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Twilio to lay off 11% of workforce

cnbc.com

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Re: Twilio to lay off 11% of workforce

#171

Post by crackercrews »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #155
crackercrews wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This creates three problems. The first is that some white people who were affected will believe it was because of their race. The second is that minorities who were not affected may be assumed to have been kept because of their minority status. But the most harmful is for minorities who were laid off. That signals that they were really subpar, even more than the average laid off person. It seems like this policy has…

However, it avoids a perception problem which may be far worse: the hypothetical perception that the people drawing up the layoffs were racist and that they disproportionately affected minorities. They wrote "Layoffs like this can have a more pronounced impact on marginalized communities, so we were particularly focused.." on making sure they did not. If they ignored race entirely, and just laid off people at random,…

> If they ignored race entirely, and just laid off people at random

This is a false dichotomy. They could have done layoffs based on the company's needs and the performance of the employees. That isn't random.

Your big picture point amounts to a heckler's veto. The more you cater to the heckler, the more powerful the heckler becomes.

Re: Twilio to lay off 11% of workforce

#172

Post by notch656a »

grapehut wrote: post #169
John23832 wrote: post #34

(I am a black man) I feel like the statement that the layoffs "were carried out through an Anti-Racist/Anti-Oppression lens" puts a target on the backs of the people who you claim to be helping. If you're affected by layoffs described this way, you then question whether that was because of who you are. That then makes it harder for the minorities you claim to be "helping" to stay in the room anywhere else because of…

The issue is that it becomes necessary as marginalized candidates are given preferences during the hiring phase. So if the same privilege is not extended during layoffs it will unfairly impact them.

> if the same privilege is not extended during layoffs it will unfairly impact them.

By unfairly you mean fairly.

Re: Twilio to lay off 11% of workforce

#174

Post by ajsnigrutin »

peter422 wrote: post #132
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me (someone from a former socialist country), both hiring and firing, based on race, seems very very racist. Replace all the groups with "white men", and if it seems racist then, well, it's also racist when it's any other group except "white men".

Serious question: Are you aware of the historical context of the United States as it concerns race? Without looking anything up tell me what you know about it.

Are you talking about slavery? Since i'm a slav, I'd know, considering the similarity of the words is not a coincidence.

But since neither I nor any of the employees there were ever a slave, I have no idea why a histy so old has to be taken in consideration.

Re: Twilio to lay off 11% of workforce

#176

Post by hudsonjr »

rocket_surgeron wrote: post #110

>Twilio had 7,867 employees as of Dec. 31, 2021. Every single layoff story stupefies me. Confuses. Flabbergasts. What are these companies doing with so many people? What are they doing? Like, what are their day-to-day tasks? My employer has more people but we build nuclear reactors and spacecraft. Our revenue per employee is nearly double Twilio's and is low for a "tech" firm due to the extremely high capital costs a…

Based on my experience bloat causes more bloat. People get hired to work on fringe projects/products, those people cause work for other staff that are already at 100% capacity on higher priority work, so additional staff are hired.

Re: Twilio to lay off 11% of workforce

#177

Post by choko »

yojo wrote: post #131
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #90

Back in my time, we called "treating people differently, based on their race" racism.

People are treated unequally because of their race everyday. My wife’s former boss (CEO of an education non-profit) was a black man. He was walking in downtown Paulo Alto, wearing a suit, on a way to a business meeting. A cop stopped him at gunpoint and had him lie face-down on the ground and frisked him. Eventually, finding nothing, he let him go. “Mistaken identity.” This is the kind of shit black people have to li…

What evidence do you have that it was because your boss was black? X happened and the target was black doesn't mean X happened BECAUSE the target was black. Did the cop use any sort of racial insult? I can share all kinds of negative interactions I've had and other white friends and family members have had with police for reasons unknown - including with black officers.

Re: Twilio to lay off 11% of workforce

#178

Post by crackercrews »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #175
taeric wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Why would they hit minorities harder? What does race have to do with that?

This is not always the case. Didn't some company just shutter their German office? Probably that hit whites harder.

But it's plausible that layoffs would hit certain groups harder right now. If your company had a big affirmative action push after the summer of 2020, you might have a bunch of junior minority employees. Perhaps they would be let go sooner than more senior employees or employees who not hired via an affirmative action program.

Re: Twilio to lay off 11% of workforce

#179

Post by nomel »

zo1 wrote: post #118

This is not going to be a pretty thread. Hopefully we can keep this civil and maybe move the conversation forward, as this could be a big tipping point in the landscape wrt DEI.

> and maybe move the conversation forward

What does this actually mean, in the context of "when we fired people, we considered their race"?

Re: Twilio to lay off 11% of workforce

#180

Post by grapehut »

notch656a wrote: post #172
grapehut wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is that it becomes necessary as marginalized candidates are given preferences during the hiring phase. So if the same privilege is not extended during layoffs it will unfairly impact them.

> if the same privilege is not extended during layoffs it will unfairly impact them. By unfairly you mean fairly.

It is brutally unfair to hire by one standard and then suddenly hold them to a higher one. And fairness aside, if you do not look through an anti-racist/anti-oppression lens you would destroy years of work of improving company diversity.
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