Business Big Tech Layoffs Megathread - Techbros... we got too cocky...

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Since my previous thread kinda-sorta turned into a soft megathread, and the tech layoffs will continue until morale improves, I think it's better to group them all together.

For those who want a QRD:


Just this week we've had these going on:

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But it's not just Big Tech, the vidya industry is also cleaning house bigly:

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All in all, rough seas ahead for the techbros.
 
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You all have Karen's in your HR? Lucky. Here its all aged out cholos and jeets. Unless you can flash a gang sign or you're name is Srinivas Prasad Bindu Sanjay Rajesh Priya Sita Slushy, you're not getting past the screening. Every one being forced out here is a white man. I'm assuming some sort of alternative society is being formed somewhere because its a browning sea of despair.
 
AbendCode12 dijo:
Every one being forced out here is a white man
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This is the outcome that continues to be pushed. The leading candidates of the HR prescreens for the open positions at my job coincidentally are all DEI candidates or nepo babies. White guys don’t get prescreened or if they do, they’re at the bottom. HR will put in comments like “candidate does not grasp roles and responsibilities” and it’s a white kid who made the deans list every semester but the jeet who misspelled every other word is the leading candidate. Right.

A lot of the “applied to 100 jobs and heard back from two of them” are usually from white guys. DEI staffing targets are still alive and well and most of them have commitments like needing 30% of the company needing to be diverse by 2030. So yeah, no white guys. You have to bypass the HR process as much as possible if you want a shot.
 
Aidan dijo:
HR may be overcompensating more than ever to justify their importance.
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Relevant

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https://fortune.com/2026/05/19/bolt...causing-problems-fintech-startup-turn-around/

sadrefrigerator dijo:
You know that every job listing gets blasted with x0,000 perfectly matched ai generated resumes right? Even before ai, people were sending fake resumes. There's no way a engineering manager has time to screen all of those. Unless you have a better way of doing a recruiter screen, karen from HR is the best you're going to get.
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This is all well and good, if they can acknowledge they're application janitors that should be paid minimum wage. Filtering AI, browns/whites, and North Koreans. The moment they start evaluating any sort of technical ability while having zero themselves, they've lost the plot. In that case the HM is better off simply grabbing the first 50 applications and trashing the rest. The ratio of shit to shine would probably be the same and I trust my own or a HM's vibes more than HR's.

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People are, on average, average. Every company demanding top talent with the utmost urgency to work on their agile venture AI slop, rather than slow methodological development that any qualified engineer will make it through, is the race to the bottom for everyone involved. Crabs in a bucket. Or monkeys at the bottom of stairs.
 
blargenheimer dijo:
This is all well and good, if they can acknowledge they're application janitors that should be paid minimum wage. Filtering AI, browns/whites, and North Koreans. The moment they start evaluating any sort of technical ability while having zero themselves, they've lost the plot. In that case the HM is better off simply grabbing the first 50 applications and trashing the rest. The ratio of shit to shine would probably be the same and I trust my own or a HM's vibes more than HR's.
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Even if HR could magically recognize and reject AI, jeets and North Koreans, the amount of resumes they would pass would far outscale what the HM could reasonably look through. That's not even taking into account how many resumes you get that are full of lies that go beyond just embellishing experience. I had a candidate I interviewed that had a white sounding name, but a korean guy showed up. The linkedin link he gave was broken, but I found someone else with his name and address, along with the experience he listed. We figured out at that point it was a fabricated person and they sent someone else to pass the HM screen.
Recruiters aren't the ones pushing to do technical screening. HMs need to have some form of screening before resumes get to their eyes. Reality isn't even far off your example of the first X number of resumes getting passed along. There are just so many applicants today that if you apply too late after the listing is posted you have no chance of getting looked at.

Recruiter screens accomplish a number of tasks. They make sure theres a real person at the other end of the resume. They can check for obvious red flags like if the candidate sounds like hes in a call center, or if theres too much autism. Usually the HM has to give them some buzzwords to look for, or a list of technical questions and the answer they are looking for. Its not a good solution, but its the only thing that they can do right now. Even if your resume gets in front of the HM, theres no guarantee he'll choose to pass you. They look through dozens everyday and really don't have time to do more than skim past each one. You might be a perfect fit for the role, but get denied because the HM was in a bad mood or whatever bullshit.

