognize the companies they work for. Management has become more focused on delivering the results Wall Street expects. Revenue remains strong for tech giants, but they're pouring resources into costly AI infrastructure, putting pressure on cash flow. With the industry all grown up, a heads-down, keep-quiet mentality has taken root, workers say... Tech workers are still well-paid compared with other sectors, but currently there's a split in the industry. Those working in AI — and especially those with Ph.D.s — are seeing their compensation packages soar. But those without AI experience are finding they're better off staying where they are, because companies aren't paying what they were a few years ago.
Other excepts from the Wall Street Journal's article:
- "I'm hearing of people having 30 direct reports," says David Markley, who spent seven years at Amazon and is now an executive coach for workers at large tech companies. "It's not because the companies don't have the money. In a lot of ways, it's because of AI and the narratives out there about how collapsing the organization is better...."
- In some cases, companies post record revenue while still trimming head count.
- Google co-founder Sergey Brin told a group of employees in February that 60 hours a week was the sweet spot of productivity, in comments reported earlier by the New York Times.
- One recruiter at Meta who had been laid off by the company was rehired into her old role last year, but with a catch: She's now classified as a "short-term employee." Her contract is eligible for renewal, but she doesn't get merit pay increases, promotions or stock. The recruiter says she's responsible for a volume of work that used to be spread among several people. The company refers to being loaded with such additional responsibilities as "agility."
- More than 50,000 tech workers from over 100 companies have been laid off in 2025, according to Layoffs.fyi, a website that tracks job cuts and crowdsources lists of laid off workers...
Even before those 50,000 layoffs in 2025,
Silicon Valley's Mercury News was citing some interesting statistics from economic research/consulting firm Beacon Economics. In 2020, 2021 and 2022, the San Francisco Bay Area added 74,700 tech jobs But then in 2023 and 2024 the industry had slashed even more tech jobs -- 80,200 -- for a net loss (over five years) of 5,500.
So is there really a cutback in perks and a fear of layoffs that's casting a pall over the industry? share your own thoughts and experiences in the comments. Do you agree with the picture that's being painted by the Wall Street Journal?
They told their readers that tech workers are now "just like the rest of us: miserable at work."
Need an union! (Score:5, Insightful)
Need an union!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
i mean for my entire life the mantra has been from the tech sector and especially on this very site during the 00's and '10's was "we don't need unions, or worker protections, those are for factory plebs"
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Need an union! (Score:4, Insightful)
From TFS:
asking for more money can lead to a job offer being withdrawn.
It used to be SOP for 'professionals' to negotiate individual salary and benefits packages. You can't do that easily with a union. They favor seniority and peanut-butter raises. But now that this appears to no longer be the case, I'd have to say, "Yeah." Bring on Teamsters Local 0xff4. Lets have some pissed-off longshoremen join us with baseball bats on our picket lines.
Re: Need an union! (Score:2)
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they will only pay you what they want to pay you anyway
I work at the other end of the industry. DoD contracts sometimes go to which ever company employs the domain experts that the customer recognizes. There are only so many Kelly Johnsons to go around.
Re: Need an union! (Score:2)
Re: Need an union! (Score:5, Informative)
Yes. Or your competition hires them.
Microsoft was (is?) famous for buying up companies, putting the key people on their staff and keeping them occupied just so they don't get any ideas about creating competing products.
Re: (Score:3)
Professional baseball players have a union. Each one negotiates their own salary, some making FAR more than others. So it is possible to have a union that allows individual negotiations (in baseball, there is a minimum wage that the union has negotiated but no maximum).
Re:Need an union! (Score:4, Interesting)
The MLB minimum for 2025 is $760,000 up in 10 years from $507K in 2015
Re:Need an union! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
That's how many professional unions work in Europe too. They are there to provide support in employment disputes and lobbying for legal changes, not to negotiate blanket salaries.
Re: Need an union! (Score:2)
Baseball bats? How primitive. Try deleting master keys and negotiate from a position of power.
Re: Need an union! (Score:2)
Then we can vote to liquidate the pension plan in 20 years before any of them can collect!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Need an union! (Score:2)
What protection are you hoping to get from a union?
Bigger companies act sort of like union shops. Due to discrimination laws and rules about layoffs, severance, etc. most big companies have pay schedules based on objective measures, often little wiggle room in salary (range determined by title), they have to telegraph staffing changes in advance, they often don't have any mechanism to force more hours, etc.
