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Macroeconomic changes have made it impossible for me to want to pay you

mcsweeneys.net

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Re: Macroeconomic changes have made it impossible for me to want to pay you

#41

Post by mshake2 »

Crusoe123 wrote: post #36
mshake2 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She wasn't a recruiter, she was a Partner Services Program Manager[0]. And there's dozens of videos just like these of employees flexing their perks daily while appearing to do very little work. It's been going on for awhile. If you're asserting that it's all propaganda, you're going to need to give some sources and not half-baked conspiracy theories. 0. https://news.yahoo.com/former-google-employee-documents-day-...

OK I mixed with a different video that people mocked on twitter. First one was bragging about amenities like in your post and second one is layoff - https://urlebird.com/video/def-not-an-ideal-start-to-2023-bu... . Here it is indeed a recruiter. Do you honestly believe those TikToks were made spontaneously and they depict a realistic view of the workplace? It's not a half baked conspiracy theory - it's called a PR st…

It doesn't matter if it's a realistic metric for the amount of work done. It's demoralizing to her coworkers that actually work hard, and I would fire her based on that alone. But the fact that she was fired for reasons probably unrelated to her Tiktoks is just more evidence that probably wasn't adding a whole lot of value.

Re: Macroeconomic changes have made it impossible for me to want to pay you

#42

Post by arrrg »

mshake2 wrote: post #22
gunnihinn wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly every single one of those execs is very replaceable too.

Says the person who lacks the ability to fire them. The reason why you don't have that ability is the same reason why you are seen as more replaceable.

Is it necessary to fire them? That's the relevant question we should ask ourselves.

A hiring freeze and marking obsolete positions as obsolete (meaning if someone switches teams or quits that specific position will not be replaced) should be a workable model for all profitable companies with some cash reserves. Sure, it takes a bit longer and probably costs a bit more (though probably not tons and lay offs also have other traumatic effects concerning knowledge loss, morale and motivation that can negatively affect the business) but it's a workable model.

Embed that into overall more cautious hiring in good times (yeah, we can't time travel, so that's not an option - but to me that's the thing that should be learned from this) and you should never have to do any layoffs if your business is basically sound. I would be shocked, for example, if Apple were to do any lay offs. They seem to follow that approach (well, probably not in the retail context which I also think is unfortunate).

To me it seems like those lay offs are primarily a tool to communicate and that just sucks. It sucks that something that should clearly be seen as a management failure (if you need to do lay offs it seems to me obvious that management is to blame, not those laid off) can in this weird upside down world be used as a communication tool towards the wider world that they are doing something useful. Even if it wouldn't be needed.

Also, I just don't think people should be treated like that, especially if it's not needed. It seems so pointlessly cruel and inhuman. This is not the world I want to live in.

And I know that's hard to pull off in capitalism. Maybe that's the issue. Though it's not as if you cannot modify capitalism to at least not allow for stuff like this.

Re: Macroeconomic changes have made it impossible for me to want to pay you

#43

Post by Yoric »

SturgeonsLaw wrote: post #34
username_my1 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wrong view / comparios ... in a 5% interest rate environment, companies fight for investors money .. if you don't do the cuts and find a way to be efficient investors will put their money somewhere else that's more profitable. this reasoning is pure and simple and correct, you start from the top, not from the fact "they can afford it" because their job is not to spend the money they have their job is to increase valu…

Let's do a little root cause analysis. Why do companies like Google, Microsoft and Amazon, with massive income streams combined with substantial cash holdings, need investor money? Maybe Toyota's "Five Why's" can shed some light on it. We need to fire thousands of people. Why? Because it will make us more attractive for investors. Why? So they put their money in our company. Why? Because that will buoy our stock pric…

True but oversimplified a little.

Because that will buoy our stock price, which is important.

Why?

Because our stock price is also our operational funds.

How comes?

Because our actual funds are invested somewhere else.

Why?

Because it makes shareholder richer.

Oh.

Re: Macroeconomic changes have made it impossible for me to want to pay you

#45

Post by mshake2 »

arrrg wrote: post #42
mshake2 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Says the person who lacks the ability to fire them. The reason why you don't have that ability is the same reason why you are seen as more replaceable.

Is it necessary to fire them? That's the relevant question we should ask ourselves. A hiring freeze and marking obsolete positions as obsolete (meaning if someone switches teams or quits that specific position will not be replaced) should be a workable model for all profitable companies with some cash reserves. Sure, it takes a bit longer and probably costs a bit more (though probably not tons and lay offs also have…

>Is it necessary to fire them? That's the relevant question we should ask ourselves.

That's not the relevant question. The relevant questions are: were the layoffs illegal, and if they weren't, then why is it any of your business? If you don't want to live in that world, start your own startup, hire people, and never fire them. Nobody is stopping you.

Re: Macroeconomic changes have made it impossible for me to want to pay you

#46

Post by icu »

I think one of the hard truths is that corporate managers and executives are often disconnected from the decisions they are making and the negative impacts of those decisions are pushed on to employees.