Hiring is not perfect because its a difficult process that AI has made much worse on both sides. I don't know what the solution is. You can bitch about HR if it will make you feel better. For the forseeable future, you'll need a referral to get taken seriously.
 
blargenheimer dijo:
People are, on average, average. Every company demanding top talent with the utmost urgency to work on their agile venture AI slop, rather than slow methodological development that any qualified engineer will make it through, is the race to the bottom for everyone involved. Crabs in a bucket. Or monkeys at the bottom of stairs.
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I've been on the IT side(not software dev, more sysadmin) for many years. Outside one startup where I got to do everything, all my employers have had sane on-call rotations, 40 hour weeks, some night and weekend but usually scheduled well in advance and not as overtime.
And I tend to work on big stuff that people get angry when it breaks. There's no reason for a software developer to work more than 40 hours or nights and weekends on any regular basis, except perhaps supervising deployments. The code will still be there on Monday.
 
There are a lot of (bad) managers who believe the key to rise to the top is to work everyone nonstop, deny them raises and bonuses, and basically just fuck their direct reports into the dirt. Senior management keeps giving these retards chances but these guys always fail in the long run. Mostly because it is a shitty and ultimately inefficient way of doing business. The continuous scramble mode is exhausting.
 
The Hardest R dijo:
Senior management keeps giving these retards chances but these guys always fail in the long run. Mostly because it is a shitty and ultimately inefficient way of doing business.
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Those chances only come after upper management realizes the taskmaster is the problem and not the solution. In the short term, the people quitting are written off as flukes if not thrown under the bus for not going along with the manager's idiocy.

ETA This goes double in companies with the 'professional manager' setup (i.e. managerial experience is valued more than technical know-how) because it lets inept or abusive, but well-spoken, managers duck blame and responsibility for much longer.

Source: Do I have to spell it out?
 
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sadrefrigerator dijo:
Lmao hr have no control over technical interviews. They literally don't know anything past buzzwords. The most they are allowed to test is prescripted questions given to them by the hiring manager.
Tech interviews and take homes are defined by the engineering team. You'd know if an interview process for engineers was defined by someone outside of engineering because it would be extremely bizarre and filled with non technical rounds.
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The larger point is that HR directly controls who can access technical tests and interviews.

If you have 1,000 applicants for a tech job and HR non-technically screens that down to ~15, that's a deeply tainted pool before anyone even gets into anything technical. HR just becomes an artificial barrier that leads tech hiring down one of two paths - either just grabbing a contractor from somewhere or very basic personal networking.
 
Tanner Glass dijo:
The larger point is that HR directly controls who can access technical tests and interviews.

If you have 1,000 applicants for a tech job and HR non-technically screens that down to ~15, that's a deeply tainted pool before anyone even gets into anything technical. HR just becomes an artificial barrier that leads tech hiring down one of two paths - either just grabbing a contractor from somewhere or very basic personal networking.
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The post I was responding to said that HR defines technical interviews, ie how many system design and coding rounds a candidate has to go through.

Nowadays every job listing gets atleast 5 digits, not 1000, of perfectly crafted resumes that match everything your JD looks for. HR filtering sucks, but its the only way to filter applications at the top level right now. I'll ask you the same. Do you have a better way of filtering all those resumes so that only the very best people end up infront of the HM? Because if you do, you will have solved one of the biggest problems in hiring and you will probably get really rich doing so. Every company would switch to your method because hiring sucks so much right now on both ends.

Until then, referrals are the best way to hire and get hired.
 
sadrefrigerator dijo:
Nowadays every job listing gets atleast 5 digits, not 1000, of perfectly crafted resumes that match everything your JD looks for. HR filtering sucks, but its the only way to filter applications at the top level right now. I'll ask you the same. Do you have a better way of filtering all those resumes so that only the very best people end up infront of the HM? Because if you do, you will have solved one of the biggest problems in hiring and you will probably get really rich doing so. Every company would switch to your method because hiring sucks so much right now on both ends.

