The corporate jobs aren't much better. The pay is great for tech workers, but no amount of money makes the 10% yearly cull, the added layoffs, and micromanagement easier.
To your last point, though, you'd be surprised at how hard it can be as a very experienced candidate from outside the US to land a role in the US. I have had multiple HM's that have wanted to hire me for my experience in their market, but they have been forced to take domestic candidates or to run weeks of interviews with external candidates to rule out that a foreigner should get a tech role.
Hmm, I had never thought of it...but soup is absolutely a neutral experience. Even a good soup on a cold, winter day is still slightly above neutral, and is improved by non-soup add-ins.
There was a great article called The Sociology Of Brexit that discussed how Britain made the choice to leave the EU. The TLDR was that it was because for many years, despite some prosperity, there were large parts of the country, especially white, uneducated, working-class people that felt things weren’t going well. A strong economy didn’t translate to a better life for them, and all they saw was others in a totally different world prospering.
The reason I mention it is because it was written before Trump came to power, but it accurately predicted that Trump would beat Clinton. It said that there were similar groups in the US that felt the same, and that they are often a much larger demographic than you’d think. The main point of the article is that these people don’t care if the radical in charge will fuck the economy, or do things “incorrectly”, because those things are so detached from their life that it won’t change anything. It’s the political equivalent of giving yourself chemotherapy to get rid of a cold.
While many of these people are justifiably criticised for their extreme views and actions, they’ve been radicalised through inaction. If you ignore a problem like the racist assholes that moan about foreigners taking their jobs, in several years someone will combine those voices and have a platform to exploit.
Exploitation is the right word here, because what many conservatives are now finding is that the shift towards the right is often at odds with their parties core beliefs. In the UK, Boris Johnson gutted the party of anyone that disagreed with one of the core tenets of the party (unionism) to push Brexit along, and if that party loses the next election, they will arguably have no one left outside of right-wing nutjobs. The US will likely find the same, in that MAGA have replaced what their party stood for, with none of these leaders planning for the future. If you are a traditional conservative in the Republican party, you’ll probably struggle for the next 5-10 years, and a presidential campaign is highly unlikely. If Trump loses to Biden, it might mean a generation of inaction and inability from the Republicans, in the same way that Conservatives around the world are being wiped out
The average time a software engineer, regardless of level, stays at a big tech company is around 18-24 months. That, surprisingly, hasn’t changed with the market slowing. Many are still taking jobs at a higher level at smaller companies, or leaving to do other things.
Given the severance paid out for many of these employees, alongside the operational damage caused, it’s likely that the people they laid off or forced out would have already left for another role. Funny enough, many of the companies that laid thousands of people off are still hiring external candidates, or people on boomerang deals to return to the company after 6-12 months.
It was always a short-sighted move, triggered by everyone else doing the same thing. While you’re not wrong, I don’t have enough faith in these companies to run things for the benefit of their current employees.
Not just them, their whole family. There are people in Wales and Scotland that were bullied at school because their dad’s crossed a picket line. It’s something that’ll almost literally define their lives in that area or country.
I work at Amazon, and for many people this is what annoys people the most.
Rightly or wrongly, a lot of people like Amazon because it pushes the narrative that data is king. If you want to do something, you need the right data and figures to justify it.
Since Jassy took over, Amazon mimicked other tech companies by becoming a belief-driven company, instead of a data-driven company. The reason he’s losing patience is because his belief is being questioned, at a time where his leadership is either being questioned or being followed right to the top.
FWIW, I fully agree, and I’ve seen countless examples of managers using LP’s as a weapon to fuel URA or to promote their own views.
The view is distorted in that the people that Jassy is pissing off are those that benefited and thrived under the reign of Bezos. IMO, he would’ve done the exact same thing, but that doesn’t stop the Amazon cult from remembering “the good old days”.
I work in tech, at one of the big tech companies (the Rainforest one).
The dirty little secret of tech is that you don’t need the best engineers. You just need people that are “good enough”, and that bar varies wildly across all of tech. I’ve worked with senior engineers from Google that absolutely crumbled outside of building Python web apps, and recent grads in LCOL areas that are better in all areas.
Alongside this, many tier 1 services in big tech are propped up by mid-level engineers. Depending on the company and org, you’d be shocked at how little coding some software engineers actually do, because they’re attending WBR’s, building review decks, running all scrum ceremonies, even responsible for multimillion dollar team budgets. Again, many of these people aren’t particularly talented compared to your standard engineer.
You’re absolutely right, but I doubt any big tech company cares. They want to reduce human cost as much as possible, and if that means letting everyone that knows how shit works go, and hiring new grads to keep your systems alive, so be it.
Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s a fucking stupid approach, as do ~90% of IC’s at these companies.
Someone at Amazon put it nicely when they’ve said that there’s a rise in “belief-driven” leadership in tech right now. Instead of following the data and asking people what they want, we’re seeing tech leaders position themselves as visionaries, and making market-changing decisions on gut feeling. It’s absolutely a series a short-term decisions, and all they care about is what they think, and how it’ll save their skin for the next 3-6 months.
Amazon hit with $5.9 million fine for violating California labor law ( www.cnbc.com )
xkcd #2929: Good and Bad Ideas ( imgs.xkcd.com )
https://xkcd.com/2929...
'It was so scary': Trump fans at Missouri Caucus 'literally attacked fellow Republicans' ( www.rawstory.com )
A billionaire wrote this letter to Google a year ago. How likely is that Google's layoffs and actions since then are at least partly because of this? ( lemmy.world )
Being Mean to Scabs Is Working ( www.motherjones.com )
Drew Barrymore and Bill Maher are now not resuming their shows amid strikes.
Amazon CEO Tells Workers: Return to Office or 'It’s Probably Not Going to Work Out for You' ( gizmodo.com )
Zoom orders workers back to the office ( www.bbc.co.uk )
A company that achieved success due to people having to WFH are now forcing staff back in to the office