231–240 of 279 posts
Crazy seeing some of the comments in here supporting the layoffs when just a few decades ago people were up in arms about IBMs layoffs because working for one company for a significant portion of your career was seen as the norm.
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.
It's not exactly true. It actually takes quite a long time to hire competent employees, particularly more senior ones. Hence why it was so hard to hire in 2020-2021.
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There is no such thing as a labor shortage. There are just insufficient wages.
That isnt true. If the demand for brain surgeons doubled overnight, no amount of wage hike is going to magically double the supply of brain surgeons.
If you look at an unregulated field like software I think it's pretty clear that the huge increase in demand from ~2008-2020 did result in a huge increase in supply.
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!)
What do you read into a company that starts doing large scale layoffs even though it has a massive hoard of cash and remains massively profitable, just because some temporary trouble hits?
Given the company can easily retain the staff from a financial perspective, and employee churn is incredibly expensive - it has to mean they really, truly they can't think of anything useful to do with those staff. From that you would have to conclude that management and the board are simply out of ideas for how to grow the business.
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> We had the rug pulled If by "We had the rug pulled" you mean "the people we intended to force to pay for our pensions said 'no thanks'" then I agree. I get why you may be upset how it played out because I agree that spending all your money your whole life then forcing other people to pay for your retirement is a sweet deal. But as one of the people who was expected to be paying, I'm sure you'll understand why I'm n…
You don’t understand what a pension is so are reaching misinformed conclusions. A pension is deferred compensation. The employee earns the compensation while working, but agrees to receive the money later. If a person were a car, a pension plan is like paying monthly payments for a car rather than paying the full price of the car at the time of purchase. A company failing to pay a pension is analogous to a person fai…
They guaranteed above-market returns based off of the same ever-increasing-pool math that screwed up social security. Why do you think they’re essentially nonexistent now?
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…
No one is saying you should have 100% job security, or never be let go / fired. People are saying that these mass layoffs and the way they are conducted are harmful to society and not as beneficial to the business as CEOs and investors want to believe. Layoffs are not always a result of declining performance. We have seen several now where quarterly results point to increased performance but layoffs still occur as an…
True, but Google search revenue was down 2% YoY. Youtube ad revenue was down 8% YoY. OpEx was up 10%. Google absolutely saw declining performance while on a hiring binge.
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> 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.
Right now is the perfect time to get fired if you are having performance problems though. No one is going to think twice if you claim to be a victim of layoffs.
I implore these corporations: Please stop hiring so many people if you can’t guarantee lifetime employment!
Posting social media videos of "a day in the life of FANG" company showcasing the little amount of work people do doesn't work either. There's a lot of people at these companies who don't do anything meaningful and are getting paid a boat load. There's people like that in almost every company. Back from the Yahoo peak days I had multiple people tell me that all they did in a week was fix 1-2 small bugs in a day and d…