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Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

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Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#571

Post by WalterBright »

munificent wrote: post #504
WalterBright wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you cut 10%, expect 10% from the top to flee within a couple of years. If the company was laying off the deadwood and the quiet quitters, the top performers know who they are, and are not concerned about being laid off themselves. Top performers don't particularly care to work with deadwood and quiet quitters, either.

> If the company was laying off the deadwood and the quiet quitters That's a big if, though. Executives doing layoffs also tend to do them quickly and plan them in secret in order to reduce the chance leaks. That means they are deciding who to cut with very limited time and information. They make lots of mistakes. Both times I've been through large layoffs, I saw skilled respected peers get the axe while deadwood did…

The RIFs I've been through did a good job culling the deadwood and quiet quitters. Everybody knew who they were.

Of course, every company is different.

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#572

Post by nitwit005 »

These small percentage layoffs seem a bit pointless.

A lot of these companies were hiring right up till their layoff (including gitlab if their careers page was accurate last time I looked). Just appropriately pausing hiring would deliver similar savings.

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#573

Post by andsoitis »

hirako2000 wrote: post #342
andsoitis wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if, as you say, the economy is super strong and employment opportunities are robust, then nobody should worry about the layoffs because hey, you’ll find a new gig easily!

Many people have been at a place for a while, some over a decade. Massive layoffs means quick and picking individuals who rarely demonstrated poor performance. What it means to someone being laid off is far more than the challenges in finding another place. Plenty of fish and a rich dating scene out there. If you are dumped for dubious reason, would the argument that it isn't a problem at all to find someone else sta…

> millions people should be let go

Where did you get the notion that millions of people have been laid off?

Not that it is the canonical source of truth, but according layoffs.fyi:

- 2023: 100k people laid off at 332 tech companies

- 2022: 160k people laid off at 1044 tech companies

source: https://layoffs.fyi

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#574

Post by Salgat »

atomicnumber3 wrote: post #181
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…

I worked at a bigco that followed this approach. I think the alleged fungibility of programmers is surface-level. Sure - ~any decent programmer can jump into ~any codebase and do your JIRA tickets. But there's a more holistic ownership you miss out on that's going to be the difference between a system aging gracefully and a system becoming a giant hunk of butchered junk that's been one-small-jira-ticket-ed to death o…

When you know for an absolute fact that you hold ownership and are held accountable for a codebase, assuming you're competent, things like tech debt and bugs suddenly become much more important and consequential to you.

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#575

Post by andsoitis »

IshKebab wrote: post #246
andsoitis wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they make shareholders rich do you realize that for most software engineers at the hi-tech companies, the majority of their compensation is in the form of equity? and at startups, reduced headcount cost gives more runway for the company and hence employment.

That's nonsense. Maybe for a small number of companies in SV or for successful startups (which are rare). But the vast majority of software developers get no or very little equity.

If my interpretation of the overarching sentiment here on HN is accurate, it is that the big tech companies make tons of profit and hence the layoffs are unnecessary. It is within that context that I said that.

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#576

Post by Salgat »

nordsieck wrote: post #167
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 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. I don't know, but I imagine that there's a pretty substantial difference between an isolated layoff and an industry wide layoff. Maybe it hits differently when you get to see the sausage…

The problem is that "industry wide" doesn't mean much if you know your company is doing well. It's jarring seeing "record profits" and "layoffs" mentioned within a few weeks/months of each other. If you get laid off even when things are going great, what hope do you have for knowing when the next layoff occurs?

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#577

Post by Salgat »

WaitWaitWha wrote: post #377
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…

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…

The median 401k balance is downright scary. For ages 55-64, it's only $84k. Percentage participating in these plans doesn't mean much if they don't have much in it.

https://www.personalcapital.com/blog/retirement-planning/ave...

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#578

Post by charcircuit »

hashmap wrote: post #531
charcircuit wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>the majority of CEOs plan to increase headcount this year in spite of layoffs. This just means that companies are continuing to hirer. It doesn't mean that they plan on increasing headcount to above where it was before the layoff.

It's so weird to post the first thing that feels like a thought, just to carry water for CEOs who are never going to see you write this, and will never like you, without getting paid for it. 1300s feudal serfdom mindset. And it's everywhere. If you're continuing to hire past these layoffs, and expanding plans to do so, it's to take advantage of the environment created by the layoffs. If there really was a fiscal cris…

>just to carry water for CEOs who are never going to see you write this, and will never like you

I like my CEO, but it doesn't bother me if he doesn't know about me. He has much more important stuff to think about.

>without getting paid for it.

I don't care about money. I join companies to have fun working on their projects.

>you'd also see mass hiring freezes

Hiring has slowed down. Large companies are always going to want new people.

>“We expect to end 2023 as either roughly the same size or even a slightly smaller organization than we are today,” said Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

Meta's employee count has typically grown over 20% every year. This was also said before the layoffs were public knowledge.

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#579

Post by ycombobreaker »

jokethrowaway wrote: post #487
atomicnumber3 wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah no nothing like that. And 10 is just a pithy way to say that they want people to stay a long time if they're good. And they did that by, each year, if they wanted you out, you got a very small bonus. If they wanted you to stay, you got a very large bonus. That's all I meant - they retain you by giving you many dollars via payroll.

Sensible, but if they can afford to give you a substantial bonus every year, you're making way too little to begin with. You're anyway better with job hopping.

A trading shop can afford to give bigger bonuses to a smaller set of staff, not everyone who is still cutting teeth.

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#580

Post by jldugger »

SantalBlush wrote: post #563
jldugger wrote: post #549

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, you wanna look at SOFR instead? It shows the same thing but is an actual measure of economic activity instead of policy goals: > The Secured Overnight Financing Rate (SOFR) is a broad measure of the cost of borrowing cash overnight collateralized by Treasury securities. [1]: https://www.newyorkfed.org/markets/reference-rates/sofr

>Okay, you wanna look at SOFR instead? Why would I want to look at the SOFR? That's the epitome of cherry-picked data. I just sent you a list of common economic indicators, and you're willfully avoiding them, which doesn't bode well for your argument. If anything, you should be referencing the yield curve, which is an actual economic indicator and has recently inverted. That would illustrate your point much better.

> Why would I want to look at the SOFR?

I'm asking what your preferred metric for interest rates is. Apparently you want to look at the yield curve slope? Which is fine, and commonly used as a leading indicator of recessions. But in a way its about the market predicting a change in the future value of money, rather than economic conditions right now. Sort of a second order effect, and IDK any timeseries that captures it that I can compare now versus last year with.

> I just sent you a list of common economic indicators, and you're willfully avoiding them, which doesn't bode well for your argument

You sent one random top ten listicle from investopedia. How do housing starts matter as a macroeconomic signal for a tech startup selling services to other tech companies? It won't, these are proxies for the larger economy. And it wont ever matter to them. Interest rate is the macro indicator that most directly affects such companies, so thats the one I'm discussing.

Other conditions exist, like every tech company undergoing layoffs and cost cuts is a factor but not usually treated as "macro." It's definitely a factor, and one worth reflecting on. But we're not trying to forecast global GDP here, so when an exec says 'macroeconomic conditions' think capital markets not rental vacancy rate.

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