Imagine a tiered job market with 3 levels. Companies at tier 1 stop hiring and some of them have layoffs.
- now everyone at tier 1 is competing for a limited number of positions, some people are moving down to tier 2 out of necessity, and it's extremely difficult for people at tier 2 to move up to 1
- people at tier 2 can't move up so they stay at tier 2 and are much more attractive candidates for those positions than the people from tier 3 who are trying to move up to tier 2.
- it's almost impossible for juniors to enter (this was already hard) at tier 3 or at any other
It's a soft squeeze from the top. And while this is happening the companies at tier 2/3 are having freezes and layoffs of their own (maybe at a lower rate).
PS. The tier model is to make the argument clear, I know that companies don't separate that cleanly into groups and we could argue about which companies fall into which group but you can roughly think of the tiers as a proxy for compensation.
- It's unclear if the layoffs hit software engineering, or if it's mostly business roles.
- Engineers from FANG (or whatever the acronym now is) aren't competing for all the roles out there. They generally aren't looking to join banks/insurance/telco or what they would consider "boring" roles.
If you are looking to join a cool well paying startup in SF, then yes, I imagine the competition is extra tough right now.