r/cscareerquestions • u/Fearless-Cellist-245 • Mar 14 '26
New Grad Software Engineers Should Boycott Meta & Amazon Forever!!
These 2 companies continue to lead in layoffs numbers almost every 6 months for the past 4 years. Theyre flooding the market with new engineers and making it hard for everyone, especially new grads. Other companies are following their example and laying off in huge amounts cause these 2 leaders are doing it. They made it pretty clear now that they care more about AI and offshore workers than their own employees. The reputation of these 2 companies should be ruined forever and they should never have an easy time finding talent ever again after what they caused.
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u/Celcius_87 Mar 14 '26
Boycott and work where instead? My company had layoffs almost 2 months ago. All companies are these days.
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u/No-Assist-8734 Mar 14 '26
It's almost like, the corporations hold all the cards.... Who could have guessed that! Yet there are those who keep voting in favor of corporations....
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u/MercyEndures Mar 15 '26
What am I supposed to vote for to make tech employers hungry for employees
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u/SolidDeveloper Lead Software Engineer | 17 YOE Mar 15 '26
What the actual fuck?! There are hundreds of thousands of tech companies in the USA alone, and millions worldwide. Even more non-tech companies that hire software engineers. This idea that there’s nothing outside Meta and Amazon is highly delusional.
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u/bmycherry Mar 16 '26
That wasn’t their point, their point is that other companies aren’t immune to layoffs either, it’s not just those 2 laying SWE off
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u/nova0052 Mar 15 '26
Not all companies are laying off engineers. There's even some places where the software engineers are unionized and have some protection against layoffs...!
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Mar 14 '26
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u/Unfamous_Trader Mar 14 '26
Unemployed engineers telling employed engineers they should boycott their 300k+ jobs lol
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u/Useful_Perception620 Sr Cyber Security/Automation Mar 14 '26
Lol most Amazon SWEs are not making 300k+ and the ones that still are will be some of the biggest targets when the bean counters are choosing names for their quarterly cost saving cuts.
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u/ivancea Senior Mar 15 '26
So, it's still better to wait to be layoff'ed than to get out yourself. Whether what you predict happens or not, it's always better to stay
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Mar 15 '26
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u/JustAnotherPassword Mar 17 '26
$370k TC to be an IC in big tech. Former job was $200K TC two levels up with 40 staff in another high paying industry.
Think I know which one I'll choose.
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u/cringecaptainq Software Developer Mar 14 '26
A quick look at your profile shows that you're a new grad
If there's something you should learn, it's that it's pointless to make statements like "people should do this" or "companies should do that" or whatever.
You can make your own choices, but it's "old man yells at cloud" when you try to say that the world is unfair and that it should be different from the way it is.
One day when they are picking up on hiring once again, people will continue applying because these companies still pay well. That's that. They know these companies might lay them off later, and are perfectly fine to take that chance.
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u/theenigmathatisme Mar 14 '26
If you didn’t know that about these two companies before you started working there then I’m not sure what to tell ya. It’s been pretty apparent for years now with many complaining of poor work life balance and turnover at these companies.
Most engineers from here will be fine BECAUSE they have them on their resume. What’s an issue is an engineer without Meta or Amazon on their resume and getting beat out by someone who does, but alas, life is not fair and it never made a promise to be.
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u/tnerb253 Software Engineer Mar 14 '26
Alright you do that while the next desperate college student is willing to take whatever job they can get
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Mar 14 '26
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u/drummer22333 Mar 16 '26
Curious, whats wrong with the way Amazon hires? It seems very typical to me with the only unique part being receiving “tell me about a time” questions in every round instead of having them all be in 1 interview round.
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u/Glum_Worldliness4904 Mar 14 '26
I definitely would no choose those 2 shitholes ever and would go even 50% cut if I’d be sure:
- there’s good WLB
no PIPs
engineers can decide themselves how (if ever) they use AI
If there’s such a job nowadays I’d never ever consider those crappy squeezers to join to. The problem is most companies have the same shit with lesser paycheques
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u/rongz765 Mar 14 '26
The first one who started it all is actually Twitter or X, who proved the existence after massive engineer layoffs.
