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How screwed am I? (self.experienced_devs)

submitted 1 year ago by buxton to c/experienced_devs

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I started working for a big corporation about six months ago. Turns out a few months before I started there was a new CTO hired from a startup. This CTO has been on a hiring spree and basically hired all of the technical staff of the startup he came from (to the point that they're suing the company I work for).

All these people from the startup have their own office, away from all the corporate offices. And they're writing something (that they won't reveal) in what they refer to as their bunker. The best we can gather is that they're coming up with modern equivalents of all the backend services. This would mean that everything the devs do in the office I work in will be redundant.

I have the feeling that within a year or so (maybe less) there'll be mass layoffs of all the existing devs. Am I being paranoid?

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I was hired onto a project like this. Had to sign an NDA and we were completely separate from the rest of the company, slack email etc. People weren't allowed to interact with us unless they signed the NDA also, most of the company didn't even know we existed.

We were actually architecting an alternative to something a third party was providing internally, and had to be super secret cause of the contract.

So I guess it depends how much you like your job. The market sucks right now and there's no guarantee you won't leave and be laid off from your new job elsewhere. I would stick around cause it's less effort til I find out what the deal is. It's not like they are gonna be able to cut over the entire backend suddenly if that's what they are doing. But be saving money in the meantime.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

I agree with @pizza_rolls, unless you can find out more about exactly what the startup-group is working on, I would base my decision on how much I'm enjoying my day-to-day work, how good my co-workers are, and how good the opportunities are for me to learn/grow my skills.

It isn't usually a good sign when a new higher-up is bringing over large groups of people from a previous place, but it's not always bad (or nefarious). It also depends on the scale of things. A close-knit 10 person team who has been working with each other for years can be an incredible asset when brought into a larger company that can provide them more resources. And giving them the space to continue doing their thing can lead to awesome results. This is usually the case when they are building something the compliments the offerings of the larger company, rather than trying to rewrite or replace some core offering of the larger company.

If you do find out for a fact that they are rewriting core backend services without working with the existing teams who know/understand these systems, then that is a huge red flag.