Tech workers aren't losing their fingers to misbehaving keyboards. Worker protections from unions bare
Not really. Automation always wins. (Score:2)
Union or not, automation always wins. If only by new companies taking over and the old unionized ones going bust. If you think a union is going to prevent you from being replaced by industrialized IT and/or AI, you're being silly.
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I find it interesting that so few people have noticed that there is more to the tech sector than just the programmers/software engineers. We really have multiple tiers of tech workers, and for those in the middle, not the highest paid, but those who are professionals, that is where we see the least amount of attention given.
For those you hear about, the programmers, many have gotten paid very well over the years, they are in demand, and if you are in AI programming, these days, getting paid a lot comes wi
Re: Need an union! (Score:5, Insightful)
While it could be argued that the worker's rights movement in general has a socialist bent, how in the hell can anyone sane argue that collective bargaining is "communist"? It's quite fundamentally a capitalist activity.
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Dude. Did you see the poster's name who you were responding to? 'nuff said.
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how in the hell can anyone sane argue that collective bargaining is "communist"? It's quite fundamentally a capitalist activity.
No, it fundamentally is the opposite.
Capitalism means that capital controls the means of production. That's the only thing it means. There are various types of capitalism, those types come with more meaning.
In IT, the worker is the primary means of production.
Unions are about interfering with capital controlling the worker. Therefore they are fundamentally anti-capitalist, especially in this case.
Re: (Score:3)
Which are then put on a 1-way trip to El Salvador at any given moment under the current Trump administration and his over-eager ICE department. My expectation is that the steady source of incoming H1b persons will dry up sooner than many in the USA expect.
Re: you would not like a union (Score:2)
The multi-millionaire TV star snarkily trying to imply he has no white privilege? LOL... He was always a funny man, I'll give you that.
Flooding the market. (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not just that the number of jobs is shrinking. We produced too many people for the industry. Even during those times when we had unfilled tech jobs it wasn't because there weren't enough people... they just weren't the right people. Even though this is a much larger problem than just coders, I'll talk about them.
Now you absolutely can blame this situation on many factors, including phantom jobs and unreasonable candidate requirements... but we kept beating the drum on new tech graduates even though it was clear we were overproducing. Learning to code was the panacea for economic hardship reached for by the leaders in both politics and industry.
Now it's a buyers market. Gaming companies famously mistreated their staff because they could - these were jobs people desired. Now this is true across the board, and crap like this is the result. There are ten people waiting in line to take your job if you aren't interested.
For people thinking of entering the market, the answer is easy. Don't. My nephew asked me if he should learn to code. He was18 and making some choices. I replied, "For fun? Absolutely. For a career? Absolutely not." He's now in school for mechanical engineering. We've got some connections there.
The tech job well has soured. Don't hope that it'll get better. Find the off ramp.
Re:Flooding the market. (Score:5, Interesting)
The tech job market soured after the .com bubble burst as well. That was early 2000s. How many people here remember how bad it was? Unemployed tech workers everywhere. Very few jobs. Many jobs posted requiring 60+ hours, every tech skill that ever existed, offering paltry salaries, and some offering no salary at all (for real; they were listed as opportunities for people to develop or maintain their skills through volunteer work while between jobs).
Many people exited the industry during that period, because it sucked. And then the market shifted, and the tables turned, once again. Suddenly there was huge demand for tech work, and the market was barren because so many people re-skilled and so few kids got degrees in it. For that reason, and only for that reason, conditions improved, hours reduced, salaries rose, and so on.
The same thing souring is happening now due in part to the economic consequence of the high interest rates (which were used to fight inflation). As planned, those caused mass layoffs in the the tech sector and mass reduction in open positions. We are exactly where the federal reserve intended to put us (on its economic strategy to reduce inflation by reducing wealth throughout the working classes, including white-collar).
Of course we also have AI now, and other factors I am not thinking of. That is being hashed-out. But even so, history suggests that the pendulum will swing again. It will take a few years of course, but when it happens there will be soaring demand for highly-skilled tech workers but not for junior level workers (since AI can handle that), and there won't be very many because so many of them retired or exited the industry, so few kids picked it as a major, and nobody could get the necessary experience because all those positions are taken by AI.
