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Thoughts on getting laid off after nine years at Twilio

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Re: Thoughts on getting laid off after nine years at Twilio

#71

Post by timr »

fzeroracer wrote: post #67
timr wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This whole trend of optimising everything to the max without caring for people is going to create an employee base that is completely disillusioned about their role or prospects or what's their best strategy for life. While I get where you're coming from, it's a pretty big leap to go from what's happening now to "optimizing everything to the max". Twilio tripled in size since the pandemic, and wasn't/isn't profitab…

What are you referring to? We've gone through multiple cold cycles already. 2012 was a year of large layoffs and tough hiring, so was 2016/2017 and now 2022 for seemingly arbitrary reasons. Some engineers may have gone through these cycles without issue, but everyone was acutely aware of the layoffs when they were occurring and if you graduated during those times it was especially hard to find a job until the job mar…

> 2012 was a year of large layoffs and tough hiring, so was 2016/2017 and now 2022 for seemingly arbitrary reasons.

Everything is relative, I suppose, but those are the sorts of things a person might say if they've never actually seen a downturn.

When I say "downturn", I mean: 2001. 2008. Compared to that, 2012 was boom times. I was running a startup then, and hiring was a brutal competition. Maybe not compared to 2020, but again...that's not normal.

In 2008 we were hiring Ivy-league grads into hourly customer support roles. Circa 2000, programmers with decades of experience were going on unemployment.

Re: Thoughts on getting laid off after nine years at Twilio

#72

Post by librish »

Xeronate wrote: post #65
librish wrote: post #40

Reading the responses to some of these posts it feels like the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction in the "the company is not your family" discussion. Yes, if you expect corporate America to always treat you fairly you're going to end up disappointed. But spending 9 years at a place and not even giving a little bit of yourself to the company seems even worse. It's OK to think that your boss cares about…

Your sentiment is nice in theory, but in reality it's just a recipe for getting taken advantage of.

It's OK to be taken advantage of a little bit.

Re: Thoughts on getting laid off after nine years at Twilio

#73

Post by nivenkos »

nibbleshifter wrote: post #25
zerr wrote: post #19

2 hours notice - How do you handover the work? Or is there nothing to handover?

Here's the thing I've learned lately from friends who have survived layoffs: handover often doesn't happen. The company terminates access effective immediately (maybe with gardening leave) for security reasons. The immediate loss of institutional knowledge causes fucking havoc across the board. So some people will be taken back on as contractors for a while at extremely expensive rates. This also means there's a weir…

And then more good people leave too, as they're more willing to accept other offers.

Re: Thoughts on getting laid off after nine years at Twilio

#74

Post by znpy »

librish wrote: post #40

Reading the responses to some of these posts it feels like the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction in the "the company is not your family" discussion. Yes, if you expect corporate America to always treat you fairly you're going to end up disappointed. But spending 9 years at a place and not even giving a little bit of yourself to the company seems even worse. It's OK to think that your boss cares about…

The author of the post clearly would agree with you.

And got fired anyway.

Re: Thoughts on getting laid off after nine years at Twilio

#75

Post by e2e4 »

haswell wrote: post #16

Greg’s “Devs and Depression” talk many years back was a light in the middle of a very dark period of time in my life. Having followed some of Greg’s work when I was doing developer relations, this particular post hit me closer to home than most, and is just another reminder of the caliber of people impacted by these cuts. When I voluntarily left my job last year to refocus on my mental health for awhile, it was one o…

https://youtu.be/CausE8Sc8Uc

Re: Thoughts on getting laid off after nine years at Twilio

#76

Post by znpy »

znpy wrote: post #74
librish wrote: post #40

Reading the responses to some of these posts it feels like the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction in the "the company is not your family" discussion. Yes, if you expect corporate America to always treat you fairly you're going to end up disappointed. But spending 9 years at a place and not even giving a little bit of yourself to the company seems even worse. It's OK to think that your boss cares about…

The author of the post clearly would agree with you. And got fired anyway.

This is not pure cynicism though: had they decided to leave after the first round of layoff they would probably be in a better position when negotiating the next job (something that sadly now they have to do anyway, but as someone currently unemployed).

