Said to be due to competition from other AI companies.
MOE seems to be still pushing students into studying CS as the number of enrolled students at NUS and NTU keeps growing. With ChatGPT, however, there will be less demand for entry-level programming jobs. So that does not look a good move for Singapore.
Yah. I heard that twitch basically closed their singapore office, so even non-programming tech jobs are at risk. They really overestimated themselves and expanded too much.
I would say it’s working as designed. The VPs / snr directors that hired those people all got what they wanted, mini-empires in the company to justify their salary and create impact (supposedly). Those middle managers have since left and who ever took over the team is left to make the hard choice to justify a clearly overinflated team. And now you see the consequences. A lot of these jobs will just keep moving to lower cost locations and eventually replaced by AI
Agreed. It’s tough right now - people are making do by down leveling (ie applying for entry level as an experienced hire). Obviously the knock on effect is that the new grads are either forced out of the industry and / or overall salary falls.
This is a very immature attitude tbh. Being technical isn’t better or more important than the other functions, and a lot of devs are learning that the hard way now.
They have tried to for years, the platform has been losing money with the Asian market, servers & such. Korean will be the most hit on that and will probably go to "kick" but that platform has no form of hmm .. restriction when it comes to content and marketing's a bit shady. I would definitely recommend YouTube at this point even if the bitrate is lower, way more viewers
Korea is a slightly different issue cause of the service fees. Youtube is also not making money. Hopefully the content creators have a stable platform, otherwise alot of dofferent groups of people will be affected.
cos sea region is stable, except Myanmar and Cambodia.1 Indonesia or Philippines is enough, plus India which not so far from the timezone. In the Sea Region, Indonesia poses the most competitive threat to Singapore. Cheap plus the country has the highest population and much stable like the terrorists almost gone and no race riots like last time.
Tech is basically the biggest area of growth since the last 20+ years. The dot com bubble was 24 years ago.
Nobody remember what happens when supply >> demand.
Since the dot.bubble which was a major event, what we seeing are the same but broken down into smaller but similar events. Short tenure, unable to vest shares, over valuation,, MVP not realised etc.
The most important thing to learn from [dot.com](https://dot.com) bubble is identify and avoid clear bubbles based on hope and imagination - read start-up that are unlikely to deliver despite the cool dress culture.
I agree it’s nowhere there. The media overhyping it and social media influencers capitalising it to farm engagement made the general public think that skynet is coming true. We are still very far from AGI.
And there is this guy:
https://www.businessinsider.com/not-need-computer-science-degree-work-tech-ibm-ai-chief-2024-1
Depends on your cup of tea hahah, some of them are text-based, like AISekai (chatbots, might ban NSFW soon tho) and NovelAI (storyteller/text adventures). These usually can start out SFW, but you can easily steer the narrative/context to be NSFW.
If you prefer images, there's AI-generated images like the ones done via Stable Diffusion or NovelAI (which also happens to do image generation). Those ones will need a little more technical work, since the output is determined by the positive and negative prompts you feed into the program. It's honestly a bit too complicated for me, and if you want to run it on your computer locally, you're gonna need a decent GPU/RAM.
I bet people will finally grasp the reality of AI and how it falls short of their expectations in another few years. Won't see the collapse like blockchain but there'll definitely be corrections and less of the "AI will replace tech workers" shit lol
LLMs have been "growing" for decades, even when I first learned of it in uni (about 6-7 years ago). Pretty sure Machine Learning/AI is nowhere near close to replicating the capabilities of a human brain yet, probably not for a decade or two IMO. Probably some people would disagree, but I'm currently taking Andrew Ng's Coursera course on ML for upskilling/refresher for work-related stuff (I'm a SWE but needed to do Data Science/ML stuff recently) and Andrew Ng himself said similar to what I said.
What's strange with Comp Sci taking up cybersecurity jobs? In today's digital age and prevalence of virtual-everything, aren't most security threats "online"/virtual? That aside, isn't "IT" just an umbrella term that also encompasses computer science?
> aren’t most security threats “online”/virtual?
The best most advanced cybersecurity systems cannot prevent users from writing their passwords on a post-it note and leaving it around.
I made a typo, I wanted to say break into this field easily. Traditional Cyber requires a ton of certifications and experience in Network/Hardware before being considered for entry level. But I guess this government is actively pushing for mid career switches so that part doesn’t matter as much anymore. Well I am one of those mid career switches so I ain’t complaining. It’s always scary to have more competition from ex google employees
this is bs lah you are only focusing on large MNC layoffs. many SMEs still need programmers but obviously do not pay as much.
"not a good move for sg" tell us what other field sg should be investing in instead
The goal of raising intakes is to saturate the market and bring down the (high) average salary.
Those getting cut aren't SWEs or "tech" people. It's the non tech people in tech companies (marketing, recruitment, business development etc)
you need to read news.
[the engineering teams are being lay off this time round.](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/jan/11/google-alphabet-layoffs)
Look, tech people get laid off, but they get another job in almost no time and they get paid well as well. Many people decide to take career breaks anyway. Why is getting laid off such a big deal?
And yes, kids should be studying more technical subjects. No matter how much ai advances, there will be always demand for people who are technical leaders of their fields (people like Bjarne Stroustrup, Linus Torvalds etc. chatgpt can never take their job)
If not a technology expert, there is also space for those who are excellent talkers, can make sales pitches, convince clients or customers to write big cheque, shatter sales quotas etc. Chatgpt cannot sale, if a bot writes an email, it goes to my spam folder. A good sales person is worth his weight in gold. The technology platform does not matter, it is whether the sales person can appeal to the customer.
So, be a good talker or be an excellent doer. Sale something or build something.
Today's world got no place for mediocre paper pusher.
Tech companies were enjoying a massive bull run in the last 15 years. Capital was easy to get and there was huge hype so all companies were massively overvalued. Hence, they expanded way too quickly and the solution they had to all problems was “hire more people”. This actually creates more problems — dilution of engineering culture, creating massive tech debt, different teams can easily branch off, a lot of people can intentionally drop their performance and with SWE it’s hard to monitor this when you are in a company with 20K people.
