An investigation into the causes of the significant layoffs in the tech sector is conducted by YouTuber Josh, who is featured in this video. He discounts AI’s potential to replace jobs as a small problem when he first addressed the widespread worry about it.
The core problem, according to Josh, is with the structural hiring practices of IT organizations, particularly their propensity to overhire and hyper-specialize positions—a practice he refers to as “employee farming.” As a kind of covert and legal deception, he denounces this practice of artificially inflating business sizes in order to manipulate stock values and give the impression that the companies are larger than they actually are.
According to Josh, in the past, digital companies used to hire generalists who could perform a variety of activities, but this started to change when businesses started hyper-specializing roles in order to inflate the number of employees. Examples of these organizations include Facebook and Snapchat. According to his theory, this results in inefficiencies and unnecessary positions that add little value, leaving these jobs open to layoffs.
Though it stresses that ineffective management and hiring practices are more important contributions, the talk also focuses on economic variables such possible recessions causing layoffs. Utilizing Elon Musk’s Twitter layoffs as a case study, Josh explains how, despite early challenges, the platform became more effective once Musk made a large reduction in staff. Josh said other tech organizations are also thinking twice about their excessive staffing levels in response to this incident.
Josh gives programmers advice on how to ensure job stability throughout, including learning transferable skills and steering clear of highly specialized roles. He believes that in the end, the market will return to appreciating broad skill sets over hyper-specialization, which could result in increased pay and job stability for proficient programmers.
Josh ends by enumerating a number of IT firms that have recently had significant layoffs, attributing them to overhiring and offering viewers advice on how to secure employment going forward.
