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Twilio to lay off 11% of workforce

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Re: Twilio to lay off 11% of workforce

#221

Post by crackercrews »

lr1970 wrote: post #209
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…

But is it plain illegal. For employment purposes Race is a protected class (at least in USA) and racial discrimination while hiring or firing violates federal law. How would they get away with this?

Isn't affirmative action in hiring legal? Seems like this is just the same thing but for layoffs.

Re: Twilio to lay off 11% of workforce

#222

Post by time_to_smile »

_fat_santa wrote: post #3

> The cloud communications software builder has been striving for profitability in 2023, and the restructuring plan aims to improve operating margins, create a better selling capacity and reduce operating costs. If you look at all the layoffs we had this year, the vast majority are by companies that are VC funded and unprofitable. It would be a scary time to work for a VC backed company, because you're one missed fun…

You can't just broadly look at all companies for patterns in layoffs. It's important to divide startups from IPO'd companies.

A common pattern for all of these is the inability to generate profit, but this is business-as-usual for a startup. Even in normal times it's okay for startups to lose money.

Startups typically perform layoffs because they are running out of runway and need to extend the life of the company. Their entire reason for existing is the liquidity event that is either acquisition or IPO, and it is essential for investors that they survive long enough to see such an event.

For publicly traded companies, which we've seen a lot of layoffs in recently (which in the last 30 days includes: Twilio, Rent the Runway, Uber, Shopify, Snap, Wayfair, New Relic). The common theme for almost all of this is negative net earnings and B2C. This is what makes Twilio interesting, they're the first B2B IPO with major layoffs.

One thing that I keep hearing at my IPO'd startup is that "we won't have layoffs since we have a long runway", but runway matters way less for IPO'd companies. The key aim for IPO'd companies is to please your investors, and if you're shares keep taking a hit because interest rates go up and your net earnings remains steeply negative, then layoffs are coming.

If this continues it will start to impact profitable companies, but not before doing much more damage to the non-profitable ones. This feels like a slow motion re-enactment of the dot com burst.

Re: Twilio to lay off 11% of workforce

#223

Post by vondur »

lr1970 wrote: post #209
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…

But is it plain illegal. For employment purposes Race is a protected class (at least in USA) and racial discrimination while hiring or firing violates federal law. How would they get away with this?

I'm pretty sure if you are white and laid off, you will have a pretty strong case for a lawsuit. I can't believe someone in legal wouldn't warn the leadership that putting out a press release stating this was a good idea.

Re: Twilio to lay off 11% of workforce

#224

Post by replygirl »

taurath wrote: post #213
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.

what conservative code words?

Re: Twilio to lay off 11% of workforce

#225

Post by x86_64Ubuntu »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #174
peter422 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The person you are responding to didn't mention slavery, and knowing the etymology of a word doesn't mean that you know how the phenomenon may have historical echoes.

Re: Twilio to lay off 11% of workforce

#226

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Twilio to lay off 11% of workforce

#227

Post by gitfan86 »

vondur wrote: post #223
lr1970 wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But is it plain illegal. For employment purposes Race is a protected class (at least in USA) and racial discrimination while hiring or firing violates federal law. How would they get away with this?

I'm pretty sure if you are white and laid off, you will have a pretty strong case for a lawsuit. I can't believe someone in legal wouldn't warn the leadership that putting out a press release stating this was a good idea.

Legal probably approved the word "lens". And if this ends up in court they will say that "lens" means that we are aware of the impact layoffs have on our society, but does not change who we fire during a layoff, meaning even if we didn't do this through a lens the person suing would have still been let go.

Re: Twilio to lay off 11% of workforce

#228

Post by coredog64 »

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,…

The EEOC will have something to say if your layoff disproportionate effects a protected group. The right thing here is for management to keep their mouth shut and point people to the EEOC if they believe this layoff was disproportionate.

Re: Twilio to lay off 11% of workforce

#229

Post by pclmulqdq »

crackercrews wrote: post #55
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…

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…

Everyone who was laid off here has strong grounds to sue for racial discrimination. White people and non-white people alike.
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