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The layoffs at Klarna

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Re: The layoffs at Klarna

#261

Post by rightbyte »

drakonka wrote: post #203

I was actually surprised to read that the Swedish CEO "took a dab at unions". Sure, relationships with unions can be complicated, but I've never heard an employer talk negatively about them here (maybe I'm just sheltered?). I am used to seeing union reps come to the office a few times a year for Q&As and feedback sessions, and taking about union membership was normal in internal channels. Never heard of anyone in lea…

> I was actually surprised to read that the Swedish CEO "took a dab at unions"

My impression is that he wants to be like the cool kids on the other side of the Atlantic. Meanwhile the Engineering union and Bankers guild are suing Klarna for the way the layoffs are being done. Maybe they are pissed. Dunno.

Re: The layoffs at Klarna

#262

Post by SilverBirch »

dento wrote: post #131
stormbrew wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fwiw there is a more normalized practice that resembles this and is, afaik, not a massive hr risk: openly offering a voluntary severance with defined benefits. Obviously it's not a great signal to those who don't take it about the health of the company, and you might lose a bunch of people you'd rather not, but I think allowing some level of self-selection is good when it's possible.

I find it rather rare that a relatively compentent dev couldn't get approximately equal compensation working for some other company. So if offered $X for volutary severance, where $X at least N months total compensation, most devs who can get a similar job in less than N months will leave. This leaves you with least capable people, which is (usually) not what's wanted when doing layoffs. (This is of course assuming t…

I think you need to consider that we're in the context of a job market that has been hoovering up devs for the last 10 years. There are 30 year olds who graduated into a fairly good market who are now expeirenced developers who have never seen a really difficult job market. It's all fun and games if you're a fungible 20 something who can go off to be another cog in another machine. But if the market dries up - as is starting to happen with all the big names slowing, it's a very difficult situation to be in, and long term unemployment isn't just a financial burden, it can be a massive emotional burden as well. One thing that has always troubled me in my career is that I look around and I don't see many 50+ or 60+ year old engineers, and partly it's that our industry is still emerging and 60 year old engineers pre-dated the industry. But some of it could well be that at some point attrition pushes people permanently out of the industry.

Re: The layoffs at Klarna

#263

Post by geysersam »

deltree7 wrote: post #249
geysersam wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rewarded for luring people into consumption loan debt? Great system.

debt is a fantastic instrument that solves a production / consumption mismatch of both individuals and humanity. A 55 year old is the most productive member of a society, but that is also the age where you start to consume very little. Imagine if you had to 'save' to get your college education, your home, a laptop, or starting a business. There is a reason we don't ask babies to 'pay up' for milk or shelter. Imagine…

Never said debt is intrinsically harmful.

I do however think consumption debt, for goods such as clothes or the next iphone, is harmful.

They're not investments, like an education or a car.

It's a tax on people who don't have money in the bank to buy such things up front.

Usually such loan "services" are marketed in a way that hides the effective cost of the loan to the customer. Especially problematic for young people less experienced handling money.

> But you can't prevent good things for 95% society because a 5% of the society abuses it

Sounds like you thought I suggested prohibiting debt in general. That's a misunderstanding. It's definitely possible to prohibit predatory lending strategies.

Re: The layoffs at Klarna

#264

Post by Kiro »

drakonka wrote: post #247
Kiro wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my experience, it's not very common in tech companies in Sweden. They often lack collective agreements and in the last company I worked at I never heard anyone talk about it or say they were a member.

The only companies I've worked for in Sweden have been tech companies, and union membership was very common. At EA we had a collective agreement, along with some other larger games companies here iirc. Many people are members but don't mention it unless it gets specifically brought up since it's such a non-event. Edit: Was curious to find some numbers about this. I don't read Swedish fluently yet so having to use Goo…

EA seems to be an exception, as confirmed by this article: https://kollega.se/avtal/fa-kollektivavtal-i-dataspelsbransc...

The gaming industry is notorious for not having collective agreements (as per the article, only 1% of the companies has it). So I'm not sure your experience is representative.

Re: The layoffs at Klarna

#265

Post by dan-robertson »

datalopers wrote: post #101
chrsig wrote: post #14

> The culture of “we are awesome” has dominated most internal communications for the last couple of years, including in 2022. We all believed that we were awesome and would continue growing and winning. This is the big thing that drives me nuts . I don't know if it's a fragility of ego thing or what the cause may be, but it results in a corporate inability to critically self-evaluate at the highest levels. If you can…

> The self congratulatory back-patting HN is guilty of this constantly. Everyone who posts here is implicitly in the right and users unequivocally back that attitude, even when it realistically is a scenario of "maybe you were a shit employee and were fired for it and your employer isnt in the wrong?" or "your Show HN really isn't that impressive". We're not allowed to say anything critical of other HN users without…

I would not say that HN does this constantly or agree with much of what you write. In general I think written/upvoted comments tend to be biased towards being critical[1] and disagreeing with the comment/article being responded to.

In general, the guideline is for comments to be curious and “maybe you were a shit employee” or “your Show HN really isn’t that impressive” do not sound to me like they are curious. However I realise it is hard to describe in general comments that would surely contain specific things.

An alternative strategy to the former general comment might be to try to get curious about the details more. For example one might discover that the likely cause was a breakdown in communication leaving the employee unable to understand what was actually wanted and being fired for failing to read minds to meet expectations. However I think it can be hard to actually be curious here rather than applying some kind of smug-Socratic method[2] asking innocent-seeming questions where the answers lead to one’s unwritten hypothesis, though perhaps the answers can give an opportunity to update. I think it can be doubly hard to do these things in a kind way, especially when, like in the general examples, the topics are personal to one participant rather than a typical internet discussion where parties may pretend to be disinterested.

