(OT) big layoff at work

[Marvin]

The consulting firm that I work for is doing a big round of IT layoffs.  I am worried because I have been on the bench a while.  I am lucky that I can work anywhere in the entire tech stack, so AI might survive this round.

[MattPie]

2 minutes ago, Marvin said:

The consulting firm that I work for is doing a big round of IT layoffs.  I am worried because I have been on the bench a while.  I am lucky that I can work anywhere in the entire tech stack, so AI might survive this round.

Dude, that sucks. I've been there. I hope you make out OK.

[TageMVP]

Bummer man 

If they do lay you off, you'll start your own bigger, better company

[JohnC]

3 minutes ago, Marvin said:

The consulting firm that I work for is doing a big round of IT layoffs.  I am worried because I have been on the bench a while.  I am lucky that I can work anywhere in the entire tech stack, so AI might survive this round.

Layoffs in the tech sector is pervasive. Why is that? I would think that there would be a need and demand for IT workers because the way business and all sectors are dependent on the networks and computer programs.  Sometimes the stress of the possibility of being let go is worse than the stress of actually being let go because it is constantly hanging over you. I wish you the best. 

[bob_sauve28]

18 minutes ago, Marvin said:

The consulting firm that I work for is doing a big round of IT layoffs.  I am worried because I have been on the bench a while.  I am lucky that I can work anywhere in the entire tech stack, so AI might survive this round.

Good luck! 

[LTS]

39 minutes ago, Marvin said:

The consulting firm that I work for is doing a big round of IT layoffs.  I am worried because I have been on the bench a while.  I am lucky that I can work anywhere in the entire tech stack, so AI might survive this round.

We just went through a massive restructure and layoffs have been the norm for the past year as well.  I don't know if its better to know they are coming or if they are not. This last round I knew something was going on and then I got read into the changes so I knew I was safe and that was a massive relief.  I still had to move some people who were on my team and lots of people were impacted.

Being versatile is valuable.  If not where you are now then it can only help if you do have to look for a new opportunity.  All the best.

31 minutes ago, JohnC said:

Layoffs in the tech sector is pervasive. Why is that? I would think that there would be a need and demand for IT workers because the way business and all sectors are dependent on the networks and computer programs.  Sometimes the stress of the possibility of being let go is worse than the stress of actually being let go because it is constantly hanging over you. I wish you the best. 

There are many reasons.  The economic changes that went from boon in some areas during COVID are winding back.  The move to remote workforce has lessened the need for in building IT staff.  IT is often seen as a cost center and not valued for its ability to save the company money through efficiency.  Staffing IT can be difficult because IT people tended to move around a lot and the churn was painful.  Finally, you have managed service firms always in the ear of the C-levels talking about how they can save money by outsourcing.  In some cases they are not wrong.

If you are working in the MSP field then you could be impacted by the business world dialing back its budgets as well.

There's a lot of flux in IT and its hard to remain relevant and at the front of the technology curves.

[JohnC]

3 minutes ago, LTS said:

We just went through a massive restructure and layoffs have been the norm for the past year as well.  I don't know if its better to know they are coming or if they are not. This last round I knew something was going on and then I got read into the changes so I knew I was safe and that was a massive relief.  I still had to move some people who were on my team and lots of people were impacted.

Being versatile is valuable.  If not where you are now then it can only help if you do have to look for a new opportunity.  All the best.

There are many reasons.  The economic changes that went from boon in some areas during COVID are winding back.  The move to remote workforce has lessened the need for in building IT staff.  IT is often seen as a cost center and not valued for its ability to save the company money through efficiency.  Staffing IT can be difficult because IT people tended to move around a lot and the churn was painful.  Finally, you have managed service firms always in the ear of the C-levels talking about how they can save money by outsourcing.  In some cases they are not wrong.

If you are working in the MSP field then you could be impacted by the business world dialing back its budgets as well.

There's a lot of flux in IT and its hard to remain relevant and at the front of the technology curves.

Thanks for your informed response. Does the new AI realm make the text sector more volatile and precarious for the workers or does it create a greater need for those workers?  

[Pimlach]

47 minutes ago, Marvin said:

The consulting firm that I work for is doing a big round of IT layoffs.  I am worried because I have been on the bench a while.  I am lucky that I can work anywhere in the entire tech stack, so AI might survive this round.

Good luck Marvin.  Start looking at other opportunities and maybe you can contract for yourself or through another firm.  

I retired in 2021 before I hit 63.   I still had some fire left, but did not agree with the corporate culture changes so rather than be antagonistic towards it I left. 