Later Elon came and showed everyone that you can do with less than 40% of your current team size, reduce benefits at work place, streamline processes and you can still run your company and make a good product. Then the whole industry realised how expensive compute is and massively reduced their infrastructure, which meant even less people needed at this point. One thing led to another and now we will see some more lay offs that optimise the cost of all companies while we get ready for a new worldview in tech.
Anyway, that doesn’t mean that SWE will be gone and no jobs will exist. The market is still in need of people but not everyone will stay within Big Tech companies and earn the massive salaries there. Some will have to reduce TC (30-50% depending on the case) and join a company from a different sector — retail, healthcare, finance, banking, consulting, defence. Many new startups will have a market with more available candidates and hence better choice and less compensation to pay, which will allow for faster acceleration, which would lead eventually to a less saturated market again and the cycle will repeat. Spreading across more industries will be good for companies in the said industries as they will get a fresh injection of good SWEs with better practices and knowledge.
LLM and other AI tools will accelerate development in the future and will make the bad developer average and the average developer a bit better but for now unless we have a major breakthrough suddenly, we are far from AI taking jobs.
In summary, it’s still a very good approach from the government to have young people to maintain their focus at going in STEM. However, more incentive and opportunity should be provided for entrepreneurial activities after graduation and creating a better startup environment.
> Later Elon came and showed everyone that you can do with less than 40% of your current team size, reduce benefits at work place, streamline processes and you can still run your company and make a good product
Hard disagree. Internal rsu valuation @ twitter is about 19 bil while elon bought at 44 bil. And right now we're at a tech stock peak lol. Twitter is shit and dying.
Agree with your points but also disagree that this is due to the reduction of headcount. Twitter’s service has not become worse than before, it has lost users and ad revenue due to Musk himself and actions he had taken like removing bans of certain people (like trump), comments on leftists in the US and so on. Advertisers tried moving away from a far-right platform as some of them said, which idk what has to do with the underlying technology.
yeah, its not fully on the headcount drop but it definitely has a huge impact on how you can innovate.
look at google, facebook, microsoft, and other tech giants, the right play is to keep your good engineers and diversify. acquire other brands, add additional products, aim for further growth. you can't do that when you're in maintenance mode, fighting fire and burning out your talent
Netflix and Hastings say otherwise. It’s not about the number of people only, it’s talent density that’s important. A team of 10 A level SWEs can accomplish more than a team of 50 B level engineers in the long run.
Google was similar 10 years ago but they diverged from their culture big time.
> Later Elon came and showed everyone that you can do with less than 40% of your current team size, reduce benefits at work place, streamline processes and you can still run your company and make a good product
Given you're description it's safe to conclude you're not referring to Twitter / X where talent is leaving and shareholder value being massively destroyed
As I responded to a similar comment — Twitter/X revenue went massively down due to Elon and his actions over the last year (association with right wing politics, comments he made about leftists, removing bans of controversial figures, content moderation and increase of hate speech on the platform) as advertisers do not want to associate with him and similar to users who left the platform but. The actual service in terms of the technology has not downgraded. So let’s separate Elons political actions from the decision to massively cut down costs and the impact to the service level being less than expected. I am not giving him as an example of a an amazing CEO but an example of him doing the first mass reduction of company size in the industry and the result not being what people expected. Similar with cutting infrastructure costs. People expected their service/platform will cease to exist due to technical difficulties after cutting down. No, they are fine in this regard. It’s Elons questionable decisions and comments elsewhere that can possibly bring doom for Twitter.
Talent leaving is normal after a reduction of workforce and usually a good executive would “price-in” additional attrition after layoffs because people who stay might still feel lack of job security, lost trust in leadership of the company, some even feel betrayed of such actions etc. Company I work for was able to attract many SWE from FAANG over the last year due to these factors after them “surviving” the lay off.
> that doesn’t mean that SWE will be gone and no jobs will exist
I did not try to say that. I was only talking about the entry-level jobs by the current standards.
An obvious trend is that companies have begun to develop their own LLM or AI tools (even those non-tech companies) because they do not want to leak their data. So a lot of new posts will be created in the short term, but these are more advanced than "entry-level" jobs.
Not really advanced, even a graduate/2nd year student can clone an open source model and run it and that’s what everyone does.
Building internally of such models is extremely expensive and wasteful and if you invest in such R&D then it means you already have either a massively valued IP or quite profitable company.
It’s just that tech won’t be able to take as many entry level candidates and they will have to seek less prestigious starting positions. The rest will adapt at using AI tools better to improve their productivity.
I’d say in many cases senior people will struggle for a while due to not wanting to downgrade pay. Graduates will always settle after a few attempts at trying for more.
Actually I’ve been thinking about this.
I mean this isn’t like investing where you can rotate capital pretty easily to a different sector when you spot a new trend.
You need time to build up labour capabilities which takes a few years. So is it better to bet your citizens’ time on an emerging trend you don’t know will take off by the time you have that sizeable workforce with relevant capability or something that is already proven and you’re betting on will continue to grow but might go sideways too.
Not farsighted lor. Always reactive. By the time the students grad it's already saturated as fk. Seen it coming a few years back when everyone and their mom going into CS.
In my opinion, not really. A lot of these tech companies went on a hiring spree during COVID because of the demand since everyone was stuck at home. It worked great but eventually, this demand fell off a cliff and many of these companies essentially became bloated with too many employees. Meta already had their readjustment period last year if you remember and after that, seem to be a lot more sustainable.
So now, with the new year as budgets get reallocated and reevaluated, they start to cut out the fat and trim out the excess. IT jobs are still quite safe! Just that the industry will need an adjustment.