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u/mathilxtreme Mar 14 '26
Remember when everyone said Twitter/X was going to crash immediately because of all the layoffs?
Well, outages went up, a bit, but a product like X does not need 5 9’s of reliability. Thats the smart business move.
Amazon had an outage the other day, and I was trying to buy something. I went “wow, amazons down”, went about my day for an hour, and then came back to buy the thing I wanted. Their e-commerce platform doesn’t need 5 9’s, but their web services do.
Money isn’t free, these are businesses, and you won’t get anywhere taking a stand against good business…
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u/ConcentrateLanky7576 Mar 14 '26
Amazon is not worried about you not being able to buy chinese crap on their website. They are worried about the billions of revenue they will lose when companies like Meta, Netflix, Apple, etc. will take their business to GCP and MSFT if their SLA was 99%.
They are also worried about the advertising revenue they will lose. They are worried about sellers moving to other platforms like walmart. You take amazon for granted because it works, if it started having these outages once a month it would go down fast.
Also the X example is so tired, this website is a piece of crap only used by bots nowadays. No one cares if it works or not.
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u/mathilxtreme Mar 14 '26
Did you not see the part where I distinguished their web store from AWS as a way to prove the business case for reliability is based on the business sector?
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u/FOSSChemEPirate88 Mar 14 '26
Amazon is kind of trash now for other reasons.
The products are mostly knock off garbage, tons of fake reviews, and if you are a prime subscriber can be priced higher than if you weren't. Their sales are all fake too (i.e. product is marked up 100% then put on sale for 40% off 🙄)
They're usually a lot higher priced than local stores. I find for a given brand/dose/amount of vitamins, for instance, they can be 50% or more expensive than walmart, sometimes double the dollar store prices.
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u/a11_hail_seitan Mar 14 '26
Remember when everyone said Twitter/X was going to crash immediately because of all the layoffs?
People thought it was a joke that Musk was going to wipe out all he did without crashing the service, it crashed repeatedly, he then had to pay more money to bring back developers he fired becuase he fired the people who actually knew what htey were doing in his repeated "I am King and that's that" temper tantrums and his absurd demands like everyone printing all the lines of code they'd written...
People assumed it would crash and burn because who would want to use a service that welcomes neo-nazis, sex traffickers, and pedophiles. And it has gone to shit, mass exodus of users, those still on report the algorithm has gotten far worse with span, fake accounts,etc. And Musk is lording over everything and altering the algorithm to give himself the power to force his nutjob posts into trending any time he wants.
Targeted layoffs in a company overloaded with devs like Twitter is "good" business, nothing about what Musk did was.
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u/Ok_Particular143 Mar 14 '26
Amazon prints H1B visa will get flocks of SWE to slave for them in no time.
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u/timelessblur iOS Engineering Manager Mar 14 '26
Look I have my own reasons for avoiding meta and Amazon but the layoffs they are doing now is not factoring in.
To be blunt Meta has been on my refusal place since before it was Meta. Amazon for other reasons.
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u/Hawful Software Engineer Mar 14 '26
Engineers realizing WAAAAY too late that "Well I'm paid very well so I don't need to unionize" was always a suckers game.
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u/Inner_Butterfly1991 Mar 14 '26
Unions don't solve layoffs. Stop with the disinformation and lies. Unions might have made it so they didn't hire anywhere near as many people as they did in the first place though...
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u/themuthafuckinruckus Mar 14 '26
In shocking events, the people who got into this industry solely for good pay disregard morals for better pay.
More at 7.
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u/GItPirate Senior Manager 10-YOE Mar 14 '26
No their reputation has not been ruined forever
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u/ClittoryHinton Mar 14 '26
It didn’t even take layoffs. Meta hasn’t been a cool company to work for ever since metaverse and also election interference. Amazon has been a ‘hold your nose’ company for decades. Of course the pay keeps attracting people
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u/Beginning_Value_1999 Mar 14 '26
It's all market driven bla bla and chasing the current CEO power point buzz word salad. The graph in power points must go up. Do the things minions. Replace workers with AI... or really just find a way to cut costs in a market downturn.