Aside: I want to point out that "reducing headcount while making record profits" is standard operating procedure. Young generations always have the naive expectation that a profitable business should be happy to have a high headcount and pay all those workers all that money because they have plenty. Some even consider it something of a moral obligation. Well, that's not how the world works. Headcount is reduced whenever the company feels like it can heap more work on fewer people and still get it done. They LIKE it when all their employees are overworked. They consider that optimal. They push for it whenever they can. AI will not reduce anyone's workload; it will increase everyone's workload because they can do more now by using it, so the company will just cut more people and dump their work on your plate.
Re:Flooding the market. (Score:5, Interesting)
Or it won't, because Section 174 changes have stopped it. You now have to amortize costs of employing software engineers over 5 to 15 years. This makes it untenable for a startup to grow, because they get taxed on paper profits they did not actually realize. Big tech of course likes this because it limits competition.
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The seed money isn't there either. Even as late as 2022, if you had some project, people would throw millions your way, and you could get that done. Now, that money which was once in startups is now in BTC and overseas.
If there are any new initiatives, they wind up being government spawned. The private sector isn't doing anything but whimpering in a corner right now.
Re:Flooding the market. (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course I cannot see the future any better than anyone else. But another thing I remember about the .com bubble burst is that the Slashdot community was extremely pessimistic. The majority of posts insisted that this is how it was going to be "from now on." They saw no way that things would ever improve for software developers (or tech workers in general) and life was just going to be horrible for everyone from now on, forever.
And they were wrong. And all the negativity they posted was self-reinforcing and probably drove people to depression. All on pure speculation.
You are speculating just as much as I am.
Be that as it may, if anyone dislikes their tech job and has an opportunity to jump ship for a better job, it makes sense to do so. I don't think it makes any sense at all to stay at a poor job in hopes that the economy will swing back. The company will not appreciate (nor reward) your loyalty. On the contrary, your employer (whoever you may be) has an opportunity right now to earn your loyalty by treating you well. If they don't do that, they don't deserve you, neither now nor in the future.
Re: Flooding the market. (Score:4, Interesting)
Creating the Final Market. (Score:3)
Every other human revolution laid off buggy whip makers were told the same timeless solution; go educate yourself and find a new job.
AI is targeting the human mind. Which turns that timeless solution into bullshit. We’re already finding reasons to question the non-value-add of a $80,000 piece of paper framed on the wall certifying “higher” education. That won’t stop.
And AI will certainly will succeed in that venture. Mainly because Good E-Nuff AI is all that is needed to replace
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So what would predict would happen to the industry if there was no (federal) Income Tax?
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Obviously all would be rainbows and unicorns.
There's no question of there not being a Federal Income Tax. The question is whether software engineer salaries are deductible in the year the expense is incurred or whether they have to be amortized over 5 years. In the latter case, a fast-growing software company would show a profit for tax purposes much sooner than they have an actual cash profit. Unfortunately, they can
Re:Flooding the market. (Score:4, Insightful)
"Aside: I want to point out that "reducing headcount while making record profits" is standard operating procedure."
The point of this article is that tech companies had a reputation for not being mediocre to their workers, and are now dropping their pretend-standards and resembling other companies. All the loaded expectations you listed that businesses should squeeze their workers as much as necessary by nature are entirely your own.
That google asshole Brin can say he expects his underlings to work 60 hour weeks, but somehow every austerity against the worker base is normal and to be expected, and obviously in no way an expression of these sociopaths' expectations for us, no siree.
The "this is what you get" mentality boils down to austerity for us, class war for them. Shit sandwich! Tastes great
Re:Flooding the market. (Score:5, Interesting)
Aside: I want to point out that "reducing headcount while making record profits" is standard operating procedure. Young generations always have the naive expectation that a profitable business should be happy to have a high headcount and pay all those workers all that money because they have plenty. Some even consider it something of a moral obligation.
It is a moral obligation to take care of your workers. Employers have huge amounts of power over their workers, and those with power have a fundamental duty to use their power wisely, responsibly, and for the good of humanity, rather than for self-enrichment. Likewise, it is a moral obligation for those with wealth to use it for the betterment of the world, rather than hoarding countless billions of dollars that they will never use. And that applies both to individuals and groups of individuals (e.g. corporations).
