441–450 of 481 posts
"There are three ways to make a living in this business; be first, be smarter, or cheat. Now, I don't cheat. And, although I like to think we have some pretty smart people in this building, it sure is a hell of a lot easier to just be first."
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No. Most layoffs are done by the managers being given either quotas or burn rate caps and tasked with producing lists of people to layoff. The point of "many bosses" is if your manager knows you work on other projects, it's easier to leave you off the list. The point of "no bosses" is no manager is tasked with considering you. You're not on anyone's books. There's numerous ways of doing this if you're interested. If…
> The point of "no bosses" is no manager is tasked with considering you. You're not on anyone's books. There's numerous ways of doing this if you're interested. Can you speak more to this? I don't know that I've ever seen this somewhere I worked.
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msft is a business..not charity. my experience at two big tech companies said this extremely overdue. especially since about 2012.. lots of added head count. managers and sr. managers and directors #1 priority on increasing head count to grow empires and get promotions. it elephant in the room supported by easy US fed policy. uncomfortable truth these people dont want to admit. what is vision for these new teams? if…
re >> #1 priority on increasing head count to grow empires and get promotions. I'm sure that's the case always , but I'm convinced it's the case more often than many of us realize . I also recall this being discussed in David Graeber's book "Bullshit Jobs"
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No. Most layoffs are done by the managers being given either quotas or burn rate caps and tasked with producing lists of people to layoff. The point of "many bosses" is if your manager knows you work on other projects, it's easier to leave you off the list. The point of "no bosses" is no manager is tasked with considering you. You're not on anyone's books. There's numerous ways of doing this if you're interested. If…
> The point of "no bosses" is no manager is tasked with considering you. You're not on anyone's books. There's numerous ways of doing this if you're interested. Can you speak more to this? I don't know that I've ever seen this somewhere I worked.
You can be entrusted to work on your own little bet project for somebody in a C suite and you become so low on the priority that you're out of mind.
During a power vacuum, you can play teams off each other in a multiple bosses strategy and appeal upstream in the org chart. The exploit here is the company hierarchy in practice is closer to the Habsburg monarchy than some binary tree.
The multiple boss play can get you to a no boss play in this situation because each one will assume you're doing important things on other projects.
All of this requires a keen skill at social engineering. I worked at a place where I didn't have a meeting with anybody for about a year. I played the meetings off each other at first and they all slowly became optional and eventually I got them off my calendar.
I should probably use my time doing better things but I'm really lazy.
These are all hacks. YMMV.
This is a curious decision. Microsoft shows a ~73 billion dollar net income [0] and it's probably reasonable to assume their shareholders are enjoying a robust, growing business. I wonder what they believe this reduction in staff is meant to provide? Will this really and meaningfully move their bottom line or will it better tighten the performance characteristics of the staff? [0] https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives…
If you have 10k in your checking account and are saving an extra 10k per year, would you not cancel a $200/mo gym membership you don’t need?
Here's a dashboard we made keeping track of the economy. We're now at a higher number of layoffs in January than any month in 2022 except for November https://app.plusdocs.com/startup-funding-/page/clcgzzo551257...
Here's a dashboard we made keeping track of the economy. We're now at a higher number of layoffs in January than any month in 2022 except for November https://app.plusdocs.com/startup-funding-/page/clcgzzo551257...
These layoff articles are incomplete without mentioning how many they hired and when. This brings Microsoft back to their staffing levels of when exactly? March 2021?
What’s the relevance of knowing a previous employee count? How does this information “complete” the story?
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That's a good point. Few people realize that a big part of fighting inflation is getting wages down. Jerome Powell said as much in an interview in May of last year: > So in principle, it seems as though, by moderating demand, we could see vacancies come down, and as a result—and they could come down fairly significantly and I think put supply and demand at least closer together than they are, and that that would give…
Not just Powell, every Fed kept talking about "we don't want to repeat history". What they meant is 1970-1979, when they were beating down the economy for a decade and when they decided to let the pressure go, inflation went right back where it was before the beating. Because the wages were still up and with the power of the unions it was very difficult to bring them down. At least that's how it was explained to me b…
If our only two options are the Fed or FAANG winning I choose neither.
The macro market (and their truthsayers) are obsessed with reducing things to the [current price] of public companies. Even though there is never ending increasing disconnect between their stock prices and the long term value they generate for the broader markets. The more we gamble on those small sets of metrics being the "truth" from which to guide society the more we (see: gov and media) will adapt to protect and push them higher.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's a good point. Few people realize that a big part of fighting inflation is getting wages down. Jerome Powell said as much in an interview in May of last year: > So in principle, it seems as though, by moderating demand, we could see vacancies come down, and as a result—and they could come down fairly significantly and I think put supply and demand at least closer together than they are, and that that would give…
Not just Powell, every Fed kept talking about "we don't want to repeat history". What they meant is 1970-1979, when they were beating down the economy for a decade and when they decided to let the pressure go, inflation went right back where it was before the beating. Because the wages were still up and with the power of the unions it was very difficult to bring them down. At least that's how it was explained to me b…