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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

#71

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0 »

zmxz wrote: post #13

[flagged]

Um. Last time I checked, Google interviews are not known for being easy to the point that just being interviewed says something about the candidate ( they either have an in with someone or have some level of expertise ) and bestows some credence for recruiters. If that is the case, was the person able to fool the entire sets of panels interviewing that person? If so, the failure may not be of the individual. The system that allowed the individual to pass is flawed.

Sure, but numbers don't suggest anything other than slower growth. Not a loss of revenue, but slower, than an activist investor wants, growth.

I personally call BS on the 'they base it on numbers you know'. Some do, but they are a minority. I won't subject you to details, but I can explicitly say that the extent to which data is used as a justification for an already made decision is disheartening. Sometimes even if you have all the info, data and numbers, it will not matter. The decision was made despite it.

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

#72

Post by tkfu »

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.

This is one of those worldviews that seems to be common among US-Americans, but sounds totally bizarre from an outside perspective. You say "If you don't want to live in that world, start your own startup, hire people, and never fire them.", but why should that be my course of action instead of working collectively to make sure that companies' decisions are driven by all stakeholders--owners (shareholders), employees, customers, and regulators to the extent that the company's actions generate negative externalities. Why should that be my course of action instead of advocating for change, and expressing my displeasure and outrage when large companies act in ways that I would never accept from a human being with empathy? Yes it's my business, because I live in the world, in a society, and everyone who lives in a society is affected by everyone else.

I was really fascinated to learn that most North Americans never even encounter the concept of ordocapitalism/ordoliberalism in their basic economics courses. Somehow, a concept of capitalist economic organization that has been the recipe for success for the creation of most successful economic turnaround in modern times is just...ignored?

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

#73

Post by mrsuprawsm »

roenxi wrote: post #31

Management needs to be made up of the sort of people who make economically optimum decisions. Without diminishing the horrible experience of being fired; if we have people who purposefully keep tens of thousands of people working on jobs that don't make sense to them, on aggregate society will be much worse for everyone. We have a system that allows people to do unpopular things, like this, because it works better th…

it would be nicer if they made economically optimal decisions in the first place, instead of making a bad decision in 2022, firing a shitload of people in 2023, and going "ah whoops our bad".

competent operators wouldn't get into this problem in the first place

(or, alternatively, these layoffs are also an incompetent decision and the C-levels are simply following the herd)

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

#74

Post by ZiiS »

manmal wrote: post #66
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.

Everyone is replaceable, in some way. Even Steve Jobs and Bill Gates seem to have been replaceable, at least from a stock owner perspective. I'd like to offer a different explanation: Entrenched in-groups and institutions control access to the highest paid jobs. You need to become a part of those to be allowed to participate.

Being able to run a megacorp is very different then being able to build one.

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

#75

Post by ikiris »

Aeolun wrote: post #69
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why would the company care if the investors sell? They’ll happily buy again when things are looking up. Only when things are going so terrible that the board is trying to get you replaced is when it becomes important. If the board aims to replace you because of a bad quarter in a bad economy… find a different company to be CEO of I guess.

Because a huge part of their compensation both to themselves and their employees is floated stock.

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

#76

Post by tkfu »

drdrek wrote: post #61

Not to rain on the common man parade, most of these layoffs are after even bigger hiring rounds. Microsoft hired 40K employees in 22 to layoff 10k in 23, that is still 30K more employees. In 22: Meta hired 12K+ Netflix 2k+ Google 20K+ Amazon 300K+ (!) But oh me oh my the free market that lets the companies hire lets them fire. Evil money man used to give me money to get compensation, that is good greed. Now evil mone…

Your numbers are massively wrong at a glance, when I went to check them. Microsoft's total number of employees increased by roughly 40k between June 30 2021 and June 30 2022, but a large portion of that increase was from M&A, not from hiring, and they started large layoffs in July 2022. Net hires are not public info, but it's probably more like 15k in the period specified. Amazon has 300k employees total, and they obviously didn't hire all 300k in 2022.

Those were the first two I checked and they're massively off, so I'm inclined to think the rest of your argument is also in bad faith or misinformed.

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

#77

Post by Kon-Peki »

ZiiS wrote: post #74
manmal wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone is replaceable, in some way. Even Steve Jobs and Bill Gates seem to have been replaceable, at least from a stock owner perspective. I'd like to offer a different explanation: Entrenched in-groups and institutions control access to the highest paid jobs. You need to become a part of those to be allowed to participate.

Being able to run a megacorp is very different then being able to build one.

Good news for them! They don't need to build a megacorp - they already have one. And it needs running.

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

#78

Post by pas »

safety1st wrote: post #37
ath3nd wrote: post #17

What a funny write! Despite it being funny, if it wasn't for the outright satire, it would be virtually indistinguishable from the recent tech layoff messages: Gitpod - https://www.gitpod.io/blog/building-for-the-long-run Microsoft (this is maybe the classiest) - https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2023/01/18/subject-focusing... Zuck/Meta - https://about.fb.com/news/2022/11/mark-zuckerberg-layoff-mes... Stripe - https:/…

Maybe I've lost my heart but it's hard for me to find fault with the way Nadella communicated MSFT's layoffs. They're a business, they need to reallocate capital and headcount, he doesn't shed any crocodile tears, but they are providing above market severance benefits, end of transmission. If I have to be laid off I want it to go something like this.

The word layoff does not appear in that post. It's word salad for 2 paragraphs.

It's bad writing, it's an even worse communique from a CEO.

Start with the point. The point is that X percent of the workforce is to be let go. And that it has been already in the works for some time because some people have been let go that day. "some notifications happening today" = we already have a list and we'll go through it as fast as labor laws allow.

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

#79

Post by pas »

Yoric wrote: post #43
SturgeonsLaw wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

is that really true?

or is it because a large portion of the global revenue is "parked" outside the US for tax reasons?

or due to stock buyback there are not much "funds" at all?

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

#80

Post by bootsmann »

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…

And they didn't think about making shareholders richer the years before when they hired all these people or how do you explain that process?
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