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

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#381

Post by deeviant » Thu, Feb 09, 2023, 5:13 PM UTC

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.

But Avatar doing well doesn't erase the fact that many of their movies and series aren't.

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#382

Post by lame-robot-hoax » Thu, Feb 09, 2023, 5:13 PM UTC

mostertoaster wrote: post #378

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.

What? When did the Biden administration change the methodology behind measuring unemployment?

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#383

Post by pachico » Thu, Feb 09, 2023, 5:15 PM UTC

I really looks like swinging the word 'macroeconomic' is a wildcard to justify just anything.

I'm tempted to see if I can get away with horrible shit by just appealing to it. "Agent, I got in the drugs business fue to the current macroeconomic situation..."

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#384

Post by utrack » Thu, Feb 09, 2023, 5:15 PM UTC

zopa wrote: post #319

charcircuit wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an analogy

A bad one. What's the insight here? If a body were a nation-state, it'd be a totalitarian hellscape where life is cheap, individuals exist only to support the collective and some populations are invaders to be exterminated.

I'd call it a complex system. It's entirely possible to have a component in a system that may disrupt the whole system in a whole new, unpredictable way. Just like some sort of asymptomatic tumor which breaks the whole body once it metastasizes.

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#385

Post by neilv » Thu, Feb 09, 2023, 5:16 PM UTC

thwayunion wrote: post #352

neilv wrote: post #315

I would've guessed GitLab would be unlikely to join the layoffs party right now, just on culture and internal/hiring image reasons. Then again, I also thought Google might've been a holdout among the FAANG companies. Before, I figured someone working at Google could assume that, if they focus on the company and do great work (or focus on the perf/promo metrics/criteria that Google seems to want), that Google will tak…

Google doesn't need good will; they'll always be able to get commodity labor. As long as they take care of a large enough number of senior folks they will be okay. (Unclear they're doing this, ofc.) Companies like GitLab are different; these layoffs seem extremely risky long-term. But they're unprofitable and capital has gotten a lot more expensive, so they might not have much of a choice.

Do the founders still believe in Google culture? It seemed to be styled as a place that other Stanford new college grads would want to go (money, status, lifestyle, ambition).

Without goodwill, even senior people pulling down $500K-$1M and performing very well are going to be thinking about when it makes sense to leave (for a competitor, startup, or windsurfing/woodworking).

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#386

Post by unethical_ban » Thu, Feb 09, 2023, 5:16 PM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #360

brnewd wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple isn't the best example. For instance their Safari development team is already severely underfunded, there is barely anyone to fire.

Or maybe Apple is a great example because they've resisted over-hiring in the fat times, so don't have to trim in the lean times.

Or maybe all these layoffs wouldn't be a problem if we in the US had a government that supported people more reliably with wages and affordable health insurance for a decent duration after a layoff.

Over hiring then laying some off shouldn't be a catastrophe in tech.

I also think people would have less issue with these layoffs if CEOs didn't make it sound like a short term critical business decision while being worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#387

Post by Apocryphon » Thu, Feb 09, 2023, 5:17 PM UTC

pixl97 wrote: post #302

gmt2027 wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

There was one time that Kodak made record profits and now they exist in name only. "Past performance is not indicative of future results"

These pat responses still elide whether future results are contingent upon drastic action. You simply cannot justify all actions by claiming past success is irrelevant.

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#388

Post by adamors » Thu, Feb 09, 2023, 5:17 PM UTC

travisgriggs wrote: post #266

adamors wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who was recently laid off at one of these % cuts at another company, these cuts target specific groups, for instance people who have higher salaries. Well paid people won't just quit.

I’ve seen this happen over the years and I’m always curious why there isn’t a discussion beforehand that offers the “overearners” a chance to stay at a reduced salary. I’ve asked people who were in those positions, and they’ve often indicated that they would have stayed at a lower salary, at least for a while.

I would have stayed on with temporary pay cut, especially in this economy.

I think it comes down to bad management, my direct manager didn’t even know I was getting cut.

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#389

Post by icedchai » Thu, Feb 09, 2023, 5:17 PM UTC

andsoitis wrote: post #212

todd3834 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of them over hired like crazy during the pandemic bubble. I wouldn’t say they were stupid but collectively most of them made a massive mistake. So yeah it isn’t hard to believe for me. I don’t think the layoffs are a stupid decision but I do think the extreme over hiring as if the bubble was a new normal was. Between 2020-2022 I literally conducted over 200 interviews for my previous employer. It was like we cou…

> Between 2020-2022 I literally conducted over 200 interviews for my previous employer. it sounds like you knew at the time that it was a mistake to hire this much and you were part of the interview processes. did you ever speak up, tried to make a case that it is the wrong move?

That would likely be a career limiting move. I remember the dot-com bubble days. We'd hire like mad... literally anyone who could spell HTML or PHP. There was no reason to speak up. We didn't know the gravy train was going to be over in a couple of years.

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#390

Post by ben7799 » Thu, Feb 09, 2023, 5:19 PM UTC

subsubzero wrote: post #373

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.

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 whe…

That's a funny one cause Lightyear was a really good movie. In some ways it was a much more mature sci-fi story than most of the big "sci fi" movie franchises.