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Twilio to lay off 11% of workforce

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Re: Twilio to lay off 11% of workforce

#351

Post by happyopossum »

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.

I’m sorry, but present racism is not absolved by last racism. There is no “historical context” that excuses a society from promoting race based discrimination. Period.

Re: Twilio to lay off 11% of workforce

#352

Post by Ozzie_osman »

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…

(White male, minority religion)

I read this just as "we were careful not to have our layoff unfairly impact minorities", not "we unfairly fired non-minorities".

Unfortunately, reading the comments here, it sounds like most people assumed the latter, which I found quite sad.

Re: Twilio to lay off 11% of workforce

#353

Post by yibg »

peter422 wrote: post #86
nemo44x wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

And what do you imagine the effect of that "factor" would be?

Taking offense to unfair firing practices also doesn't mean one doesn't take offense to unfair hiring practices. But the topic at hand is layoff, not hiring.

Re: Twilio to lay off 11% of workforce

#354

Post by monocularvision »

noelsusman wrote: post #319
Ensorceled wrote: post #168

This line seems to be referenced a lot in these comments: > Layoffs like this can have a more pronounced impact on marginalized communities, so we were particularly focused on ensuring our layoffs – while a business necessity today – were carried out through an Anti-Racist/Anti-Oppression lens. Sounds like they are taking steps to make sure whoever was chosen for layoffs were not chosen for racist reasons. But so man…

HN is full of reactionaries who are easily triggered by any sort of diversity-related language and seem to lose their ability to think critically. Everyone complaining about that line is making a whole lot of assumptions about what it actually means. FWIW I would be interested to know what the CEO actually meant by that. My assumption is it's more lip service than anything else.

I love seeing people defend this statement by basically saying “it actually meant nothing”… as if that is a really strong defense.

Re: Twilio to lay off 11% of workforce

#355

Post by mattalex »

Ensorceled wrote: post #168

This line seems to be referenced a lot in these comments: > Layoffs like this can have a more pronounced impact on marginalized communities, so we were particularly focused on ensuring our layoffs – while a business necessity today – were carried out through an Anti-Racist/Anti-Oppression lens. Sounds like they are taking steps to make sure whoever was chosen for layoffs were not chosen for racist reasons. But so man…

> Sounds like they are taking steps to make sure whoever was chosen for layoffs were not chosen for racist reasons.

that would have been illegal either way. Really there are two options here: Either they did something questionable and want to deflect (like being racist against white people. I'm not saying this is the case but it is a possibility), or they want to get a pat on the back for not breaking the law.

It's one of those sentences that immediately puts your mind to why it was placed in there: "[..] so we were particularly focused on ensuring our layoffs – while a business necessity today – were carried out without clubbing any seals."

Why would one say that? Why does one explicitly mention this? To what gain?

Either you want brownie-points for something that should be a given, or you want to get ahead of something.

Re: Twilio to lay off 11% of workforce

#356

Post by [deleted] »

peter422 wrote: post #307
rootusrootus wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And thus the exact problem. It's okay to observe that a whole class of people enjoy a privilege. Where it goes off the rails is when you use that knowledge to discriminate against individuals in an attempt to correct the historical injustice.

And thus we perpetuate the injustice indefinitely! Your essential argument seems to be that once an injustice is over one generation old, it is as if it never happened, no matter if the after effects continue to cascade into modern day. You cannot just magically pretend an individual is not part of a society.

[deleted]

Re: Twilio to lay off 11% of workforce

#357

Post by [deleted] »

peter422 wrote: post #307
rootusrootus wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And thus the exact problem. It's okay to observe that a whole class of people enjoy a privilege. Where it goes off the rails is when you use that knowledge to discriminate against individuals in an attempt to correct the historical injustice.

And thus we perpetuate the injustice indefinitely! Your essential argument seems to be that once an injustice is over one generation old, it is as if it never happened, no matter if the after effects continue to cascade into modern day. You cannot just magically pretend an individual is not part of a society.

[deleted]

Re: Twilio to lay off 11% of workforce

#358

Post by catiopatio »

peter422 wrote: post #307
rootusrootus wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And thus the exact problem. It's okay to observe that a whole class of people enjoy a privilege. Where it goes off the rails is when you use that knowledge to discriminate against individuals in an attempt to correct the historical injustice.

And thus we perpetuate the injustice indefinitely! Your essential argument seems to be that once an injustice is over one generation old, it is as if it never happened, no matter if the after effects continue to cascade into modern day. You cannot just magically pretend an individual is not part of a society.

No post body was provided.

Re: Twilio to lay off 11% of workforce

#359

Post by strix_varius »

dehrmann wrote: post #67
crackercrews wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps the next administration might. The current one is more likely to offer a pat on the back.

For how much Republicans hate woke politics, I'm surprised Trump didn't have the EEOC look into hiring practices of tech companies. I'm not sure what would come of it (though I suspect there are illegal practices in order to hit diversity targets), but the announcement would have been a political win because Republican's don't trust big tech, don't trust coastal liberals, and don't like that this might be taking plac…

Christ you're right, would have been brilliant.

Re: Twilio to lay off 11% of workforce

#360

Post by christophilus »

peckrob wrote: post #252
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…

I am glad I'm not the only person who has had this thought, and I think it every time I see how many people some of these random tech companies employ. Those are the kinds of employee numbers I would expect from a much larger company than Twilio. For reference, in the past I worked for an immensely profitable eCommerce business and I don't think our entire engineering department ever reached more than 40 people at it…

When I worked at a VC-backed firm, headcount was a bragging point and seemed to be a metric they were concerned about in the opposite direction you’d expect— that is, if I was a business owner, I’d be concerned about having too much headcount. They were always busy seemingly trying to maximize headcount. I never understood it.
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