> Millennials and Generation Z, born between 1981 and 2012,
  > started tech careers during a decade-long expansion when
  > jobs multiplied as fast as iPhone sales.

I'm always amused by the media trying to conflate "millennials" with young people, because at this point someone born in 1981 is middle-aged and their children are graduating university. There's no commonality with someone born in 2012, who would currently be in 5th grade.

Who born in 1981 has children graduating University? I was born 1984 and most people I know are either childless or have children under the age of 5.

We must live in very different universes

I'm from that age bracket. That one teenage mom from my in-group as a kid is a grandmother now.

The majority of children from that group of parents are just about old enough to apply for uni now, though.

Very very few people at 42 have kids graduating from college.

I can't tell if this comment ignores the abundance of teenage pregnancies or assumes that the progeny thereof ain't graduating from college in abundance.

The rate is 16.7 per 1000 as of 2019 and continues to decline. That's not an "abundance".

https://www.cdc.gov/teenpregnancy/about/index.htm

You and I have very different definitions of "abundance", then. 16.7 out of 1,000 births would be 611,936 for 2021 alone.

Also, young adults graduating from college right now probably weren't born in 2019. You'd want to be looking 20+ years ago, wherein the teen birth rate was more than double or even triple your figure: https://opa.hhs.gov/adolescent-health/reproductive-health-an...

> that cuts aren’t always rational

The FAANG I'm at made offers to return to some of the people it laid off. Whoopsie! Our bad.

That's perfectly normal. It's how you cull the deadwood without having to go through 3 years of HR misery.

It sucks knowing that your job isn't as stable as you'd have hoped. I guess the advantage in working in startups, you know they aren't guaranteed to last.

Having said that, the big corps were paying gooooood money, enough to save up plenty.

Agreed. This may sound harsh, but if you’re a software engineer at Microsoft with five years of experience (starting your career at Microsoft) making $300k+ a year and aren’t sitting on a massive pile of cash/investments, a layoff is the least of your worries. Hopefully most of the staff getting laid off have at least three months in cash not including severance.

Does Microsoft pay this much?

Fresh out of university new grads were getting $100k/year base salaries there when I graduated about 11 years ago. Plus stock and bonuses. So for 3-5 years xp “normal” engineer it was very, very doable to have $300k total comp (stocks, bonus and base) at Microsoft. I’m quoting Microsoft Silicon Valley numbers because that was the one I was interning at the time.

No wonder they have to layoff if they do. Insanity that compensations reached this level. The definition of a bubble really.

You should look into how much money they make per employee.