I don’t know if you’ve noticed. Meta. Twitter. Salesforce. Microsoft. Oracle. Lyft. Opendoor. Stripe. All have announced major layoffs. Other major players like Amazon Web Services have announced hiring freezes. The layoffs add up to nearly 100,000. All in all quite a disturbance in the force.
I don’t know if it’s the end of an era but I suspect wages in IT won’t be rising in the near future.
What can I say; those observant in the industry thought this was the inevitable outcome if the stock declines that started in select companies from summer 2021 didn’t reverse.
Beyond Meta; the company to follow is Amazon. That Amazon has a hiring freeze in AWS is very telling. If Amazon does a round of layoffs, considering the size and breath of the company — that would be a very bad signal for the economy.
Two other sidenotes — First, I though after October companies would do their best to hold layoffs until after holidays, but that some notable companies could not wait speaks volumes. Second, those declining stock prices and layoffs are going to impact State and Federal tax receipts next year.
Although I would encourage anyone who has the aptitude and interest in “coding” to do so.
“Coding” requires learning a way of thinking that is useful in different areas of life. Someone once told me it has similarities to learning “law”, once learns ways of thinking that are useful in other areas in life.
Agree about coding. Its also hard to avoid if you go into any number of the sciences and I think even engineers often need it now. I never thought the tech industry would be immune to layoffs if there was a downturn. Think it is still a good career choice and skill.
Steve
I was trained in what we called programming in the early 1960’s. It’s a mandatory part of every undergraduate engineering curriculum, and every engineer can do some programming, usually for focused problems. Large scale programming, as in Computer Aided Design (CAD), requires advanced skills and preparation. All large engineering projects and the great majority of even small ones use CAD extensively.
Also, programming does impose systematic, logical thinking, otherwise its garbage-in-garbage-out. It also requires a high level of intelligence, attention to detail, and persistence. A large majority of people, even some science and engineering students, never quite get the hang of it.
The great bulk of IT coding jobs is fairly low level stuff, bookkeeping literally, and there aren’t all that many jobs. Programming AI is a highly technical, highly sophisticated form of coding, and very few people can master it, as it requires a theoretical background in AI. Years ago, the early AI was mocked as “if-then-else,” but no longer.
By the way, the great majority of people let go at Twitter, Meta, et al., are not coders.
The spreadsheet detailing Twitter’s layoffs is quite broad and includes lots of people in IT from managers to junior developers. I haven’t seen a comparable list from Meta but I suspect it’s similar.
Not only will that have an impact on IT jobs it will have an impact on the economies of the Seattle and San Francisco areas in particular.
I think you’re all underestimating just how bleak the prospects are becoming for software developers in the U. S. Add the crypto companies to the list.
“It’s a mandatory part of every undergraduate engineering curriculum, and every engineer can do some programming, usually for focused problems.”
Absolutely correct, even if you are more chemistry oriented like me.
Dave,
I’m not sure how important big tech companies are in terms of IT generally. IT is everywhere now. Back when I was an intel analyst, we probably had an IT person for every 3-5 analysts. It’s probably more now since the intelligence function has grown even more dependent upon computer systems. Now that I work in the tech niche of cellular and satellite internet connectivity, there is tons of IT work in various companies that need to develop firmware and software for these devices. The companies I talk to always tell me it is difficult to get the right developers, especially if they are headquartered outside a tech hub like Seattle, SF, Austin, etc.
Steve can probably talk about IT in medicine.
And, IMO, the IT side is definitely lacking. I see a lot of products in my area with great hardware but with shitty software and firmware.
Anyway, the big tech layoffs will definitely have an effect IMO, but I’m skeptical it will change the whole industry.
IT is pretty important in medicine now though I think we largely arent using it up to its capabilities. I will say that IT people really do think differently than we (medical folks) do. For a long time, too long, I was resistant to this and either fought with them or tried to form allies. Then I decided we should fully embrace it. We have hired several people with undergrad degrees and experience with working in IT who later went into medicine. It has been a huge help.
IT people, many of them, assume we dont understand what they do. Which is kind of true. But having a kid in the business and guys who worked in the field plus lots of experience managing people I know that when they say they cant do something much of the time it just means they think it is too much work, not important or they already have too much to do. Now I find ways to free up some of my guys to help with the coding.
Steve
With regards to wages for software engineers; one should think short-term, medium-term, long-term.
Short-term, I suspect it will be ugly. While big tech (FANGNMA) only hires a minority of all programmers, they act like Steinbrenner / Yankees before salary caps. Their compensation ranges sets the benchmark the rest of the industry orients itself against. Hiring freezes / layoffs at these companies means there isn’t a driver to increase salaries in other companies. Just check the social app “Blind” to understand what I mean.
Medium-term, I agree with Andy that the demand for software engineering should keep expanding. Software continues to eat the world.
Long-term, the picture is much more mixed. The driver and enabler for the growth in demand for software is the transistor and Moore’s Law. But to invert the quote of Richard Feymann at the beginning of micro-electronics in 1959; “there’s not a lot of room at the bottom”. The end of Moore’s Law is coming into view within a decade or so. A datapoint, transistor costs are actually increasing as we try to miniaturize them (the optimal cost for a transistor seems to be with technology from about 10 years ago). In a world where hardware is advancing like jet travel technology (measured by 10% over a decade); the demand for software engineers may resemble the demand for jet engineers.
Technically, Moore’s Law is already ended. It takes longer than two years for the number of transistors on an IC to double.