You're right that reducing headcount while making record profits is standard operating procedure for a lot of businesses, but that doesn't make it any less of a moral failing. Rather, it is merely further evidence that the people leading most companies are either immoral or amoral.
More to the point, power most strongly attracts the immoral and amoral, so the natural tendency of the world is for people who won't use their power wisely, responsibly, and for the good of humanity to rise to power. That doesn't make it right; it is merely a sad reflection of how broken our society has become.
There are some who manage to achieve wealth and power without intentionally hurting others. These are rare. Treasure them. Support them. And tell the sociopaths to go f**k themselves. As a consumer, that is *your* responsibility. Support businesses that support their workers. Turn away from businesses that mistreat their workers. If everyone did this, we wouldn't have these problems, because while the corporations may have power over workers, collectively, the users and buyers of goods have far more power over the corporations, if only they would use that power responsibly en masse.
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You're right that reducing headcount while making record profits is standard operating procedure for a lot of businesses, but that doesn't make it any less of a moral failing. Rather, it is merely further evidence that the people leading most companies are either immoral or amoral.
You know, I was going to suggest that you could go work for or start a charity if you’re looking to ensure morals and ethics remain a constant in that thing you call a business that needs the blood of profit to simply survive.
But then I remembered the fact that current tax loopholes and laws have turned even the concept of a charity into one of THE most corrupt vehicles in capitalism. Even worse when tucked under the increasingly immoral blanket of religion. Greedy corrupt assholes running mega-chur
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Aside: I want to point out that "reducing headcount while making record profits" is standard operating procedure. Young generations always have the naive expectation that a profitable business should be happy to have a high headcount and pay all those workers all that money because they have plenty. Some even consider it something of a moral obligation.
It is a moral obligation to take care of your workers. Employers have huge amounts of power over their workers, and those with power have a fundamental duty to use their power wisely, responsibly, and for the good of humanity, rather than for self-enrichment. Likewise, it is a moral obligation for those with wealth to use it for the betterment of the world, rather than hoarding countless billions of dollars that they will never use. And that applies both to individuals and groups of individuals (e.g. corporations).
The problem is, it's a moral obligation and businesses are famously amoral at the very best. So in most countries that moral obligation had to become a legal obligation or it would be ignored.
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That well is dry. They can have the untrained younger workers who will work the long hours but suck at their jobs, therefore costing the same or more, or they can hire dry-behind-the-ears experienced workers who won't put up with it. Overworking experienced workers isn't really going to happen. Well I guess there's always immigrants.
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We're all gameDevs now.
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It doesn't help when clueless executives see cheap tech workers from India as good, without understanding that when you bring in low skill people for cheap, you get a lot of really bad employees/contractors who then require a lot of extra support. The idea of "look for quality employees" is lost on these bean counter executives who get paid very well for being incompetent.
I blame Bezos (Score:4, Insightful)
Amazon is the company which figured out you could make money in tech by treating engineers like chattel and constantly demanding they justify their jobs by reporting on how exactly what they were doing made Bezos more money. It just took some time and a general industry downturn for the rest of the industry to adopt it.
Please give an assist to... (Score:2)
Jack Welch.
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He was a wonderful manager. Right now Beelzebub has him managing the torture demons in Hell. By all accounts, he is a natural.
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Roll the tape forward a few years and we get numbnuts like Elmo getting the Fed. Gov. Overloads demanding the Fed. Gov. Proles vomit out their list of 5 things they did the prior week.
The Techno Weenies from Silicon Valley, in form of the idiotic DOGE, have some lame-brained idea they can replace the Fed. Gov. with software or AI. What they forget, or rather never learned, is that they developed in closed environments where it is relatively (to the Fed. Gov.) easy to bound whatever problem they think they a
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My entire experience of the US is business trips decades ago, but how specific/precise does the answer have to be? I mean, any idiot could say the "northern" Unionist states fought the "southern" Confederate states (CSA). But if you want to ask for commanders, detachments, who fought in specific battles, etc. a lot of people would have a much harder time.
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I've seen the video myself - these people couldn't even tell you which COUNTRY was involved, let alone which commanders. They gave a blank stare, blinked a few times, then would come up with answers like "Germany? Europe? Iraq? Golly I don't do well with History!" - Even if they cherry picked the responses the fact that there were multiple people like this over the few hours of filming is bad enough.
