Layoffs = The END of Software Engineering?

Key Takeaways

Amazon is planning to lay off approximately 10 000 employees so Matt is now laying off 13 percent of its staff that is more than 11 000 employees half of Twitter's Workforce thousands of employees got this email Friday informing them it was their last day at the company lift stripe an Open Door all announced this week they're going to be cutting their staff so far more than 100 000 Tech workers have been laid off in 2022 while some companies have directly let go their employees others have opted for weight and watch by doing hiring fees Google Apple Microsoft and snap also reportedly pausing or substantially slowing hiring the companies of all sizes are getting impacted by this economic downturn the future of tech industry looks more uncertain than ever so what does all of this mean for someone who's about to start their career in the tech industry and how can someone who's already working in the tech industry save themselves from these layoffs and more importantly is this the end of tech industry as we know it before I answer all these questions if you are one of the people who have been impacted by these layoffs I'm truly sorry if there is anything we can do for you please let us know in the comments I request the entire power Community to help each other out in these tough times we are all in this together to answer what the future holds for the tech industry we first need to understand how we got here in the first place and for that we need to go back to the beginning of pandemic in 2020 when the entire world economy came to a standstill people were losing their jobs everywhere especially in the hospitality industry and to help people who are having a hard time governments throughout the world started giving out covered relief packages the Senate unanimously passed a 2 trillion dollar economic relief package late last night today I'm announcing an additional 4.6 billion pounds for the hardest hit businesses across the UK and to fund all these packages governments printed a lot of money all this money made its way to the stock market the stocks of the big tech companies sold which gave them a false confidence and what did tech companies do as a result of all this they started hiring massively better which is the biggest culpit in these layoffs doubled its staff and pandemic and hired more than 87 000 new employees and the entire world was struggling to make the ends meet tech industry witnessed something that they called this great resignation it's a great resignation we have already covered this in detail in one of our earlier videos but in short the great designation was a phenomenon where Tech workers were leaving their jobs for higher salaries if I'm being honest I'm also one of the tech workers who participated in the great resignation during the Great resignation Tech salaries were at their Peak I managed to get offers from Google Facebook Uber and some other startups and as a result I almost doubled the salary Amazon was paying me at that time in summary tech companies increase their size aggressively during the pandemic now after the economy recovered from pandemic people got their jobs back and everything started going back to normal but all the money that was printed still remained in circulation more money in the market meant that people were ready to pay more for the same thing and this led to inflation an 8.4 Spike from a year ago that would be the highest since December 1981. the comic sanctions of Russia after the Ukraine war started further increase the gas prices which led to even more inflation the cost of oil is more than a hundred and twenty dollars a barrel resulting in record high gas prices control inflation the government decided to pull some money back from the market by increasing interest rates Federal Reserve announcing its decision on interest rate hike and less money in the market meant less economic activity it's like meta and Twitter it might have spent which makes the majority of their profits low earnings meant falling tech stocks make up for the lost profits tech companies started laying off their employees in short they overheard when the money was artificially pumped into the economy during the pandemic and now when the government is removing that money they are correcting their mistake now to understand what the short term and the long-term future looks like you need to go back in the history because increasing the interest rates plummeting tech stocks and mass layoffs are not something new in the tech industry in the late 90s any company with the word.com in its name was getting massive funding from the investors even if the company had no business model and was losing money sounds familiar due to the similar chain of events as today the.com bubble of late 90s burst in the year 1999 in 2000 their companies lost more than 1.75 trillion dollars in value and 22 000 people lost their jobs at that time as well fast forward to 2022 yet in a similar situation right now but what we need to remember is that even in the.com bubble there were some tech companies that survived the crash some of these tech companies were Microsoft Apple Amazon and Google what was common among the companies that survived the crash was that they had a great product and a solid business model so if the history is any indicator of the future the tech industry is not going anywhere anytime soon but we as Tech workers have to be a little careful during these tough times in the short term it's going to be harder to find a new job in Tech most of the major big tech companies are on official or unofficial hiring fees and it's anyway not a great time to join smaller companies that have fragile business and make no profit if you're thinking that you will prepare hard and get a tech job income in four to six months you need to set your expectations right and be ready for the heartbreaks I've talked to multiple people who are in the job market right now and the interviews are not coming easy and even if you manage to get an interview and do well in the interview there's no guarantee that you will get the job because companies are preferring to hire internal candidates over hiring externally so don't be too hard on yourself and start questioning your ability you get rejected in the interviews there's a great chance that it's not you it's just the market conditions in fact if you've been trying to get a job for a very long time without taking a break now is the time to take it easy and recover because in the current market you'll be seeing diminishing returns for your effort in the long term similar to the.com Bubble I expect the tech companies with great products and good profit margins to come back stronger than before that's because there is less competition between the Employers in the current labor market and good companies that have cash on hand will take this opportunity to hire exceptional people at lower wages to grow faster than ever so short term it's going to be tougher for people looking for jobs but long term we will have plenty of tech winners that will be top dollar for your talent however in order to make it in the long term we need to navigate the short term wisely but how do you do that I'll talk about the people looking to start their career in the tech industry in a moment but if you're already working in the industry here are a few things you can do to save yourself in these layoffs number one always be ready to interview if you need to brush up on your interviewing skills do it now number two keep the communication channels open make sure you check in with your manager regularly on what the leadership is up to and whether there are any plans for the layoffs I know that this is not the most efficient way but if you press hard enough you might get some information early and you can prepare accordingly lastly when it comes to layoffs your relationship with your manager is very important be more available in that relationship if you know what I mean for the people who are looking to enter the tech industry right now there are two things that are going to work against you in the current market I have personally struggled a lot with these two things first one is going to be the fear fear is your biggest enemy in these uncertain times and I'm not talking about the obvious fear that I would expect most of us to feel in the current situation what we see we can tackle it's the invisible that bites us what I'm talking about is the subconscious field that would make it very easy for you to rationalize things that would hurt you in the long run rationalizing things like giving up on your dream to become a software engineer time and again in my life I have made many wrong decisions out of fear feel that I did not acknowledge at the time I would always come up with some story to rationalize my decisions when I was getting an opportunity to do computer science at IIT Delhi it's only top 100 students get in entire India I chickened out at the time I rationalized it by saying that I like mechanical engineering more in reality I was scared of programming because I had never owned a computer until that moment in my life now I have made it a point not to let fear dictate my decisions while I have learned how to tackle my subconscious fear to a good degree this gets me most of the time and it might trip you as well in these difficult times and that is desperation desperation is what makes you buy those expensive courses that promise to somehow magically get to your dream job in a few months respiration can also lead you to take that first job that you get even if it's not good for you in my case whenever I'm doing a job switch my brain pushes me to finish the job search as fast as possible take the first job that I can get that's when I've interviewed at hundreds of companies in the last five years and have a good amount of experience in this job hunting game in my last job search I had to say no to a couple of great offers before I finally got my offer from Google so don't be fearful and don't be desperate and I'm very sure that good things will happen to you if you keep improving your skills having great interviewing skills is essential in current times no matter if you are looking to enter the industry or if you are already a part of it take your interviewing skills to the next level watch this video where I'll show you how to use the code effectively my name is sahil and I'll see you in the next one