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Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

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Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#331

Post by edgyquant »

mplewis wrote: post #256
mberning wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Maybe not a human body; but it is /a/ body and it is true that those things are not a good condition to have for prolonged periods of time.

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#332

Post by xapata »

ARandomerDude wrote: post #277
bentlegen wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

FTA, Iger's goal is the "return [of] creativity to the center of the company."

That makes a good soundbite.

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#333

Post by cragfar »

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…

Their NI was $1.2 billion and cash flow was -$2 billion. YoY their cash balance went down by $8, while debt only went down by $5.

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#334

Post by edgyquant »

deepGem wrote: post #280
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.

Yet unemployment is at the lowest levels. So the economy is doing just fine.

Or rather it’s doing poorly this no one has the savings or means to skip out on jobs they don’t want .

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#335

Post by pokstad »

As a former GitLab employee from an expensive region, I’m a little concerned Sid didn’t layout the layoff process more transparently. Were high earners more likely to be laid off while lower CoL areas were kept? This was always a distant fear in working for a very global team where I knew teammates from other countries did the same job as me for much less.

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#336

Post by anon7725 »

andsoitis wrote: post #238
iamflimflam1 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly this - if you're still making massive profits then layoffs are unnecessary. You could just instigate a hiring freeze and let natural attrition run its course. But that would involve having some balls and managing a business in a way that is good for everyone.

typically a company also refocuses where they spend effort or make changes how they operate and that leaves a lot of people without meaningful work that matters. not only will those people be demoralized, but those around them too, together with continue collaboration and communication complexity. waiting for that to organically resolve it self would be terrible leadership.

Many/most of these companies have a huge portfolio of projects underway and have lots of open headcount that they’re hiring for. What sense does it make to say cut an engineer from one org only to hire another one a month later for another org?

Literally no thought is given to redeploying the labor force against the new set of projects. Just cut and rehire. It’s the ultimate short-termism, lack of vision and lack of leadership. Ironically all of these companies blather on about leadership but fail to even demonstrate a scintilla of it. Leadership just means “plays political game competently” at these companies.

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#337

Post by hashmap »

charcircuit wrote: post #311
hashmap wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 makin…

These companies overhired and now they are realizing that the positive cash flow to justify all of these new employees isn't existing. None of these layoffs are focused on laying off their most expensive people. The severance packages have been very good meaning that the laid off employees have a long time to find another well paying job.

> These companies overhired and now they are realizing that the positive cash flow to justify all of these new employees isn't existing.

This is false in a broad sense - the majority of CEOs plan to increase headcount this year in spite of layoffs. You can find examples here and there where it is true, but in general it is not. There's tons of literature of this readily available, but here is an example from as recently as yesterday: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ceo-outlook-report-optimism-r...

> None of these layoffs are focused on laying off their most expensive people.

The people you see laid off tend to be newly hired at higher recent market rates or people who have been there a very long time, both of whom are either expensive in a relative sense or an absolute one.

But even that is besides the point. Even if you fire randomly you still see this benefit if you're a CEO.

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#338

Post by ActionHank »

holman wrote: post #306
isuckatcoding wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that part of the Microsoft layoff?

It was announced this morning- during the initial Microsoft layoffs they were told GitHub wasn't impacted.

This doesn't even make sense, I can't imagine that there was a huge surge in demand for Github due to the pandemic that has now dissipated.

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#339

Post by vondur »

bentlegen wrote: post #255
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Once the accounts get to it, it will be shown to have lost money. (I'm referring how movie studios will get financially creative to portray popular movies "losing" money in order not to pay royalties to actors/writers"

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#340

Post by vintermann »

jkukul wrote: post #64
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.

I think there are several reasons to do it this way: - Effective number will be higher because some employees will be disgruntled because of the layoff event and will leave on their own. It's usually estimated that the effective number is twice as high - By doing a layoff you can quickly get rid of people who are overpaid. The attrition would take much longer. And with the regular performance review process you can o…

Can attest to this. I worked at an open source consultancy for a while. During a tough period, and having made some bad bets (trying to get into the enterprise Java world), they did some downsizing - or actually, it was more like warning that there would be downsizing. A lot of people quit, not even waiting to get a severance package. Including many people they definitively weren't happy to lose.
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