Until then, referrals are the best way to hire and get hired.
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Generally I've found in my limited capacity that outside of referrals that Staffing Agencies have come back into favor - they prescreen all of the various stages and just get to the "final round" which goes directly to the technical team and are directly incentivized to actually put in a little effort (as opposed to a HR team). It's a potentially gigantic pile of money for browsing linked in for a couple of hours and making some phone calls.

The only person who really loses is the hired employee, but that's usually how it goes.
 
Tanner Glass dijo:
Generally I've found in my limited capacity that outside of referrals that Staffing Agencies have come back into favor - they prescreen all of the various stages and just get to the "final round" which goes directly to the technical team and are directly incentivized to actually put in a little effort (as opposed to a HR team). It's a potentially gigantic pile of money for browsing linked in for a couple of hours and making some phone calls.

The only person who really loses is the hired employee, but that's usually how it goes.
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Staffing agencies don't see applications. They can't help filter the applications you receive. They are outsourced outbound recruiters. Small to mid sized companies will usually retain a number of them to cold contact people through linkedin or whatever. Bigger companies have a big enough recruiting team that they don't need to hire outside recruiters most of the time.
3rd party recruiters are paid on commission, usually a percent of first year salary if you stay for a set amount of time. They cannot have anything to do with applications because they only get paid if the candidate is sourced directly by them. Because of this often these recruiters tell the candidates not to apply by themselves. As a qualified candidate, you're hoping they see your LinkedIn and decide to contact you.

Aside from effort, they are incentivized to have their candidate hired as soon as possible over another firms candidate. A lot of them do sketchy stuff. Most will ask their candidate for interview questions to prep other candidates they send over. I've had one set an arbitrary deadline to an offer I got because I told them I was in the process with other companies. Always negotiable directly with the company after initial contact.
 
sadrefrigerator dijo:
Staffing agencies don't see applications. They can't help filter the applications you receive. They are outsourced outbound recruiters. Small to mid sized companies will usually retain a number of them to cold contact people through linkedin or whatever. Bigger companies have a big enough recruiting team that they don't need to hire outside recruiters most of the time.
3rd party recruiters are paid on commission, usually a percent of first year salary if you stay for a set amount of time. They cannot have anything to do with applications because they only get paid if the candidate is sourced directly by them. Because of this often these recruiters tell the candidates not to apply by themselves. As a qualified candidate, you're hoping they see your LinkedIn and decide to contact you.

Aside from effort, they are incentivized to have their candidate hired as soon as possible over another firms candidate. A lot of them do sketchy stuff. Most will ask their candidate for interview questions to prep other candidates they send over. I've had one set an arbitrary deadline to an offer I got because I told them I was in the process with other companies. Always negotiable directly with the company after initial contact.
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That's all true but I mean it's easier for larger companies (depending on definition, but 5,000 to 30,000 people) to outsource to staffing agencies for ~4 interviews then to have their own HR machine do huge numbers of first rounds - or they aren't liking what they get through their HR machine.

Maybe it's entirely anecdotal but that's been my experience in the last 2 years through 3 companies.
 
sadrefrigerator dijo:
The post I was responding to said that HR defines technical interviews, ie how many system design and coding rounds a candidate has to go through.

Nowadays every job listing gets atleast 5 digits, not 1000, of perfectly crafted resumes that match everything your JD looks for. HR filtering sucks, but its the only way to filter applications at the top level right now. I'll ask you the same. Do you have a better way of filtering all those resumes so that only the very best people end up infront of the HM? Because if you do, you will have solved one of the biggest problems in hiring and you will probably get really rich doing so. Every company would switch to your method because hiring sucks so much right now on both ends.

Until then, referrals are the best way to hire and get hired.
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Solution: Filter every Jeet surname
 
Ahriman dijo:
Bros... could it be?
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Nah, its just the usual churn. We're a few months after fiscal year end, new projects have been planned out for a bit and are starting to get legs under them and be resourced out. Nobody has hit the mid fiscal clawback yet, everyones riding high and growing their little fiefdoms while they can. Come November the clawbacks will hit again and we'll be back onto the doom loop as people get shitcanned for the holidays and the next shiny corporate excuse bounces about.
 
Got laid off last Friday (IT job with some programming) with no time to download company secrets. I'd join ICE just to give spreaders of the H-1B virus what they deserve but I couldn't find any openings.
 
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