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Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

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Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#371

Post by ye-olde-sysrq »

mardifoufs wrote: post #361
ye-olde-sysrq wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"with 0 connection to anything close to labor."

Except for the part where if you get fired, a countdown starts for when you become homeless and then starve? Especially in the US?

"professional managerial class"

are still labor, since their primary expression of economic power is through the sale of their labor.

Stop trying to drive class division.

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#372

Post by utrack »

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…

That sounds like proper risk management then? If you don't know what's happening then it makes sense to play safe. The only problem is that those collective layoffs might actually slow economies down and exacerbate the issue at hand...

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#373

Post by subsubzero »

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.

Disney has produced a bunch of duds this year, Avatar and a marvel movie or two were the only two shining stars in a otherwise drab sky. Lets look at Lightyear, a real bomb considering every other Toy Story movie has been a smashing success($220M made against a $200M budget). Or Strange World which did even worse($73M made against a $135-170M budget). Black Panther Wakanda looks like it had a good box office, but when compared against the first movie it did half the returns of its predecessor.

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#374

Post by evouga »

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…

It makes sense to me that the economy overall is doing well but that the tech sector specifically over invested during the pandemic and is now contracting.

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#375

Post by Natsu »

xnx wrote: post #359
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.

Lowest unemployment rate in 50 years: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/UNRATE

More people than ever worked two jobs last year:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNU02026631

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#376

Post by pokstad »

postexitus wrote: post #368
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?

There’s a lot of value in those high CoL areas. A lot of concentrated knowledge and skill is in the Bay Area.

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#377

Post by WaitWaitWha »

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…

Just a quick reminder regarding those "they", "shareholders" - it is a pet peeve of mind how we tend to forget who are the vast majority of these sharholders "getting rich" by the count of people, not necessarily by the value.

In the USA 401(k)[0] & 403(b)[1] plans are used by vast majority of people as their retirement funds. It is very rare for a small organizations to be able to offer full pension plans. What they do offer are investment plans like 401 & 403.

All those little 401k/403b plans, through the plans and the mutual funds are the "they" "shareholders", "getting rich".

In 2019 21% of US workers participated in pension plans, while 43% in 401K/403b [2]

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/401(k)

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/403(b)

[2]: https://www.pensionrights.org/resources/information-center/

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#378

Post by mostertoaster »

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 “good jobs report” is just smoke and mirrors to have something positive to say at the state of the union. Changing how you measure the number of jobs so it looks better is just par for the course for politicians. Using the old measure that 400k over the 100k expected is 20k less than expected.

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#379

Post by deeviant »

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.

Disney+ was also a financial disaster.

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#380

Post by Apocryphon »

lmarcos wrote: post #161
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…

These companies laying off people are doing so because they made a mistake to begin with (over hiring). So, yeah, if you make one mistake, you can make another. And no: not all tech companies have over hired during the pandemic and they are not firing people these days. No one talks about them because that doesn't sell.

That would sell because those companies would be desirable places for the newly unemployed to apply for.
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