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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

#101

Post by wildrhythms »

cycomanic wrote: post #32
gorgoiler wrote: post #7

I grind away at our codebase day in day out causing me immense personal anxiety and burnout risk and all for what? Well! The honest answer is because software engineering is an incredibly satisfying intellectual pursuit. So satisfying that outside of work in my spare time I literally do it for free , giving away my work to strangers as free / open source software. Why draw a salary then? Or stock? Well obviously I ha…

Because the people who decide exec salaries are execs in other businesses, so they generally have 1) An inflated view of the impact of execs compared to other employees. This is a well studied psychological phenomena. People tend to overestimate their "skill/contribution" even in poor luck or even rigged scenarios. (There was a study which gave some subjects a head start in monopoly, i.e. more money, the subjects ten…

> People tend to overestimate their "skill/contribution" even in poor luck or even rigged scenarios.

I don't personally understand this one, although I don't doubt its veracity. I am an engineer with years of experience in the industry, but I don't think my contribution is high or important; I could be fired at any moment and would anyone notice? Maybe in the short term yes, but mostly no. I am easily replaceable, my boss is easily replaceable... Society will continue on without me because like most of us I work a B.S. job. So I really struggle to empathize with the viewpoint of a self-perceived 'Hero IC', is it just narcissism?

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

#102

Post by Kinrany »

gorgoiler wrote: post #7

I grind away at our codebase day in day out causing me immense personal anxiety and burnout risk and all for what? Well! The honest answer is because software engineering is an incredibly satisfying intellectual pursuit. So satisfying that outside of work in my spare time I literally do it for free , giving away my work to strangers as free / open source software. Why draw a salary then? Or stock? Well obviously I ha…

> Why draw a salary then? Or stock? Well obviously I have to feed my family.

Wrong: salary is determined by your ability to negotiate, and your ability is higher when you could be doing the same satisfying activity for someone else.

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

#103

Post by wildrhythms »

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.

> The reason why you don't have that ability

And why is that?

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

#104

Post by wildrhythms »

icu wrote: post #46

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…

> 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.

...a labor union?

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

#105

Post by unity1001 »

icu wrote: post #46

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…

> 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

They weren't. The upper classes did everything in their power to prevent the plebs from getting ANY right whatsoever. Churchill even sicced the military at the striking workers at the turn of the century.

All of those gains were made by the people fighting tooth and nail. Especially after Ww II, when the USSR did not 'just collapse because socialism is not sustainable' like the British press was screaming about during the interwar years, it made a great case for the people pushing their agenda and the Labour party was able to do all the reforms that the neoliberals have been bit by bit dismantling over the last 40 years.

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

#106

Post by doctor_eval »

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.

> The relevant questions are: were the layoffs illegal, and if they weren't, then why is it any of your business?

I think a more relevant question is: should the layoffs be illegal?

Just because todays law says “tough luck” doesn’t mean it has always been, or will always be, that way, or that we can’t argue for something better.

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

#107

Post by Yoric »

pjc50 wrote: post #82
Yoric wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> our stock price is also our operational funds. .. no it isn't? This is conflating "equity" with "free cash". Have a look at one of the balance sheets.

I may very well be misunderstanding some of this.

However, until now, it has been my understanding that the way any large company works is by using their stock value as collateral against short term investments from banks, which then serve as operational funds.

Am I wrong?

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

#108

Post by albntomat0 »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #95
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…

No it doesn't. It works better for 1% of the population. Everyone else is a health crisis away from bankruptcy. Literally. That's all it takes in the US for everyone who doesn't have an eight-figure-or-more net worth to be staring ruin in the face. Your comment is exactly the mythology that perpetuates the problem. Exploitation is sold as participation. "Well we're paid fairly well so I guess we must be privileged an…

I feel it’s important to properly look at the context of the layoffs.

The original article leads with mentioning the recent layoffs at Microsoft, Google, and Amazon. These are people who were making great money, and now have those companies on their resumes. I know they’re currently going through a rough situation, which should not be minimized.

It’s hard to take your argument seriously though, as there’s so much space between FAANG execs with 8 figure savings, FAANG workers making 200k+, and poverty. Being realistic about this helps your argument that those companies could have done better, not the exaggeration.

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

#109

Post by nivenkos »

pas wrote: post #78
safety1st wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I can't stand all the beating around the bush language.

All stuff like "best wishes to those impacted by the course correction in our employee base".

Like they aren't just numbers or human resources, it's real people losing their jobs and facing difficult situations with work visas, mortgages, etc. - the same people who have helped build the products they work on.

It's isn't an unfortunate natural disaster but a deliberate decision made by executives, where in the majority of cases it's just that the rate of growth of profit has fallen - nowhere near severe losses and economic trouble.

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

#110

Post by zwily »

vooffle wrote: post #88
bootsmann wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The economy, consumer confidence and investor mood changed. The way you make investors richer changes depending on inflation.

Well, interest rates. But that’s driven by inflation.
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