Quite possibly, but if you had a labor shortage you would waste your time managing the prima-donnas for lack of alternatives. If you're about to do layoffs anyway, no need.
What labor shortage? In software engineering or other organizations? It's certainly not the former, at least not for companies of any notability (e.g. Netflix). I work for a well-known company, not as big as FAANG but well on its way and at least as big as any other major tech company in the news. Our engineering shortage is due to the artificial bar we set for hiring. Our recruiters each have dozens of resumes and applications to sift through on a given day. Far less than 1% of these ever make it to a tech screen, and I think the rate of our panel interviews is in the low double-digit percent of that figure. There isn't an engineering shortage. There's a shortage of engineers that don't meet some incredibly stupid, ego-driven arbitrary gate-keeping policies.
> There's a shortage of engineers that don't meet some incredibly stupid, ego-driven arbitrary gate-keeping policies.
I suggest you hire people who don’t meet the bar and see what happens. The reason your recruiters have dozens of resumes to sift through is because software engineers make bank and that’s not a secret. Most of those resumes will be people who don’t even understand what software engineering really entails and the extent of their experience will be editing a vb macro and taking an online Python course.
> Far less than 1% of these ever make it to a tech screen, and I think the rate of our panel interviews is in the low double-digit percent of that figure.
The majority of people who get rejected at this phase just nearly literally can’t program. I’m an engineering manager so I sit on on-sites once or twice a week and people with long careers that look good on resumes end up not being able to squeeze out trivial code because they haven’t actually programmed for 5+ years.
> There isn't an engineering shortage.
There absolutely is. You’re right that there isn’t a shortage of people who want the paycheck though.
My goodness, I’ve been in this industry for 15 years, have been an EM and am currently a TL on my team. I’ve seen what you’re referring to, but you are grossly exaggerating the issue. In my current role we have had candidates we really want rejected at the second pass review for “fit”, “culture” and “ambition/greatness/accomplishments” reasons which are entirely arbitrary (“he dropped out of a PhD program”, “his undergrad school isn’t that great”, “her ‘proudest accomplishment’ didn’t impress me”, etc.)
There absolutely isn’t an engineering talent shortage, in spite of the horde of people looking for a paycheck.
I am not exaggerating. We have never rejected for facile reasons like that. The only “culture” rejection we had was a candidate who became verbally aggressive in a technical interview.
Perhaps your technical bar is very low so you can afford to be picky? If so, your company sounds super fucked up. You’re willing not hiring candidates for dumb reasons when hiring is difficult.
I really enjoy it when techies show their egos and contempt, without having the full picture. I'm speaking with an EM where I work now, who just insulted my entire team and the rest of the engineering organization, and puffed himself up with his resume (which essentially consists of various CTO/VP/Director level positions one failed or small-time startup after another). I'm half tempted to report him to HR, to be honest, because his pointless antagonism serves no purpose other than to stroke his own ego by deriding his peers and venting his spleen.
An artificial shortage is still, functionally, a shortage.
It doesn't really matter whether there aren't enough candidates, or there are plenty of candidates but they all wipe out during interviews - the result is still an inability to hire at the desired rate, and in that situation you don't court massive layoffs without a reason.