I got calls from a company that is in my old companies supply base.   So I consult to them on occasion.  Worked 400 hrs in 2022, 360 hours in 2023 - that is enough for me.  

Depending on your age and what benefits you need you may be better off going that route.  

[Marvin]

1 minute ago, JohnC said:

Thanks for your informed response. Does the new AI realm make the text sector more volatile and precarious for the workers or does it create a greater need for those workers?  

I found that one generative AI fell for traps that I laid for it with a sample project I had worked on a couple of years ago, so it currently can not replace IT reliably.  It learned off of publicly available code, which tells me that there are a lot of companies using known inefficient or flawed algorithms because the programmer was unaware of the limits of the obvious, naive solution.  On the other hand, having the AI write the tedious boilerplate code to get me started writing an API with a standardized project configuration and set-up was soooooooo cool.  So if people are willing to think and be careful, then IT could see a big boom with coding with AI's help.  But you just know that some companies will use AI as an excuse to cut their IT departments at some point, which could bite them HARD because the odds are that they won't think about the ramifications carefully.

[RochesterExpat]

We laid a few engineers off earlier this week following layoffs at the end of last year. It's not fun at all. Seems a lot of companies overextended during the period of low interest rates and the expected returns never materialized. This is a consequence of that.

[Xzy89c]

What is your specialty?

[Marvin]

28 minutes ago, Xzy89c said:

What is your specialty?

I am a generalist with more strength in middleware, primarily with Java, although I have some C# plus too many other languages to mention.  I have been a DBA (Oracle, DB2, Ingres), SysAdmin, tech support, Full stack developer (my front-end experience is kind of old, though), QA, DevOps, team lead, substitute Scrum master, substitute project lead, with some predictive analytics to top it all off.  Basically, tell me what you need and I will figure it out.

[Weave]

Hate hearing this.  I’ve been through it 4 times in my career.  I’m at a point where I worry about my marketability now.  I need this gig to be my last one, I think.

Good luck.  I wish I was in a field where I could help if needed.

[MattPie]

2 hours ago, JohnC said:

Thanks for your informed response. Does the new AI realm make the text sector more volatile and precarious for the workers or does it create a greater need for those workers?  

I was going to answer, but Marvin's is better.

AI will kinda throw stuff out there that kinda works for general cases, but you need to be careful about QA on the code. It reminds me of how a friend described the initial wave of offshoring manufacturing to the far east. You cut costs on creation, but you better be on your A game with test and QA processes. Especially at the time, the far east would just kinda ship it and it was up to you to make sure it met the requirements. AI is no different; it doesn't actually understand or care about your problem, it just creates something that looks like the way someone else solved it.

8 minutes ago, Weave said:

Hate hearing this.  I’ve been through it 4 times in my career.  I’m at a point where I worry about my marketability now.  I need this gig to be my last one, I think.

You and me both. I might have a move left in the next couple years if I have to, but there are certainly people that aren't going to look twice at an IT resume going back to the 90s. I am lucky that my current gig is doing AI infrastructure, so I have a certain amount of leverage there.

Edited February 15 by MattPie

[Marvin]

58 minutes ago, Weave said:

Hate hearing this.  I’ve been through it 4 times in my career.  I’m at a point where I worry about my marketability now.  I need this gig to be my last one, I think.

Good luck.  I wish I was in a field where I could help if needed.

 

50 minutes ago, MattPie said:

I was going to answer, but Marvin's is better.

AI will kinda throw stuff out there that kinda works for general cases, but you need to be careful about QA on the code. It reminds me of how a friend described the initial wave of offshoring manufacturing to the far east. You cut costs on creation, but you better be on your A game with test and QA processes. Especially at the time, the far east would just kinda ship it and it was up to you to make sure it met the requirements. AI is no different; it doesn't actually understand or care about your problem, it just creates something that looks like the way someone else solved it.

You and me both. I might have a move left in the next couple years if I have to, but there are certainly people that aren't going to look twice at an IT resume going back to the 90s. I am lucky that my current gig is doing AI infrastructure, so I have a certain amount of leverage there.

Same here.  I am pushing 60.  I am thankful that I can still be a competent grunt at any lower to middle level if need be.

[Doohickie]

1 hour ago, Weave said:

Hate hearing this.  I’ve been through it 4 times in my career.  I’m at a point where I worry about my marketability now.  I need this gig to be my last one, I think.

Good luck.  I wish I was in a field where I could help if needed.

Same here.  In my case it was 4 times in 5 years.  My management has said they see a downturn coming, possibly later this year or next.  I need another three and a half years to get to 65...

