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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

#151

Post by davidjfelix »

acdha wrote: post #143
winstonprivacy wrote: post #126

Pretty ironic seeing as just a few months ago, everyone was ghosting employers, taking counteroffers after accepting, and "quiet quitting". So let's quit pretending employees are holier than employers.

“Quiet quitting” was corporate spin shopped around to gullible journalists. The behavior described was employees doing what they were paid to do but not giving the company freebies. This is important to understand because it relates to why there are layoffs now: the managerial class hates when normal workers have negotiating clout. Layoffs remove that clout by cooling the job market and making existing employees afra…

Agreed. The quiet quitting pieces were the most obvious manufactured consent for layoffs that I've ever seen. They played right into the minds of a culture that thinks relaxation is a sin and your personal worth is measured by productivity.

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

#152

Post by danaris »

pas wrote: post #81
ikiris wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That doesn't explain it. It might be a factor, but it's not a big factor. FAANG jobs pay extremely well and then there's the stock on top. Is the vast majority working at these companies (with years of vesting, no?) so shortsighted? Especially the higher ups? Is it a requirement at these companies that you have to be 10000% in debt and living paycheck-to-paycheck to be a SVP/VP/director/whatever so you have to be hyp…

It's taken on a life of its own at this point. The idea that the quarterly stock price is The One And Only Metric That Matters arose for various reasons related to what was mentioned, but over the years it's become so ingrained in the minds of executives and other wealthy people that even when those conditions don't specifically apply, they still act as though they do.

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

#153

Post by danaris »

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.

Clear away all the words, and you're left with a massively profitable company putting thousands of people out of work just so that they can boost their stock price.

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

#154

Post by hypertele-Xii »

MomoXenosaga wrote: post #139
vooffle wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Do people on HN not read history books? This has happened countless times before. Or was it assumed that those in the tech industry were a "protected" class of people for whom the rules do not apply? Hell one of the best things about capitalism: everyone is equal before the dollar and everyone is expendable.

And expend you they shall. Faster and longer and cheaper, unless a union demands otherwise.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_fi...

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

#155

Post by arcturus17 »

rossitter wrote: post #148
arcturus17 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I understood it, the point was that they are laying off people but hiring more expensive contractors instead.

The contractors in that joke are for the CEO's kitchen reno: > ...complicated global factors like [one], [two], and my desire for a marble kitchen island with a waterfall edge. As we all know, our competitors are relentless. Even as we speak, they’re [one], [two], and booking the best contractors in the Bay Area for the next eighteen months.

Ah that makes sense!

The author is a really clever writer. It's a short text but it's packed with little details like that, and shows a great understanding of the tech enterprise domain.

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

#156

Post by 6510 »

I'm not sure if I'm stating the obvious here but if enough big tech companies combined flood the market with unemployed talent it could lower salaries as opposed to hiring everyone at any price to make them unavailable to the competitors. They have captured the market now, hoarding employees is no longer necessary.

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

#157

Post by danaris »

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 law should be the absolute lower bound on our ethics, not where the conversation starts and ends.

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

#158

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

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:/…

> The industry had been, for quite some time, growing both in terms of headcount and compensation, without regards to boundaries, sanity or practicality.

Tech has been addicted to VC funds and investors don't care what happens as long as their stock price grows in the short term.

At this point I'm considering just never working for a public company ever again.

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

#159

Post by chewz »

You might be a proud and valuable person in your personal life. But for a company, you are just an asset - low yielding asset with high depreciation.

So it is rational decision for an enterprise to let you go and free some liquidity that could be deployed elsewhere. Even buying Treasury bill yields more then an employee and is more liquid option. Liquidity is important when times get tough and recession is coming..

Just face it.

And for an enterprise if competitors are letting go employees it means that they are building their war chest of liquid assets. So you have too because you have to be prepared when time comes for mergers, takeover and acquisitions....

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

#160

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]
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