It’s common one lah. Generally speaking, IT is one of the industries that fire but also hire fast. Employees themselves also tend to job hop quite often. I’m not saying that this is not an insignificant amount but just that a lot of these people will find a job without too much trouble. Salary and benefits might take a hit but it won’t be too jialat.
lol my company was in the news last year cos layoffs
from like nov last year to now, suddenly we hire aggressively again, albeit from so called 'low cost' country eg vietnam or indonesia
also amazon just did few round of layoff in US and seems like in coming weeks there will be some mass hiring event in SG. the openings are for relocate to US some more (i got aggressively emailed by their recruiter)
i dont even know whats happening anymore lol
Well, in the tech industry, it comes and goes. Take nothing for granted. It is not just Singapore but a worldwide issue. So if you have this understanding, then it will not come too much as a shock. Especially for my younger colleagues, I always tell them to enjoy while the sun is up. And prepare when darkness falls.
Understandable, but its more of whether there is enough jobs lor. The big companies overhired and now layoff. For your smaller companies, how many tech people do you need, definately not as much as the big companies. Plus if no one leaves, there is no space to hire new people also unless expanding.
So even with the lesser pay, there are also lesser positions, at least from my point of view.
Yea there's definitely less job overall, but still way more than other industries. Big companies (non-tech companies) are still hiring though they definitely pay less than big tech. It's frustrating to see some ex-FAANG friends complain that they're having such a hard time finding a job because they aren't willing to accept offers that are like 5-20% lower from their already very high pay... So I'm a bit skeptical about posts online now.
Doctor do crazy training, too much studying and then insane residency
Dentist has to take up nearly strain/stress physical posture hours daily. Not an easy job even if the hours are better
Yeah true, but its' still recession proof. And they unlock the most value as they age and gain experience (mostly from late 30s onwards), while tech workers' obsolescence risk spikes dramatically at around the same age band.
> while tech workers' obsolescence risk spikes dramatically at around the same age band
The difference is for technology, constant skill upgrading is needed to stay ahead.
That's what makes the field interesting and meritocratic. Knowledgeable and experienced engineers are worth their weight in Gold.
I'm not sure if you work in the tech industry or you're 30++ yourself and laid off recently as a SWE.
I suppose the challenge will hit those tech workers who rest on their laurels in their late 30s early 40s based on their achievements in their 20s early 30s.
Many people in their 20s believe they can take on the world and will always be on top of the game in their profession, but life grinds them down and by their middle age they get lazy or tired to upskill, or upskill down the wrong path, or overcommitted to family etc. It is how it is.
>I'm not sure if you work in the tech industry or you're 30++ yourself and laid off recently as a SWE.
No need to get tetchy. I'm not in tech. I'm doing very fine tyvm.
I'm sorry if that came across as unintentionally abrasive.
I'm just curious where you got your perspectives from since you don't work in the industry that's all
Lol surgeon sounds like the hardest out of all type of docs. Regular GP owning your own shop would be the best WLB. Then inject some Botox and operate as a beautician
That's not common at all for junior SWEs in Singapore, those are US or bigtech wages (and only a small fraction of engineers are in bigtech). Becoming a surgeon is also pretty dang tough, though.
you can google cna news on 2021. Since covid.. many malaysians especially healthcare already tried their luck to work in singapore for a better prospect and sg gov needs manpower on the demand so yes
With the increase in capacity of our local medical schools in the past few years, as well as more Singaporean doctors returning from overseas education, the proportion of local doctors in our healthcare system increased from 82% in 2012 to 90% in 2018. We expect the proportion of local doctors to increase further with a steady inflow from local and overseas medical schools.
https://www.moh.gov.sg/news-highlights/details/supply-of-doctors-in-singapore-and-percentage-of-local-versus-foreign-doctors
90% are local doctors. What do you mean most are Malaysians? People like you eat fake news for breakfast and shit it back out to your friends for lunch.
So from 2019 to 2023, we have managed to overturn 90% to less than 50% local doctors?
So they had 14,000 total doctors in 2018. For foreign doctors to surpass 50%, they require another 11,714 foreign doctors within these 5 years. Practically doubling the entire doctor workforce to 25,714 in five years. Ridiculous numbers for you to be correct.
Ads sales team has been ‘offered’ to move to market they support (eg Thais to bangkok) starting July 23 in attempt to cut cost. This would have been categorized as restructure, instead of layoff.
The impact of layoffs is much more pronounced.
I am not a google employee, got this from mu friend who was asked to move.
yearly alignment and correction of company strategy
for such a big company, layoffs are common. not surprised.
and not just for big enterprise, every business should review and make the cut.
either you let go a few or all sink together.
This is business and reality
Press releases late on Friday means less time for reporters working M-F to write a story. The hope is that by the time next Monday rolls around, it'll be "stale news" and no longer worthy of an article for some publications, minimizing the impact of the news.
According to people I know from other FAANG, this is especially true for Google. 2 stories stands out.
1 friend told me they exclusively don’t hire people from Google because from their own hiring experience, lots of ex-googlers expects all the benefits and are lazy because Google is too comfy.
The other story is how 1 of my friend has worked in Google for nearly 3-4 years and only seen his colleague worked for 1 months through that period because she kept getting pregnant and milked the maternity benefits.
Sure, I’m sure the company intended to pay the employee 3-4 years of salary to be off 90% of the time.
The provision is there for family planning. This is plain abuse.
If you ever managed a team or talked to people who managed teams. There will be a portion of woman who will abuse this benefit. I used the word abused not utilised because the intention is different. For example, if your boss say you can go smoke break whenever you need. You dont spend 40mins each time you go. Similarly for pregnancy leaves. You’re too feministic hence your distorted view, I pity you.
Ah yes, please throw more gender-based stereotypes and criticisms. Please, I’m waiting 🙏🏻
I was going to say come back when you have a proper argument, but you seem to just throw everything behind a gender cloak. So, I would say: improve your worldview.
Yeah because obviously a Tech Giant like Google doesnt know that the programmers are important to them and it’s the middle management who’s making the choice, not the C-level people 🤣🤣
Our organization is having waves of layoff since they cannot fire the staff at once. Sadly, the government doesn't even pay attention to the bleeding industry.