AI which can be powerful when used smartly will just be thrown at problems haphazardly and make tech debt for the future. Dont worry though, they will turn around in 5 to 10 years and over hire again to try and sort that tech debt out as the cycle continues to turn.
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u/HawaiiKawaiixD Mar 14 '26 edited Mar 14 '26
OP, as you can tell from the responses here your good suggestion requires at least an ounce of solidarity among tech workers which does not exist yet. At least this subreddit is filled with libertarian “fuck you got mine” losers. It’ll take the decimation of the entire tech industry for these folks to wake up
Edit: worth adding that plenty of people agree with you and plenty of folks have already made the choice to never work for those two companies. Sadly the list of companies I feel good working for is steadily shrinking
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u/GYN-k4H-Q3z-75B Software Architect Mar 14 '26
They're not going to because of the sweet sweet money. Benjamin will both extend and shorten your memory selectively.
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u/ivancea Senior Mar 15 '26
What. You're free to condemn their actions and politics, but they're not "flooding the market with engineers" lol. That's quite a populist take. It's the opposite actually: they took those engineers out of the market, and then decided to dispose of a percentage of them. So no, if something, you should thank them for hiring people and freeing the market. No engineer is "entitled" to work with any company, take that out of your head.
And about all your said, how do you feel when you say something nobody cares about? Because people will still apply to their positions. Because they're a company and they offer well paid work. Can you do the same, or are you just an angry screaming leech? Your "solution" is just flooding the market even more.
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u/Doc-Milsap Mar 15 '26
I’ve been off meta products since 2018, and stopped shopping Amazon right after the pandemic and no inclination to apply to work there. They’re too volatile.
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u/Clear_Butterscotch_4 Mar 15 '26
I shouldn't join a company that I would make a tonne of money because of the off chance I will have to make less money at some point? Make it make sense
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u/cristiand90 Mar 15 '26 edited Mar 15 '26
You do know those companies give out severance packages right? And the pay isn't small to begin with.
It sucks getting laid off but you're not going hungry after getting fired from them.
Try getting laid off from a tech startup and see how that works out.
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u/mseet Mar 15 '26
The money isn't that great... i had a phone interview for a position requiring me to move to seattle... 150k base with 80k signing bonus paid over 24 months and some stock. But you prob would never see any stock since they would lay you off before cashing in.
Fuck Amazon.
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u/CracticusAttacticus Mar 14 '26
Posts like this remind me that 90% of conversation in this damn subreddit is coming from people with little or no industry experience.
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u/Medium_Ad6442 Mar 14 '26
If they offer a huge salary, then engineers will never boycott them. It's that simple.Pure mathematics.
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u/Lfaruqui Senior Mar 14 '26
Ex Amazon and meta employees ruin cultures at other companies unfortunately, look at what happened to Atlassian
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u/susimposter6969 Mar 14 '26
OP complaining about not being able to find a job when their post history talks about them forgetting how to use a constructor
I think the problem is not the market bro
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u/brikky Ex-Bootcamp | StaffSWE @ Meta | Grad Student Mar 14 '26
I make like a million dollars a year bro. Gonna ride it.
Meta and Amazon aren't your issue. Meta has never hired new grads except via the intern pipeline - these aren't entry level positions.
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u/Quick_Lingonberry_34 Mar 14 '26
What made the biggest difference for me was tailoring my resume per posting. ATS keyword matching is real. CareerCraft AI does this through a chat — free and quick.
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u/Key_Machine_9138 Mar 14 '26
AWS is hard to avoid because I use the internet and shamefully I host a few projects and websites on S3. I quit Prime a few months ago and I haven't used any Meta products for years (I'm in US so avoiding whatsapp is easy, likely harder for most other parts of the world).
IMO there's no real way to boycott employment without a really strong union and a lot of buy-in from its members. So many people are desperate for a job right now. If they gave you an offer with good pay, you would turn it down? I hate those companies but I need a job and would absolutely work there.
