Now that "everyone" works from home, a lot of companies figure it cost a lot less to hire Indians to do that than Americans.
Comment on About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off
FatTony@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Man, techworkers are really into getting laid off huh?
Jokes aside, why is this happening so much recently?
g8phcon2@teacup.social 8 months ago
Pons_Aelius@kbin.social 8 months ago
Did work from home start 30+ years ago? Because that is when companies started offshoring jobs on mass.
jmanes@lemmy.world 8 months ago
This isn’t accurate. Outsourcing tech jobs has been a thing since the 90s. It rarely works which is why it never stuck around. It’s just as risky today as it was back then.
Pxtl@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
Wrong timezone, wrong first language, and a corporate culture of fake-it-till-you-make-it-and-keep-faking-it-even-after-everything-failed makes that way harder than it seems at a glance. I’ve worked with a lot of great Indian developers, but those great Indian developers weren’t working at Satyam and the like.
I mean, to me the middle-ground is obvious. Don’t outsource to India. Just outsource to Pittsburgh. Still cheaper than hiring Silicon Valley people, only 3 hours time-shift, and Yinzers speak something pretty close to English.
gohixo9650@discuss.tchncs.de 8 months ago
because of the eternal growth principle of capitalism. Objectively there is a point that a company cannot grow anymore. For example there cannot be infinite bands that will constantly enter bandcamp to increase their numbers. At that point the company holders find different paths, like temporarily increasing numbers by reducing the number of employees. In periods of recession and uncertainty this has a domino effect.
force@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Around COVID tech gained a lot of popularity and especially stuff like AI/ML became the new trend, so tech companies starting hiring insane amounts of people. In the past year though companies have started realizing “oh shit, we hired way too many people” and started laying off (usually the most expensive/highest paid, or the most “useless” i.e. non-tech positions) employees.
It’s not really all that bad for juniors especially because now they get a big boost in their opportunities for work, especially ones that worked at the big companies that overhired a ton like Meta, because they can say “I worked for Facebook/Google/JP Morgan” or whatever the hell.
At least for software development, you’re kind of expected to be hopping jobs a lot because that’s the only way you’re really going to get more benefits and higher pay (unless you get really lucky and get a company that actually cares about retaining current employees!). There’s practically an infinite number of jobs, many good ones, in the sphere because of how valuable tech is in the modern world, so you don’t have to worry about not being able to find a position when you get some experience. That’s why companies will hire people who barely can even program, so long as they can write “hello world” in JS…
fosho@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
this is incredibly inaccurate. we just hired for a single position and got well over 250 applicants. a junior dev friend of mine says he and none of his friends can find work. with all the layoffs tech jobs are just very scarce right now.
EnderMB@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Fully agree. I work at a big tech company, and we’ve had experienced software engineers really struggle to find work, even in tech hubs like London, Barcelona, NYC, etc. We’ve also had apprentices leave after 4+ years without a return offer, only to find unemployment awaiting them.
force@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Depends on where you are applying, what I said won’t apply in every single municipality of course.
dustyData@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Prospect hire: “I worked for Facebook”
Recruiter: “So did the other 400 applicants, we don’t care. How much humiliation and misery wages are you capable of taking before having a medical crisis? That’s the only metric we care about.”
superguy@lemm.ee 8 months ago
Jokes aside, why is this happening so much recently?
It’s cyclical and very well understood at this point.
A business will hire a bunch of people to meet demand and then lay them off to make the company’s earnings look better the following quarter.
At this point, I have no sympathy for anyone targeted by these layoffs if they work for a company that has been known to do them. Real ‘leopards ate my face’, vibes.
Pechente@feddit.de 8 months ago
Funding is drying up due to high interest rates. That’s why these kinda of layoffs happen more frequently right now.
NOT_RICK@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Also, everyone’s doing it so it’s harder for an individual company to be vilified for it. They get to blame it on “market forces”
echo64@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Funding drying up is real, but if you see an established profit making company doing it, just remember that whenever they do layoffs, share prices rise. The execs get big bonuses for share prices, so sacrificing employees for those bonuses is worth it to them because they are parasites on society.
db2@sopuli.xyz 8 months ago
The whole stock market system is parasitic.