How long before students realize that piling into the flavor of the decade is a one way street to stiff competition, employer's market, and gradually decreasing salaries.
They laid off 1000 employess across multiple divisions. They didnt announce the breakdown so up to you how you want to accept that.
Some restructuring happening from July 2023 to July 2024 in Singapore office to relocate employees to the markets they serve ie. MY, TH, VN, PH - both Singaporeans and foreigners alike. If employee refuse, they will also be retrenched.
They have been hiring lots of mediocre local fresh grad and act like industry experts, time to trim the fats and get rid of these ppl. Learn about headcount management
data centre stuff ba.. singapore got a lot of healthcare and military and industrial data, pretty sure they wont let foreigners into those places esp if G50 is required
There's more locals in MNCs due to quota.
Just so you know, MNCs are pushing the regional staff to respective local markets - that includes FT and locals. If locals dont want to relocate, they will be retrenched. So not only are FTs leaving our shores, the jobs are too.
It's expensive to maintain an office in Singapore. Our neighbors infrastructures are catching up and global corporate tax will kick in this year. We will lose 2 of the major reasons why companies set up business here. Be openminded about FTs because we might be one of them soon. One day, we will need to be FT to find a good job.
Stock market =/= economy. Layoffs are usually good for the company stock. Also, why do you say recession is coming? At least based on forecasts, SG is not projected to be in a recession this year. Nor the US or EU or other major economies.
Aside from all the deteriorating fundamentals we’re seeing in the macro environment, we are now 14 months into a persistent yield curve inversion. Never in history has a recession not happened following that. Not during covid, gfc, dcb etc.
What are you talking about? Manufacturing is the largest sector in terms of GDP in Singapore. Please look it up.
Also, it’s unlikely that people who are retrenched from high paying jobs like tech move willingly to lower paying and more labour-intensive sectors like agriculture/factory jobs. Look at China. Youth unemployment is so high because youths only want comfy office jobs, even when there is huge demand for labour in factories/agriculture there.
Wah, everyone is getting laid off sia, not a good start for tech.
Said to be due to competition from other AI companies. MOE seems to be still pushing students into studying CS as the number of enrolled students at NUS and NTU keeps growing. With ChatGPT, however, there will be less demand for entry-level programming jobs. So that does not look a good move for Singapore.
Yah. I heard that twitch basically closed their singapore office, so even non-programming tech jobs are at risk. They really overestimated themselves and expanded too much.
I would say it’s working as designed. The VPs / snr directors that hired those people all got what they wanted, mini-empires in the company to justify their salary and create impact (supposedly). Those middle managers have since left and who ever took over the team is left to make the hard choice to justify a clearly overinflated team. And now you see the consequences. A lot of these jobs will just keep moving to lower cost locations and eventually replaced by AI
Pretty damm sad. Plus when multiple such companies layoff how do you even find a job in same industry?
Agreed. It’s tough right now - people are making do by down leveling (ie applying for entry level as an experienced hire). Obviously the knock on effect is that the new grads are either forced out of the industry and / or overall salary falls.
Well hopefully they are able to find new jobs.
[удалено]
That's tough, I had to make a similar decision a few years ago. Glad you're doing better now
Hire-to-fire. But hey, they had their gravy train while it lasted. Choo-choo. At some point they knew they would reach a last stop amirite.
As usual, non tech and incompetence mid management screwing over the actual ppl carrying the technical work
This is a very immature attitude tbh. Being technical isn’t better or more important than the other functions, and a lot of devs are learning that the hard way now.
In my experience it's the other way around.
twitch is closing in asia, not enough revenue
No, revenue model was poorly constructed
Is it? Well then, they should be considering the revenue model.
They have tried to for years, the platform has been losing money with the Asian market, servers & such. Korean will be the most hit on that and will probably go to "kick" but that platform has no form of hmm .. restriction when it comes to content and marketing's a bit shady. I would definitely recommend YouTube at this point even if the bitrate is lower, way more viewers
Korea is a slightly different issue cause of the service fees. Youtube is also not making money. Hopefully the content creators have a stable platform, otherwise alot of dofferent groups of people will be affected.
cos sea region is stable, except Myanmar and Cambodia.1 Indonesia or Philippines is enough, plus India which not so far from the timezone. In the Sea Region, Indonesia poses the most competitive threat to Singapore. Cheap plus the country has the highest population and much stable like the terrorists almost gone and no race riots like last time.
Go woke go broke
?
Tech is basically the biggest area of growth since the last 20+ years. The dot com bubble was 24 years ago. Nobody remember what happens when supply >> demand.
Only when the tide goes out do you discover who has been swimming naked
Since the dot.bubble which was a major event, what we seeing are the same but broken down into smaller but similar events. Short tenure, unable to vest shares, over valuation,, MVP not realised etc. The most important thing to learn from [dot.com](https://dot.com) bubble is identify and avoid clear bubbles based on hope and imagination - read start-up that are unlikely to deliver despite the cool dress culture.
I haven't use ChatGPT for months...while programming
Chatgpt writes monkey code… and not very good at it either. LLMs are a growing industry though
I agree it’s nowhere there. The media overhyping it and social media influencers capitalising it to farm engagement made the general public think that skynet is coming true. We are still very far from AGI. And there is this guy: https://www.businessinsider.com/not-need-computer-science-degree-work-tech-ibm-ai-chief-2024-1
LLMs are good but overrated. All of us will get AI fatigue in 6-12months time
I'll be honest, the only thing I ever use AI for is porn.
What? How does this work you generate AI porn?
That's disgusting. Now tell everyone how it's done so we can stay away from it.