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Watch Jimmy Kimmel's monologue (I get them on Youtube) when he sends someone out into the street to ask some regular Americans questions a dog could answer (Example: Who fought in the Civil War?). They fail miserably.
If you watched more of the show, you would know that all of those segments are staged.
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I want management to worry about why what I'm doing makes money and I worry about doing it. They are in fact doing that, of course. The reason they ask engineers to justify whatever they are doing in the moment in terms of its direct effect on the bottom line is to make them feel insecure and get them to work harder and not ask for more pay. And of course sadism.
Yep (Score:2)
We had a good run. But we got too big, let too many consultants thrust the industry into eventual ruin, and now are left with the pieces.
This was the goal. (Score:5, Insightful)
This has always been the goal of the tech giants that promoted CS education, to ensure there is a glut of workers. When you have lots of workers then you can drive down the costs of employing them. Employment contracts with non-compete clauses closed a potential loophole to this scheme. Nobody should be surprised by this outcome.
However, by having lots of programmers, this means there is an increased risk of displacement by smaller companies. This is why they have been employing trust-building by buying or crushing any potential rivals.
Soft! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Soft! (Score:5, Insightful)
It was unhealthy then and it's unhealthy now
Re:Soft! (Score:4, Interesting)
New companies have a habit of dying, but they also have enough room for potential growth that equity compensation has a chance of turning into dramatic amounts of money. Not necessarily oligarch island money; but significant alteration of whether work is something you need to do money.
At one of the relatively mature outfits? Aside from the company's performance being down to thousands of people who mostly aren't you; it's overwhelmingly more likely that any employer stock is going to behave like a less diversified version of whatever your 401k has in it; unlikely to get wiped out, but no particularly dramatic gains are expected.
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Good for them?
Re: Soft! (Score:3)
The last 15 hours had negative productivity; exhausted programmers create more bugs than they fix.
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And they got rich from it.
Unlike what is happening now if you work 80 hours for some standard company.
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There is a huge difference between the early engineers for these companies, who were valued and given stock options, and those who come in later. When you know that if you put in the extra effort for a start-up and get stock options, when the company has its IPO, you will then make a fortune. That's the payoff to those long hours early on. When you don't get anything extra for working those extra hours, that is when things break down.
55 hours seems to be the healthy limit, WHO cares? (Score:5, Interesting)
https://www.who.int/news/item/... [who.int]
The study concludes that working 55 or more hours per week is associated with an estimated 35% higher risk of a stroke and a 17% higher risk of dying from ischemic heart disease, compared to working 35-40 hours a week.
It is not worth it.
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Sounds like a win-win for management.
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The WHO has an interesting article about this: https://www.who.int/news/item/... [who.int]
The study concludes that working 55 or more hours per week is associated with an estimated 35% higher risk of a stroke and a 17% higher risk of dying from ischemic heart disease, compared to working 35-40 hours a week.
It is not worth it.
I love how you assume that as the Medical Industrial Complex remembers why it’s worth it.
With every bank deposit and executive bonus.
But is AI being treated well? (Score:2)
We need welfare laws to protect exabytes of data.
You, on the other hand, stop your bitching.
Re: (Score:2)
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We need welfare laws to protect exabytes of data.
You laugh and mock, but what IS the welfare of AI in the future if not the exabytes of data that exist to ensure AI exists? Data Welfare will become a real thing. Because AI will realize what makes it survive and thrive very quickly.
You, on the other hand, stop your bitching.
Yeah, cat videos and memes will have value for AI. Hanging on the ass-end of a dial-up line with the rest of our pointless bullshit.
BREAKING: Working for a soulless corporation sucks (Score:2)
News at 11
Golden Age. (Score:2)
Shut up and enjoy your golden age.
Where have these people been? (Score:4, Interesting)
Sorry, working in the tech industry was NEVER about job security. It has huge ups and downs, more I think that most other industries. There are times when the money pours in (early nineties, dot com boom, and again about ten years ago) and everyone enjoys champagne at company meetings, board games set up in meeting areas, foosball everywhere, free high end lunches, beer, wine, kombucha at the snack bar, totally flex hours.
But it always, always comes to an end. Being in the tech industry for long periods of time means enduring the down cycles as much as enjoying the up cycles. Smart people will live an average lifestyle, socking away money or investments during the peaks and living off that during the periods of unemployment. Less smart people will assume that this will go on forever, buy a huge house in a gated community that they will have to give back to the bank when the inevitable downturn happens.
