Elon showed tech how bloated they were
And we're all paying the price
This may be a difficult article for some of you to read as I know the tech layoffs have affected so many, myself included. But understanding why they are happening is paramount to understanding how to get back on your feet. Please understand this comes from a place of love of tech workers and also from being a CEO and understanding how corporations think.
I’m not saying it doesn’t suck and I’m not saying it’s right. I’m just giving some perspective on what I think is happening.
According to Techcrunch, 168,243 tech workers have been laid off in 2023 through May 5. This year, it’s mostly been software engineers after last year’s HR and marketing personell. Anecdotally, I bet this number is somewhat higher. My friends have told me the job market has never been this bad. Extremely skilled people I know who never went two weeks without a job are now languishing months without so much as a bite of interest. The recruiters I talk to say hiring standards are out of control and they have very few openings. Everyone agrees many if not most of the actual job listings are fake, posted to make teams feel that help is on the way while companies overwork them, when in fact they have no intention of actually filling those roles.
Elon showed them all. He laid off most of Twitter….and Twitter continued to work just fine. Personnel makes up the largest portion of costs for tech companies so they suddenly took a look at what their workers were doing. I’m sorry, but as someone who works in tech, a lot of you really don’t do enough to earn what you are paid. Especially for some reason at FAANG companies. I’ve heard countless stories from my FAANG friends about how the hardest part of the job was the interview. I’m not saying these aren’t skilled employees, just that their productivity levels aren’t as high as they could be.
And the evidence is everywhere. Just look at the dozens of TikTok and YouTube videos bragging about how cushy the “day in the life of XXX company is.” This is what these people call work?
Can anyone really say that person was likely generating $200k/yr+ in EV for Twitter? And there are dozens of videos like these.
So guess what? Elon and people like the on in this video ruined it for everyone. Companies everywhere woke up. They suddenly realized they had a lot of slackers on their hands, did some cost-benefit analysis, and realized they can cut a ton of people and not lose a dime in revenue.
So that’s exactly what they’ve done.
If Amazon can layoff 9,000 people, mostly in AWS, do you think those people were really productive? It doesn’t seem like Amazon really thinks so. They certainly wouldn’t be laying them off if they thought they’d be risking revenue.
Those of us whose careers are in startups know a little better. We work 60 hours not because we want to, but because we have to to succeed. I’m not calling anyone lazy, it’s just a different life choice. But I’ll never forget what a very successful startup CEO told me about 4 years ago.
He was visiting Google’s Boston campus and sitting with the head of the campus in their cafeteria around 11:30. Over the next 30 minutes, the entire cafeteria filled to the brim with workers while they continued their conversation, and then emptied over the next 30 minutes. My friend stopped, looked around the empty cafeteria and calmly asked the head of Google’s campus:
“Wait, your engineers can stop work on a dime so they can eat on a regular schedule?”
“Yep, they generally all eat around the same time and socialize.”
“So no one is busy enough that they have to shift their lunch schedule?”
“…….no. Why would they be?”
“You have a major problem on your hands.”
I don’t ever recall being able to eat lunch on a regular schedule working in startups. I was lucky if I even had time to catch a meal at my desk, usually just skipping lunch. His observation as a very successful startup CEO with multiple exists has stuck with me for years.
And it seems Google did wake up and realize they have problem on their hands. And now they’re demanding their money’s worth out of their employees.
I’m not saying it doesn’t suck and I’m not saying it’s right. I’m just giving some perspective on what I think is happening.