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.
People in USA [I assume you mean] are happier and more fulfilled than those living in Europe?
Unpopular opinion but I'm a fan of this. In the Tesla case they mostly cut deadweight from the Solarcity acquisition and the resultant company has performed better for it.
If you don't have a firing heavy culture sometimes this is the only reasonable way to lean teams up again and ensure your best team members are not dragged down by mediocrity.
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…
Not sure if this is still the case but didn't SpaceX make a point to stick to trade secrets instead of patents[1] for fear of Chinese rocket agencies copying them anyways? If they lay off 10% of their workforce, how do they ensure that their trade secrets are kept safe? Lay off only low-risk employees? NDAs? It was my understanding that the degree to which those can be enforced in California is limited. [1] https://w…
In general, in USA and California, NDAs are extremely enforceable.
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+…
Not at all. The only observation I'm making is that {ways without layoffs} ⊆ {ways without layoffs} U {ways with layoffs}. Everything you can do in a universe where layoffs are outlawed you can also do in a universe where they aren't. The difference is that in the former universe you have less options, and therefore less paths to success. None of that means or implies that layoffs are always the "best" option.
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…
In the UK, if your job is genuinely no longer needed, you can be made redundant, with mimimal pay off and notice (Typically 1 month notice and a minimum of 1 week per year redundancy)
“Genuinely” being basically arbitrary. What you do is you move people from role X to Y then, shortly after, you say role Y is no longer needed.
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,…
Even assuming your argument is correct and the world floats on with between 90-70% ‘dead weight’ as you seem to put it, GDP would fall significantly because you have significantly less consumers spending. Not to mention that society would pretty much grind to a halt because all the people doing intangible work that isn’t counted in GDP, like having and looking after children and replenishing our human capital.
We live in an imperfect world, and not everything has a utility function that is measured by headline figures
Not sure if this is still the case but didn't SpaceX make a point to stick to trade secrets instead of patents[1] for fear of Chinese rocket agencies copying them anyways? If they lay off 10% of their workforce, how do they ensure that their trade secrets are kept safe? Lay off only low-risk employees? NDAs? It was my understanding that the degree to which those can be enforced in California is limited. [1] https://w…
Also, i assume with a workforce of 7K not every single one of them is actually working with classified information every day.
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,…
I think you are overestimating a bit: killing the government employees would reduce GDP. The government may not directly produce GDP, but it is essential for providing the conditions for business. Simply cutting away the peaceful enforcement of contracts and peaceful settlement of disputes privided by the government (two major purposes of the courts and police) would have immediate negative consequences. Within a few years you would also feel the consequences of nobody planning, building and maintaining infrastructure, or collecting the taxes to do so.
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…
Cutting top performers would result in disincentives that would reduce overall profitability.
They cut the bottom 10% of weak performers because they weren't up to the standard.