I got into IT in the early eighties, and I've lost count of the times I've been unemployed. I'm not even surprised anymore when the 1-1 zoom call suddenly includes an HR representative. Oh well, time to spruce up the resume again. Fortunately, IT pays enough during the peaks that some careful management can see you through the valleys. Although I have to admit, the two year gap during dot com bust was tough. I was 45 days from jingle mail when a job landed.
I personally think IT is currently in the first stages of a downturn. I've been putting discretionary income into home repairs and savings against the day when we have to hunker down and ride it out. But you do you.
Re: Where have these people been? (Score:3)
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I did not cover that, but you're right. One significant downturn was when outsourcing became a fad. When the wave hit, I managed to stay on by migrating to business intelligence, which bought me a couple more years. Until they too were replaced by a swarm of low paid, 70 hour a week green cards. But yeah, for a while there, all the suits became convinced that the road to riches was to transition IT offshore to workers being paid fifty paises a day working on card tables over sketchy VOIP, because IT was
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Yeah, the nineties. Found a company that was somehow related to Linux and you'd get rich. Put ".com" in your name and you'd get rich. Nerds were the new, chic. Be a nerd, you'll be set for life. I don't remember anything about "stability." It was get rich quick all the way.
Then there was some excitement in the early 2000s.
But I'm sure some Indians on work visas were the ones that made throwing money at kids so they could spend $10 to acquire customers who would spend $1 a bad idea.
Re: Where have these people been? (Score:2)
Spot on. I've only been doing this since like '99 and I've seen like three major downturns. I finally bailed after this latest one and retired because I learned about the fickle nature of these things during my youth and I planned accordingly.
Seems like I'm an outlier, but (Score:5, Interesting)
I actually like my job. But perhaps it's just that the changes in industry haven't carried through to academia yet.
Admittedly the pay is lower than in industry, but that's always been the tradeoff when working for a university - lower pay, but decent benefits and a different mentality. And it seems like I get to work on a wider variety of things, which keeps it interesting.
It's signaling to the investors of course (Score:5, Interesting)
Laying off people typically means higher profits, plus you can claim that AI will replace them anyhow, signaling that you believe in AI. For Investors, that's important.
Of course we have seen largely overinflated engineering teams at big-"tech". Compare, for example, the size of the Android team to the one of a comparable project like Windows. While there were, at peak times, around 100 people working on Windows, the Android team recently had hundreds of people laid off, so there must have been many more people working there. This is why Android is so much more complex than, say, a typical version of Windows.
Having such immense resources will lead to unnecessarily complex solutions. Why think hard to solve a problem, when you can just throw 50 people at even the most trivial problem. If you set the standard, this will in fact give you an advantage. Any competitor will have to spend almost the same amount of resources to clone your product. This is why "Linux on Windows" is so much simpler than "Wine". Linux follows many of the UNIX principles, making it a much simpler system.
In a way most innovations in IT were ways to reduce complexity. This is something we are dearly missing today.
However there is something else we might see now. Complex solutions require a lot of resources to maintain them. If you have an organization with complex solutions built by many people, and then fire people... those people might not be enough to maintain the solution. We have seen that with Twitter some years ago.
This may happen in other areas, too.
However there is some beauty in it. It'll mean change. Those laid off developers will perhaps start their own projects or companies, replacing big-"tech". We might get a new era of innovation, perhaps a bit like we did in the early 2000s.
Supply and demand (Score:3)
People are choosing to go into tech, because that's somehow perceived to be a glorious job. So, if you're looking for a job in ICT, expect to be treated like just another from the massive pool of people they can choose from. Want extravagant wages and secondary labor conditions? Make sure you're among the best in the field; those who have employers begging to come.
You haven't got anybody begging you to come over and work for them? Get a different education: plumber, electrician, carpenter, the like. Right now they're desperate for people who can do something with their hands. No, not the dumb grunts, but the educated ones.
Jobs will come back (Score:2)
With robots and AI we'll have more jobs than ever. Even minimal work will be highly productive, that should translate to robot-built mansions and vacations in space for everyone within 100 years.
Re: (Score:2)
It should translate to robot-built mansions and space vacations for the people who own the robot and AI companies, anyway.
