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Tell HN: IBM and SAP are cutting thousands of jobs

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Re: Tell HN: IBM and SAP are cutting thousands of jobs

#31

Post by Apocryphon »

snowpid wrote: post #28
Apocryphon wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not just the money. Losing health insurance is pretty bad, especially if there are others on one’s insurance.

The reason why I said, it is a mainly American problem: SAP is a German company. We can assume many people losing their job wont lose their health insurances because they live in Germany.

And this is all in the context of layoff sprees happening at mostly U.S. based tech multinationals. It’s not as if Booking.com has been doing layoffs- though it seems like they already did that a year ago. And certainly Spotify also laid people off.

Re: Tell HN: IBM and SAP are cutting thousands of jobs

#32

Post by tanjtanjtanj »

s_dev wrote: post #6

I can well imagine there are lots of upset people having lost their jobs. However it never seems to be a priority or even on radar for jobseekers to consider how a a company handles layoffs or handled layoffs in the past as a proxy for their own treatment should that time come again. I wonder if this is partially because jobs seekers have over optimized for salary or total comp relative to other things like job secur…

While rare, I have seen it happen. A family owned financial services company's recruiter made sure I knew the company had never had layoffs to try and entice me to accept a position.

Re: Tell HN: IBM and SAP are cutting thousands of jobs

#33

Post by vkou »

Apocryphon wrote: post #16
nightski wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I'd focus more on making a layoff less of a traumatic event than playing ultra safe with a low salary in a low risk company. For most software engineers it's not hard to build up a significant emergency fund. I'd advocate for 6 figures. Feel free to invest 80% of that as well in something liquid. Keep at least 3 months in cash.

It’s not just the money. Losing health insurance is pretty bad, especially if there are others on one’s insurance.

Ever since Obamacare banned discrimination for pre-existing conditions, health insurance is entirely a function of money. If you're taking home significantly more money, you can set a small fraction of it aside to cover an employer insurance gap.

The problem for programmers is not cost of insurance, the problem is weird long-tail shit like insurance denying treatments you need, or wildly over-billing you.

Re: Tell HN: IBM and SAP are cutting thousands of jobs

#34

Post by snowpid »

Apocryphon wrote: post #31
snowpid wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason why I said, it is a mainly American problem: SAP is a German company. We can assume many people losing their job wont lose their health insurances because they live in Germany.

And this is all in the context of layoff sprees happening at mostly U.S. based tech multinationals. It’s not as if Booking.com has been doing layoffs- though it seems like they already did that a year ago. And certainly Spotify also laid people off.

the context might be different for people in different countries. SAP is more important for me than lets say Meta.

Re: Tell HN: IBM and SAP are cutting thousands of jobs

#35

Post by Ironlikebike »

NKosmatos wrote: post #4

Following the trend :-( Time to get rid of people they don’t want, without them look bad since everybody is doing it, and also they’ll have an excuse if financial results aren’t very good. IMHO it’s the retaliation of big companies to what remote working brought to all of us (freedom, better wages, quality time, escape from bad environments…).

> Time to get rid of people they don’t want, without them look bad since everybody is doing it, and also they’ll have an excuse if financial results aren’t very good.

This is IBM's classic modus operandi. I worked there from 2001 - 2013 and survived 17 rounds of deep layoffs during that time. IBM constantly manipulates their financial results on the backs of their employees.

Re: Tell HN: IBM and SAP are cutting thousands of jobs

#36

Post by lotsofpulp »

multifasciatus wrote: post #13
_rs wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any recommendations on what type of accounts to use or what might be decent investments? I certainly wouldn’t put anything I’d call an “emergency fund” in stocks right now

High Yield Savings Accounts (HYSA) like Marcus by Goldman Sachs can be a good place to keep the 3 month cash reserves.

Marcus has lagged its competitors by 0.7% or more for all of 2022. I suspect Goldman Sachs is having problems dumping money into Marcus given its losses.

I would go with CIT Savings Connect, they have historically been near the top and they have a nice website.

https://www.doctorofcredit.com/high-interest-savings-to-get/

Re: Tell HN: IBM and SAP are cutting thousands of jobs

#37

Post by crmd »

cdumler wrote: post #14
NKosmatos wrote: post #4

Following the trend :-( Time to get rid of people they don’t want, without them look bad since everybody is doing it, and also they’ll have an excuse if financial results aren’t very good. IMHO it’s the retaliation of big companies to what remote working brought to all of us (freedom, better wages, quality time, escape from bad environments…).

Nah. It's about making your financial results look better. My company touts every quarter how not only is revenue up, profit per revenue is up, ie. we're making more money on the money we make. Yet, when it comes to compensation and dealing with cost of living, the statement is that we haven't met our targets so it's a 3% pool. Not minimum or maximum, but that for someone to get more someone else has to get less. COV…

At my last medium sized company there were at least a half dozen branches of “the budget”, with employees and sales people being measured against the most aggressive budget, and several levels of management adding their own buffers, and finally the board which was working off the most conservative/pessimistic revenue and profit forecasts. No idea if this is normal or not.

Re: Tell HN: IBM and SAP are cutting thousands of jobs

#38

Post by BeetleB »

s_dev wrote: post #6

I can well imagine there are lots of upset people having lost their jobs. However it never seems to be a priority or even on radar for jobseekers to consider how a a company handles layoffs or handled layoffs in the past as a proxy for their own treatment should that time come again. I wonder if this is partially because jobs seekers have over optimized for salary or total comp relative to other things like job secur…

> I have never once seen places advertise that they haven't had to let an employee go.

Mathworks (of MATLAB fame).

They're still a private company, BTW.

Re: Tell HN: IBM and SAP are cutting thousands of jobs

#39

Post by drjasonharrison »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #30
cdumler wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah. It's about making your financial results look better. My company touts every quarter how not only is revenue up, profit per revenue is up, ie. we're making more money on the money we make. Yet, when it comes to compensation and dealing with cost of living, the statement is that we haven't met our targets so it's a 3% pool. Not minimum or maximum, but that for someone to get more someone else has to get less. COV…

>profit per revenue is up, ie. we're making more money on the money we make. This makes no sense to me.

The amount of profit per customer or item sold has increased. Instead of just increasing the number of sales, they have increased their profit margin on each sale.

Re: Tell HN: IBM and SAP are cutting thousands of jobs

#40

Post by lotsofpulp »

_rs wrote: post #12
nightski wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I'd focus more on making a layoff less of a traumatic event than playing ultra safe with a low salary in a low risk company. For most software engineers it's not hard to build up a significant emergency fund. I'd advocate for 6 figures. Feel free to invest 80% of that as well in something liquid. Keep at least 3 months in cash.

Any recommendations on what type of accounts to use or what might be decent investments? I certainly wouldn’t put anything I’d call an “emergency fund” in stocks right now

Emergency funds in FDIC insured savings accounts. HSA accounts serve as the best tax advantaged backup that you can invest in a broad market ETF like VOO since they are triple tax advantaged, although ideally you never have to withdraw from here until retirement.
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