2min chapter

Odd Lots cover image

What Happens Now to All the Laid Off Tech Workers?

Odd Lots

CHAPTER

Should We Learn to Code or Is That Not the Career Safety That It Used to Be?

CNN's John Sutter says tech companies are laying people off. He asks if this is a sign of things to come in the broader economy. Goldman Sachs: Tech firms have grown their headcount by over 40% since pandemic. The layoffs raise questions about what is going on in the market for tech talent, he says.

00:00
Speaker 3
And I think there was a little bit of tension in that episode in that we were talking about why corporate software is so bad. So it's almost like, well, obviously there's a need for better software and yet all these big tech companies that ostensibly provide these services are laying people off. But also in the broader macro picture, since we recorded that episode, we had a payrolls report that came out much, much stronger than anyone expected. And yet we've seen these big tech companies lay off people. And so the question obviously becomes, is this something specifically about tech or are these layoffs sort of the first sign of something broader to come in the economy? And the other
Speaker 2
thing that everyone points out to when you see these announcements from Meta and Alphabet and various startups and Microsoft and Amazon, they've all done it, is like they added so many jobs over the last two years that actually these layoffs are like fairly small
Speaker 3
in the grand scheme of things, even for these companies based on the amount of hiring that they've done. Yeah. But I saw a figure from Goldman Sachs, I think it was Jan Hadsius, and he was talking about in the tech sector, most of the companies that have been laying people off grew their headcount by over 40% since the pandemic, basically, because they thought all the pandemic trends were going to keep going. Maybe there's a little bit of labor hoarding, but it's a big figure. Absolutely.
Speaker 2
You know, people in our industry, journalism, when journalists lose their jobs, there's always trolls on Twitter saying, oh, learn to code. You know, that's like a thing. I think at one point, even like Twitter start banning people for saying that. But I guess the question is right now, when you see these layoffs, like, should we learn to code or is that not, you know, is that not the career safety that that it used to be? So all kinds of questions about what is going on in the market for tech talent.

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