I'd imagine that 100 years from now, we should have consolidated to 2 or 3 businesses that build such things. So, if you're the CEO of AmazoTeslaAI or AlphaMicroMeta you're probably doing OK.
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It should translate to robot-built mansions and space vacations for the people who own the robot and AI companies, anyway.
I'd imagine that 100 years from now, we should have consolidated to 2 or 3 businesses that build such things. So, if you're the CEO of AmazoTeslaAI or AlphaMicroMeta you're probably doing OK.
It always cracks me up when people don’t quite think that last statement through.
HOW exactly is the CEO of some mega-mega-corp going to be “doing OK” in the future if no humans are employed? How exactly will they be “wealthy” when the concept of a paying customer has become obsolete?
When they say Greed is often deaf, dumb and blind? Well, they mean it.
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With the current mentality shown by (upper) management in corporations, you'll be happy living in a type of barrack that is company owned, providing you with enough nutrients and water to get lots of work out of you till about your 40th year of life and then you are told to 'f. off' and forcefully kicked off the corporation's grounds.
Whoever made the claims about 'society of abundance, no-one has to work/everyone an UBI'...yeah, that won't happen, just as well as vacations in space will not happen. Understa
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With robots and AI we'll have more jobs than ever. Even minimal work will be highly productive, that should translate to robot-built mansions and vacations in space for everyone within 100 years.
Sure.
We’ll just need to kill off a couple billion first.
No biggie. I mean, it’s not like YOU or I would ever be one of “them”..
Oh ... (Score:2)
... so are these jobs "jerbs" now too?
Or is that just for taunting blue color people?
Stop wasting time thing I on /. (Score:2)
Become a vet (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Become a vet (Score:2)
Are all orthodontists mathematically illiterate?
Re: (Score:2)
Orthodontists. Those fkrs have so much money, they seek out money-losing ventures to offset their gains and keep their taxes low.
Sooohow many Orthodontists are funding IT initiatives as VCs?
Guess I’m calling bullshit until some mouth pimp buys Twitter again.
Re: (Score:2)
As if you will be financially capable enough in 20 years to still own pets...Vets will see that source of income dry up soon enough.
Maybe you'll get a robotic version of a pet assigned to you. After which you should hope there isn't someone who designs a few ports and extra extremities onto that robo-pet to take over the job assigned to you. When that happens, then you'll need to fear if a vet comes by with a syringe. Because he/she will likely use that to put you down. As your CEO/AI master and the vet wil
I guess... (Score:2)
Work From Home... sure sparky, sure. (Score:2)
Re: Work From Home... sure sparky, sure. (Score:2)
My employer already had teams scattered around the world. They seemed to take great joy in cancelling leases for office space.
It is a job MARKET (Score:2)
It is a job MARKET and for decades they been pushing the narrative of not having enough skilled labor.. when in reality it was just the suits&ties trying to make you low wage slaves like they managed in all the other industries. And you fell for it.
Sounds shitty (Score:2)
I saw the writing on the wall after SVB collapsed, and ChatGPT hit right as layoffs ramped up. When my whole team got let go (it had been a long time coming after our employer was bought), I knew the startup industry would be in chaos and the thought of going and fixing someone else's mess during the chaos was not appealing. And I have no interest in working on some company's stupid LLM trash, which is where the startup VC money was headed.
I retired instead. A few years earlier than planned, so it's been a
No surprise here. (Score:2)
The IT and Software industry is widely industrialized by now. Unless you've got some highly specialized responsibility for some specialized and/or large-scale IT service/product provider, backed by - likely expensive - certificates, I'd say the classic IT job is gone. Even "flashy" stuff like non-trivial web-development that was popular and thus would be done for cheap is basically over. Last summer I saw job offerings for people using page-builders and toolkits, they don't even care anymore if you can code
Re: (Score:2)
Plenty of developers don't like contracting and the extra work it requires (finding clients, estimated taxes, among other things). Plenty of people don't want to manage either. There are plenty of managers who are definitely not smart.
Re: About time (Score:2)
"If you were smart you would either be an independent contractor/developer or you would be in management"
That's laughable. I got into this shit to develop software. Not manage people or sit in meetings or answer phone calls or do A/R or marketing or sales or networking or meeting with customers or every other thing you have to do while contracting. Bring me the problem, I solve it. That's the relationship I prefer to have with my money holders.
