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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

#101

Post by notinfuriated »

lapcat wrote: post #65
dtdimond wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Group 1: companies in a good enough financial situation to not need layoffs Group 2: companies in a dire financial situation requiring layoffs None of the big tech companies are in a "dire" financial situation. Indeed, some of them have just announced modest revenue increases this week. Yet they still conducted big layoffs. Did they "need" to do it? (Note in contrast that Apple announced a significant revenue decre…

Depends on your definition of "dire." Perhaps some companies have Finance departments that believe they're in a dire situation when they have less than six months runway if all revenue stopped. I don't know what they factor in to the decision other than they believe their costs are too high given the current economic conditions.

It's kind of like me having plenty of money, right now, to afford Netflix but cancelling it anyway because I feel $14/mo or whatever the price is still too much for the value it delivers in the current year, and generally worried that I might need that $14 in a year (multiplied out across a bunch of other services or habits I engage in). I'd rather save my money now, as I've decided the situation is dire or could easily become dire. Am I actually cruel and obligated to keep my Netflix subscription (gotta make sure Netflix employees make a living) because I am not, at this moment, in what others perceive to be a "dire" situation?

Re: Layoffs Are Cruel and Don't Work

#102

Post by dougmwne »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #39
dougmwne wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. Nearly everyone I know left college doe-eyed and ready to dedicate a piece of their soul to their shiny new job. Everyone learned otherwise one person at a time. Some worked for “we’re all a family” companies and were able to remain innocent ignorants till the day the axe fell.

> Absolutely. Nearly everyone I know left college doe-eyed and ready to dedicate a piece of their soul to their shiny new job When did you graduate college? In the social media era, the sentiment has been more about "fuck you, pay me" and "H.R. is not your friend" type ideology. This is especially true in recent years, where a lot of college graduates have been exposed to years of /r/antiwork in their daily Reddit br…

Yes, I am older than that. I truly feel for a lot of the younger people who came of age during pandemic isolation and raised by YouTubers. I work with some of them and they are not having an easy adjustment into adulthood.

Good on you for putting in the effort. The corporation cannot be your friend, but a good manager can be.

Re: Layoffs Are Cruel and Don't Work

#103

Post by haswell »

fsociety wrote: post #73
haswell wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it’s just one of many ways people can come to realize this over time. I’ve been fortunate enough to avoid the experience of layoffs, but learned the same lesson by pouring too much of myself into a role and burning out. Until you’ve directly experienced the reasons work isn’t a family, etc. it can be hard to avoid falling into the trap of thinking that it is. I would also say that most takes on this are a bit too…

Burning yourself out sucks, but is not an equivalent experience to being laid off. Not sure how you came to this conclusion.

I'm not claiming it's an equivalent experience.

I'm saying that burnout was my path to thinking differently about my relationship with work.

Burnout is a whole other beast, and recovery from it a whole other topic.

Re: Layoffs Are Cruel and Don't Work

#104

Post by HarryHirsch »

bradleyjg wrote: post #44
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Absolutely. Nearly everyone I know left college doe-eyed and ready to dedicate a piece of their soul to their shiny new job When did you graduate college? In the social media era, the sentiment has been more about "fuck you, pay me" and "H.R. is not your friend" type ideology. This is especially true in recent years, where a lot of college graduates have been exposed to years of /r/antiwork in their daily Reddit br…

This business about “fuck capitalism” and so on is also infantile, just in the opposite direction.

That's an assertion of belief, not a statement of fact. You'd have to bring arguments why the interests of workers and owners are congruent (which they are not).

Re: Layoffs Are Cruel and Don't Work

#105

Post by lesuorac »

pksebben wrote: post #78
politician wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This statement is missing qualifiers. Consider the extreme counter-example: A small village of a dozen individuals sitting a top a mountain of gold is unlikely to be able to operate an industrial scale gold mining operation. There can be too few people to do certain work. Nuclear plant operators. Ordinance disposal experts. Electricians in my area...

but hold on. "not having people" and "not having people with the skills you need" are different in this regard. Offering more money won't make more people, but it will motivate people to learn skills.

Sure but in the interim (while they're learning skills) you don't have as many as you want of nuclear reactor operators AKA a labor shortage.

Whether or not the real world has a true labor shortage or just a shortage for the current market price is not shown. i.e. if you offered more wages would some stay at home parents meet the demand?

Re: Layoffs Are Cruel and Don't Work

#106

Post by garbagecoder »

I think layoffs are a social contagion in a lot of cases, an excuse to overcorrect for overcorrections and all of that but...

the cruelty is the point.

eta: if the economy at large is adding 500,000 jobs as reported today this makes the laying off companies look either foolish or somehow specially in a downturn.

Re: Layoffs Are Cruel and Don't Work

#107

Post by CuriouslyC »

xwdv wrote: post #36
CuriouslyC wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And imagine you told that dog how much you loved it and how important it was to you, but only paid attention to it when it was misbehaving, fed it recalled Chinese dog food and avoided taking it to the vet, then decided to put it down the second it needed any expensive care. All the while telling your friends what a dog lover you are, and what a great relationship you have with your dog.

And imagine still, that instead of a dog, it was an adult, and you shake hands agreeing to hire their skills in exchange for regular payment, but when their skills are someday no longer required or adequate, and that day will come, the payments will cease and they will have to peddle their skills elsewhere.

That is totally valid for the fraction of companies that treat each piece of work as a transaction with terms agreed upon beforehand, and don't try to wheedle extra work/crunch effort with nebulous promises or talk of "loyalty" then deliver a sad token while enriching shareholders and executives.

I might be able to get on board with your ideology if your ideal was the norm and the second case the exception, but it's quite the reverse.

Re: Layoffs Are Cruel and Don't Work

#109

Post by Joeri »

karaterobot wrote: post #16

> Imagine you had a dog... Imagine that instead of a dog, it's an adult who makes their own choices and gets paid money, and who signed a contract where the terms of employment were spelled out very clearly..

That’s the view of someone who is lucky to have many choices. Many people, in fact I suspect most people, pretty much have to accept what they’re offered because they don’t really have other choices.

For some of the people in these layoffs it will be accurate to say they could have made different choices, and for others it won’t be.

Re: Layoffs Are Cruel and Don't Work

#110

Post by klyrs »

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 ?

> How do you control for important factors like, say: whether the board is in enough financial trouble to downsize?

I'd love to see this controlled for shareholder dividends and stock buybacks. A big trend we're seeing in this round of layoffs is companies doing a lot of service for their shareholders, some posting record profits, and sacking fractions of their workforce. It doesn't tell a story of sacrifices made due to financial trouble, it looks like nothing but ruthless profiteering and class warfare.

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