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Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

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Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#361

Post by mardifoufs »

ye-olde-sysrq wrote: post #114
scient wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[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.

Engineers are still not proles lol. And they will never be, so it's always funny to hear a bunch of highly paid SWE talk like they are class conscious workers. In reality, most are thoroughly professional managerial class, with 0 connection to anything close to labor.

It's even funnier when that discourse seem to mostly happen when firings happen, as if losing your highly-paid cushy job makes you a proletaire.

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#362

Post by sokoloff »

UncleMeat wrote: post #348
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This feels like another semantic argument, this time over what "macroeconomic environment is tough" means. You are correct in everything you say in your first paragraph. That said, it's fair to say that "sharply rising interest rates" are also part of the macroeconomic environment. You can say that it was silly for all these tech companies and investors to think the free money spigot would go on for so long, but the…

People say “free money spigot” but I don’t understand it. Google has 120b in the bank. How was it able to leverage nearly zero interest loans before? Why isn’t new risk free (nominal) growth on cash a benefit considering they have so much cash?

All of Google advertisers were able to make use of easy/cheap money to fuel their own business, in which they bought Google and YouTube ads with part of that money.

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#363

Post by rwalle »

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.

Sure, your subjective feeling is more accurate and convincing than concrete numbers.

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#364

Post by [deleted] »

tablespoon wrote: post #214
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…

> No, it isn't, and it's embarrassing at this point to continue insisting this. Yeah, it feels the most charitable interpretation for the companies that say that is their CEO read doom-and-gloom predictions last fall, and hasn't opened a newspaper since. My employer just put out good numbers for 2022 and what look like positive growth predictions 2023 -- they're not laying anyone off, but they're cutting budgets and…

[deleted]

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#365

Post by utrack »

coryfklein wrote: post #318
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This feels like another semantic argument, this time over what "macroeconomic environment is tough" means. You are correct in everything you say in your first paragraph. That said, it's fair to say that "sharply rising interest rates" are also part of the macroeconomic environment. You can say that it was silly for all these tech companies and investors to think the free money spigot would go on for so long, but the…

The sharply rising interest rates are a problem if you have a short runway that makes you reliant on debt or investor money, in which case yes you very well may need to cut costs just to keep the lights on. But if you're Microsoft or Google? You're profitable. You're bringing in money hand over fist. Technically the high interest rates might benefit you because now you have more options of what to do with that giant…

This thread is about Gitlab, not GitHub. AFAIK Microsoft doesn't own them (I hope).

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#366

Post by yamtaddle »

kasey_junk wrote: post #282
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.

This economy is baffling to basically every professional who looks at it. Just this week we saw a jobs number that absolutely rofl stomped the consensus expectations. At the same time the credit card number came in ism services business purchasing came in 35% over expectations and new orders were way over expectations as well. Businesses are out there doing something! You could watch in real-time as the markets all d…

I listen to conservative AM radio a fair bit (because I'm not right in the head) and a local guy was really struggling with this the other day. "The jobs numbers, yeah, those are really good, but... um... economy bad? Can't possibly say it's good while a Democrat is President, but um, yeah, I was surprised at how good the job numbers were. But... it's still bad, somehow, because reasons. Inflation? Oh and we're definitely on the cusp of a recession, if not a depression, I'm just sure of it."

The situation's super-weird and it's evidently hard for people used to being able to easily spin the narrative one way or another to adjust to whatever the hell this is. It's definitely not the case that all indicators look great, but damned if the economy's not still trucking along.

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#367

Post by suralind »

coryfklein wrote: post #318
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This feels like another semantic argument, this time over what "macroeconomic environment is tough" means. You are correct in everything you say in your first paragraph. That said, it's fair to say that "sharply rising interest rates" are also part of the macroeconomic environment. You can say that it was silly for all these tech companies and investors to think the free money spigot would go on for so long, but the…

The sharply rising interest rates are a problem if you have a short runway that makes you reliant on debt or investor money, in which case yes you very well may need to cut costs just to keep the lights on. But if you're Microsoft or Google? You're profitable. You're bringing in money hand over fist. Technically the high interest rates might benefit you because now you have more options of what to do with that giant…

It's Gitlab, not GitHub tho.

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#368

Post by postexitus »

pokstad wrote: post #335

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.

The answer is yes, in all cases, he doesn't need to state in explicitly. So what? Layoffs are being done to save costs or to signal doing so to shareholders. It is not a "let's be meritocratic and only cut the lowest performers" exercise. The overarching question is, with our insistence on remote working etc, how will we ever justify hiring from high CoL areas again?

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#369

Post by trynewideas »

utrack wrote: post #365
coryfklein wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sharply rising interest rates are a problem if you have a short runway that makes you reliant on debt or investor money, in which case yes you very well may need to cut costs just to keep the lights on. But if you're Microsoft or Google? You're profitable. You're bringing in money hand over fist. Technically the high interest rates might benefit you because now you have more options of what to do with that giant…

This thread is about Gitlab, not GitHub. AFAIK Microsoft doesn't own them (I hope).

Yeah, the "GitHub to lay off 10%" thread is over here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34726735

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#370

Post by coryfklein »

suralind wrote: post #367
coryfklein wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sharply rising interest rates are a problem if you have a short runway that makes you reliant on debt or investor money, in which case yes you very well may need to cut costs just to keep the lights on. But if you're Microsoft or Google? You're profitable. You're bringing in money hand over fist. Technically the high interest rates might benefit you because now you have more options of what to do with that giant…

It's Gitlab, not GitHub tho.

:facepalm: Ah yes, thank you for the correction, I definitely misread that. I also don't know Gitlab's specific financial situation, so perhaps the general point still stands haha.
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