No Series Title
No Series Description
Some thoughts on the layoffs at Meta, Twitter, Amazon and other tech companies, having worked in HR for a long time.
Why is this happening?
Most big tech companies, especially the FANG companies have been recruiting like crazy over the past 2–3 years and paying top notch compensation. Something had to give. One can get above average talent by paying above the 50th percentile and it makes no business sense to pay the same folks at the 80–90th percentile. As long as the companies made a lot of profits, no one thought about this. I know that one of the FANG companies was interviewing anyone in the bay area who had anything close to “product manager” listed in their linkedin profile. Another planned to hire 50,000 every year in the US alone for highly paid tech jobs. All these shenanigans basically made it almost impossible for any other recruiter in the bay to get anyone to fill open jobs.
The COVID situation was an unexpected windfall, increasing eyeballs to video streaming, online shopping and social media companies dramatically. Some tech leaders including Mark Zuckerberg noted that they had mistakenly assumed that the COVID boom would go on longer. Sadly, things changed after the war in Ukraine. This coupled with global recessionary headwinds of the 6 trillion-dollar COVID relief stimulus, re-emergent COVID shutdowns, chip shortages, geo-political tensions, tightening monetary policy and the current oil crisis, ensured a perfect storm. Companies are seeing their quarterly results getting hammered. Yesterday, Amazon was the first company to lose a trillion dollars in market cap.
What it means to you?
1) Stop chasing compensation: If you want stability, choose companies which offer stability.
There is a reason why some companies pay at the 50th (matching the market). They typically (not always) guarantee you a safe and steady job, even if the pay is not great. The higher the pay, the more the risk. It is exactly like the risk reward decisions when one picks stocks in the stock market. The higher the risk, the higher the possible gain and higher the chance that you will lose everything. So next time, a company offers to pay you a high pay package, remember that there will always be a catch. Either you are doing the work of two people and getting paid 40–50% more, or you will the first to get fired when the profits decrease in the company. Remember this when you keep negotiating for higher compensation.
Many big tech companies, outside FANG, pay well above market but don’t offer the same brand appeal. They could be good choices. Many European tech companies also belong to this stable group.
2) Choose jobs where you have the right skills and passion:
Ask yourself if you have the right skills for the future. Many jobs will not be available 10–20 years later. If you are doing the same work you did 15–20 years ago, you shouldn’t be surprised if nobody wants you anymore. One has to retrain and learn continuously. One example I offer is Parag Agarwal who after a Computer Science Ph.D. in Stanford would keep taking online courses and join hackathons to become better and better. Anybody who thinks that there is nothing left to learn is on the fast lane to disaster. In short, be humble and keep learning, whether tech skills or people skills.
Many companies are happy to offer job rotations. Use them, if you are not content with your current job. Every job move need not be a promotion. Sometimes, a parallel move even with a cut in compensation, may help you find the right niche where you can shine the brightest.
When you get up every day, ask yourself if you like your job? If you like it, you will be spending more hours after work and be on top of things. If there is little passion, maybe your job is not the best fit for you long term. Dating and work are not very dissimilar. No amount of compensation can make a bad job, a right fit. Move across roles, jobs and companies earnestly till you find your fit. If jobs don’t work, maybe there is something outside regular corporate jobs you are good in. Explore and experiment. None can help you discover yourself other than yourself. It is a sham to be in a job just to convince a future recruiter. It is better to genuine and honest about your life experiences in any job interview, than putting on a pretension. As a recruiter having hired thousands of tech employees, the most important thing in an interview is to be unique and interesting.
3) Don’t look back with regrets, look forward with optimism:
There is nothing good or bad in this world. In the long term, all issues solve itself. What we think as a bad experience may have positive connotations, which we find impossible to see with our immediate sense of focus. As every self-important leader or pioneer will find in their lifetime, the world will keep moving — with or without them. Worries or regrets is just a waste of time. It is better spent trying to become good in some skill which you like. That switch may take months or years, but is well worth it. You will be honest to yourself after a long, long time.
Maybe it is time to learn a new skill. If you are an accountant, doctor, lawyer, teacher, bureaucrat or financial analyst, remember that your job could be among the 47% of jobs which will disappear in the next 20 years.
What we miss all the time is that sometimes what we want desperately, is not always good for us. If Elon Musk’s ask for a job had not been rejected by Netscape or Google’s ask for a million dollars not been rejected by Yahoo, the world of today would have been a poorer place. In the long term, everything will work out and we will all be dead. We place an inordinate focus on our individual actions as if only that will save a company or even our family. We all want to be the Titan Atlas holding up the world, but the truth is that most of us are a speck inside a cog inside a gargantuan machine. Vinod Khosla noted in a speech at Stanford that less than 100 people born in any decade will influence society in any meaningful way.
Stop playing to the gallery. Let us do what we can in the limited time we have, find our niche and do our best. At the least, we owe it to ourselves.