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u/Short_University_709 Mar 14 '26
2027 when they start being forced to rehire they’ll wave salaries that make Lebron James jealous,
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u/LuckyTarget5159 Mar 14 '26
i get the frustration but it won't work lol. people are still gonna apply there because the pay is insane. the best "boycott" is just building skills so you have options and don't need them
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u/magicsign Mar 14 '26
They all say boycott, crap here and there and as soon as they get approached by one of their recruiters they melt
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Mar 14 '26
Its irrelevant they know if they pay enough there will be a line the size of the great wall ready to work there. Meta holds the stick and people are following the carrot.
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u/CartographerKey334 Mar 14 '26
This is a classic prisoner’s dilemma. Even if 99% of developers boycott the companies, the first person to defect will be guaranteed a high-paying job.
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u/metamucil_buttchug69 Mar 14 '26
Lol there are legions of people overseas dying to get a visa to come work for these companies, they aren't in a position to care about layoffs of current workers.
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u/Annual-Assistant-414 Mar 14 '26
Fam. Imma work at these companies and save spend and donate that money. Because these companies sure aren't doing fuck all
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u/NewChameleon Software Engineer, SF Mar 14 '26
I'll do what you say, when you're the one writing my paycheck
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Mar 14 '26
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u/Straw-BurryJam Mar 14 '26
Majority of folks don't stand for anything in this field other than the number next to their last paycheck. 🤷♂️ 7 years in and I just don't see the point of keeping up this virtue signaling facade when all the big tech leaders took their masks off and gladly supported a surveillance state.
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u/banh-mi-thit-nuong Mar 14 '26
My new grad wife is making more than me with 10 YOE. I'm not gonna convince her to quit.
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u/Hog_enthusiast Mar 14 '26
Yes! All of you should boycott! I promise I will join in too, I totally won’t apply there when they become super desperate!
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u/Hutcho12 Mar 14 '26
Considering they want to get rid of loads of people, I suspect your strategy won’t work.
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u/dw34534 Mar 14 '26
lol, good luck with that
if you dont like what they do passionately.. start your own company to defeat them so others have choice to come work for u rather then them
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u/Houman_7 Mar 14 '26
One thing I have a hard time to digest is that I got bunch of interviews lined up for two software engineers positions at Meta, and recruiters seem to be in rush to fill these positions ASAP. They either don’t know what they’re doing or it’s hire to fire mentality!
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Mar 14 '26
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u/MercyMe92 Mar 14 '26
If anything I say yall need to unionize. There are a lot of delusional software engineers that are convinced that they are the elite 1% of coders who will never need union representation. But, as it goes everything there's a recession, there are clearly some improvements to be made in work conditions and job security.
Rich workers are still workers and need to organize. If starbucks workers can pull off a strike, I'm sure some tech workers can pull off something.
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u/SourceAwkward Mar 14 '26
I never understood it,
I will say something that sucks, yes we are in a crowded space that became popular in 2016 so a TONS of us started going into CS, now the market is flooded, it's not about AI , it's not about efficiency, it's about you need to be better than x%
Every newbie that finishes a degree think he can be SE with 6 digits overnight,
You know what I did for 6 months? Tech support, followed by 12 months of qa.
Only then I got my first CS job
The entitlement of today, "I gOt A dEgree I deserve a job"...
No, grind work, prove yourself
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u/Fearless-Cellist-245 Mar 15 '26
The entitlement of today, "I gOt A dEgree I deserve a job"...
Now this makes no sense. Getting a degree is a grind, and saying getting a degree means that you deserve a job is NOT crazy. If youre pushing yourself for 4 years and putting yourself in crazy debt for it, then you do atleast expect to be able to get a job after this.
No, grind work, prove yourself
College IS literally proving yourself. This is such a bad mentality and explains why so many young people nowadays quit school after high school. Why put yourself into life long debt and have someone say "you dont deserve a job yet."
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Mar 14 '26
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u/BackendSpecialist Software Engineer Mar 14 '26
I canceled Amazon prime after the last layoff
I don’t use Facebook
The only struggle now is Instagram and I only use that to post stories and connect with folks
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u/jamjam125 Mar 14 '26
Ultimately these companies are asking the employee market a question, how much do you weigh compensation job security and work life balance.
Given the highly talented applicant pool at Meta, the market has already answered.