[1] There are two common meanings of ‘critical’. One is related to ‘critical thinking’ or critiquing: looking specifically and carefully at the faults or merits of something. The other meaning is similar to ‘disapproving’. Generally the former kind is accepted here and the latter is less accepted, though I think comments which are negative and not particularly thoughtful or curious often do better than I would hope. Further, the acceptance of the former kind of critical discourse may sometimes be hidden behind for comments that perhaps fit into the latter sense (when they don’t fit I would say it is because they are too mean to really deserve to be called critical).

[2] I think this roughly corresponds to what the guidelines call cross-examining.

Re: The layoffs at Klarna

#266

Post by drakonka »

Kiro wrote: post #264
drakonka wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only companies I've worked for in Sweden have been tech companies, and union membership was very common. At EA we had a collective agreement, along with some other larger games companies here iirc. Many people are members but don't mention it unless it gets specifically brought up since it's such a non-event. Edit: Was curious to find some numbers about this. I don't read Swedish fluently yet so having to use Goo…

EA seems to be an exception, as confirmed by this article: https://kollega.se/avtal/fa-kollektivavtal-i-dataspelsbransc... The gaming industry is notorious for not having collective agreements (as per the article, only 1% of the companies has it). So I'm not sure your experience is representative.

Having a collective agreement is not a prerequisite for being a union member. It is common to be part of a union even if the company does not have a collective agreement (such as the games company I worked for after EA; no collective agreement, but still plenty of union members).

Re: The layoffs at Klarna

#267

Post by the_only_law »

iforgotpassword wrote: post #248
datalopers wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The self congratulatory back-patting HN is guilty of this constantly. Everyone who posts here is implicitly in the right and users unequivocally back that attitude, even when it realistically is a scenario of "maybe you were a shit employee and were fired for it and your employer isnt in the wrong?" or "your Show HN really isn't that impressive". We're not allowed to say anything critical of other HN users without…

> "maybe you were a shit employee and were fired for it and your employer isnt in the wrong?" or "your Show HN really isn't that impressive". We're not allowed to say anything critical of other HN users without being downvoted or reprimanded by dang. These things absolutely can be said on HN, if you list some points that make you think so. If OTOH your comment ist literally just that one sentence then I don't see why…

> These things absolutely can be said on HN, if you list some points that make you think so.

Only if what you say doesn’t oppose the current zeitgeist of the thread. I’ve seen some of the most well thought out and level headed comments get flagged to death while some insult floats to the top.

Re: The layoffs at Klarna

#268

Post by deltree7 »

geysersam wrote: post #263
deltree7 wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

debt is a fantastic instrument that solves a production / consumption mismatch of both individuals and humanity. A 55 year old is the most productive member of a society, but that is also the age where you start to consume very little. Imagine if you had to 'save' to get your college education, your home, a laptop, or starting a business. There is a reason we don't ask babies to 'pay up' for milk or shelter. Imagine…

Never said debt is intrinsically harmful. I do however think consumption debt, for goods such as clothes or the next iphone, is harmful. They're not investments, like an education or a car. It's a tax on people who don't have money in the bank to buy such things up front. Usually such loan "services" are marketed in a way that hides the effective cost of the loan to the customer. Especially problematic for young peop…

I would challenge that notion too.

I rather travel the world, eat great food, take tennis lessons, dance into the night when I'm in 20's and 30's where I get the most enjoyment rather than in my 60s where my body is not in good physical shape to do any of those things.

The fact that I travelled the world in my 20s may also enhance my own future productivity.

I would even further claim that not enough people go into debt. There are plenty of young people (70% or more) in developing countries who can get into travel, education, iPhone/Samsung, great food debt and their country (and the rest of the world) will benefit immensely from it in the long run.

Re: The layoffs at Klarna

#269

Post by johannes1234321 »

chrsig wrote: post #14

> The culture of “we are awesome” has dominated most internal communications for the last couple of years, including in 2022. We all believed that we were awesome and would continue growing and winning. This is the big thing that drives me nuts . I don't know if it's a fragility of ego thing or what the cause may be, but it results in a corporate inability to critically self-evaluate at the highest levels. If you can…

I think people in an organisation are constantly confronted with the problems and downsides. Engineers always know where the problems in the code and architecture are. Sales people and support always see the complaints from customers. CEOs see how high-valur prospects always find new issues to lower the negotiated prices and how features are delivered late. And so on.

My interpretation is that the overly positive view aims to drive the positive points forward and remind everybody about the positive things and how well things work on a macro view. If you stick small negatives in the message to cover "reality" this is what sticks.

I can't stand these motivational speech, but I also don't see a good speech for high level talks and not saying anything is bad as well and for some kind of people that seems to give them a push.

Re: The layoffs at Klarna

#270

Post by erenyeager »

hotpotamus wrote: post #74
allenu wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I recently left an 8,000 person company that's been on a 2 decade loop of private money to publicly traded and back a couple times now. It occurred to me that in 25ish years (about 10 of which I worked there) that it might never have made any money That is crazy if true. My fear is that there are a ton of tech companies like that, just chasing future profits or an acquisition, but not actually creating anything of…

I actually worked providing infrastructure to tech companies; from large enterprises to startups. I think I realized starting in the early to mid 10's that all the startups I was working with were just about taking VC money to provide the founders with hip, well paying jobs - the stated goal of the company was mostly immaterial and the "change the world" talk was virtue signaling to the rank and file so they don't fe…

Buy Now Pay Later actually has a really good use case, it’s for people who may be wary of credit cards, interest, and or low credit scores. For example, many people who wouldn’t take out credit cards will use BNPL. Also, usury is prohibited in the major Abrahamic religions, so BNPL can also work for client avoiding interest loans.
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