Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

about.gitlab.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 622 posts

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#221

Post by sethd »

jlmorton wrote: post #190

> The current macroeconomic environment is tough No, it isn't, and it's embarrassing at this point to continue insisting this. The macroeconomic environment is good, particularly in the United States. Business investment is growing at 3% a quarter (annualized), which is better than the average over the past decade. Employment is growing rapidly. Inflation has been tame over the past six months. And wages are growing…

Unprofitable tech companies are probably not doing too great in the face of rising interest rates.

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#222

Post by jeltz »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #197
jlmorton wrote: post #190

> The current macroeconomic environment is tough No, it isn't, and it's embarrassing at this point to continue insisting this. The macroeconomic environment is good, particularly in the United States. Business investment is growing at 3% a quarter (annualized), which is better than the average over the past decade. Employment is growing rapidly. Inflation has been tame over the past six months. And wages are growing…

The current macroeconomic environment is tough if you have deeply negative cash-flow (most of tech).

And it is no wonder they have issues when their customer support is hostile. I used to pay for Gitlab but switched to the community edition after having to deal with their support over billing issues. Easier to use the free version than the paid version. Making money does not seem to be a priority.

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#223

Post by alldayeveryday »

noelsusman wrote: post #216
mberning wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Record high credit card balances, record low personal savings, 40 year high inflation, rising interest rates and no sign of the fed stopping. Housing affordability at its lowest point since the real estate bubble and crash of 07/08. You are on some very good copium if you believe the economy is in good shape.

The economy is humming along just fine despite all of that.

which says a lot if the economy is disconnected from the prosperity and economic outlook of the majority of people. In such a case, a "good economy" is just a synonym for "elite are still doing well."

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#224

Post by [deleted] »

mberning wrote: post #198
jlmorton wrote: post #190

> The current macroeconomic environment is tough No, it isn't, and it's embarrassing at this point to continue insisting this. The macroeconomic environment is good, particularly in the United States. Business investment is growing at 3% a quarter (annualized), which is better than the average over the past decade. Employment is growing rapidly. Inflation has been tame over the past six months. And wages are growing…

Record high credit card balances, record low personal savings, 40 year high inflation, rising interest rates and no sign of the fed stopping. Housing affordability at its lowest point since the real estate bubble and crash of 07/08. You are on some very good copium if you believe the economy is in good shape.

[deleted]

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#226

Post by Alesiono »

gregors wrote: post #213
jlmorton wrote: post #190

> The current macroeconomic environment is tough No, it isn't, and it's embarrassing at this point to continue insisting this. The macroeconomic environment is good, particularly in the United States. Business investment is growing at 3% a quarter (annualized), which is better than the average over the past decade. Employment is growing rapidly. Inflation has been tame over the past six months. And wages are growing…

Disney is laying off 7k workers... >>> “While this is necessary to address the challenges we’re >>> facing today, I do not make this decision lightly,” said >>> CEO Bob Iger, " From the same article >>> ...the company released better than expected financial >>> results for the fourth quarter of 2022. Disney revenue in >>> the quarter rose 8% to $23.5 billion, edging past >>> estimates of $23.4 billion Truly they are…

And how is Disney related to gitlab?!

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#227

Post by _cenw »

xyzelement wrote: post #203
anon20230209 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bet people like that drift into voluntary unpaid overtime.

Or, equivalently, "people like that are paid a lot and are engrossed in their careers." When someone makes $500k+, what does "unpaid overtime" even mean?

I wouldn't want my $500k+ engineer to even remotely get close to burning themselves out.

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#228

Post by rootusrootus »

Every time a tech company announces a layoff, I'd like a corresponding announcement of where in their history this puts them. Back at late 2022 levels? 2021? 2020? All of these layoffs feel like a little purge after a big binge, not a serious signal of problems.

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#229

Post by actually_a_dog »

gregors wrote: post #213
jlmorton wrote: post #190

> The current macroeconomic environment is tough No, it isn't, and it's embarrassing at this point to continue insisting this. The macroeconomic environment is good, particularly in the United States. Business investment is growing at 3% a quarter (annualized), which is better than the average over the past decade. Employment is growing rapidly. Inflation has been tame over the past six months. And wages are growing…

Disney is laying off 7k workers... >>> “While this is necessary to address the challenges we’re >>> facing today, I do not make this decision lightly,” said >>> CEO Bob Iger, " From the same article >>> ...the company released better than expected financial >>> results for the fourth quarter of 2022. Disney revenue in >>> the quarter rose 8% to $23.5 billion, edging past >>> estimates of $23.4 billion Truly they are…

Well, for Disney, making up for some of that early pandemic park revenue is certainly a challenge. Nobody messes with Mickey Mouse’s money!

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#230

Post by hashmap »

arbuge wrote: post #56

At this point it's beginning to look like tech companies are doing this because it's the trendy thing to do, along with inserting a few words about AI in their websites and pitch decks.

I don't know how this has gone over everyone's heads here, because what's happening is extremely obvious.

If you're a big FAANG-like company, you've seen workers make big gains in wages over the past year, and turnover rates have been increasing significantly during the great resignation. This isn't enough to sink you, but you don't like it, because it does eat into your margins a little. Of course you're still making massive profits, but workers getting any measure of power scares you. Imagine if this trend continues? Workers are only getting harder to find!

So what do you do? You can't walk up to all your CEO friends and say "Hey how can we go about paying everyone less? What if we all agree to lay off our expensive people at the same time? That way, we'll have a massive pool of workers to hire from that are all looking for jobs, and since they'll all be scared from having been laid off they'll happily take pay cuts. Additionally, it'll scare the hell out of the rest of the employees to see all their friends get blown up with no warning right in front of them. They'll want desperately to keep the jobs they have and won't leave!"

You can't say that because coordinated wage suppression is highly illegal (remember Apple and Google?). But wink/nod based wage suppression? Totally fine! If everyone just happens to fire their expensive workers at the same time but leaves no record of getting anyone to agree to it, it's perfectly allowed. This is not "copycat" behavior. This is all the CEOs recognizing what the game is and cashing in on it.

And better yet, there's nothing the tech workers can do about it! There are no real tech worker unions to speak of, and these companies know their workers have a highly libertarian bent who believe in the meritocracy myth, so there's no real risk of unionization no matter how bad things get. It's a pure win for them, with no real downsides, and the general consensus is that if they're smart they'll do this every so often to bring workers to heel. And given the pervasive attitudes about labor that I see among tech workers I don't see any reason to think that's wrong.

Post reply on HN