Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce

latimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 557 posts

Re: SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce

#341

Post by jononor »

pmontra wrote: post #312
antpls wrote: post #265

I don't understand how anyone in the world accept such social contract of being laid off anytime for arbitrary reasons. If you create a company, you take care of it and all of its members. If you have to cut expenses because the company needs to be "leaner" then you cut the salaries starting from the top executives. Eventually you fire management, because the state of the company is in part the result of their decisi…

I used to work for a mobile phone operator in Europe, so no quick way to lay off people. After the startup phase they ended up with hundreds of people in the software/network department that they really didn't need anymore. Not there at least, as the focus moved from development to operations. Some people were moved to operations but (I spare you the technicalities) we eventually ended up in a separate company provid…

Sure, adjustments are sometimes natural. The important thing is that is should not affect employees too negatively. Huge difference between a 1-day/1-month resignation notice without compensation, and a multi-month (or even multi-year) reduction process with incentives to quit. The latter makes it possible for basically everyone to get a new decent job and change over without gaps in employment.

Re: SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce

#342

Post by SamReidHughes »

skrebbel wrote: post #331
unethical_ban wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're missing the point, with or without intention. "Comfortable" doesn't mean that they have a nice house and are happy with their life at work. Comfortable in this context means they no longer have any concern about their own job performance, knowing they have a "sure thing" and underperform in their duties.

Good point. But I wasn't responding to the GGP's central argument, only to the implication that it's bad when employees get too comfortable. In particular, I'm ranting against the use of the word "comfortable" for describing unmotivated/shitty employees. It's perfectly achievable to have a company that consists of people who are motivated, comfortable, and extremely productive. It's a ridiculous Americanism that the…

Well, there's a reason America has a higher standard of living than Europe.

Re: SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce

#343

Post by jononor »

mkio wrote: post #337
austenallred wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like a fantastic way to make it too risky to ever hire anyone

In Germany you see things like a single person having to do all jobs at once at a Pizza Hut or only three people working at the same time in a supermarket. A lot of customer-facing businesses are insanely understaffed. If your employer doesn't hire enough coworkers for whatever reason, your life will be miserable.

Isnt there a maximum average hours of work around 40 a week in Germany?

Re: SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce

#344

Post by pbhjpbhj »

pavelrub wrote: post #335
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would it "stifle innovation"? Having to run a company sustainably should promote innovation. It may stifle impractical get-rich-quick strategies and customer scamming, but that's not a bad thing.

Because it removes degrees of freedom. If there are N ways to achieve goal X, and some of those ways include layoffs, then removing those ways from the space of possible strategies will reduce the probability of companies achieving X.

Your analysis is incomplete.

Some of the ways to achieve goal X are via layoffs, some aren't. You cut some possible routes to X, but you add more routes.

Not all routes are equal. Cutting a particular employee might mean that a vital convergent point is no longer possible to enter, meaning all routes now lead to failure.

Some of the optimal routes to X may require that management get paid a fair wage (rather than 40+ times the median), and that they reconfigure the company to enable them to keep all employees - everyone gets hours cut by half-a-day, say.

TL;DR - in short you're committing petitio principii, assuming the best way is layoffs, and thus concluding the best way can't be taken without layoffs.

Re: SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce

#345

Post by jononor »

skrebbel wrote: post #331
unethical_ban wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're missing the point, with or without intention. "Comfortable" doesn't mean that they have a nice house and are happy with their life at work. Comfortable in this context means they no longer have any concern about their own job performance, knowing they have a "sure thing" and underperform in their duties.

Good point. But I wasn't responding to the GGP's central argument, only to the implication that it's bad when employees get too comfortable. In particular, I'm ranting against the use of the word "comfortable" for describing unmotivated/shitty employees. It's perfectly achievable to have a company that consists of people who are motivated, comfortable, and extremely productive. It's a ridiculous Americanism that the…

What is the source for higher standard of living in US compared to Europe? In most of the indexes I have seen, some European countries are ahead of the US, and some are behind. Countries previously in the Soviet union are still lagging compared to western and northern europe.

Re: SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce

#346

Post by mulmen »

rightbyte wrote: post #338
cyberferret wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firing via SQL query or an email filter. Is this what we have come to? SELECT * FROM employees ORDER BY last_performance_review_score LIMIT 600;

This is acctually probably how they do it.

Typically higher scores are better. If SpaceX used this query they would fire their 600 best employees. Or they use bad column names.

On top of the lame SQL reference this diminishes the true severity of firing 600 real people. We have no reason to think the firing was this nonchalant. This diminishes the work and humanity of everyone involved.

It appears to be a weak reference to stack ranking.

Do you have any reason to believe this is probdbly how they identified people to be let go?

Re: SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce

#347

Post by late2part »

candiodari wrote: post #340
unethical_ban wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So cut from the top down, period? Cut the people with the vision and strategy of the company, until nothing but the assemblers and forklift drivers are left? I believe in worker rights, and the ability of a person to live in relative economic security. But should a company not EVER be able to restructure when it realizes it has too many workers, or too broad a mission? Is 2 months pay and medical not a decent send-of…

It's funny how you assume there'a choice. Unemployment in Europe as a whole (including Eastern Europe) is ~20%. Depends on what/when exactly of course but it is. Government (non-productive by definition, by which I mean they don't add value, not that they're not useful) is easily half of the remainder. So Europe has 40% value-adding employees among the working age population, which is about half the total population,…

Not a Thanos fan?

Re: SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce

#348

Post by ben_w »

Retric wrote: post #305
pavelrub wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would be the rationale behind that? This clearly places limitations on a company's ability to optimize for achieving its goals, and ultimately stifles innovation. At the very least the long term impact of those downsides needs to be incorporated into any sort of social calculus. Would you prefer to live in a world without Teslas or SpaceXs, as long as employees are "taken care" of by their companies? This isn't…

SpaceX could quickly shrink by 10% via attrition and not highering new people. They can get rid of dead weight by firing people. This kind of small scale lay-off is mostly a stunt, or just sign of incompetence.

Downsizing via attrition means your losses are focused on those with both desire and ability to work elsewhere, and so you keep those who can’t or don’t want to.

“Don’t want to leave” is good, “can’t get hired anywhere else” is bad, and the presence of the latter makes it more desirable to leave even places which used to be fun.

Re: SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce

#349

Post by ben_w »

jononor wrote: post #343
mkio wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Germany you see things like a single person having to do all jobs at once at a Pizza Hut or only three people working at the same time in a supermarket. A lot of customer-facing businesses are insanely understaffed. If your employer doesn't hire enough coworkers for whatever reason, your life will be miserable.

Isnt there a maximum average hours of work around 40 a week in Germany?

Sounds about right. EU Working Time Directive is something like 40 or 48, but my German isn’t good enough to read German law.

Re: SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce

#350

Post by mulmen »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #211
mulmen wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And your usage of sadistic is hyperbolic. We don’t know the details, employees may have known before walking out the door.

> And your usage of sadistic is hyperbolic. Obviously. It's still a shitty thing to do. > We don’t know the details, employees may have known before walking out the door. Huh? We have multiple SpaceX employees on Reddit saying they were told to go home and wait for emails. Some took hours, some are still waiting.

Source: reddit is not compelling, ever.
Post reply on HN