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Red Hat cutting hundreds of jobs, CEO says in letter to employees

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Re: Red Hat cutting hundreds of jobs, CEO says in letter to employees

#91

Post by away271828 »

rwmj wrote: post #43
toomuchtodo wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This! FIRE as fast as you can so you’re not at the whim of this class of people (management class, broadly speaking). There is no security, no one is coming to save you except you. I speak from experience.

Rates of pay are so high in tech that I wonder if there will come a crisis when many people take early retirement. (Obviously I'm not saying this is a bad thing)

Anecdotally, I see some people in their 40s or early 50s who made very serious money and worked really hard (founders, CEOs, and the like) end up doing some of the on-the-side type of work that gets thrown at people in that position (boards, "advisors," and the like). But I don't actually see a huge number of late career regular employees (even fairly well-compensated ones) retiring way early.

Re: Red Hat cutting hundreds of jobs, CEO says in letter to employees

#92

Post by steveBK123 »

tough wrote: post #52
CoastalCoder wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the causes of R&D layoffs, I'm curious about the split between (a) increased interest rates, vs. (b) changes to U.S. tax code that disallow 5-year amortization of software-development costs. I'm only hearing people mention (a). So maybe (b) is less relevant than I'm imagining? CORRECTION: I think I stated (b) exactly backwards. IIUC, previously a company could fully expense the cost of software development in the…

Now that you put it that way, maybe (b) is the ugly truth, and (a) is just the prettier (everyone else is doing it) scape goat. I see interest rates being the number 1 excuse for layoffs, but there has to be something else on why Software is getting screwed so much in this down cycle. I used to think AI/LLMs, but who knows. Im not seeing as many layoffs internationally but that might be biased, one would thought clim…

Conversely, I think it should make sense that the growthiest of growth areas, tech, would see the biggest pullback once money starts costing money again.

A lot of loss-making / future growth speculative tech business models make a lot less sense when you can make about 5% risk free.

It doesn't get discussed much, but during the boomiest tech hiring days of COVID.. interest rates weren't just 0%.. they were, in real terms, negative.

Circa 2021 the treasury/risk free rate was about 1.5% while inflation ended the year at about 7%. So you were getting paid 5.5% to take risk. This incentives speculation as parking your money in a safe CD/bond/whatever loses real-money with time.

Now inflation & risk free rate are at about parity.

Re: Red Hat cutting hundreds of jobs, CEO says in letter to employees

#93

Post by garbagecoder »

whitemary wrote: post #49
foobarian wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - Cut expensive (old) employees. Anyone have tips to avoid this? I keep getting promotions and raises and it's all very nice but makes me worried about being closer to the top of the list when the next round of cuts needs to happen... Just this year I got an unsolicited bump because I was "below market avg TCO." You can't just say "no thanks" to that.

Unionize.

This is the best answer ITT. Union-busting tech people is easy though since they appeals to them as uniquely intelligent people who gain nothing from the support of others works most of the time.

Re: Red Hat cutting hundreds of jobs, CEO says in letter to employees

#94

Post by away271828 »

mjr00 wrote: post #60
htag wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FIRE is obviously nice. I do think "bank the extra" is significantly more attainable, while providing a lot of extra security. 1. He doesn't have to change his spending habits at all. He just needs to direct the extra income into a saving account, maybe check on it one a month/quarter/year and move it someplace like CDs, Bonds, or ETFs. 2. His goal is to continue to work. Having a healthy savings account can keep you…

This. "Bank extra and make sure you have savings" is way more reasonable than the "aim to retire by 35" FIRE cult. Out of a sample size of 4, 75% of the people I know who have done "FIRE" regret it. (The one who doesn't comes from a wealthy family who bought him a house right after university, so the sacrifices he made are a lot less.) Among the 3, the common theme was realizing they wasted the best years of their li…

Even with the benefit of hindsight--and admittedly ignoring some periods when I wasn't really happy where I was--given a somewhat arbitrarily large amount of money in the bank, maybe I'd have taken a couple sabbaticals but I'm not sure that, in retrospect, I'd really have been happy retiring much before my late 50s.