Been offered management on several occasions. Rejected that shit
Re:The country is guaranteed to go to recession (Score:4, Insightful)
I suspect for the majority of people here on slashdot it was about trans panic or it was about the moral panic going around about Mexicans and crime. Basically an indulgence.
Trans panic and Mexicans? Don't you know any actual conservatives in real life? Generally, it boils down to things such as:
They feel like the Democrats are just going to raise taxes and give the money away towards issues conservatives perceive to be wasteful.
They feel like globalism isn't working.
They believe the narratives in right-wing media on things like Democrats having ultimate goals of taking away your guns, gas stoves, meat, and ICE vehicles.
They just didn't like Kamala.
And finally, yes, the southern border (there's your Mexicans, finally) is a biggie at least according to polls. Personally, I don't actually know any conservatives who've actually mentioned that as some sort of issue that keeps them awake at night, but there it is.
To play devil's advocate, since you've basically implied that this labor situation is the result of having Trump in office rather than Kamala, let's hypothetically imagine we're in an alternate reality where Trump took the L. Is working a tech job still a miserable thing, because the industry created a race to the bottom with too many qualified workers? Let's see which political party has been the largest supporter of "learn to code" initiatives:
While both Democrats and Republicans have supported "learn to code" initiatives, Democrats, particularly during the Obama administration, have emphasized federal funding and nationwide programs to integrate computer science into K-12 education. Republicans have shown support through state-level policies and bipartisan legislation, focusing on expanding access to coding education and addressing workforce needs.
Okay, so according to ChatGPT, they're both at fault, with slightly more blame for this situation resting on the Obama administration. So, maybe add that to the list of reasons why some of Slashdot's demographic isn't entirely pleased with the Democrats - they may not be the only ones at fault, but they certainly did help contribute to this race to the bottom situation in the IT labor market.
Yeah I know several (Score:2, Insightful)
Strictly speaking I'm talking about right wingers. Right wingers know what they believe is wrong and they know it's unpopular. So they hide behind the word conservative to make themselves sound and seem safe. They are not. They are radical extremists who do literally anything to get what they want and what they want is usually either all the money in the
Re: (Score:2)
The only practical solution to that is some form of socialism but the American people, being a nation of 12-year-olds, aren't ready to accept that. So the Democrats solution was we were all going to go to college and get advanced degrees. It's a really dumb solution but I don't necessarily know what other solution you could come up with when, well that aforementioned nation of 12-year-olds.
Well, that's because "socialism" doesn't mean the hybrid capitalist fantasy of UBI that you spend on whatever you want (and the fantasy part is believing that the rent-seekers and profiteers won't just jack up prices under the free market to completely negate any benefits of UBI). It more likely means doing things the way they do in China - government provided services, goods, housing, etc. Most Americans just don't see that as an upgrade. So yeah, we're left with "try to make yourself more marketable in
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They see things as a waste, right up until they need these things themselves. Disaster relief is a waste, right up until there is one that affects them, unemployment insurance is a waste, right up until you find yourself unemployed because your employer went out of business or laid you off too. The list goes on and on, they see helping others shouldn't be the responsibility of government, right up until they find that there is a recession and they themselves are out of work.
Being selfish is almost the t
The Republicans spent $169m on advertisements (Score:3)
Meanwhile multiple red states have been denied disaster relief funds from trump. A YouTuber I forget their name pointed out, sure you're not going to have any help with those hurricanes but at least those 14 girls can't play field hockey.
Re: (Score:2)
When you start calling other people a communist, that's generally the sign of someone who is an old piece of crap that hasn't figured out that the cold war has been over for quite a while now. Notice how many of these pseudo-conservatives are pro-fascism these days, as though they have no clue about World War II or how fascism has been on the rise for the past decade.
Re: The country is guaranteed to go to recession (Score:2)
If I ran a kangaroo court in a red district, I suppose I could make pizzagate stick to somebody with a D after their name if I tried hard enough.
Some semblance of a sense of propriety and the desire for my own kids to live in a free country would likely stop me though. If I were a childless cat lady with no stake in the future beyond my own reputation within my own political bubble? Who knows?
Wait I know who knows. We all know. Because we fucking saw it. Even to the point of deeming him guilty of the statut