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Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

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Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#111

Post by mattgreenrocks »

izacus wrote: post #78
gerhardhaering wrote: post #32

Ok, 7%. With all the cost, I wonder if just stopping hiring and letting normal attrition rate play out would have had almost the same effect.

You're missing the point - the point is to send a message, to employees and to the investors. That they're SERIOUS COMPANY that does the right thing. Follows the market. Listens to economy. That won't hear complaints from the entitled lazy overpampered engineering workers. That they need to get back to the factory and be like all other quiet labor. That HARD DECISIONS can be made without regret when bankers ask for t…

It's incredible how submissive these companies act to capital.

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#113

Post by maxsilver »

ww-picard-do wrote: post #95
dboreham wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No because some of the effect is to instill fear.

So, let me understand your argument. The CEO choose to lay people off in order to scare the remaining employees? To what end? Also, if the intention was to "instill fear". Why give good severance? Why not give nothing?

> Why give good severance? Why not give nothing?

You lay off hard to instill fear and legally-depress everyone's wages, but you give good severance so that when you inevitably want to hire people in the next two months (as GitLab is likely to do), they're aren't too terrified to accept your offer because of all the layoffs you just did. 7% of staff as "layoffs" comes out to about 150-ish? people, but they are also currently hiring for over 100 open job position at GitLab on job boards right now. GitLab is also up 74% year-over-year in quarterly revenue, and had their highest sales quarter ever just four months ago, according to their own PR department (https://ir.gitlab.com/news-releases/news-release-details/git...)

It's a pretty transparent process, frankly. Lots of companies are doing 'fake layoffs' (layoffs they don't need, done solely to appease the executive class, who strongly desire a recession), but unfortunately for them, the truth is that the economy isn't anywhere close to a recession, so they simultaneously have to keep hiring open, to keep labor incoming, to keep up with all the new business growth or increased sales they're experiencing right now.

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#114

Post by ye-olde-sysrq »

scient wrote: post #68
dboreham wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No because some of the effect is to instill fear.

[flagged]

Don't drive class division. Even the highest paid engineer is closer to being homeless than being any of the people deciding these layoffs. If the primary economic force you have is the sale of your labor, you are labor, and need to act like it.

Our "high" salaries could quickly evaporate if we're not paying attention while the owners of capital are taking advantage of excuses to wage class warfare.

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#115

Post by pc86 »

scient wrote: post #68
dboreham wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No because some of the effect is to instill fear.

[flagged]

The difference is the people on r/antiwork by and large have menial jobs, and/or are students in that very predictable/boring pseudo-socialist phase of their life. People on HN are making like $200k/yr typing JavaScript into a computer.

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#116

Post by Quarrelsome »

msm_ wrote: post #98
softwaredoug wrote: post #63

Listened to a great podcast about layoffs yesterday ( https://hbr.org/podcast/2023/02/why-many-companies-get-layof... ) The takeaway is that layoffs are extremely trust destroying for employees NOT laid off, and in the end not clear they're a financial net positive. Both with direct and indirect costs (lack of engagement from employees, etc).

My issue with analyses like this is they argue that layoffs are a bad idea and it's just companies shooting themselves in a foot. That's what people want to hear, so it gets a lot of clicks and citations. But, this also means that all the big companies (and that's a lot of them) that just announced layoffs made a obviously bad move. Are they all stupid? I find it hard to believe. It's more plausible, that yeah, layof…

> Are they all stupid? I find it hard to believe.

I find it very easy to believe. A lot of executives appear to have a prime motivation that is "number goes up" which IMHO makes them extremely susceptible to the same levels of groupthink and other cognitive fallacies as one would see on /r/wallstreetbets.

I appreciate that isn't necessarily the case for all executives but given that executive's fallacies are mostly disproved by a slow to react and sometimes illogical economy as opposed to a nearby cold logic machine, it makes cliff-marching much easier for them.

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#117

Post by whalesalad »

softwaredoug wrote: post #63

Listened to a great podcast about layoffs yesterday ( https://hbr.org/podcast/2023/02/why-many-companies-get-layof... ) The takeaway is that layoffs are extremely trust destroying for employees NOT laid off, and in the end not clear they're a financial net positive. Both with direct and indirect costs (lack of engagement from employees, etc).

If your plane is gonna crash without dumping some excess weight, killing everyone on board, what do you do? You throw a ton of stuff out of the plane in an effort to continue on. This is what layoffs are. It’s a survival mode tactic. The cost of lower morale is smaller than the cost of complete failure.

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#118

Post by teeray »

msm_ wrote: post #98
softwaredoug wrote: post #63

Listened to a great podcast about layoffs yesterday ( https://hbr.org/podcast/2023/02/why-many-companies-get-layof... ) The takeaway is that layoffs are extremely trust destroying for employees NOT laid off, and in the end not clear they're a financial net positive. Both with direct and indirect costs (lack of engagement from employees, etc).

My issue with analyses like this is they argue that layoffs are a bad idea and it's just companies shooting themselves in a foot. That's what people want to hear, so it gets a lot of clicks and citations. But, this also means that all the big companies (and that's a lot of them) that just announced layoffs made a obviously bad move. Are they all stupid? I find it hard to believe. It's more plausible, that yeah, layof…

> they make shareholders rich

In that regard, I wonder if it becomes a Wall Street meme--layoffs for the sake of doing layoffs. Companies that performed layoffs made shareholders rich, so therefore if your company isn't doing layoffs in a layoff climate it's assumed that shareholders are better off putting their dollars somewhere else.

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#119

Post by vintermann »

tedivm wrote: post #87
izacus wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing the point - the point is to send a message, to employees and to the investors. That they're SERIOUS COMPANY that does the right thing. Follows the market. Listens to economy. That won't hear complaints from the entitled lazy overpampered engineering workers. That they need to get back to the factory and be like all other quiet labor. That HARD DECISIONS can be made without regret when bankers ask for t…

Exactly- Facebook laid off 7% of their staff and then followed it up with a $40 billion stock buy back. That's over $3,600,000 per laid off employee. The economy isn't the issue here, the companies know that since layoffs in mass are happening they can get away with it without taking the same reputational hit as if they did this on their own.

Yes, making the same bad move as everyone else is safe. "Nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM", as they say.

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#120

Post by pc86 »

sqldba wrote: post #110

It's weird because I've seen job posts for them running for 6 months now and still not be filled. Are they running job ads but not hiring?

It's really hard to find people willing to work on a second-tier product for 60% market rate salaries apparently.
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