EDIT: As other commenters are pointing out, this appears to be a list of voluntarily added people. In such case the lack of replies is indeed puzzling.
Hopefully that's actually true but, regardless, it seems to be what's believed. If it is true, it's reasonable to assume they knew what the list would be.
> that those laid off folks added their contact info to
They seem to have added their info to the list for it to be floated around.
If I just got laid off, I might not want to take another huge gamble like this.
Senior devs I know who got laid off are just enjoying their time off (with pay! if you consider the severance) after the rocketing market in 2021 (and maybe even H1 22) made them whole and financially secure. And they won't be entertaining a startup unless significant equity or big leveling up (eg Principal or Director).
On the other hand, fresh grads who got laid off are in such a panic mode (esp those on visa) they'd be willing to take anything.
The amount of wealth all people need is constant. It is 1.5 x whatever they have today.
Different ideas about retirement—such as retiring with different amounts of security, different standards of living, different amounts of money donated to charity, different locations, downsizing or not downsizing the house, living in the countryside or the city, traveling a lot or a little, etc.
My impression as someone who’s not retired is that you are signing up for a new relationship with your partner once you retire, and it’s hard to know what that new relationship will be like.
The majority of us don't actually know what we "have", because it isn't that much anyway. We do know though what we need to pay in the next 10 to 15 days(and if we somehow forget there's where anxious dreams come into play to help us out with that).
And back to developers (I am one, but not living in the US), I don't think most of them own their place of living. I know I don't, so, yes, I have to work in order to have a roof over my head.
You can filter out by other characteristics here: https://igotstandardsbro.com/
There are jobs out there, I've turned down 3 (2xUS, 1xUK/CH) last year I enquired about just to keep in touch with whats on offer and gain insight into projects underway or commencing. Paying 6 figures, US onsite, UK/CH offered remote, working as many hours as I wanted. Turned them down. I think US/Canada remote is rare because of the poor internet infrastructure once you get outside of the cities, Europe has better internet infrastructure so can offer more remote work. Management styles are generally different in the US compared to Europe, with the UK somewhere in between the two regions as usual.
I think people need to understand the different parts of a global economy and realise some sectors some countries wont be or will hardly be affected by the social media downturn especially if they are prepared to work abroad and broaden their horizons.
Plenty of money in China.....
But sometimes that number goes to == on layoff. I’ve seen this in real life.
When I bail (or get axed) I’m gonna just do some indie hacking or maybe scratch up some 1099 work.
That would apply to me too. I have 10 years in the industry but have been underpaid and have a family. My current plan if I get fired is to work at Walmart or Lowes until I can find another job.
A fired employee is still eligible for unemployment as long as they were not fired because of specific misconduct. Poor performance does not constitute misconduct. Misconduct must be “willful and wanton.” (Regularly missing work or being late, stealing, fighting with coworkers, etc.)
The CA guidelines are long, but contain some useful examples and guiding principles: https://edd.ca.gov/en/uibdg/Misconduct_MC_5/
I know of people who should have been fired who were talked into quitting instead just because quitting means they can't sue. In turn the company gives the official answer "X worked here between these dates and left in good standing". Since the company always said the same thing when asked if someone worked there it wasn't a negative to the next employer, while if they fired they would have to say left in bad standing.
Of course since getting fired is a sensitive issue I won't say who. Reading between the lines in conversations and how the company acted though I'm sure that is how it worked.
Note that there is a difference between being sued and losing in court. Even if you win you still need to pay your lawyers. I've had one lawyer tell me about spending nearly a million dollars in court for a case that was about $100,000 in asked damages that the lawyer knew based on facts they would lose - but [I can't talk about this part] made it impossible to figure out how to settle out of court.
Also, you can focus on a finding a job in your field. If for some reason you didn't want to get unemployment while you look for a job I would try to find any type of contracting job even upwork or fiverr so you can at least put Self-Employed Consulting on resume.
If you feel like you could lose your current, underpaid job I encourage you to start looking around. I wish I would have before waiting til the bitter end.
If you are at a startup and working on support tools or platform infrastructure or whatever, maybe you're indispensable. But you'd still be better off if you were doing support tools or platform infrastructure that involves revenue.
(The obvious corollary is that if you work at a startup that doesn't make money, you should find a way to make money, or move to a startup that does make money. I feel like a lot of engineers don't know this.)
Of course, your team can be considered strategic one day, then disbanded the next.
These are very confusing times.
Obviously, if you're the junior hire on a team of 1,000 people doing third-derivative things that relate to revenue, YMMV.
Is this really broadly true? I worked for a FAANG for a ~year and half and was constantly over-burdened (rarely with enjoyable or challenging technical work).
I assumed outside of the TikTok "Day in the Life" PMs most folks were grinding away on build issues 50hours a week.
It would not be smart of them to accept a lower paying job immediately. A lot of them have life expenses directly tied to the amount of money they're making. Maybe those who haven't found anything for 3 months can join your company, move to a new place, change their childrens' daycare, and do a lot of life changing decisions based on their new income
I get a ton of emails from random startups in stealth mode, early funding, whatever.
