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Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

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Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#451
post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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

It's the "we're in a downturn" crowd that is relying on vibes and feelings. GDP is growing. Unemployment is the lowest it's been in over 50 years. Real wages are growing for the bottom 50% of earners despite high inflation.

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#452

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's film division made a huge profit last year. One of their films made over a billion in around 10 days, has passed the $2 billion in just over a month, and is still on track to earn another hundred million before it leaves theaters. (Disney demands, and gets, 100% of opening weekend revenues, and a declining share each week thereafter; the exact breakdown varies from chain to chain. For small/independent chains, Disney retains at least 50% of box office revenues for the first 8 weeks.)

Their parks and live experiences made a huge profit last year: $29 billion in revenue, and approximately $8 billion in operating profits.

Their tech-heavy streaming division was the part that lost money: over $4 billion for the year, almost entirely offsetting the gross revenue made by the the film division from theatrical releases.

Yep, that's right: the only part of Disney that lost money was the tech-focused part.

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#453

> 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…

Almost. The rate of inflation has been tamed. Inflation overall is high still comparatively

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#454

> 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…

For a company like GitLab, the widespread perception that macro conditions are bad is equivalent to their actually being bad.

The email says that clients are holding off on big software purchases, and that's GitLab's bread and butter. I see no reason to disbelieve Sid on this.

In general this is one of those weird things about the economy, that perception/expectations dictate a lot of terms. It gives me the heebie jeebies sometimes. If enough people suddenly stopped believing that stocks represented real value, we'd be in a lot of trouble.

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#455

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.

It's just the first cut (for all companies). You can't do 50% right away as you don't know what will happen, so you need to do in steps. If they were just 7% over hired then they could just do attrition + a bit tougher perf reviews, or close a few teams over the course of a year but there is high chance for all companies they are not 10% or 7% or 15% over hired but 50%

really? a high chance for ALL companies that they are 50% overhired? based on what do you make this call? apart from doom pessimism.

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#456

> 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…

Indeed. In fact 10 days ago the IMF upgraded their outlook for the global economy in 2023.[1] These layoffs and their accompanying statements from the CEO talking about "challenging macroeconomic environments" are really starting to feel like CEOs just parroting each other.

[1] https://time.com/6251381/imf-global-economy-outlook-2023/

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#457

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…

strange world was really excellent. I never heard about it until it hit the streaming service, and then my kids watching nothing but that for like two weeks straight

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#458
What’s annoying is these companies maintain a “Careers” page with a bunch of job openings. “Oh look we’re the ones who are still hiring. Psych! We’ve been working on firing thousands!” At least GitHub shut down their careers page weeks before they announced their cut.

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#459
post #441
post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More people than ever worked two jobs last year: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNU02026631

That's interesting. Thanks for sharing. (Eyeballing it) That seems to be a continuation of a trend since 2015. I wonder if that relates to the prevalence of rideshare, which also caught-on about that time? https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=u...

There is a trend, but there's a spike at the start of Covid and then again around 2021, which correspond with the worst of the economic problems.

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#460

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…

Well, for Disney, making up for some of that early pandemic park revenue is certainly a challenge. Nobody messes with Mickey Mouse’s money!

Disney has already raised prices at their parks twice this year though:

https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/disney-raises-ticket-pric...

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