[Marvin]

10 minutes ago, Doohickie said:

Same here.  In my case it was 4 times in 5 years.  My management has said they see a downturn coming, possibly later this year or next.  I need another three and a half years to get to 65...

This is interesting.  All 4 of the standard leading indicators for a recession went red from 2020-2022.  But they are currently flat, which normally predates a recovery.  And a lot of the usual other bad things that predate a recession have not happened.  It is possible that there still will go into a recession, though.  I am hoping for hiring to accelerate as interest rates fall.

[Mango]

5 hours ago, Marvin said:

The consulting firm that I work for is doing a big round of IT layoffs.  I am worried because I have been on the bench a while.  I am lucky that I can work anywhere in the entire tech stack, so AI might survive this round.

I have been in tech the better part of 10 years. It has been quietly very bad. I know people who have spent a career at the director level with pretty notable vendors who have been on the sidelines for a year. 

A friend who is a tech sales recruiter is always talking about how she doesn't understand all the talk of booming or bounce back, that she hasn't seen a job market this bad in a very very long time. 

 

[Mango]

36 minutes ago, Doohickie said:

Same here.  In my case it was 4 times in 5 years.  My management has said they see a downturn coming, possibly later this year or next.  I need another three and a half years to get to 65...

I think everybody is white knuckling at the moment. 

I have some connections in manufacturing, IOT, and remote access, and there is a major slow down in production globally. Machine builders aren't moving anything out the door. The US seems to be a quarter or two behind but APAC and EMEA.

[Big Guava]

6 hours ago, JohnC said:

Layoffs in the tech sector is pervasive. Why is that? I would think that there would be a need and demand for IT workers because the way business and all sectors are dependent on the networks and computer programs.  Sometimes the stress of the possibility of being let go is worse than the stress of actually being let go because it is constantly hanging over you. I wish you the best. 

 

In many cases it was because they way overhired during the pandemic when there was free money floating around to keep people working or hiring new ones.

Then when the economy slowed down due to inflation and rising interest rates, the companies started cutting people who literally were doing nothing, or at least had very little work to do.

In some cases, they were hired to keep them away from the competition.

First round of cuts was mostly directed towards that. Second round of cuts can be somewhat attributed to AI, but most people don't have a good understanding of how or what AI does for a software engineer.

It can help you, but it can't do your job for you. It is very helpful for generic boilerplate code, unit tests and documentation. Not so great at the finer details that require you to actually know how you plan on implementing things in the application.

As I often say, if you were driving cross country, it would be great giving you the directions to get to the city you are going to, but once you get there it's not good at telling you how to get to the various landmarks in the city.

Edited February 15 by Big Guava

[JoeSchmoe]

My son is 16. I'd like for him to get into a trade and use the money I'd use for college to get him set up to work for himself. Unfortunately, the stigma of trades vs white collar has him wanting to go to university. 

[Big Guava]

8 minutes ago, JoeSchmoe said:

My son is 16. I'd like for him to get into a trade and use the money I'd use for college to get him set up to work for himself. Unfortunately, the stigma of trades vs white collar has him wanting to go to university. 

There are pros and cons to both.

[North Buffalo]

13 minutes ago, Big Guava said:

There are pros and cons to both.

If he can do both that'd be ideal.  I can enough in construction and as a CT Tech to be considered part of trade community but I also wrote legislation for 15 years and if I had to back into the slop I could.

[JoeSchmoe]

28 minutes ago, Big Guava said:

There are pros and cons to both.

Up here in Canada, you can't find trades... Contractors are naming their prices. I dropped $800 in labour to a gas tech last summer for 3 hours. The only other guy that came out quoted the job at 8 hours, 2 guys, and over 3 times that.

[Marvin]

46 minutes ago, JoeSchmoe said:

My son is 16. I'd like for him to get into a trade and use the money I'd use for college to get him set up to work for himself. Unfortunately, the stigma of trades vs white collar has him wanting to go to university. 

I hate that stigma.

I tell everyone: if you are not in a field with good job prospects in and around your major, then consider learning a trade.  There is nothing dishonourable about being a plumber, electrician, or whatever.  And if you want to be a good capitalist pig about it, tradespeople often make more than college grads in white collar jobs and they don't have the debt load.  He'll never have a girlfriend who graduated from Harvard Law or Stanford Medical, though.

If he is set on going to college, then until he is fairly certain what he wants to do later, then go to a state school and save the money.  Gen Ed courses at all but the highest and lowest schools are pretty interchangeable.  We use the same textbooks, teach the same courses, and give similar exams.

Also, he can learn a trade and go to college later for the joy of it.