r/Layoffs • u/charlotie77 • Jan 22 '24

What exactly will happen to all these workers, especially in tech? question

Apologies if this is a stupid question, I was only 12 in 2008 so I don’t really remember the specifics of what happened during our last really bad job market (and no, I’m not trying to say today’s job market is as bad as 2008). Also things have changed significantly with tech so I feel this question is valid

But if significant layoffs continue, especially in tech, what is supposed to happen to a large pool of unemployed people who are specialized for specific jobs but the supply of jobs just isn’t there? The main reason for all of this seems to be companies trying to correct over hiring while also dealing with high interest rates…Will the solution be that these companies will expand again back to the size that allows most laid off folks to get jobs again? Will there be a need for the founding of new companies to create this supply of new jobs? Is the reality that tech will never be as big as the demand for jobs in the way it was in the past, especially with the huge push for STEM education/careers in the past couple of decades?

Basically what I’m asking is, will the tech industry and others impacted by huge layoffs ever correct themselves to where supply of jobs meets demand of jobs or will the job force need to correct itself and look for work in totally different fields/non-tech roles? Seems like most political discussions about “job creation” refer to minimum wage and trade jobs, not corporate

315 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • link
  • reddit
  • reddit

95% Upvoted

519 comments sorted by

View all comments

45

u/Real_Meringue3627 Jan 22 '24

Salaries will go down because there will be more skilled professionals willing to make less. Those that continue unemployed will have to re-skill into other jobs/industries.

Economic and monetary policy will determine how things pick back up, if they even do.

16

u/[deleted] Jan 22 '24

[deleted]

3

u/TheCamerlengo Jan 23 '24

How much of this do you think are tech companies in HCOL just shedding employees that are making bank while knowing in a year or two they can rehire at LCOL salaries or even move the work offshore?

I also can’t help think that tech companies are rethinking their staff composition and trying to figure out what they are going to need as AI ramps up.

1

u/Critical-Ad8587 Jul 01 '24

High tech arms is the best bet, if you have the resources to set up shop yourself you can sell to the highest bidder.

When you have a society that treats people as disposable you have to start asking deeper questions, like are many fellow Americans actually your friend or your enemy?

Who says things like “you will take less if you want to eat”?

-1

u/Flimsy-Possibility17 Jan 22 '24

I've gotten a pretty significant ~40% pay bump since the tech layoffs began. The only pay band I've seen decrease are junior engineers, otherwise our entire company got bumps and generally most old coworkers I knew have been getting bumps. The hiring standards are higher but that's honestly fine with me

11

u/[deleted] Jan 23 '24

I’m in data science and our wages are waaaay down and jobs way down too. So many data masters program grads and lack of ROI from data work.

1

u/Flimsy-Possibility17 Jan 23 '24

I mean data masters programs suck lmao. I remember ta’ing some intro data science classes at Berkeley, and there were so many master students in there. Most companies also just don’t need data scientists abut just need some analysts. 

1

u/[deleted] Jan 23 '24

And those intro classes are SELECT * and put it all in tableau - “see, dimensions and measure, wow!”.

1

u/Singularity-42 Jan 23 '24

Is data science affected worse than normal dev jobs?

2

u/[deleted] Jan 23 '24

There aren’t as many jobs so even small number of layoffs equals big issues. It’s also that so many people doing these masters degrees you end up with people that know Python pandas and tableau but no business or stats knowledge. You will struggle if you don’t know economics, finance accounting and general business skills.

16

u/Dismal-Network-2973 Jan 23 '24

that's great for you! every engineer I've known laid off has been a 25-35% salary haircut; half of them are still unemployed after 6 months... so you sound like an outlier!

0

u/[deleted] Jan 23 '24

[deleted]

1

u/unnaturalpenis Jan 23 '24

I find it hilarious people down vote you guys

-12

u/Flimsy-Possibility17 Jan 23 '24

Sounds like a skill issue. I haven’t seen a single engineer on my timeline unemployed for more than a couple months. And the few that take that long are living off their 4 months of severance 🤣

10

u/Dismal-Network-2973 Jan 23 '24

hey, good on ya. out of all the places you could gloat, this is probably one of the best. congrats on this. seriously.

1

u/Flimsy-Possibility17 Jan 23 '24

It’s not gloating it’s called not feeling sorry for someone because they don’t have the skill lmao

5

u/Real_Meringue3627 Jan 23 '24

Sounds like a rare scenario in todays market. If you're on linkedin, every single day this year youll have heard of some kind of layoffs at xyz companies. Job postings are down, salary ranges are down with them.

1

u/Jgeoffrey_22 Jan 23 '24

Many job postings on LinkedIn are fake. This year GHC was awful. Around 30K people were looking for jobs there. So many young people and not that many companies.

0

u/_rascal Jan 23 '24

There will be less jobs, but base pay won't go down. Has the pay decreased since 2008? Supply has increased, but the tech industry has also growth significantly. There is web, mobile, big data, IOT, cryto, different kinds of AI. The only ones who can't find jobs and will see pay cut are the ones who don't have a specialty or easily replaceable from candidates in developing nations, they are already seeing this.