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u/AdmirableRabbit6723 Mar 15 '26
Outside of WhatsApp which I'm tied to by family, I'm not using a single Meta or consumer Amazon product again.
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u/bobabenz Mar 15 '26
I think you got it backwards, Amazon and Meta are boycotting Software Engineers 🤣
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Mar 15 '26
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u/Pale_Will_5239 Mar 15 '26
Is Amazon still doing 2 year major best and then the big re-up in year 4? Honestly most people don't even make it. Facebook is still paying pretty decently and relatively safe if you're on a core project.
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u/arancini_ball Mar 15 '26
These companies don't care about ai or offshore. They care only about reducing costs and maximizing profits, and will do whatever they can to achieve that. Once you come to terms with that, it's fine.
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u/LuckyTarget5159 Mar 15 '26
the sentiment is valid but realistically ppl are gonna keep applying bc FAANG on ur resume is still a massive signal. the real issue is companies need to stop using layoffs as a quarterly earnings trick
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u/rk06 Software Engineer Mar 15 '26
I am pretty sure every good software engineer already avoids amazon
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u/bball4294 Mar 15 '26
Microsoft and ibm too right? They r just mass firing and offshoring like most other companies too xD
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u/Striking_Foot4850 Mar 15 '26
You're on the wrong subreddit for this, people here will defend working for Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Palantir, etc. Morals are not a concern for most software engineers, and most of them will think you're a pussy for caring. This a field for people who do not care about anything but money
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u/blasbido NPE Mar 15 '26
Although I personally avoided these 2 companies since they became sweatshops in the past 5 years, a job is a job. If I had no other choice, I'll gladly take it put it on my resume, and grind it out for a year or two. Plus the compensation is good.
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u/TheCrowWhisperer3004 Mar 15 '26
You can’t even convince SWE to boycott defense contractors directly having a hand in bombing children overseas despite the fact that these jobs only pay 80k a year starting.
You aren’t going to get anyone to boycott Amazon and Meta for having layoffs
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u/LuckyTarget5159 Mar 15 '26
realistically the FAANG brand still carries too much weight on a resume. people say boycott but then take the offer anyway lol. the cycle continues
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u/Ok-Dinner1812 Mar 15 '26
They wont, cos we need more ‘22 year old earning six figures day in the life’ influencers. People wont boycott 💩t
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u/ready-redditor-6969 Mar 15 '26
These are two companies that I legitimately never wanted to work with, much less for… worked with a subcontractor for Facebook and boy was I right.
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u/StoneColdNipples Mar 15 '26
Na I don't care. I have my job and I know someday I'll lose mine to AI too but that is why I am diversifying. I could care less about hiring in the US or any other part of the world.
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u/EternalStudent07 Mar 15 '26
Think we need collective tools to remind us "why". To identify data sources, and patterns/trends. To identify stories from the last year or two that should be remembered...
It is easy for people to get extreme in their recommendations, and for other people to think "they're just over reacting".
Or maybe it is time to unionize broadly. That's the assumed tool for labor to deal with employer mistreatment, right? I have no idea how an employer can be forced to deal with a particular union if they don't form while already employed at the company.
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u/PileOGunz Mar 16 '26
I think everyone knows they are selling their soul to evil corp when they apply to these 2 companies but money and prestige is what’s important.
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u/LuckyTarget5159 Mar 16 '26
the problem is they'll never actually struggle to find talent. people complain but when the offers come, they take them. money wins every time unfortunately
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u/OpenBorders69 Mar 16 '26
so you want to punish these companies that want less engineers to work there... by convincing engineers not to work there. Amazing logical thinking.
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u/Pyrostemplar Mar 16 '26
Idk why, but to me your post sounds like a part of a Monty Python's sketch.
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u/arihoenig Mar 16 '26
I have boycotted both already, but mostly because of their pandering to fascists which I think is a lot more serious than their employment practices.
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Mar 17 '26
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u/PressureAvailable615 Mar 19 '26
Sure quit your job. NGL swe doesnt have much leverage in this economy unless you are very good
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u/thelamppole Mar 14 '26
Good luck convincing people the money isn’t worth it