Another hard week in tech (Ep. 509)
A lot of people in tech lost their jobs this week—and in 2022, generally. Twitter is one situation that many of us are watching closely. One theory is that companies are beginning to prioritize lean teams and sustainable growth over hypergrowth. Are we looking at a turning point for how tech gets built?
On today’s podcast, Ben, Matt, and Cassidy reflect on job losses in tech, repojacking on GitHub, the ethics of generative AI, and what it would take to make us switch browsers.
Episode notes:
The team questions whether a print out of 60-90 days worth of code is the right benchmark for whether to lay someone off.
Ben gives our podcast listeners a heads up to reports of repo jacking on GitHub (who got ahead of the issue quickly).
We reflect on whether or not we’re okay with generative AI—and question tradeoffs between copyright and the ability for more people to create stuff.
Ben discusses how his internet browser might be becoming his second brain.
Matt and Cassidy get props from Ben for their rising popularity on Stack Overflow’s YouTube channel.
Follow Ben, Matt, and Cassidy.
Tags: repo jacking, second brain, the stack overflow podcast
10 Comments
“Another hard week in tech”
“We need to talk about it.”
..this on Veterans day? really?
lol. wow.
yeah they should have written how hard of a week it was for veterans
Yes, in fact it was. You’ve never talked to a veteran about their daily struggles, have you?
So, are you assuming that the world stops during veterans day? That nothing else happens and this segment got you by surprise breaking the rule? and also that people only listen to the podcast exactly the day it is released?
you are a special human being, aren’t you?
No need for personal insults. When did I say any of those things? I simply think the heading is tone deaf and dramatic on the day we should be recognizing folks who stormed the beaches of Normandy for example. Have you ever seen the raw footage?
Hi TJ,
I hear you. Thanks for calling out the need to acknowledge Veterans Day. As the author of this post, I feel it is important to chime into the discussion — especially as someone who consults for technical teams in the dual-use defense sector. I closely work with veterans as colleagues, which includes employees in defense sectors in 3 countries. You’re right. The pain that veterans live with is something that needs to be brought to light.
We’re a global team, which means that acknowledging (important) designated days of remembrance is not always the most linear walk. I’m not sure what the ideal approach is here to give people the honor, respect, and dignity that they are due. This will be something I raise with my teammates in our editorial planning session, as we continuously strive to show our thanks and gratitude to populations who have served society.
With appreciation,
Ritika (takes ownership of her contributions to the Stack Overflow editorial team)
Hi Ritika, thanks for taking the time to respond and for bringing this up internally. I do understand that SO is a global site, but I felt that doing a piece on layoffs that were (at least in part) locally focused (Twitter) made me wonder more about Veterans day. I appreciate your sensitivity to the topic, as I think it is sometimes lost in the tech sector.
We respect and value your feedback very much. I’ll keep the thread posted.
Tech employees got soft while demand for their services was artificially high. Spoiled and soft. Not that the good times are fading, oh my gosh, they’ll have to actually work hard.
Intro:
I have first-hand insight into this. I created my own startup along with many of my peers from university. Don’t get me wrong it is a lot of hard work, especially for the founder.
Since about 2010 there’s been a flood of money for some of the most stupid and unprofitable startups I’ve ever seen. For example, I saw one local startup by a first-time entrepreneur fresh out of college get $10 million in funding. They used that to get office space, hire a bunch of overpaid employees, buy video games and foosball tables to make it a cool workplace, and then played video games during the day until they went completely bankrupt within 3 years. They couldn’t turn out a single product or revenue.
I saw countless startups funded on nothing but investor money with no revenue to show off, quickly go bankrupt one after another. As soon as one would go bankrupt another one would pop-up. My brother worked in a lot of these well-invested startups and saw an astonishing lack of productivity or work ethic. He actually liked that kind of environment because it was chill and would jump ship at the first sign of trouble. If the start-up was poorly invested, the opposite was true where the founder is frantic to turn something over. However, I saw over and over again unprofitable tech-startups get a flood of money and be propped up by investment bankers and big investment funds.
Role of Central Banks:
I think this is a side-effect of an even greater economic woe: the policies of central banks. The tech industry was artificially driven by the flood of investment money from Quantitative Easing programs by the Federal Reserve after the mortgage crisis in 2008 and low interest rates. Trillions were dumped into toxic derivatives and stocks, and eventually made their way to investment banks where they had an excess of capital available for just about any gamble. At one point $16 Trillion (yes trillion) was loaned out to primary banks at 0.25% interest, which they subsequently gambled into the market driving up stocks for an insane 10-year bull run.
This created the phenomena of a zombie economy, where investors would throw millions into a startup hoping it could be the next Facebook, Twitter, or Apple. When millions could net billions in market capital, investment banks wouldn’t mind losing billions in dead startups.
This also translated into insane P/E ratios for tech stocks that were beyond logic or traditional investment philosophies. Suddenly market caps for big tech corps were in the trillions while traditional industries (ala Warren Buffet type of stocks) that produced more revenue had smaller market caps.
What this has to do with Employment:
Much of the tech industry paid exorbitant salaries (like $300k in the bay area) and drove up the cost of living in areas with heavy concentrations of these companies like the bay area, Seattle, and quantum valley. Now that quantitative easing programs have ended, interest rates have gone up, and inflation has kicked in, the investment money is starting to dry up. The cows have come home.
That means the reality of many of the unprofitable ventures, cushy positions, socially driven roles, and hiring [insert useless major] studies graduates with 2 weeks of coding bootcamp (yes I saw this firsthand) are beginning to kick-in. That means potential lay-offs, more reasonable salaries, an increased demand for proper qualifications, and other terms of reality reflected in other industries.