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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

#241

Post by mch82 »

Godel_unicode wrote: post #236
mch82 wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is at best extremely incomplete. Pensions are not some kind of savings account, they guaranteed a rate of return that in retrospect was impractical. They’re now in trouble because that is becoming apparent. 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?

“impractical rate of return” is one element of “mismanaged”

Pensions are nonexistent now because other compensation packages have become the norm. Actuarial regulation has changed to incorporate lessons learned from pension fund failures. The goal of the regulatory changes is to decrease risk to consumers in contemporary actuarial products.

That’s about as deep as I can go on this topic. I’m not an actuary, by a number of my friends are and actuaries talk about lessons learned from failed pensions like engineers talk about lessons learned from failed software development projects. Evidently, demonstrating knowledge of those failures and the resulting controls is a key element of earning the title of professional actuary.

Re: Layoffs Are Cruel and Don't Work

#242

Post by mch82 »

mch82 wrote: post #241
Godel_unicode wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is at best extremely incomplete. Pensions are not some kind of savings account, they guaranteed a rate of return that in retrospect was impractical. They’re now in trouble because that is becoming apparent. 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?

“impractical rate of return” is one element of “mismanaged” Pensions are nonexistent now because other compensation packages have become the norm. Actuarial regulation has changed to incorporate lessons learned from pension fund failures. The goal of the regulatory changes is to decrease risk to consumers in contemporary actuarial products. That’s about as deep as I can go on this topic. I’m not an actuary, by a numb…

Continuing with the car loan analogy, the interest portion of the car loan is similar to the guaranteed rate of return in a pension. If a car company sets up a loan with a bad interest rate the car company will lose money on the sale.

The main difference between car loans and pensions is the time horizon. It’s much simpler to manage the risk of a 3-5 year loan than a 30+ year retirement that begins 45 years in the future.

Re: Layoffs Are Cruel and Don't Work

#243

Post by renewiltord »

mch82 wrote: post #214
TapWaterBandit wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stable pensions are gone because they were built on a ponzi scheme based on a demographic moment in history that has now passed. In hindsight those stable pensions were actually extremely immoral in a way. They allowed for a demographic moment where a large portion of workers consumed everything they produced with too little saving while supporting a much smaller number of retired and simultaneously telling themselve…

A pension is deferred compensation. It’s money employees have earned that they agree to receive later in life in order to smooth their tax burden over time and benefit from pooled financial management by professional investors. Pensions have failed because they were mismanaged. They are not “Ponzi schemes”.

Ponzi schemes are also just mismanaged funds. They are just the degenerate case of:

> "impractical rate of return” is one element of “mismanaged”

Re: Layoffs Are Cruel and Don't Work

#244

Post by WalterBright »

> Coming up with a scientific way of determining who is doing a good job and who is doing a bad job is extremely hard.

In fact, it's probably impossible.

On the other hand, everyone knows who the deadwood is on their team.

> Cruel

I know multiple instances of coworkers getting laid off, and being very angry about it. But a year later, they'd ruefully admit the company was right to lay them off, and they had been pushed off-center and decided to do what they really wanted to do - like start a business. More than one was laid off for coming to work high, and as a result got clean. They were, after a year or two, all better off and happier than before they were laid off.

Re: Layoffs Are Cruel and Don't Work

#245

Post by jwr »

The dog analogy is terrible.

You should never, ever consider your employer to be your family. The employer is not your friend, nor a relative. They are your employer.

I really dislike the whole "let's build the team spirit and be a great family together" approach. It's dishonest, and often done with the (explicit or implicit) intention of brainwashing.

Also, this goes both ways: I was an employer for the majority of my professional life. I had the best intentions and tried to be "good" and a friend to my employees, only to get screwed over many times in various ways by people later on. I learned that a professional relationship is different from a family relationship, and while you should try to be fair, you should never confuse the two.

Re: Layoffs Are Cruel and Don't Work

#246

Post by sudosysgen »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #225
jeffwask wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The majority are not some cartoonish greedy fatcats either; 53% of all stocks are held by the 1% so yes Virginia the MAJORITY are some cartoonish greedy fatcats

I don't care how many stocks the 1% own. I do care that my own investments increase in value. So I want companies to make decisions that benefit shareholders (including me). Just because some rich guy makes $10 million while I make $10,000 doesn't mean I'd rather not make the $10,000.

If you buy and hold, then a company taking a short term loss to avoid long term consequences is in your interest. If you are a speculative investor, then circumstances are different.

Re: Layoffs Are Cruel and Don't Work

#247

Post by WalterBright »

fsociety wrote: post #66
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…

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…

Layoffs are sometimes used to avoid saddling employees with the stigma of getting fired. Laying them off also means the employee can get unemployment compensation.

Re: Layoffs Are Cruel and Don't Work

#248

Post by uxcolumbo »

jwr wrote: post #245

The dog analogy is terrible. You should never, ever consider your employer to be your family. The employer is not your friend, nor a relative. They are your employer. I really dislike the whole "let's build the team spirit and be a great family together" approach. It's dishonest, and often done with the (explicit or implicit) intention of brainwashing. Also, this goes both ways: I was an employer for the majority of…

Interesting to see it from a (smaller) employers point of view.

Can you give some examples, ie how did you do things before getting screwed and what have you changed after?

What are your top lessons you learned?

Re: Layoffs Are Cruel and Don't Work

#249

Post by nextaccountic »

jwr wrote: post #245

The dog analogy is terrible. You should never, ever consider your employer to be your family. The employer is not your friend, nor a relative. They are your employer. I really dislike the whole "let's build the team spirit and be a great family together" approach. It's dishonest, and often done with the (explicit or implicit) intention of brainwashing. Also, this goes both ways: I was an employer for the majority of…

> You should never, ever consider your employer to be your family. The employer is not your friend, nor a relative. They are your employer.

I will add that their interests are often in conflict with the interests of the employees, and as such, in those matters the employer is best viewed as an adversary.

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