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Google layoffs: Sundar Pichai-led company fires entire Python team for ‘cheaper labour’
(www.hindustantimes.com)
this post was submitted on 29 Apr 2024
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Technology
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Please treat this as an explanation, and not an apology for big tech. If you work in tech, or are thinking about it, understand the rules of the game :
First, a new skill goes hot - maybe functionally superior, may just be a trend. In tech, it’s always the new shiny.
Demand for skills outstrips supply
Salaries go up !
Big tech flex, offer big money to hoover up the talent. Sometimes it’s for projects, sometimes it’s just to keep them out of the hands of competition, in case the trend becomes a standard
Time passes
Chasing big salaries, lots of people acquire the skill.
Supply outstrips demand, skill becomes a commodity.
Salaries come down
Big Tech is still paying huge salaries, for skills that may have stopped trending, but at the very least - are now available at market at a much lower rate. If you include globalisation, it could be 30% of what they are paying.
The high salary hires get cut, because there’s a new skill trending, or, the same skill is now available at much lower rate .
Everyone is shocked !
This has been tech workers life cycle for at least 30 years, and I don’t see it changing
You're missing the whole "growth starts to plateau so management looks for ways to cut costs"
And
"Product comparatively stable so it gets hired out to contractors who inevitably fuck it up because they're cheap and there was 0 knowledge transfer but it's too late you laid off the entire original team"