There aren't many solutions to this problem besides better voluntary ethical treatment of employees or compulsory enforcement via a set of professional standards set by a 'management body', a 'management regulator' or well written employment laws.

However, having said this, I don't think many US based management or executives would want to be constrained in this way due to cultural perspectives around capitalism. I've spent a lot of time thinking why socialist policies are part of the zeitgeist in the UK but not the US. I think it's due to a historical hangover of industrialization and having a society where there was the rapid exploitation of workers and especially children. I think socialism in the form of worker rights and healthcare was an upper-society response to squalor and destitution being in the face of the political elite in London. My somewhat jaded view is that socialist policies in the UK are setup so that instead of the wealthy paying for a greater proportion of the negative externalities caused by industrialization and capitalism, everyone, would pay in an "equal" way. However equal isn't quite equitable because National Insurance employee deductions are capped out at 2% above a salary threshold of £4,189 a month.

No I'm not saying capitalism is bad or that socialism doesn't have problems. I think free market capitalism is good in many cases, it just needs to be constrained by high ethical standards. However, I don't think free market capitalism can solve all the challenges we face in society and Western democracies need a Government mechanism to address wealth inequality otherwise the foundations of society start to break down.

In comparison the US, with it's vast land mass and varied dispersed resources, industrialized in a more distributed way, the exploitive effect of industrialization was far away from Washington DC. Even now I think US politicians still don't viscerally understand the human suffering caused by the hollowing out of blue collar jobs due to globalization.

For a time I thought 'triple bottom line' might work, but it seems like ESG has taken over with an emphasis on the environment and not people. While I care deeply about Mother Earth, realistically I think people who are struggling to survive have no mental space to consider their environmental impact.

Re: Macroeconomic changes have made it impossible for me to want to pay you

#47

Post by notahacker »

grey-area wrote: post #33
notahacker wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This might be true of a lot of companies, but then you look at others like Waymo where the revenue is pure projection, the relationship between staff numbers and having a workable product unknown and the pile of cash available to fund it not requiring any borrowing, and it looks suspiciously like trend following (with maybe a bit of actually self driving cars are further off than we thought but, hey, not our mistake…

It’s not trend following, it is genuine existential fear, particularly someone like waymo - With 0% rates money is free and you can take forever to make a profit, nobody cares, just borrow more money if you run out. With 5% rates money is expensive and you have say 2 years to make a profit or everyone loses their job and investors lose their funds. This doesn’t really apply to massive companies like google or MS of c…

I picked Waymo because unlike some startups losing staff obviously isn't the route to profitability for it, and it started off as a Google-branded project backed by the near unlimited cash reserves of Google. If they're in a position where they're not confident of getting further support from that source, I don't think IRR calculations over a 2 year time horizon are the main factor there.

Re: Macroeconomic changes have made it impossible for me to want to pay you

#48

Post by [deleted] »

gunnihinn wrote: post #18
mshake2 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>So why is their exit equivalent to several mansions and mine is around about a year’s worth of salary? Honestly? Because 1) you are very replaceable and 2) you have a very low chance in succeeding at organizing any kind of group/union action. If either of those two facts were different, you would have more leverage. But they aren't so you don't.

Honestly every single one of those execs is very replaceable too.

[deleted]

Re: Macroeconomic changes have made it impossible for me to want to pay you

#49

Post by arrrg »

mshake2 wrote: post #45
arrrg wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it necessary to fire them? That's the relevant question we should ask ourselves. A hiring freeze and marking obsolete positions as obsolete (meaning if someone switches teams or quits that specific position will not be replaced) should be a workable model for all profitable companies with some cash reserves. Sure, it takes a bit longer and probably costs a bit more (though probably not tons and lay offs also have…

>Is it necessary to fire them? That's the relevant question we should ask ourselves. That's not the relevant question. The relevant questions are: were the layoffs illegal, and if they weren't, then why is it any of your business? If you don't want to live in that world, start your own startup, hire people, and never fire them. Nobody is stopping you.

Do you think it‘s pointless to talk about the ethics of decisions of other people, especially if those decisions affect several thousand people? Do you think anything that is legal is also ethical?

Also, in general I don’t live in that world. It‘s much harder for sound companies to just lay off people in Germany (though not impossible).

Re: Macroeconomic changes have made it impossible for me to want to pay you

#50

Post by pbhjpbhj »

Aeolun wrote: post #20
username_my1 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wrong view / comparios ... in a 5% interest rate environment, companies fight for investors money .. if you don't do the cuts and find a way to be efficient investors will put their money somewhere else that's more profitable. this reasoning is pure and simple and correct, you start from the top, not from the fact "they can afford it" because their job is not to spend the money they have their job is to increase valu…

> their job is to increase value for investors Is their job to increase it in the short or the long term? These “I know we’ve been doing great for 3 years, but the past 3 months haven’t been so hot, so we’re going to cut jobs.” Messages seem incredibly shortsighted.

Do investors sell if they company income falls for a quarter? I'm guessing yes, and that answers the question of whether the company looks to the short term when seeking only to satisfy investors.

The whole system is wrong.

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