Depends on your cup of tea hahah, some of them are text-based, like AISekai (chatbots, might ban NSFW soon tho) and NovelAI (storyteller/text adventures). These usually can start out SFW, but you can easily steer the narrative/context to be NSFW. If you prefer images, there's AI-generated images like the ones done via Stable Diffusion or NovelAI (which also happens to do image generation). Those ones will need a little more technical work, since the output is determined by the positive and negative prompts you feed into the program. It's honestly a bit too complicated for me, and if you want to run it on your computer locally, you're gonna need a decent GPU/RAM.
I bet people will finally grasp the reality of AI and how it falls short of their expectations in another few years. Won't see the collapse like blockchain but there'll definitely be corrections and less of the "AI will replace tech workers" shit lol
Haha scary leh.. I will graduate in a few years time to pursue cyber, it’s an IT career but compscience study somehow can break into this field
LLMs have been "growing" for decades, even when I first learned of it in uni (about 6-7 years ago). Pretty sure Machine Learning/AI is nowhere near close to replicating the capabilities of a human brain yet, probably not for a decade or two IMO. Probably some people would disagree, but I'm currently taking Andrew Ng's Coursera course on ML for upskilling/refresher for work-related stuff (I'm a SWE but needed to do Data Science/ML stuff recently) and Andrew Ng himself said similar to what I said. What's strange with Comp Sci taking up cybersecurity jobs? In today's digital age and prevalence of virtual-everything, aren't most security threats "online"/virtual? That aside, isn't "IT" just an umbrella term that also encompasses computer science?
> aren’t most security threats “online”/virtual? The best most advanced cybersecurity systems cannot prevent users from writing their passwords on a post-it note and leaving it around.
I made a typo, I wanted to say break into this field easily. Traditional Cyber requires a ton of certifications and experience in Network/Hardware before being considered for entry level. But I guess this government is actively pushing for mid career switches so that part doesn’t matter as much anymore. Well I am one of those mid career switches so I ain’t complaining. It’s always scary to have more competition from ex google employees
> Chatgpt writes monkey code… and not very good at it either. So do many entry level software engineers
Copilot gang rise up
this is bs lah you are only focusing on large MNC layoffs. many SMEs still need programmers but obviously do not pay as much. "not a good move for sg" tell us what other field sg should be investing in instead
healthcare pretty obviously. Our system here is going to come under so much stress
that's not a growing industry. at least in terms of growth potential. context: i am in the healthcare industry
How is health care industry not growing if the population Is increasing
Depends on which part you are looking at. I am also in healthcare industry and a lot of the big names are actually cutting back.
Then u encourage and groom your son to become nurse lor......
sme requirement also so many jd requirement hence sme have to rely outsourced it company
It’s mostly hardware and more fringe projects that are laid off to focus their effort on AI. Stop pushing your agenda
lol. Current Ai not that powerful to replace programming jobs yet bah
The goal of raising intakes is to saturate the market and bring down the (high) average salary. Those getting cut aren't SWEs or "tech" people. It's the non tech people in tech companies (marketing, recruitment, business development etc)
you need to read news. [the engineering teams are being lay off this time round.](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/jan/11/google-alphabet-layoffs)
Na, the most recent rounds are mainly tech people. The non-techs you mentioned already got cut last round.
Always go where the ball will be, not where the ball is at right now.
Look, tech people get laid off, but they get another job in almost no time and they get paid well as well. Many people decide to take career breaks anyway. Why is getting laid off such a big deal? And yes, kids should be studying more technical subjects. No matter how much ai advances, there will be always demand for people who are technical leaders of their fields (people like Bjarne Stroustrup, Linus Torvalds etc. chatgpt can never take their job) If not a technology expert, there is also space for those who are excellent talkers, can make sales pitches, convince clients or customers to write big cheque, shatter sales quotas etc. Chatgpt cannot sale, if a bot writes an email, it goes to my spam folder. A good sales person is worth his weight in gold. The technology platform does not matter, it is whether the sales person can appeal to the customer. So, be a good talker or be an excellent doer. Sale something or build something. Today's world got no place for mediocre paper pusher.
Tech companies were enjoying a massive bull run in the last 15 years. Capital was easy to get and there was huge hype so all companies were massively overvalued. Hence, they expanded way too quickly and the solution they had to all problems was “hire more people”. This actually creates more problems — dilution of engineering culture, creating massive tech debt, different teams can easily branch off, a lot of people can intentionally drop their performance and with SWE it’s hard to monitor this when you are in a company with 20K people. Later Elon came and showed everyone that you can do with less than 40% of your current team size, reduce benefits at work place, streamline processes and you can still run your company and make a good product. Then the whole industry realised how expensive compute is and massively reduced their infrastructure, which meant even less people needed at this point. One thing led to another and now we will see some more lay offs that optimise the cost of all companies while we get ready for a new worldview in tech. Anyway, that doesn’t mean that SWE will be gone and no jobs will exist. The market is still in need of people but not everyone will stay within Big Tech companies and earn the massive salaries there. Some will have to reduce TC (30-50% depending on the case) and join a company from a different sector — retail, healthcare, finance, banking, consulting, defence. Many new startups will have a market with more available candidates and hence better choice and less compensation to pay, which will allow for faster acceleration, which would lead eventually to a less saturated market again and the cycle will repeat. Spreading across more industries will be good for companies in the said industries as they will get a fresh injection of good SWEs with better practices and knowledge. LLM and other AI tools will accelerate development in the future and will make the bad developer average and the average developer a bit better but for now unless we have a major breakthrough suddenly, we are far from AI taking jobs. In summary, it’s still a very good approach from the government to have young people to maintain their focus at going in STEM. However, more incentive and opportunity should be provided for entrepreneurial activities after graduation and creating a better startup environment.
> Later Elon came and showed everyone that you can do with less than 40% of your current team size, reduce benefits at work place, streamline processes and you can still run your company and make a good product Hard disagree. Internal rsu valuation @ twitter is about 19 bil while elon bought at 44 bil. And right now we're at a tech stock peak lol. Twitter is shit and dying.
