Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff • Hacker News Board

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#251

Post by jeltz » Thu, Feb 09, 2023, 4:00 PM UTC

aaomidi wrote: post #100

msm_ wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Honestly yes. If you’ve been in any high exec meeting you’ll know they’re all stupid. Like, arguably more so than the average engineer.

I 100% agree. The average engineer is stupid and so is the average executive.

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#252

Post by tukantje » Thu, Feb 09, 2023, 4:00 PM UTC

CharlieDigital wrote: post #178

djkivi wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The only way you can safely pull off layoffs is if you ensure that anything you do in the company requires the experience of a boot camp. That means that everyone is fungible and you can easily swap them. This is an interesting way to think of the Leetcode style interview. If you don't require any particular experience and you have built your company's systems in a way that any "competent" developer can join and be…

This is why React is so popular; not because it is inherently good or performance or has great DX but because of how easy it is to swap one so-so React dev for another so-so React dev.

People who are not frontenders regularly look at frontend and think it is easier / simpler to work with.

If anything, complexity grew like an atom bomb.

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#253

Post by prepend » Thu, Feb 09, 2023, 4:00 PM UTC

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…

> Inflation has been tame over the past six months.

No, I don’t think so. 6.5% [0] is still an absurdly high rate compared to the past 30 years. It is nowhere near tame and may still fluctuate quite a bit.

[0] https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/inflation-cpi

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#254

Post by gmt2027 » Thu, Feb 09, 2023, 4:00 PM UTC

jayd16 wrote: post #171

aldarisbm wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but they are all reporting record breaking profits.

Layoffs are about projected profits not past profits.

So the plane has been flying over valleys at record altitude and we see a couple of mountains ahead that we will easily clear. Despite being absolutely no where near crashing, let's throw a couple of crew overboard so that we can continue to climb to new heights and keep the hype engines of our overvaluation going?

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#255

Post by bentlegen » Thu, Feb 09, 2023, 4:00 PM UTC

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #220

gregors wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Disney is laying off people because their movies keep bombing in the theaters. All they do is remakes and spinoffs of the famous old IPs they devoured, but that gravy train is coming to a stop. After a while people get tired of watching more half-baked Star Wars and Marvel sequels of bootleg quality. They're running out of franchises to milk, and making something new and original is not in their corporate culture.

I’m guessing you didn’t read the article because Avatar made in over 2 billion dollars, exceeding even their expectations, becoming the 6th highest grossing film of all time. Or maybe it bombed, beats me.

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#256

Post by mplewis » Thu, Feb 09, 2023, 4:01 PM UTC

mberning wrote: post #219

noelsusman wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Many people feel fine right up until the point they get diagnosed with a terminal illness. The point being, this would be like going to the doctor and having high blood pressure, high cholesterol, high blood sugar, etc. etc. The patient can be up, walking around, feeling OK, but in reality they are headed for a nightmare.

The economy is not a human body.

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#257

Post by Eumenes » Thu, Feb 09, 2023, 4:01 PM UTC

isodev wrote: post #106

I don’t get this - did every single company hire hundreds of people for no good reason? A global event forcing folks to temporarily use more online services is, well, temporary. I just don’t get the mindset that triggered all these companies to mismanage their teams so badly.

Companies hire in a frenzy based off future growth, esp. in tech, not exactly always current needs. How many times have you heard a recruiter or someone say in a company all-hands that we're going to grow our engineering team 300% by EOY, or TRIPLE our headcount.

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#258

Post by alexggordon » Thu, Feb 09, 2023, 4:01 PM UTC

I'm a huge supporter of GitLab, I love their product. Facilitated the use of it for my work and really admire how open their product development and company morals are. So when I say that this is probably one of the worst decisions they can make I hope you can understand I don't say that casually.

The problem with running an open company (check out their handbook[0] if you don't understand what I'm referencing) is that you can be held accountable to your values when you break them. All these blog posts regarding the "current macroeconomic climate" make it sound as though they've been blindsided by the downturn in the economy. To me, that's just a straw man. If you listened to any economist or financial adverser, even while the economy was doing okay in 2022, most knew there was a recession coming[0].

Even if they didn't know that, and they were completely ignorant (of which I would expect multiple executive level firings), they bragged in the Q3 Earnings Call on 12/05/2022 that "We added over 200 new team members in 3Q and we continue to experience lower attrition than the industry"[2], undoubtedly as they were planning layoffs. According to Wikipedia, Gitlab had 1,630 employees in January of 2022, so assuming they added 500 new employees in 2022, 7% layoffs would be about 150 positions. Given that, I love this quote from that same call[2].

> As Sid and I have said over the last several quarters, our number one priority is growth but we will do this responsibly.

The "I" that quote is Sharlene Seemungal, acting CISO[3]. I don't even have to research the layoffs to know that neither Sid nor Sharlene have suffered from the layoffs.

All that said, it's laudable the level of investment you took in ensuring the employees you laid off have a good transition--but it would be better if you didn't play the corporate bullshit shocked pikachu face game when the downturn everyone knew was coming came and actually hired responsibly.

[0] https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/values/

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/09/recession-will-hit-in-first-...

[2] https://ir.gitlab.com/static-files/96839a79-517d-4d92-989f-9...

[3] https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/eba/

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#259

Post by mywittyname » Thu, Feb 09, 2023, 4:02 PM UTC

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…

> If there are problems, they are Gitlab problems, not macroeconomic problems.

Agreed. But pretty much every business is taking a hard look at their SaaS spend and are making cuts where possible.

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#260

Post by jeltz » Thu, Feb 09, 2023, 4:02 PM UTC

zmxz wrote: post #141

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.

You forgot to mention a huge number of impostors in our industry who get hired without actually being qualified.

Sure, but that is what happens when you over hire at crazy speeds like the companies did a couple of years ago.