You know where they all go? Spam folder. As far as I’m concerned, they pay the equivalent of dog shit and are mostly full of extremely entitled founders. They rarely offer equity that’s even remotely worth the risk. I’m way better off joining a company at Series B/C. I can often get a very similar amount of stock that even seed or series A folks have with having avoided a huge amount of risk. Tbh - I find joining pre-IPO probably has close to the best reward+risk for non-public entities.
There’s just no benefit to joining early startups as a non-founder. Maybe when founders start offering serious percentages of stock that isn’t going to be diluted into nothing - I’ll be more inclined. Until then - no way!
If you're filtering for B/C, you're filtering for companies that need investor money post-supposed-PMF (A is generally considered the anointing of PMF).
That behavior was fine pre-2021, but it's a bit more suspect in 2022. Joining the median pre-IPO tech company within the last year or two would have left your initial option grant completely in the red, today.
In short, there's a continuum between "stealth mode" and Series B that's more lucrative than you're giving credit for, provided one chooses them wisely. The problem is it's hard to choose. There aren't good incentives for educating people on how to choose well.
Not sure what you mean here. I know of companies that lay off entire teams, irrespective of performance. I suspect that it's the same everywhere.
It's not just the comp difference (though I do expect most people with severance are hoping to get something close to their old TC), but startups are notoriously fragile and at the same time wildly over optimistic about their futures in down markets.
I've talked to a few startups about interesting roles over the past few months and no matter how obviously in trouble they are if the market continues the way it is, they all deeply believe that they have an infinitely bright future.
A shocking number of post-seed but still awaiting series A startups have started reaching out to me and none of them have sane business models. On top of that it looks like VC funding is way down.
Any senior engineers who just got the shock of being let go from what they thought was a very stable job with great comp simply aren't going to be excited to jump onto a high risk startup just to relive the whole experience again only this time with less severance.
I’ve considered some startups, but it seems like it’s often difficult to enforce boundaries on work… I benefit a lot from being able to go offline completely on evenings and weekends. That was always possible in my last job except during the occasional oncall and maybe one or two major launches per year. Also, the pay offered is usually half of what I made in my last job, or less. If the current market situation persists for another six months I’ll probably relax my standards. Or if I get contacted by a startup that’s especially impressive or interesting, or someone I trust tells me it’s a great place to work.
Pay isn’t the most important factor, but I don’t want to get locked in at low comp and have to change again in six months. Also, I have a hard time getting objective information about the work culture at startups. With Google or whatever I can always find contacts who work there and ask them how they feel about their job; with startups every person I talk to is trying to convince me to join and is incentivized to downplay the problems.
Yes this is a big problem as you have no idea what you're signing up with startups. Maybe the founder expects you to work 12 hours/day and constantly be available, maybe they will fire you a month before your equity vesting, or just randomly fire you one day despite having never given any negative feedback. I've seen all of this at startups, and there is zero accountability. Last time it happened to me I wasn't even offered any severance.
If anyone is considering working for a startup, please do your due diligence. Do not be naive and think that because the founders are very friendly and their startup is backed by YC that they are a good place to work and won't fire you the second they have any doubts about you (personally I'll never work as a full-time employee for a startup going through YC ever again, but that's a story for another day).
Going forward if I'm ever thinking about working for a startup, I will reach out to employees, and ideally ex-employees, to get the inside scoop on what the founders are really like behind the smoke & mirrors.
I know a friend who led product at a startup (YC). One fine day he shared concerns on how company is narrowly focusing on just one parameter. 10 mins later, he got employment termination letter.
You get a bit more cash, and I can't see it impacting your career negatively (though you do end up trading some of the time you could be resting and collecting severance to see if the company might be a good long-term fit)
I like to ask these people "Why did you choose this company versus any of the other ones?" and "What were your expectations about [thing I'm uncertain about], and how did your experience differ from that?"
Startups actually have more signal to offer than most big tech companies. However, the onus is on you to scuttlebut, and it's true that the risks of not doing it well are more severe.
Re: compensation, if you are able to demonstrate competence and efficacy, early stage startups will offer you a cash basis comparable to that of big tech. Of course, if your expenses have inflated to the expectation of selling big tech RSUs every year, you should expect a pretty significant "real" cut in annual income unless you walk in to another public company.
If anyone is struggling and is on the mid/senior/director side of their career (3+ yrs), I'm helping place people at my friends Seed and Series A companies.
VC money is still there but pumping into Seed/Series A companies with more upside now rather than insane B, C, D companies that have no profitability in sight. email me at j{at}markovmanagement.com if interested :)
I reached out to every designer and coder laid off from Twitter and Amazon (one of my investors sent me a spreadsheet that those laid off folks added their contact info to).
I didn't receive a single interested response to my reach outs. Now granted, I'm sure they were bombarded with lots of startup offers and being picky what company/stage they were responding to, or were still in grief mode and not ready to start looking, or maybe (probably!) my reach-out finesse was lacking.
But I'm just pointing out that their are definitely companies like mine who are hiring and it's not all doom and gloom for laid off folks.
I ended up hiring via ads on LinkedIn and job posts on eng message boards.
Being real for a minute: There is definitely a perspective among hiring companies that regular lay offs are sometimes packaged alongside bottom performers, but I think that is something they would just do diligence on during an interview process.