I honestly think the continued layoffs in tech are not AI replacing programmers - it's a correction from years of overhiring. I interviewed someone that was a Dir of E at Twitter and they told me that a HUNDRED people worked on their mobile app. That's just not necessary. - ThreadSky

davetron5000.com • 17 days ago

I honestly think the continued layoffs in tech are not AI replacing programmers - it's a correction from years of overhiring. I interviewed someone that was a Dir of E at Twitter and they told me that a HUNDRED people worked on their mobile app. That's just not necessary.

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skatkov.com•16 days ago

I too assume that this consiquence from overhiring.

Usually codebases reflect organisational structures. I wonder how all those codebases going to revert to pre-overhiring mode :)

davetron5000.com•17 days ago

I worked at a startup where the CEO just wanted a big engineering team. So he hired one. No roadmap existed to justify it, and it made everything slower.

LivingSocial famously just hired every Ruby person around, and it was total chaos. No plans, just hire.

davetron5000.com•17 days ago

At Stitch Fix, the original CEO did not do this. We hired only when there was something that we wanted to do that we couldn't do. But he always had pressure to hire more engineers. For what reason? I don't know. After a few years and some leadership changes, we also started hiring willy nilly

davetron5000.com•17 days ago

I've said previously, but about a year before I left, I would estimate at least a third if not half of the roadmap was utterly pointless work that would not truly help the business. But no idea was turned away. Just hire more engineers.

davetron5000.com•17 days ago

I think because hiring engineers is hard (possibly due to self-inflicted hiring processes), VCs/CEOs see big teams as a status symbol. Until now. They are realizing it's a massive cost that doesn't deliver an ROI. Thus, this is, sadly, a correction.

davetron5000.com•17 days ago

Stitch Fix original _CTO_*

czhu.bsky.social•16 days ago

I think at least part of it is the massive capex reserved for GPU's / AI infrastructure requires cutting in other areas? In that way, AI did contribute to cuts

billkarwin.geek.org•16 days ago

The same thing happened in 1998-2000.

But at that time, it wasn't just a status symbol, it was a way to demonstrate to investors that the business had the "capacity for work."

I.e. if a big project were funded to build something innovative, the business was ready with staff to implement it.

billkarwin.geek.org•16 days ago

The fact that tech businesses are shedding the "extra" employees means that they think investors are attracted more by something else.

In fact, a shift happened around 2022, when Wall Street suddenly emphasized "revenue per employee" as their go-to metric for company health.

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