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Twilio to lay off 11% of workforce

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Re: Twilio to lay off 11% of workforce

#371

Post by dilap »

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 agree the statement is ambiguous. However, it does seem to be hinting at something.

What do you think "layoffs were carried out through an Anti-Racist/Anti-Oppression lens" means?

Like, what concrete actions do you think they took to justify that statement?

Do you think it's purely window-dressing? That they did absolutely nothing different, and just included the statement?

I don't know if it's an authoritative source, but here's one of the top Google results for "what is anti-racisim":

"Anti-racism is also a system – a system in which we create policies, practices, and procedures to promote racial equity."

and

"Anti-racist policy creates systems that center the lived experiences of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color"

and

"We refer to ‘racism’ as an interpersonal display of prejudice toward Black, Indigenous, and People of Color."

Given the above understanding of the term "anti-racist", if I were a betting man, I'd bet that the racial makeup of the laid off employees is not an even sampling of the racial makeup of the company.

What do you think?

(Link to anti-racist information: https://www.nlc.org/article/2020/07/21/what-does-it-mean-to-...)

Re: Twilio to lay off 11% of workforce

#372

Post by choko »

sophacles wrote: post #345
choko wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More white people own businesses and there are more white people in the USA. It was likely an innocent assumption where no offense is intended. Not everything is as sinister as "anti-racists" claim. I refuse to subscribe to their conspiracy-based hidden racism theories. I'm "glad" you were able to claim your "white privilege". Coming from a low class background, I was not afforded such and have had to struggle to get…

I wonder what would happen if you replied to the post I wrote rather than the one you imagined?

I wonder what would happen if you weren't so condescending. Your opening statement was "I used to think like you" as if you have evolved and are somehow morally superior. I see no evidence of this assumed superiority. You made a ton of assumptions in your post and it was mostly about your own white guilt since you are on "easy mode" as you put it. You sound like you have some unresolved issues and I encourage you to get help.

Re: Twilio to lay off 11% of workforce

#373

Post by Kye »

ClassyJacket wrote: post #159
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.

Agreed. I don't consider myself to have moved politically right at all, but progressives are moving drastically left. Stuff like this, and the modern gender politics that is resulting in the erasure of women and lesbians in particular, has resulted in me no longer referring to myself as a leftist.

No one is erasing lesbians or women.

Re: Twilio to lay off 11% of workforce

#374

Post by wizofaus »

crackercrews wrote: post #363
wizofaus wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually we can and do measure it and such linkages have been demonstrated. There are probably more succinct references, but here was one of the first I found: http://kirwaninstitute.osu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/20...

Can you share a section reference? Looks like it's 90 pages long.

Chapter 4 (pp. 44-) is a good place to start, particularly "UNCOVERING BIAS BY USING FICTITIOUS RESUMES" (p. 47).

Re: Twilio to lay off 11% of workforce

#375

Post by quickthrower2 »

roflyear wrote: post #81
ryandrake wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 goi…

Funny. You could kill a company with too much money because they hired people they now need to spend time to manage. Instead if doing the thing.

Re: Twilio to lay off 11% of workforce

#376

Post by ForHackernews »

NeverFade wrote: post #320
mrtranscendence wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think this is right. Affirmative action has been upheld by the courts, and is currently in practice at some private employers (and is mandated for government contractors).

You are wrong. There is one judgement that upholds a form of affirmative action in very narrow circumstances (education) and only in very limited form, and even that is challenged in SCOTUS and likely to be overturned: https://www.wgbh.org/news/education/2021/07/22/as-supreme-co... Racist discrimination is an ugly thing, even when you call it pretty names like "affirmative action". If Affirmative Action was universal…

Men actually do benefit from soft affirmative action in college admissions because of this disparity.

You can look this up for yourself, but here's one source[0]. Men are admitted at a higher rate, with worse grades and test scores, by selective universities that want to make sure they have a "balanced" class of undergraduates.

[0] https://www.ivywise.com/ivywise-knowledgebase/resources/arti...

Re: Twilio to lay off 11% of workforce

#377

Post by exolymph »

NeverFade wrote: post #300
crackercrews wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It is absolutely illegal. It violates the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which: > outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964 Yes, that's the same act that makes it illegal to discriminate against racial minorities, women, religions, etc. Discrimination based on race is illegal, pure and simple. Hiding it under nice names like "aff…

De jure illegal, sure, but we all know it's de facto required for institutions of a certain size. Laws are only as good as the enforcement.

Re: Twilio to lay off 11% of workforce

#378

Post by quickthrower2 »

downrightmike wrote: post #151
ryandrake wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

Hiring people so that your competition can't is a business tactic, not a smart one going into a recession, but worked for decades for FAANG

Surely only works for the biggest companies. You would need to hire millions of people to drain the global pool of developers. Maybe thousands to drain the best ones intersect US working rights.

Re: Twilio to lay off 11% of workforce

#379

Post by ForHackernews »

code_biologist wrote: post #251
coredog64 wrote: post #228

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…

Obviously the answer is to fire the expensive engineers (keep a skeleton crew for maintenance and bugfixes) and keep the sales & marketing folks. If 20 years working in engineering has taught me anything it's that sales and marketing is where the real money is made.

Re: Twilio to lay off 11% of workforce

#380

Post by ZephyrBlu »

rsync wrote: post #274
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…

"What are these companies doing with so many people? What are they doing? Like, what are their day-to-day tasks?" I don't know but I will say that I had the time of my life at the Signal 2018 conference where they rented out Bill Graham Arena and booked OK GO to play ... open bar and an arena full of indoor food trucks ... ... and earlier that day Tony Hawk was doing a halfpipe demo ... related to Twilio somehow ...…

Silicon Valley was a documentary.
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