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PagerDuty to Lay Off 7% of Staff; Revenue Officer to Exit

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Re: PagerDuty to Lay Off 7% of Staff; Revenue Officer to Exit

#132
post #3

I know it's in fashion to have a cutesy name for your employees these days, but "Dutonian" is really stretching it haha.

Oh shit, here we go again. The Dutonians join the Googlers, Xooglers, Nooglers, Metamates, Amazonians, Mozillians, Stripes, Tweeps, Peeps, Veeps, Elasticians, SoundHounders, Vimeans, Rackers, Krakenites, Latticians and Plaids.

I think my favorite is still Asana, which calls its employees Asanas: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/anneraimondi_earlier-today-we...

Which contains gems like "exceptionally talented, mission driven, innovative and kind Asanas" and "once an Asana, always an Asana" — considering some of the Sanskrit usages are equivalent to "chair" or "seated posture".

"You were good chairs, but you have to go. As they alway say, once a place where you put your ass, always a place where you put your ass."

Re: PagerDuty to Lay Off 7% of Staff; Revenue Officer to Exit

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe those "better developers" were suddenly laid off by even bigger corps? I've noticed a trickle down effect in our very-small hiring queue. I can't help but imagine mid-sized companies are getting access to devs that only wanted to work for FAANG before.

Except by the original train of thought "everyone is laying off bad developers" so if you accept this (IMO flawed) premise you're going to be in a worse position after you get through this gigantic process.

It's a little sickening to take your train of thought to its destination, which is that all of the developers being laid off right now are "bad developers" and will put other companies in a "worse position" if hired.

Should someone laid off as a developer simply accept they can't cut it, leave the industry, and find a job as a barista where at least they can earn some tips?

You make a lot of assumptions about what devs are being laid off in the first place. And about the absolute quality of a developer.

One company's garbage developer is another company's 10x.

Re: PagerDuty to Lay Off 7% of Staff; Revenue Officer to Exit

#134
post #23

> Despite executing well over the last eight quarters, sustaining high growth and dramatically improving operating margins, there is more to do to secure PagerDuty’s future. This pattern of laying people off for short term gains is for the birds. It affects the entire industry when patterns like this become normalized. If you wonder why engineers don't stay around more than three years or have perceivably less loyalt…

As a company PagerDuty is negative in both Income and Cash Flow. Do you suggest they maintain velocity in the death spiral until ground contact?

No, but by that logic they knew what was going to happen if they hired people and did so anyway. That doesn't even pass the most basic of ethical smell tests.

Re: PagerDuty to Lay Off 7% of Staff; Revenue Officer to Exit

#135
post #43
post #23

> Despite executing well over the last eight quarters, sustaining high growth and dramatically improving operating margins, there is more to do to secure PagerDuty’s future. This pattern of laying people off for short term gains is for the birds. It affects the entire industry when patterns like this become normalized. If you wonder why engineers don't stay around more than three years or have perceivably less loyalt…

Would be interesting to study if there is a correlation between layoffs and remote work and employee churn. It's easier to layoff people if you don't have a connection with them.

Or you get more rigorous about what is being accomplished and realize that you don't really need as many people. Or you decide that a remote worker can be anywhere, so why not use the global talent pool? These are the dark sides of WFH for employees.

Re: PagerDuty to Lay Off 7% of Staff; Revenue Officer to Exit

#136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh shit, here we go again. The Dutonians join the Googlers, Xooglers, Nooglers, Metamates, Amazonians, Mozillians, Stripes, Tweeps, Peeps, Veeps, Elasticians, SoundHounders, Vimeans, Rackers, Krakenites, Latticians and Plaids.

Way back in the day we called our selves IBMers. I figured that the "ers" was fairly common and made sense. Kinda doesn't really sound right for names like Meta I admit, but metamates is just cringe inducing

When at IBM I could not read it as anything other than “ibb-mer”.

Re: PagerDuty to Lay Off 7% of Staff; Revenue Officer to Exit

#137
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ex-Opsgenie here. Sorry it turned out to be that way but I’m saddened by the state as well.

Small chance you worked anywhere near it, but just wanted to say the logging in OpsGenie is amazing - I kinda love working on anything that requires me to dive into the OpsGenie logs because they are so verbose and well done.

This might surprise you, but I've worked a lot on that logs feature, including two new architectures for the infrastrucutre of it over 3 years.

Re: PagerDuty to Lay Off 7% of Staff; Revenue Officer to Exit

#138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep seeing this sentiment everywhere. I think it's just two continental plates continuing to rub together: 1. Employment is purely transactional. Time is exchanged for money and money-equivalents. Full stop. 2. Your work is an act of self-expression. You derive meaning from your work, take pride in it, and feel a sense of ownership and responsibility in it. The work and its output bears the indelible mark of the m…

"I switch jobs every 2 years for a raise" vs "my employer laid me off, this should be illegal". You get the good with the bad. It's easier to get hired if it's easy to get fired. I'd buy your point about power imbalance if it was about blue collar workers. But not for IT, where jobs are plentiful and compensation is through the roof. Why not start a coop with likeminded folks and give yourselves the protection from b…

"I switched jobs" lets you plan, eg a small gap in unemployment to reduce missed paychecks or to minimize chance of needing COBRA.

"My employer laid me off" doesn't and adds on the implications of a lay off in your field of work, so you get to start your search after being unemployed and possibly in a field with many others looking for jobs.

Re: PagerDuty to Lay Off 7% of Staff; Revenue Officer to Exit

#139
post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a company PagerDuty is negative in both Income and Cash Flow. Do you suggest they maintain velocity in the death spiral until ground contact?

No, but by that logic they knew what was going to happen if they hired people and did so anyway. That doesn't even pass the most basic of ethical smell tests.

I don't think its quite that simple without knowing who specifically was laid off, tenure, specialty, for what reason, etc.

I cant imagine anyone would hire people with the intention of laying them off, so I can't agree with that conclusion.

I'd guess they hired with the intention of growing the company and for a myriad of reasons that didn't happen. Expansion and contraction are normal cycles in a company.

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