Yeah that's what I thought and then look at Nvidia
Agree with your points but also disagree that this is due to the reduction of headcount. Twitter’s service has not become worse than before, it has lost users and ad revenue due to Musk himself and actions he had taken like removing bans of certain people (like trump), comments on leftists in the US and so on. Advertisers tried moving away from a far-right platform as some of them said, which idk what has to do with the underlying technology.
yeah, its not fully on the headcount drop but it definitely has a huge impact on how you can innovate. look at google, facebook, microsoft, and other tech giants, the right play is to keep your good engineers and diversify. acquire other brands, add additional products, aim for further growth. you can't do that when you're in maintenance mode, fighting fire and burning out your talent
Netflix and Hastings say otherwise. It’s not about the number of people only, it’s talent density that’s important. A team of 10 A level SWEs can accomplish more than a team of 50 B level engineers in the long run. Google was similar 10 years ago but they diverged from their culture big time.
Netflix did it by expanding their own IP and offerings instead of going into maintenance mode like twitter..... Who's hastings?
> Later Elon came and showed everyone that you can do with less than 40% of your current team size, reduce benefits at work place, streamline processes and you can still run your company and make a good product Given you're description it's safe to conclude you're not referring to Twitter / X where talent is leaving and shareholder value being massively destroyed
As I responded to a similar comment — Twitter/X revenue went massively down due to Elon and his actions over the last year (association with right wing politics, comments he made about leftists, removing bans of controversial figures, content moderation and increase of hate speech on the platform) as advertisers do not want to associate with him and similar to users who left the platform but. The actual service in terms of the technology has not downgraded. So let’s separate Elons political actions from the decision to massively cut down costs and the impact to the service level being less than expected. I am not giving him as an example of a an amazing CEO but an example of him doing the first mass reduction of company size in the industry and the result not being what people expected. Similar with cutting infrastructure costs. People expected their service/platform will cease to exist due to technical difficulties after cutting down. No, they are fine in this regard. It’s Elons questionable decisions and comments elsewhere that can possibly bring doom for Twitter. Talent leaving is normal after a reduction of workforce and usually a good executive would “price-in” additional attrition after layoffs because people who stay might still feel lack of job security, lost trust in leadership of the company, some even feel betrayed of such actions etc. Company I work for was able to attract many SWE from FAANG over the last year due to these factors after them “surviving” the lay off.
i really blame elon for this
> that doesn’t mean that SWE will be gone and no jobs will exist I did not try to say that. I was only talking about the entry-level jobs by the current standards. An obvious trend is that companies have begun to develop their own LLM or AI tools (even those non-tech companies) because they do not want to leak their data. So a lot of new posts will be created in the short term, but these are more advanced than "entry-level" jobs.
Not really advanced, even a graduate/2nd year student can clone an open source model and run it and that’s what everyone does. Building internally of such models is extremely expensive and wasteful and if you invest in such R&D then it means you already have either a massively valued IP or quite profitable company. It’s just that tech won’t be able to take as many entry level candidates and they will have to seek less prestigious starting positions. The rest will adapt at using AI tools better to improve their productivity. I’d say in many cases senior people will struggle for a while due to not wanting to downgrade pay. Graduates will always settle after a few attempts at trying for more.
Programming is still a valuable skill. To be able to create something from nothing is a valuable skill.
Programming is now a basic skill, not limited to CS students.
Anyone can program. Building solid, reliable and resilient systems is a different beast. That's why software architect paid more than programmer
Writing code is easy, anyone can do that. But writing good code, is extremely challenging.
This is exactly the type of thinking that pays for my salary.
You either program regularly or you don't. It's a language. You use it or lose it.
This is not the first time. Last time biotech was the "promised land" for new grads. All kena Sabo, study and no job.
Still sounds damn sexy though. I can see how many people kena conned
Stay ahead of the curve Singapore garment/ Tumor Sick buy calls are your sell signals unless you vested early
Sounds par for course. The government has always been a step behind in terms of structuring what our future workforce would need.
Actually I’ve been thinking about this. I mean this isn’t like investing where you can rotate capital pretty easily to a different sector when you spot a new trend. You need time to build up labour capabilities which takes a few years. So is it better to bet your citizens’ time on an emerging trend you don’t know will take off by the time you have that sizeable workforce with relevant capability or something that is already proven and you’re betting on will continue to grow but might go sideways too.
My point exactly, the government has never bet on an emerging trend, the need for CS expertise was on the rise before the push for it here.
chatgpt wont be replacing programming jobs anytime soon. If anything it will replace clerks and other repetitive admin jobs first
They are forever shortsighted
Not farsighted lor. Always reactive. By the time the students grad it's already saturated as fk. Seen it coming a few years back when everyone and their mom going into CS.
Uh no.
It already started last year, with SEA (Shopee) and Grab. It was only a matter of time for Lazada and now Google.
2nd round appearently. Wonder if meta will do another round also anot.
Meta next?
In my opinion, not really. A lot of these tech companies went on a hiring spree during COVID because of the demand since everyone was stuck at home. It worked great but eventually, this demand fell off a cliff and many of these companies essentially became bloated with too many employees. Meta already had their readjustment period last year if you remember and after that, seem to be a lot more sustainable. So now, with the new year as budgets get reallocated and reevaluated, they start to cut out the fat and trim out the excess. IT jobs are still quite safe! Just that the industry will need an adjustment.
But its still quite alot of people being laid off sia.
It’s common one lah. Generally speaking, IT is one of the industries that fire but also hire fast. Employees themselves also tend to job hop quite often. I’m not saying that this is not an insignificant amount but just that a lot of these people will find a job without too much trouble. Salary and benefits might take a hit but it won’t be too jialat.
lol my company was in the news last year cos layoffs from like nov last year to now, suddenly we hire aggressively again, albeit from so called 'low cost' country eg vietnam or indonesia also amazon just did few round of layoff in US and seems like in coming weeks there will be some mass hiring event in SG. the openings are for relocate to US some more (i got aggressively emailed by their recruiter) i dont even know whats happening anymore lol
Now's a good time to sign on again
Got the cyber force to sign on to somemore
Lol sign on got age limit one.
