A lot of people are talking about the numbers. But top senior engineers are hard to find. The ones who were let go also took institutional knowledge with them. This is why they are in demand, they are “proven” and they can operate much better in that role than their replacements.

I was not let go, but I left a company along with a wave of others (mostly those senior enough to be certain that they’ll find great work) when the company U-turned on their remote work promises. The team I was on was responsible for a major feature of the product, and only had two very senior software engineers, who both left in protest when it was ultimatum-style demanded that they’d move into commutable distance. It’s almost like we were let go. Like many people, we had moved away from an expensive city during the pandemic and were not looking to come back.

The company has replaced us with more than 15 contractors of junior to mid skills. Despite this, they are now periodically emailing us to come back, and work remote. It started as “come back, we will let you be remote”, and has evolved to much more appealing offers over time.

The difference between us and many more contractors is not that we’re John Carmacks and the contractors are graduates. It’s part seniority, but much larger part - a ton of knowledge about the systems the company had and the types of systems in the industry used for the feature we were responsible for.

Good luck replacing institutional knowledge with cheap labor. Everyone thinks they’re special and they’ll have a great time with this footgun. And good luck to them! But I don’t know anyone who has found good employment now and wants to return to that.

Some layoffs could be more “amicable”, so I can imagine people wanting to return. But it will be hard for those in the industry who legitimately got much better jobs, which a lot of seniors that dedicated long tenures to the footgun company did.