[anon50118810]

The problem is downstream effects. If tons of employers pause hiring because they're hoping to get FAANG alumni for cheap, maybe because they read articles like this one, that will cause disruptions in the market. It may eventually work out but eventually can be a long time to people who really need a job.

[Ancalagon]

Pieces like this are trying to accomplish just that.

It's the whole "people think there's gonna be a recession, which causes a recession" thing all over again.

Although in this case tech talent is still a supply issue in the US. I don't think 10k (albeit exceptional) software engineers on the market will sway it when there are 4 million positions in total, and the market grew by 100k in the past year alone. Just my 2c.

[anon50118810]

A mental model for disaster here is tenure-track hiring in academia. Almost every school down to your least prestigious 4-year state university hires its faculty from the same top 50 or so places. All the graduates from the thousands of other schools have to leave academia or work as adjuncts or postdocs. It's possible that these layoffs are the equivalent of releasing all of the graduates from the top schools into the market, locking everyone else out or pushing them into lower tiers of jobs.

The questions I suppose are whether there are enough jobs to absorb the newly laid off workers with minimal disruption and whether mechanisms exist to move the workers into those jobs. Your 4 million includes irrelevant positions like IT help desk at a doctor's office in Omaha, which would be a bad match on both sides and even if it weren't would be hugely disruptive to the employee and others.