If I may suggest am interpretation: different kind of professionals may see different things. E.gm I'm told the market rate for react devs dropped like a brick, which is not the case for other software engineers.
If you call yourself a react dev, then I’m sorry you’re not a software engineer. That’s like calling urself a Facebook marketer instead of a marketer. Good way to box yourself into a niche that may run out of demand
> If you can collude on layoffs, that means industry demand for labor is down and salaries are reflecting lowered demand.
No it doesn't. You make a "gentleman's agreement" to do your layoffs and trust your chums to keep to it. Are you arguing that industry collusion is impossible?
Yes, because companies need labor. They aren't going to willingly crash their growth if the economy is booming and other industries are growing, because that will destroy themselves. It is insanely better to shed labor when the economy is poor than when the economy is great.
When you shed labor during poor economic conditions, it is not collusion, even if they, hypothetically, "colluded" to do it.
When a bunch of people see that a stock is crashing and decide to pull out together, it is not stock manipulation. It is a rational decision. (And don't nitpick the analogy on things like "buy low sell high", you probably understand the point I'm making.)
Companies need some labour, sure. But they can absolutely do things like hiring 10% more or 10% less, bringing a layoff forward a few months or pushing it back.
> When you shed labor during poor economic conditions, it is not collusion, even if they, hypothetically, "colluded" to do it.
> When a bunch of people see that a stock is crashing and decide to pull out together, it is not stock manipulation. It is a rational decision.
That's backwards logic. If a bunch of people agree to sell a stock at the same time so that none of them are left holding the bag, that is stock manipulation, even if they sold at a time when it was "rational" to sell. The fact that companies can act as a de-facto cartel without the kind of explicit coordination that our current anaemic anti-trust regime might punish is an argument for stronger anti-trust laws, not for ignoring the cases when we do catch them red-handed.
The "silicon valley anti-poaching agreement" is a known case where it happened a few years ago. So it's not too implausible to think that the current round of layoffs might be being coordinated in a similar way.
All you have to do is look at how these things play out. One large company announces they're considering layoffs, which primes everyone else to compile their own lists.
After a month or two one company announces they're going through with layoffs, and that sets off a chain reaction for the rest to execute their own plans as soon as possible. It always happens like this. Everyone just decides now is the time to clean house, all at the same time, and we all decided to do this independent of each other...
The "collusion" is a dog-whistle protocol happening in plain sight. There is no "evidence," no damning email to be found, only behavioral patterns to observe. It's the same playbook every single time.
I don’t know which of you is right, but I think you’re saying different things. They’re saying positions that are actually open right now are paying less, and you’re saying salaries for existing employees are flat. They could be right if the positions which are open are only recruiting those with lower salary expectations.
No, I’m saying pay for new openings is flat. I just went through a job search, the numbers in the level.fyi data match my own job search experience looking at current openings.
- soda is up about 50% for name brand, and generic soda is up around 80%
- diesel is up, what 50%? how much is regular gas in california?
- housing "values" where I am at are up 25-40% in the last two years
- Potato chips are up at least 40%
- Apples are much more expensive
- Restaurants are up at least 25%, some 50-75%
Many of these products went up by these amounts yet also engaged in shrinkflation. The biggest example of this is Chipotle which almost doubled the cost of its burritos but also shrunk them in size by about a third.
Governments are motivated to reduce inflation in inflation statistics. Perhaps the cost of goods for the ultra-rich hasn't really changed much, but for the poor (or cheap) they have all gone up quite dramatically in two years.
oh god, how will SF SWEs survive with more expensive potatoe chips and soda. Maybe stop drinking poison and processed foods and you'll be fine. A whole rotisserie chicken is only $8.99 at whole foods
boo hoo, how will SWE survive on a paltry $150k per year for adjusting drop down menu fonts. The salaries in tech were ridiculous and an insult to other professionals that actually improved the world. Now that 0% interest rates are gone and most tech is mature and cranking up margins by pushing more ads, you don't need as many SWEs. Michelin-chef meals, onsite daycare, 400K salaries, and nap rooms were not a sustainable long term thing