Re: Red Hat cutting hundreds of jobs, CEO says in letter to employees

#95

Post by jstarfish »

tough wrote: post #52
CoastalCoder wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the causes of R&D layoffs, I'm curious about the split between (a) increased interest rates, vs. (b) changes to U.S. tax code that disallow 5-year amortization of software-development costs. I'm only hearing people mention (a). So maybe (b) is less relevant than I'm imagining? CORRECTION: I think I stated (b) exactly backwards. IIUC, previously a company could fully expense the cost of software development in the…

Now that you put it that way, maybe (b) is the ugly truth, and (a) is just the prettier (everyone else is doing it) scape goat. I see interest rates being the number 1 excuse for layoffs, but there has to be something else on why Software is getting screwed so much in this down cycle. I used to think AI/LLMs, but who knows. Im not seeing as many layoffs internationally but that might be biased, one would thought clim…

AI is too nascent to be the sole reason for so many layoffs. Emulating HR is about all it can be trusted to do autonomously.

Old people (50+) and troublemakers (PIPs) comprised the entirety of my own company's most recent layoff round. They're not even trying to hide it anymore.

My hunch is that [America] is laying off domestic engineers so we can outsource more of the positions to India during the next hiring phase. If anything, AI is playing middleman in flattening a lot of the communication hurdles.

Re: Red Hat cutting hundreds of jobs, CEO says in letter to employees

#96

Post by rpgbr »

edgyquant wrote: post #72
CoolGuySteve wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because 8% growth in a single quarter is fucking fantastic.

Yet it’s more than a 50% drop from the average of the last twelve quarters.

As if high level growth could be perpetual. Capitalism expectations are unachievable by default and yet people use them as an excuse for shit decisions and everybody are supposed to accept this craziness as “rational”.

Re: Red Hat cutting hundreds of jobs, CEO says in letter to employees

#97

Post by ska »

tough wrote: post #52
CoastalCoder wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the causes of R&D layoffs, I'm curious about the split between (a) increased interest rates, vs. (b) changes to U.S. tax code that disallow 5-year amortization of software-development costs. I'm only hearing people mention (a). So maybe (b) is less relevant than I'm imagining? CORRECTION: I think I stated (b) exactly backwards. IIUC, previously a company could fully expense the cost of software development in the…

Now that you put it that way, maybe (b) is the ugly truth, and (a) is just the prettier (everyone else is doing it) scape goat. I see interest rates being the number 1 excuse for layoffs, but there has to be something else on why Software is getting screwed so much in this down cycle. I used to think AI/LLMs, but who knows. Im not seeing as many layoffs internationally but that might be biased, one would thought clim…

> there has to be something else on why Software is getting screwed

A lot of companies clearly overhired in the last few years, and had access to cheap money if needed to help with that. Perhaps that is most of what explains it? It was also biased to US companies, so would make sense that the reversal would be larger there also.

Re: Red Hat cutting hundreds of jobs, CEO says in letter to employees

#98

Post by hintymad »

mathattack wrote: post #6

Welcome to life under IBM. They’re in the business of a financially engineered shrinkage. This is what happens when innovation and growth stops. What you see from IBM: - Cut expensive (old) employees. - Market everything as the New thing. (Watson) - Audit your customers. Settle by forcing them to buy the New thing even if they don’t need it. - Current and former execs go on book tours. - Buy back shares. This is all…

Sounds like a death spiral? It's hard to see how IBM will continue to stay relevant in the years to come.

Re: Red Hat cutting hundreds of jobs, CEO says in letter to employees

#99

Post by [deleted] »

candiddevmike wrote: post #25
oofta-boofta wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Work multiple jobs that you do the bare minimum at. Always be interviewing, Q1->Q3 is the best time.

Before the recession, it was a well-known secret among coworkers who was doing this, now when budgets are being slashed these folks are the first to be let go. Please don't do this, you're ruining remote work for everyone. If you really want to, become a contractor and be honest about your situation.

[deleted]

Re: Red Hat cutting hundreds of jobs, CEO says in letter to employees

#100

Post by ghaff »

candiddevmike wrote: post #25
oofta-boofta wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Work multiple jobs that you do the bare minimum at. Always be interviewing, Q1->Q3 is the best time.

Before the recession, it was a well-known secret among coworkers who was doing this, now when budgets are being slashed these folks are the first to be let go. Please don't do this, you're ruining remote work for everyone. If you really want to, become a contractor and be honest about your situation.

I assume people who are sufficiently self-centered that they've convinced themselves that this is fine because it obviously is if you can get away with it are incredibly selfish and not nearly as clever as they think they are in many other ways as well.

Personally if I were aware, I'd report them because I don't want to be either complicit or a liar if it comes out and I'm asked.

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