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Twilio to lay off 11% of workforce

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Re: Twilio to lay off 11% of workforce

#81

Post by roflyear »

ryandrake wrote: post #48
romeros wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were overhiring. I talked to their recruiter last year. They had pretty aggressive hiring goals. Same story with Zillow, Upstart, Facebook and a bunch of companies. All of their stocks tanked by more than 50% since then.

Why would a business even have a "hiring goal?" Shouldn't you have business goals, and then look at those business goals and determine if hiring will contribute to them? Having an isolated "hiring goal" seems as pointless as having a "printer buying goal".

Bro, Apple makes like $2m or something per employee. They can hire a ton of developers to do whatever at like $300-400k/yr. It's win-win. They have talent, they keep talent from other people.

Apple is at the extreme, but the logic applies. There are massive budgets, so what do you do? You hire.

Startups do this, too. Give an engineering team $20m (or $200m....) and they will hire a lot of people. They aren't just going to sit on the money...

Re: Twilio to lay off 11% of workforce

#82

Post by bombcar »

ucm_edge wrote: post #54
tmpz22 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How the **CK are these companies training and onboarding and managing all these new hires in such short a time frames?

That is why we see layoffs like these. You just layoff the people that didn’t successfully self onboard and/or are unqualified but slipped through your screening.

This is almost all of it. Anyone (even incompetent managers) can identify productive employees after working with them for a few months/year. And all the interview processes in the world aren't entirely effective in finding them before.

So if you're flush with cash just wildly overhire and then let go those you couldn't find a place for. And that won't even necessarily be all the "bad hires" because most people can do some job well, you just need to transfer them to it. (Otherwise you have to admit that there are people not fit for working at all, and they must starve in the street or something.)

Re: Twilio to lay off 11% of workforce

#83

Post by John23832 »

nemo44x wrote: post #65
John23832 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is still a question. There could people who are clearly not performing and then are let go that just so happen to not be a part of the "protected group". People are not being let go because of who they are, it's just a part of the calculus. It may not be the significant factor.

> People are not being let go because of who they are This is a common tactic from progressive in that they flat out deny the reality that everyone else see. They just say "it doesn't happen" when the CEO in a letter that was filed stated they specifically did this.

Dude, I don't know why you're trying to paint me as something when I'm the OP of the thread that has taken umbrage with the layoffs. First, go outside and breathe.

Second, the statement clearly says that it is a part of the calculus. Nobody is fired because they are white or black or whatever. The statement is just that it is taken into consideration (which is something that I have issue with).

Please (and I mean this in the most considerate way because you're on the internet just randomly labeling people) touch grass.

Re: Twilio to lay off 11% of workforce

#84

Post by squeaky-clean »

duxup wrote: post #22
saos wrote: post #8

Another company carelessly overhiring. OR maybe using opportunity to do some trimming? edit: Where does one check hiring metrics for company before accepting contract?

What even causes "over hiring"? People just building their resume for things like "managed a department of 200 people" ? Otherwise over hiring sounds like a pain in the ass to deal with.

I don't know about Twilio specifically but Covid is the biggest reason for most of the current layoff rounds.

Kind of the opposite of the beginning of the pandemic, when companies with in-person employees were laying off staff and moving to work-from-home and online companies like Zoom, Shopify, Teledoc, Twilio began booming. But now many of those brand new customers are returning to their old ways.

These internet companies "over hired" in the sense that they got a massive unexpected influx new demand they needed to scale out for, and no clue how long this would last. Will it fade out next month or be a decade long pandemic?

Many companies also expected higher customer retention after covid than they're actually keeping. If you look at trendlines for online shopping, work from home, etc related industries covid caused an instant jump in their growth equivalent to about 5 years on the trend line. Rather than staying "in the future", demand is declining back towards a trend line that otherwise ignores covid.

Re: Twilio to lay off 11% of workforce

#85

Post by bjt2n3904 »

Many people are trying to rationalize the "anti-racist lens" remark as a simple post-hoc analysis to make sure there wasn't racial bias. (This seems plausible, and I don't think many people would have an issue with that, in theory.)

However, if this is what the CEO did, then he did not use an anti-racist lens -- merely a "not-racist" lens.

Kendi is explicit in his book, "How to be an Anti-Racist", that there is no neutrality. You simply cannot say "the layoff is not racist". You can either have the layoff be racist, or antiracist, there is no middle ground.

DiAngelo agrees in her assessment. She says that people should not ask, "Did racism occur", but rather, "How did racism occur?" When looking at the roster of layoffs, one must come to the conclusion that racism occurred, no matter how unbiased the results appear.

How does Kendi say anti racism rectifies past prejudice? Present prejudice. How to rectify present prejudice? With future prejudice.

If the CEO actually used an anti-racist lens in the layoff decisions, then by definition, he used prejudice based on race.

Re: Twilio to lay off 11% of workforce

#86

Post by peter422 »

nemo44x wrote: post #65
John23832 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is still a question. There could people who are clearly not performing and then are let go that just so happen to not be a part of the "protected group". People are not being let go because of who they are, it's just a part of the calculus. It may not be the significant factor.

> People are not being let go because of who they are This is a common tactic from progressive in that they flat out deny the reality that everyone else see. They just say "it doesn't happen" when the CEO in a letter that was filed stated they specifically did this.

They said it was a factor. Twilio I'm sure had said they've been trying to diversify their workforce for years and you didn't care (which is the same thing, just through hiring instead of firing).

It is you parachuting in to be offended that is the disingenuous thing here.

Re: Twilio to lay off 11% of workforce

#87

Post by anonym29 »

Blackthorn wrote: post #47
anonym29 wrote: post #18

Anyone else read the letter from the CEO where they claim that the layoffs "were carried out through an Anti-Racist/Anti-Oppression lens"? That's verbatim from the actual PDF, in case anyone was curious ( https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001447669/5c6aa73... ) Page 6, under the heading "How did we decide which roles would be impacted". I wonder what race they deliberately targeted for these layoffs, with la…

Anyone who actually believes that, I've got an array of bridges to sell you. People doing layoffs will say anything they can to make the fact that they just laid people off seem better, more fair, whatever. This is just the latest attempt at that. It looks as ridiculous as every other attempt throughout history.

Do you have any data or references to support your argument? I'm open to considering your hypothesis, but right now, it's merely an assertion.

Re: Twilio to lay off 11% of workforce

#88

Post by trention »

peter422 wrote: post #68
fullshark wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have no idea what it means and you can rationalize it all you like. Quota or not they likely fired a white person instead of a another person because of their skin color. Or it’s just cheap talk and means nothing, those are the only two options.

Quoted post unavailable.

Given that affirmative action has been a thing in both hiring and college admissions for multiple decades now, that's of course incorrect. Those "innumerable advantages" in today's USA overwhelmingly go to (immigrant) minorities.

I'm so glad I live in a country in continental Europe where this shit is unconstitutional and any company that even tried to hint at doing this is going to get sued to oblivion.

Re: Twilio to lay off 11% of workforce

#89

Post by [deleted] »

anonym29 wrote: post #80
white_dragon88 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I consider myself very ‘liberal’ per American standards (pro abortion, pro lgbt rights, pro racial diversity and acceptance), and this to me screams of woke culture gone wild. Looks like anything can be weaponised.

Quoted post unavailable.

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