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Twilio to lay off 11% of workforce

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Re: Twilio to lay off 11% of workforce

#321
What's to stop everyone from declaring themselves hispanic or black when they are hired? First off, it's probably true to some degree (we're all mixed). Secondly, it's a self selected category. Third, your employer cannot question your selection.

Given that it's basically all downside to declare yourself white or asian, I'm expecting almost everyone to start electing black or hispanic in the coming months.

For those who cry it's unfair – there's presently no justice or transparency in how these "anti racist" aka affirmative action policies are being implemented. It's a black box, private committee selecting person A or person B , based on some criteria: likely a self-selected category or worse a stereotypical naming pattern. (and if you don't believe me, look into university admissions processes).

Re: Twilio to lay off 11% of workforce

#322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But we are all fine with racist hiring...

I am fine with hiring that enforces equality of opportunity (where nobody is denied an opportunity because of their race). I am NOT fine with hiring that enforces equality of outcome (where some people, who would otherwise be considered unqualified, are granted an opportunity because of their race). Race should account for ZERO percent of a hiring decision.

Believing race should account for zero percent of a hiring decision is what any decent person should believe.

Acknowledging it has, and does, and that it is more often than not to the detriment of minority groups is what any informed person should recognize.

Re: Twilio to lay off 11% of workforce

#323
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.

I thought you couldn't lay someone off for performance reasons.

Re: Twilio to lay off 11% of workforce

#324

(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.

To be marginalized is to be cheaper. All else equal, the cheaper worker will be given preference during hiring. So long as the worker remains cheaper, all else equal, the cheaper worker will also be given preference during layoffs. If the worker works their way up into a position that they are no longer cheaper, they won't be given preference, but they also aren't marginalized anymore so you would't expect preference.

Re: Twilio to lay off 11% of workforce

#325

>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…

Twilio recentky acquired Segment and Sendgrid.

There is overhead per customer in each of their segments for compliance, revenue retention, contract growth, and support.

From a technical standpoint, engineers are required for each of these aspects as well.

Then there is overhead for employees, in terms of managers, human resources, and it.

Re: Twilio to lay off 11% of workforce

#327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The issue is that the layoff will disproportionately affect protected groups. Engineering is disproportionately male, east asian, south asian, and white. Companies with explicit diversity targets make up for this by compensating in other company orgs (HR, marketing, sales, admin) making them disproportionately female, black, and hispanic. This means when you keep good engineers but lay off HR, marketing, sales, and a…

Bingo. This is the double-edged sword of heavy affirmative action in hiring. If things get tough and you have to make cuts to save the company, the people who you should let go are disproportionately from affirmative action groups.

Re: Twilio to lay off 11% of workforce

#328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we look at a 1 year old black child, and a 1 year old while child, the average household wealth of the white child is around 10x higher. What did the white child do to deserve this? How much better could they possibly be at drooling and crawling to have so much more wealth available to them? So I guess your belief is that household wealth has no impact on children?

>What did the white child do to deserve this? Ah, the fallacy that everything you receive from your ancestors is undeserved. Will we be doing race-based asset appropriation tomorrow, comrade? I think I'm not interested in discussing this with someone holding such a position which I consider completely deluded.

> the fallacy that everything you receive from your ancestors is undeserved

Is there an intelligent argument that some infants are more deserving than others?

Re: Twilio to lay off 11% of workforce

#329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

To imply there is absolutely no overlap between the group of people espousing CRT and the group of people who believe the world would be a better place if every white person spontaneously died is to be willfully ignorant of an unfortunate reality. We should be taking the opportunity to disavow the latter on behalf of the good intentions of the former.

Do you have any actual data on how many people "believe the world would be a better place if every white person spontaneously died"? I don't mean this to be combative but without some actual survey data or something proving their significance, it seems like this is one of those "it feels true to me" things

Re: Twilio to lay off 11% of workforce

#330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They say anti-racist but they really just mean racist. They are taking race into account when making staffing decisions. It's as illegal as the extra "side pot" of raise money my company has for diverse employees.

Companies care about diversity numbers when they have a lot of cheap funding. When funding is tough, pure capitalism takes over woke values and it is up to whether your monetary value to the company>your monetary cost to the company.

There are lots of studies claiming that diversity makes companies more successful. But all that I've seen are correlational studies. And those are equally explained by the idea you mentioned. When companies are flush, they spend money on affirmative action. Therefore companies that have heavy affirmative action tend to be more successful.
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