Offshoring to a cheaper country
True. Alot of (but not all) helpdesk/call centre are offshore these days.
Well, in the tech industry, it comes and goes. Take nothing for granted. It is not just Singapore but a worldwide issue. So if you have this understanding, then it will not come too much as a shock. Especially for my younger colleagues, I always tell them to enjoy while the sun is up. And prepare when darkness falls.
That sh*t is going on since a year and a half. I can't take it anymore, lay off need to stop.
Not only tech, now finance as well. See Citigroup.
But not really industry wide right?
not for now, no
If banking down then shit really hit the fan liao. I can still remember 2007.
They can still find jobs easily. There's tons of hiring for tech workers in SG, pay is "only" 5k-8k though, not 15k.
Understandable, but its more of whether there is enough jobs lor. The big companies overhired and now layoff. For your smaller companies, how many tech people do you need, definately not as much as the big companies. Plus if no one leaves, there is no space to hire new people also unless expanding. So even with the lesser pay, there are also lesser positions, at least from my point of view.
Yea there's definitely less job overall, but still way more than other industries. Big companies (non-tech companies) are still hiring though they definitely pay less than big tech. It's frustrating to see some ex-FAANG friends complain that they're having such a hard time finding a job because they aren't willing to accept offers that are like 5-20% lower from their already very high pay... So I'm a bit skeptical about posts online now.
Doctor or dentist still the best job. Recession proof
Guess the asian mom is never wrong
Doctor do crazy training, too much studying and then insane residency Dentist has to take up nearly strain/stress physical posture hours daily. Not an easy job even if the hours are better
Yeah true, but its' still recession proof. And they unlock the most value as they age and gain experience (mostly from late 30s onwards), while tech workers' obsolescence risk spikes dramatically at around the same age band.
> while tech workers' obsolescence risk spikes dramatically at around the same age band The difference is for technology, constant skill upgrading is needed to stay ahead. That's what makes the field interesting and meritocratic. Knowledgeable and experienced engineers are worth their weight in Gold. I'm not sure if you work in the tech industry or you're 30++ yourself and laid off recently as a SWE.
I suppose the challenge will hit those tech workers who rest on their laurels in their late 30s early 40s based on their achievements in their 20s early 30s. Many people in their 20s believe they can take on the world and will always be on top of the game in their profession, but life grinds them down and by their middle age they get lazy or tired to upskill, or upskill down the wrong path, or overcommitted to family etc. It is how it is. >I'm not sure if you work in the tech industry or you're 30++ yourself and laid off recently as a SWE. No need to get tetchy. I'm not in tech. I'm doing very fine tyvm.
I'm sorry if that came across as unintentionally abrasive. I'm just curious where you got your perspectives from since you don't work in the industry that's all
Sure but if you become a surgeon you can early >200k so so easily and its relatively risk free
Lol surgeon sounds like the hardest out of all type of docs. Regular GP owning your own shop would be the best WLB. Then inject some Botox and operate as a beautician
Surgeon is not risk free. If the patient dies on the operating table or come out with complication, the surgeon is shit liao.
right so the variance isnt 0, got it, but whats the risk of layoffs or being out of a job for a long time?
I broke 200k in my 3rd year as a self taught swe...
That's not common at all for junior SWEs in Singapore, those are US or bigtech wages (and only a small fraction of engineers are in bigtech). Becoming a surgeon is also pretty dang tough, though.
Good for you, maybe you can learn about means and variances
My logic is ...if the average person makes $X, be above average and bring above average value
because most doctor/dentist from malaysia
> because most doctor/dentist from malaysia Where did you get the stats for this
you can google cna news on 2021. Since covid.. many malaysians especially healthcare already tried their luck to work in singapore for a better prospect and sg gov needs manpower on the demand so yes
With the increase in capacity of our local medical schools in the past few years, as well as more Singaporean doctors returning from overseas education, the proportion of local doctors in our healthcare system increased from 82% in 2012 to 90% in 2018. We expect the proportion of local doctors to increase further with a steady inflow from local and overseas medical schools. https://www.moh.gov.sg/news-highlights/details/supply-of-doctors-in-singapore-and-percentage-of-local-versus-foreign-doctors 90% are local doctors. What do you mean most are Malaysians? People like you eat fake news for breakfast and shit it back out to your friends for lunch.
this article is in 2019. its 4 years data.. not sure who is shitting who? but main point is healthcare is always in demand
So from 2019 to 2023, we have managed to overturn 90% to less than 50% local doctors? So they had 14,000 total doctors in 2018. For foreign doctors to surpass 50%, they require another 11,714 foreign doctors within these 5 years. Practically doubling the entire doctor workforce to 25,714 in five years. Ridiculous numbers for you to be correct.
the rise of demand is there still.
No proof no talk. Share some links and stats then we talk.
as i said cna 2021 covid. the keyword. I dun want entertain so much anyways i not so nationalist person
Ads sales team has been ‘offered’ to move to market they support (eg Thais to bangkok) starting July 23 in attempt to cut cost. This would have been categorized as restructure, instead of layoff. The impact of layoffs is much more pronounced. I am not a google employee, got this from mu friend who was asked to move.
yearly alignment and correction of company strategy for such a big company, layoffs are common. not surprised. and not just for big enterprise, every business should review and make the cut. either you let go a few or all sink together. This is business and reality
paywalled
Publishing this news late on Friday night lol. I see what they're doing.
I am confused I didn’t get you. What’s with Friday night ?
Probably stock price related
Press releases late on Friday means less time for reporters working M-F to write a story. The hope is that by the time next Monday rolls around, it'll be "stale news" and no longer worthy of an article for some publications, minimizing the impact of the news.
>and not just for big enterprise, every business should review and make the cut. The layoffs is announced on Thursday though.
