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Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

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Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#461

Post by deburo »

adamsmith143 wrote: post #428
deburo wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me, complaining about the reasoning used by companies while not currently at the head of such a company feels pretty darn foolish. You just don't have the numbers at hands to qualify what they are saying. And I don't understand why you would care about layoffs from the tech industry (of all people) anyway, it's one of the best industry today and will probably for a while still (forever?). Maybe one of those engine…

Pretty bad argument when we in fact do have many of the numbers for public companies and those numbers show growing revenue and record profits...

I'm not an accounting nor a forecasting expert, but I'm comfortable theorizing that the current quarter's financials of a company doesn't necessarily dictate its next moves.

I find people's tendency to generate outrage from nothing other than headlines to be very annoying.

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#462

Post by beardedetim »

grey-area wrote: post #312
beardedetim wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Specifically the Fed is trying to wrestle away the monetary power that Labor has, quoting a "wage-price spiral". In other words, the Fed is trying to cause a recession in order to fend off inflation, at the cost of Labors current economic power.

Yes, it's a brutal calculus, but inflation is also really corrosive for labour, since wage rises tend to take a while to respond to inflation and... cause more inflation. They are stuck on the horns of a dilemma they created 10 years ago with 10 years of sustained QE and ZIRP, which led to the asset bubble we now see deflating.

I agree that they are stuck in a bind, for sure, and they are definitely causing a recession in order to stave off the larger dragon/danger of inflation.

Also agree it's largely due to QE! I think the only thing I find weird enough to pause and think "huh, that's weird" is the timing. Labor gets market power and oh wow, we better fight inflation.

Maybe it just all happened at the same time and COVID caused it to bubble over. Just seems weird timing to me.

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#463

Post by ryanisnan »

jldugger wrote: post #416
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…

> Everywhere you look, the economic indicators are solid. Sure, if you cherry pick the indicators. There's a pretty big one you're tiptoeing around: the Fed Funds Rate has gone from 0.25 in 2022 to 4.75. > I do not have insight into Gitlab's customers, or the current state of Gitlab's business. Well, that is to your detriment, both as a persuader and decision maker. Gitlab is publicly traded, and their fiscal year en…

Thanks for that. I'm curious if you have any resources you would recommend for improving one's literacy for corporate finance?

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#464

Post by lbrito »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #264
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…

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…

>Yet literally every big tech company I can think of has had similar levels of layoffs. If these were Gitlab-specific problems you wouldn't expect the slowdowns and layoffs to hit everyone.

That doesn't really mean anything other than they are all riding the same wave.

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#465

Post by jayd16 »

Apocryphon wrote: post #387
pixl97 wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You can't say it's all that matters either.

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#466

Post by jldugger »

ryanisnan wrote: post #463
jldugger wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everywhere you look, the economic indicators are solid. Sure, if you cherry pick the indicators. There's a pretty big one you're tiptoeing around: the Fed Funds Rate has gone from 0.25 in 2022 to 4.75. > I do not have insight into Gitlab's customers, or the current state of Gitlab's business. Well, that is to your detriment, both as a persuader and decision maker. Gitlab is publicly traded, and their fiscal year en…

Thanks for that. I'm curious if you have any resources you would recommend for improving one's literacy for corporate finance?

Investopedia? I don't have any advice here, but The Personal MBA[1] is a reading list, and their pick "How to Read a Financial Report: Wringing Vital Signs Out of the Numbers"[2] doesn't sound like the worst. But I haven't read it, so don't mistake this for a personal endorsement.

[1]: https://personalmba.com/best-business-books/ [2]: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1118735846/

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#467

Post by SantalBlush »

jldugger wrote: post #416
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…

> Everywhere you look, the economic indicators are solid. Sure, if you cherry pick the indicators. There's a pretty big one you're tiptoeing around: the Fed Funds Rate has gone from 0.25 in 2022 to 4.75. > I do not have insight into Gitlab's customers, or the current state of Gitlab's business. Well, that is to your detriment, both as a persuader and decision maker. Gitlab is publicly traded, and their fiscal year en…

>Sure, if you cherry pick the indicators. There's a pretty big one you're tiptoeing around: the Fed Funds Rate has gone from 0.25 in 2022 to 4.75

Talk about cherry picking indicators—the federal funds rate isn't even an indicator. If you sincerely want to look at the data without cherry picking, please look at the top 10 US macro indicators [0].

[0] https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/02021...

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#468

Post by [deleted] »

isodev wrote: post #183
trentnix wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's quite simple: If you don't follow the herd, you risk being blamed if you fail. But if you follow the herd and do what everyone else is doing, even if the herd runs off of a cliff, nobody points any fingers. You'd think somewhere, in at least one of these larger tech companies, there would be a leader boldly proclaiming "this is our time to increase our investments and beat our competitors!" But it turns out ther…

It makes me sad. These are actual human beings losing their jobs. I guess they don't include “human cost” or “how much pain we inflicted” as a column in financial reports.

[deleted]

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#469

Post by SantalBlush »

rwalle wrote: post #363
noelsusman wrote: post #216

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.

You should actually look at the concrete numbers. GDP and the unemployment rate are the two biggest economic indicators used in determining a recession, and these concrete numbers tell you that you're wrong.

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#470

Post by ROTMetro »

lelanthran wrote: post #207
whatever1 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It takes long time for the layoff effects to hit the company. The main effect is that you lose the trust of the top performers. These will be the in the lookout for new opportunities the day after the layoffs are done. If you cut 10%, expect 10% from the top to flee within a couple of years. The second effect is related to the fact that companies usually target older people with expensive jobs. In an a big org these…

> The only way you can safely pull off layoffs is if you ensure that anything you do in the company requires the experience of a boot camp. That means that everyone is fungible and you can easily swap them. Yes, and that's the number one thing successful small business owners learn. The ones who don't learn this aren't successful. You want as many of your staff as possible to be easily replaced. If you're running a r…

You are talking about a Franchise model. At a good nice restaurant the individuals recognize me as an individual. You can't just drop someone in and have them know what I like or the service I am used to. You can make yourself a McDonalds, but you better not have any large customer contracts because they are not compatible with the 'franchise' everyone can do everything model (because they expect individualized attention, and often individualized features).
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