I think people are overreacting.

A lot of larger tech companies started hiring like mad during the past two years because the economy was over juiced. I work at an enterprise and was chatting with my boss about it and she mentioned that there was this idea that companies that weren't hiring were going to fall behind the those that were.

This is those companies undoing all of that panic hiring.

Using FAANG to determine the job market is like using Monaco residents to work out the state of the world's wealth. They are outliers with enormous amounts of cash and they can spend in an illogical way to reduce risk that market changes will leave them left behind simply because they can afford to. For most of us in normal businesses earning normal amounts, our jobs are as secure as ever because of supply and demand.

How much is down to knowingly recruiting people you know you might fire later, how much is incompetence on the planning teams and how much is simply that very large companies are hard to manage: that I don't know.

Yep. Those who "work in tech" are in for a rude awakening.

Engineers, programmers, hackers on the other hand are gonna be just fine. Same as the past 50 years.

Jensen H looks and sounds tickettyboo and his vision of A.I. meets physical world is spot on when you see SpaceX launch automation removing the majority of human voices out of the loop.

Yeah. This makes me really happy I did not transition to some soft-skill based job. Soft skills are really important, but if all I had going for me right now is "management experience" I'd be more worried.

Many of these purely soft-skill based jobs in tech departments are part of some agile enterprise frameworks. Yet i don't have the impression they are fading away.

I don’t think engineers have been less impacted than managers tbqh.

> Engineers, programmers, hackers on the other hand are gonna be just fine

and yet this is exactly where the layoffs are happening...AWS, ad tech, twitch

AWS has a ton of non-engineering staff. Ad-tech is also sales, marketing, and IMDb. Twitch has a ton on marketing and creator management roles.

Its not clear which roles will be eliminated, but I've worked in a few of those groups and I can assure you there is plenty of fat to be trimmed outside of engineering.

I don't think layoffs would be a problem in itself. Most likely smaller companies would benefit from the surge in offer and capture those talents.

The problem there is that smaller companies are suffering a capital shortage due to the raise of interest rates at the same time, so they have less resources available to capture said talents.

So the fed is getting the unemployment it wanted?

Not necessarily. A lot of people other than engineers work in AWS, ad tech and twitch.

It's not stated whether the roles are engineering ones or PMs.

There are a ton of non-engineering roles at those divisions ...

downvoting me isn't changing the rate of layoffs kids

you can't wish this away

The craze from 2019-2022 where "Learn to code" was parroted by everyone everywhere had to end somewhere.

A few 100 top companies are laying off while a few million IT companies are in full swing with their hiring. So if IT means these top companies for you, yea, maybe, else nothing is ending. Everything is alive and kicking.

The craze was more like that everyone had to get a job in tech. Knowing a little bit how to code is important but those tutorials went over the board

What does one have to do with the other? Almost no matter what your field, if your job involves sitting at a desk in front of computer for more than 10-20 hours a week, your job performance can probably benefit from knowing a bit of coding. And that is only going to be more true going forwards.

Because "learn to code" carries a hidden clause which is "learn to code, so you can get a job as a programmer". That's different from "learn to code, so you can automate some little tasks you do daily as part of your current job and make your life easier".

Tomato, tomato.

In theory there should be no such thing as a "programmer," programming should be a natural part of any white collar job that people use to automate their work and improve their workflow.

But since programming skills are so scarce, if you can code it makes sense to specialize in software development so you can make the biggest impact and maximize your income.

You should still learn to code, even if you're not in a programming job. It's just basic literacy, like being able to write a competent 5 paragraph essay. It doesn't mean you're going to write books for a living.

Everyone should also have a solid grasp of calculus, freshman physics and Maxwell's equations, comparative history, various forms of government, multiple models of ethics and the reasoning used to reach them, media and manipulation literacy, logistics management, and preferably a second or third language.

In short, everyone should have a classical four-year liberal arts education.

Now, excuse me while I ignore what I should do, and focus on what puts food on the table. And, unfortunately, CMPT-101 programming skills aren't going to be it - ChatGPT can do that work better and cheaper than a 'basic level' human can, just like it can produce a five-paragraph essay better than a grade school child can.

If you're going to learn programming, you're going to need to learn it to the point where you're better at it than a dumb LLM. And that bar is significantly higher than 'basic knowledge' or even 'working knowledge'.

Nobody cares about my rusty Grade 8 French skills, or my crappy hand-stitching skills in a world when Google Translate and sewing machines exist.

I still think nearly everyone should learn to code. That is not why these layoffs are happening.

I think nearly everyone should learn how to manage their virtual environment on a technical level but idk about full on coding. Just being able to attach documents to an email or wrangle proper MFA and/or password management would be a godsend.

But now GPT can code. It’s possible the narrative is changing.

I’m NOT saying that software engineers are getting replaced, but the kinds of things you learn in a boot camp, gluing APIs together and searching StackOverflow for code snippets, seems like it’s on more shaky ground than a few years ago.

It was already on enormously shaky ground a few years ago.