Hate to say it but it seems rational to hire like crazy to hedge against a rocket hot economy increasing demand. Also seems rational to cut back when things cool. I certainly don't like it, but I do get it.
Tech CEOs Should Be Held Accountable, or Even Fired, Amid Layoffs
41–50 of 386 posts
Re: Tech CEOs Should Be Held Accountable, or Even Fired, Amid Layoffs
#42My company did a big round of layoffs and it was pretty revealing that not a single director or above were laid off. Despite reduced headcount, the org chart got DEEPER in some cases. For all the talk of bloat in the tech world, nobody wants to point fingers at directors who have little to do but schedule very expensive meetings with the directors under them.
Seems like something specific to your company. A lot of large companies have flattened their org structures in this round of layoffs.
Re: Tech CEOs Should Be Held Accountable, or Even Fired, Amid Layoffs
#43The goal of the CEO of a publicly traded company is to make the shareholders money. As much money as possible. If laying people off is the best way to do that, they'll do it. Blaming the CEO for doing the job they were hired to do seems short-sighted. Blame the broken system that incentivizes this, that makes doing it profitable. And then, let's change the system.
> The goal of the CEO of a publicly traded company is to make the shareholders money. As much money as possible. This is a poor take. The function of the CEO of a publicly traded company is to execute on major objectives of the firm. This might be optimizing for max profit, but it might not, depending on what your majority shareholders communicate to the board and management (as well as how they vote their shares). A…
corporations have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders. what that means is not well defined, and a ceo could say: i’m not doing layoffs because my analysis is that they will hurt our business, not help, but generally the meaning of their duty to shareholders is that they increase share prices and layoffs make that happen.
Re: Tech CEOs Should Be Held Accountable, or Even Fired, Amid Layoffs
#44If this was really an issue for workers we would see emigration to places where firing at a whim isn’t possible (like Western Europe).
Last time I checked about 10 times more people emigrate from Europe to US than the opposite.
Re: Tech CEOs Should Be Held Accountable, or Even Fired, Amid Layoffs
#45The goal of the CEO of a publicly traded company is to make the shareholders money. As much money as possible. If laying people off is the best way to do that, they'll do it. Blaming the CEO for doing the job they were hired to do seems short-sighted. Blame the broken system that incentivizes this, that makes doing it profitable. And then, let's change the system.
If their job is to make money for the shareholders, and quarterly reports show that they are either making less money, or incurring in losses, then they aren't doing their job. They laid off people who had little to zero influence in defining the company mission, trying to cut spending. This suggests that the C-suite over-spent. > Blaming the CEO for doing the job they were hired to do seems short-sighted. Blame the…
Those are trends of company health, not performance metrics of the CEO. The performance metrics of the CEO is "In discovery of this down trend, what can we do to reorg the business and trim the fat so that we can turn this down trend upwards? (put together plan) (fires those that don't fit within that plan)". This is a good CEO. Maybe hated by those he/she fired, but loved by those who depend on the company to succeed (including those owned by the employees themselves).
If I'm making a garden with 10 folks and realize my yard is full of clay, why would I continue to employ gardeners when clearly it's time to build a pool? Should I lose my house because I couldn't make a garden? Or is my vision of a garden home incorrect for the current location and I must change my vision to match what the market/location is telling me?
Re: Tech CEOs Should Be Held Accountable, or Even Fired, Amid Layoffs
#46One strength of an economy is the speed with which workers can shift between different jobs/tasks/roles in response to market changes.
Suppose we discover a new gold mine in a rural area. Would it be wrong for a mining company to spin up in that area and start hiring like crazy? When the mine runs out, would it be a mistake for them lay everybody off? I don't think so in either case. True even if "gold" turns out to be fools-gold in the end.
A lot of CEO's would have been punished for not hiring quickly enough during the boom. Similarly during the housing bubble a lot of lenders would be (or were) punished for not loosening lending standards enough. And then blamed later for having too-loose lending standards.
Re: Tech CEOs Should Be Held Accountable, or Even Fired, Amid Layoffs
#47My company did a big round of layoffs and it was pretty revealing that not a single director or above were laid off. Despite reduced headcount, the org chart got DEEPER in some cases. For all the talk of bloat in the tech world, nobody wants to point fingers at directors who have little to do but schedule very expensive meetings with the directors under them.
Agree. I guess it's self preservation - managers decide who is laid off and are more likely to believe it's the ICs who are unproductive, not the many tiers of middle management who do nothing quantifiable.
Quite hilariously engineers are going to be measured by "productive commits" soon, but I saw no guidance created to measure how managers are providing value
Re: Tech CEOs Should Be Held Accountable, or Even Fired, Amid Layoffs
#48The goal of the CEO of a publicly traded company is to make the shareholders money. As much money as possible. If laying people off is the best way to do that, they'll do it. Blaming the CEO for doing the job they were hired to do seems short-sighted. Blame the broken system that incentivizes this, that makes doing it profitable. And then, let's change the system.
> The goal of the CEO of a publicly traded company is to make the shareholders money. As much money as possible. If laying people off is the best way to do that, they'll do it.
At what timescale?
Firing the whole company would save a whole lot of money at the detriment of destroying the company.
Or are we looking at just a quarter? There's plenty of terrible choices that will net a whole pile of profit in the quarter. And it's a string of these quarterly choices are what brought Sears, Toys-R-Us, and other vulture capital mediated destruction that a LOT of quarterly gains. And there's also just making terrible business decisions like Netflix updated account rules (Whoop, accidentally posted... sure).
How about a year? If your company has existed that long, you're still trying to fit in and make your niche. But if you've been around for decades, a year is still super short-sighted. Its very hard to gain respect, and very easy to destroy it over night.
5 years? That's the absolute maximum US stock markets look at. Which means nothing past 5y is "calculable". Long term choices aren't a thing.
Re: Tech CEOs Should Be Held Accountable, or Even Fired, Amid Layoffs
#49The goal of the CEO of a publicly traded company is to make the shareholders money. As much money as possible. If laying people off is the best way to do that, they'll do it. Blaming the CEO for doing the job they were hired to do seems short-sighted. Blame the broken system that incentivizes this, that makes doing it profitable. And then, let's change the system.
> Blaming the CEO for doing the job they were hired to do seems short-sighted
I find that to be ironic. One of the problems with a CEO is that they'll maximize short-run profit rather than do what's in the best interest of the shareholders.
Re: Tech CEOs Should Be Held Accountable, or Even Fired, Amid Layoffs
#50The goal of the CEO of a publicly traded company is to make the shareholders money. As much money as possible. If laying people off is the best way to do that, they'll do it. Blaming the CEO for doing the job they were hired to do seems short-sighted. Blame the broken system that incentivizes this, that makes doing it profitable. And then, let's change the system.
This is such a short term take on the things. If employees loses morale then their future profits are risk. Most of these layoffs are handled in such a poor way you do loose real talent from the company. In short term yes they may improve the balance sheet but in long term it jeopardize the company.