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Layoffs Are Cruel and Don't Work

matduggan.com

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Re: Layoffs Are Cruel and Don't Work

#51

Post by mc32 »

bradleyjg wrote: post #6

This place isn't your home, these people aren't your friends and your executive leadership would run you over with their cars if you stood between them and revenue growth. Your relationship to work changes forever. You will never again believe that you are "critical" to the company or that the company is interested in you as a person. This has always always been the case. Grow up.

Agreed. This is a naive point of view. The company and worker agree on some terms and if the terms stop working for either one, that's the end of the line. It sucks when that comes to be but we have to realize that we as workers in any capacity are only useful when our input aligns with the goals of the company. There is leeway, but that diminishes when time gets tough.

Blue collar workers, union or no union, always understood this. It's white collar workers who feel blindsided because they believed the company propaganda. The propaganda is not itself a bad thing but workers need to understand the use of propaganda and why it's used.

If you've ever worked with blue collar workers you know they never believe in any of the sunshine management talk and instead deride it with contempt. White collar workers would be well advised to learn from their blue collar brethren.

Re: Layoffs Are Cruel and Don't Work

#52

Post by cebert »

bradleyjg wrote: post #6

This place isn't your home, these people aren't your friends and your executive leadership would run you over with their cars if you stood between them and revenue growth. Your relationship to work changes forever. You will never again believe that you are "critical" to the company or that the company is interested in you as a person. This has always always been the case. Grow up.

If you think work and your coworkers are friends or family, you’re in for a world of hurt.

Re: Layoffs Are Cruel and Don't Work

#53

Post by bbor »

coliveira wrote: post #20

I think Amazon, Google, and Meta workers should band together and get funding to start competitors to these companies. If there were some smart investors, that would be a great way to start a new company.

That’s a great idea! We just need to write a design doc for the company, get comments, write up resource usage tickets, pass it by ux, contact sales for input, iterate on a new design doc because the old one used an outdated framework for business organization, get the final business plan doc through our autolinters, and setup 6 automated tools to track our progress - then we should be ready to contact some VCs.

Should only be a handful of quarters - if you don’t count time for retrospectives and writing packets about how complicated and impressive the process was ;)

Re: Layoffs Are Cruel and Don't Work

#54

Post by commandlinefan »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #31

Nobody likes getting laid off. But it's weird to see all of these think pieces implying that once someone is hired into a job, that job should exist forever. Things change. Company growth isn't monotonically increasing. Not all positions will exist forever. Joining a company was never a guarantee that you'd have a paycheck and work to do until you decided to leave. Also, pointing out that companies that did layoffs h…

> Nobody likes getting laid off.

Much better than being fired for poor performance, too - "laid off because the company wasn't doing well" doesn't look that terrible on a resume.

Re: Layoffs Are Cruel and Don't Work

#55

Post by dtdimond »

lapcat wrote: post #46
tomnipotent wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget the next bit, "by the third year, these differences became statistically nonsignificant". So the layoffs... worked?

> So the layoffs... worked? How does that follow? The conclusion would be that both the companies and workers suffered unnecessarily for 2 years, with no long-term benefit afterward to the layoffs. In other words, you should just ride out the downtimes instead of panicking.

Group 1: companies in a good enough financial situation to not need layoffs Group 2: companies in a dire financial situation requiring layoffs

After 3 years, what group would you expect to perform better financially? And if we told you it was a tie, you might ask: what did group 2 to improve their situation? Layoffs? Ok, sounds like they worked.

Re: Layoffs Are Cruel and Don't Work

#56

Post by juve1996 »

blamazon wrote: post #10
beebmam wrote: post #4

I think it's a huge mistake. The great labor shortage is just beginning. You can thank the retiring boomers for that. (And I hope they enjoy their retirement!)

There is no way to make a mistake here because there are essentially no consequences -- entities of this scale can rehire as easily as they fire. At a lower average compensation rate too, most likely. These companies are basically refinancing their labor force using cruelty and fear. It is working because they're all doing it, because we let them. System working as intended.

> At a lower average compensation rate too, most likely.

highly doubt it. The labor force is shrinking. There's already a dearth of talented software devs. And then there will be huge upward pressure on wages from lower level jobs that now have to pay 20$ an hour to get workers.

Re: Layoffs Are Cruel and Don't Work

#57

Post by MisterBastahrd »

Layoffs are like going on a diet: in the short term companies are able to maintain discipline through a mixture of execs getting their feet held to the fire by shareholders and employee panic. In the long term, execs are gonna do the same old shit that they always do.

Re: Layoffs Are Cruel and Don't Work

#58

Post by goodoldneon »

lapcat wrote: post #46
tomnipotent wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget the next bit, "by the third year, these differences became statistically nonsignificant". So the layoffs... worked?

> So the layoffs... worked? How does that follow? The conclusion would be that both the companies and workers suffered unnecessarily for 2 years, with no long-term benefit afterward to the layoffs. In other words, you should just ride out the downtimes instead of panicking.

Maybe there's selection bias, where the companies who downsized were doing worse than the companies who didn't. So if both sets of companies ended up the same, and one set was initially doing worse than the other, then that'd mean layoffs worked

Re: Layoffs Are Cruel and Don't Work

#59

Post by ejb999 »

brookst wrote: post #24
oconnore wrote: post #17

This is incredibly dumb. > The downsized companies, however, were outperformed consistently by the nondownsized ones during the initial two years following the downsizing. Can you think of any confounding factors in this analysis? How do you control for important factors like, say: whether the board is in enough financial trouble to downsize ?

What? Next you’re going to find fault in my analysis that proves CPR kills people, as evidenced by the number of people who die after receiving CPR compared to those who just have a normal day.

good analogy (not being sarcastic)

Re: Layoffs Are Cruel and Don't Work

#60

Post by dumpsterlid »

actionablefiber wrote: post #42
bradleyjg wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know who was a bit uncharitable? The people saying “okay boomer” to the Bobs of the world when they kindly tried to share their experience.

I'm curious about this. My experience is that people in my age bracket (early 20s) have been saying "okay boomer" to the people telling us that being in your 20s and 30s is about hustling to show loyalty to your company, showing up at the office five days a week, ingratiating yourself with your boss, spending late nights at the office and being buddy-buddy with all your coworkers. I have never ever witnessed anyone e…

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