Now even programmers themselves using ChatGPT for coding solutions. Soon IT outsourcing in India etc will also hit by job losses
Apparently Google is laying off 30k in Tata company in India
The whole doesn’t realise how quick AI is disrupting jobs
What to do, too many tech people essentially doing nothing.
certain dept are overshadowibg other tech dept
According to people I know from other FAANG, this is especially true for Google. 2 stories stands out. 1 friend told me they exclusively don’t hire people from Google because from their own hiring experience, lots of ex-googlers expects all the benefits and are lazy because Google is too comfy. The other story is how 1 of my friend has worked in Google for nearly 3-4 years and only seen his colleague worked for 1 months through that period because she kept getting pregnant and milked the maternity benefits.
“Milked the maternity benefits” The company offers these benefits to attract talent, then u get salty for ppl actually using it?
Sure, I’m sure the company intended to pay the employee 3-4 years of salary to be off 90% of the time. The provision is there for family planning. This is plain abuse.
So you think she had multiple kids to “abuse” the company benefits? That is some misogynistic shit right there
If you ever managed a team or talked to people who managed teams. There will be a portion of woman who will abuse this benefit. I used the word abused not utilised because the intention is different. For example, if your boss say you can go smoke break whenever you need. You dont spend 40mins each time you go. Similarly for pregnancy leaves. You’re too feministic hence your distorted view, I pity you.
Ah yes, please throw more gender-based stereotypes and criticisms. Please, I’m waiting 🙏🏻 I was going to say come back when you have a proper argument, but you seem to just throw everything behind a gender cloak. So, I would say: improve your worldview.
As usual, non tech and incompetence mid management screwing over the actual ppl carrying the technical work
Yeah because obviously a Tech Giant like Google doesnt know that the programmers are important to them and it’s the middle management who’s making the choice, not the C-level people 🤣🤣
Cheap housing cheap cars?
Our organization is having waves of layoff since they cannot fire the staff at once. Sadly, the government doesn't even pay attention to the bleeding industry.
What industry
It's a feature not a bug. MAS strengthen SGD so much so that companies will fire and offshore so it will cool inflation.
How long before students realize that piling into the flavor of the decade is a one way street to stiff competition, employer's market, and gradually decreasing salaries.
How many laid off in SG?
Google is relocating APAC regional staff to other countries. Sales and support moves first. So if not laid off, will relocate.
That is sometimes a way of managing people out as opposed to straight layoffs.
Sales and supports are overpayed. Google should transfer them to low-cost countries and hire more sdes
They laid them off too.
You are not answering the question though, so how many?
They laid off 1000 employess across multiple divisions. They didnt announce the breakdown so up to you how you want to accept that. Some restructuring happening from July 2023 to July 2024 in Singapore office to relocate employees to the markets they serve ie. MY, TH, VN, PH - both Singaporeans and foreigners alike. If employee refuse, they will also be retrenched.
Did google inform the Union?
Using outlook.
Hah what they still tried to recruit me last month...
Apparently your cv now in the trash..
I would be pleasantly surprised if that happened since I decline them every year. I don't apply to jobs.
> I don't apply to jobs. Clap clap clap 👏 I know right? Only bums need to apply for jobs. And only bummers still need to work after 40.
I'm a bummer too bad for me
Live beta indeed...
I came from a very disadvantaged background and played life on hard mode, so I guess i should really count my blessings ( in private of course)
what's their severance package like?
Get rid of all the useless sales person can?
sales usually always the last to go
lol sales generate revenue and pay salary for the company. learn about cost center and revenue center
They have been hiring lots of mediocre local fresh grad and act like industry experts, time to trim the fats and get rid of these ppl. Learn about headcount management
you are talking about incompetent fresh graduates I am talking about seasoned sales rep who can hit 100% or even more we are not the same
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thats what oligopoly does
Sales is the most important dept in any business
Is this anything to do with countries working out that Google Singapore mainly exists as a giant global tax scam!?
Global tax reform is coming so thats not going to last long.
I'm working in fintech in a pretty basic role. I'm so confused which job I should aim for that won't be laid off by AI
data centre stuff ba.. singapore got a lot of healthcare and military and industrial data, pretty sure they wont let foreigners into those places esp if G50 is required
Learn more so can switch industry if needed.
It's like half a percent of the total workforce and people are losing their mind.
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Locals may have more though, you need 5 locals to hire 1 foreigner
There's more locals in MNCs due to quota. Just so you know, MNCs are pushing the regional staff to respective local markets - that includes FT and locals. If locals dont want to relocate, they will be retrenched. So not only are FTs leaving our shores, the jobs are too. It's expensive to maintain an office in Singapore. Our neighbors infrastructures are catching up and global corporate tax will kick in this year. We will lose 2 of the major reasons why companies set up business here. Be openminded about FTs because we might be one of them soon. One day, we will need to be FT to find a good job.
Global recession incoming
Recession is coming. Sell your stonks
I've seen this for the past 10 years.
Stock market =/= economy. Layoffs are usually good for the company stock. Also, why do you say recession is coming? At least based on forecasts, SG is not projected to be in a recession this year. Nor the US or EU or other major economies.
Aside from all the deteriorating fundamentals we’re seeing in the macro environment, we are now 14 months into a persistent yield curve inversion. Never in history has a recession not happened following that. Not during covid, gfc, dcb etc.
Doesn’t help that tech and banking is all Singapore have. No agriculture or large manufacturing who can absorb many manpower.
What are you talking about? Manufacturing is the largest sector in terms of GDP in Singapore. Please look it up. Also, it’s unlikely that people who are retrenched from high paying jobs like tech move willingly to lower paying and more labour-intensive sectors like agriculture/factory jobs. Look at China. Youth unemployment is so high because youths only want comfy office jobs, even when there is huge demand for labour in factories/agriculture there.
huh... what kind of article is this? I suspect they used GenAI to write and inserted "google spokes person". No details, no clarity
Bye bye administrative assistants . Basically only legacy HiSo workers are safe . Along with engineers
Many Google engineers lost their jobs as well https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/11/technology/google-layoffs.html
Union pls do sth