If you work at one of the large tech companies that, in the last few weeks [or months], have laid off thousands of employees, you may be wondering what the hell is going on. Especially if the company you’re working for is not actually struggling economically right now. If you work for Google, say, you must be thinking, “What is it about the coming recession that makes a company that’s doing just fine institute broad layoffs for the first time in its 23-year history?”
The answer, my friend, is class warfare.
You might have a point there. If it weren’t for the record profits. There will never be a shortage of overhyped, cash grab startups, companies, and projects. “We’re the AI of X!”
But companies like Netflix, Google, etc would not be where they are today if there wasn’t some real value they provided. They may not have the wisest leadership and so aren’t making a profit, but that’s the point. None of the issues at Netflix are due to engineers. None of the issues at Google are due to engineers. So why then is there a globally concerted effort to drive down the labor cost of engineering? If this were a true market correction in a free market, why isn’t pointless middle management and failed leadership being replaced or cut?
As a software engineer with more than a decade of experience, I have been at companies where I only got 2-3 commits approved in a month. But that was due to the refusal of middle management to do anything except coast. The vast majority of the problem is “leadership”, not engineering.
Ask yourself this. Why are you so upset about this that you go on a rant that’s targeted at the engineer “making 100k while committing code like twice a day”? With where inflation is at, that’s actually a really low salary if they’re able to make two good commits a day. If I could hire someone who makes two good commits in a day that’s closer to being worth $150K, at the very least.