Re: Thoughts on getting laid off after nine years at Twilio

#77

Post by whstl »

JohnBooty wrote: post #66
goostavos wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I would love to work in an environment where I felt valued as a person but I have yet to find that CAN that even exist? The mercenary approach seems to me the only one that doesn't fall prey to living in a fantasy about how things "Should" be -- there is only the way they are: it's a business relationship. Younger me thought otherwise. I was big into startup culture, enjoyed the comradery of working long hours, taki…

> > I would love to work in an environment where > > I felt valued as a person but I have yet to find that > CAN that even exist? Theoretically, yes. Practically... it's always going to be insanely rare. I would be very loyal to a place that helped me grow as a person with continuing education opportunities. I would also be very loyal to a place that had a solid balance of feature delivery versus vs. technical debt m…

Sometimes it's not even about the short game of capitalism. I've seen multiple times undesired meaningless features being highly-prioritized without rhyme or reason because of hunches from some PO, because it was politically good internally for some product manager, or because the designer decided to do some redesign, and no higher-up wanted to intervene and check how important it was. When I saw that happening and I was "the higher up", I had to burn a lot of political capital to get the message from the team across. Modern software development is highly dysfunctional but we somehow refuse to tackle it.

Re: Thoughts on getting laid off after nine years at Twilio

#78

Post by znpy »

danesparza wrote: post #64

Why in the world would Twilio take somebody who is this loyal to their culture and put them out on their ear? This person was a true believer. They stuck with the company for 9 YEARS. If you want to shift the company, then do that -- and take your true believers WITH YOU. This isn't leadership on Twilio's part. This is a scared company. They aren't making smart decisions. They're just cowing to investors.

> They're just cowing to investors.

That’s what company do… keep the investors happy.

That’s also why some companies underline at every possible occasion that they are bootstrapped (ie: they’ve grown organically without investments from vc firms or similar).

Re: Thoughts on getting laid off after nine years at Twilio

#79

Post by fzeroracer »

timr wrote: post #71
fzeroracer wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you referring to? We've gone through multiple cold cycles already. 2012 was a year of large layoffs and tough hiring, so was 2016/2017 and now 2022 for seemingly arbitrary reasons. Some engineers may have gone through these cycles without issue, but everyone was acutely aware of the layoffs when they were occurring and if you graduated during those times it was especially hard to find a job until the job mar…

> 2012 was a year of large layoffs and tough hiring, so was 2016/2017 and now 2022 for seemingly arbitrary reasons. Everything is relative, I suppose, but those are the sorts of things a person might say if they've never actually seen a downturn. When I say "downturn", I mean: 2001. 2008. Compared to that , 2012 was boom times. I was running a startup then, and hiring was a brutal competition. Maybe not compared to 2…

I mean, 2001 and 2008 are all 'boom times' compared to the great depression and other periods of severe economic downturns if we want to be relative. I'm not sure that really matters though to a new grad that took 6+ months to find a job during one of the period of lean times I mentioned in my prior post however.

It can always be worse, but that doesn't mean it's not bad.

Re: Thoughts on getting laid off after nine years at Twilio

#80

Post by whstl »

wg0 wrote: post #69
wonderwonder wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I very much take a mercenary approach to my jobs. At my very first software job I remember seeing a let go employee walking sadly through the office with a box of his possessions under one arm and a potted plant in the other. Since then I have brought nothing personal into work. If I'm let go I just have to grab my keys and I'm out. Work is something I do to earn money. If companies can replace people for less or cut…

Here's a very controversial and bitter take. Aiming for maximum downvotes. It's only when you get fired, you start to see clearly and are able to come out of that flowery lala land of "we're a team", "we're a family" and all that misplaced rather abused analogies. It's just a commercial relationship rooted in generating profit (nothing wrong with that) for which have to collaborate with others. There's no team, there…

I don't think it's controversial. Or bitter.

Maybe I disagree about the part about "only when you get fired". To me it was enough seeing people getting fired, or having promotions postponed multiple times for no reason, or seeing a co-worker getting a verbal offers of a raise getting rescinded after they denied a job offer from another company, or having a C-level give me silent treatment when I disagreed with stupid release deadlines.

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