181–190 of 288 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What are they? Edit: as the saying goes, people don't want a drill, they want a hole. So if Grindr isn't a software company but a matchmaker that happens to write software (or CaaS/PaaS), then I don't know who truly is a software company. Microsoft is a productivity company, Amazon is a retailer & B2B services company, Google is an advertiser, and so on.
A matchmaking service.
> Staffing is the “single biggest cost” after fees paid to app distribution platforms like Apple Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google, according to Arison. This is a hilarious quote. It's a software company! What other major costs are there besides the staff to make and manage the software? I think I even find it a little disturbing that fees paid to Apple and Google are higher than salary paid to staff.
American Railroad ideology is that the most "efficient" railroad owns no track and runs no trains. American businesses believe they should be able to spend zero money and yet still make all the profit.
> During hearings before the board on wages … the railroads argued that labor from railroad workers does not contribute to their profits. “The Carriers maintain that capital investment and risk are the reasons for their profits, not any contributions from labor,” the PEB report said. “The Carriers assert that since employees have been fairly and adequately paid for their efforts… then they have no claim to share in the [profits].”
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Elon Musk says Twitter’s ad revenue is down 50% and cash flow is negative" https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/15/business/twitter-cash-flow-el...
That has absolutely nothing to do with the number of staff. It is directly related to the ADL’s campaign of convincing advertisers to pull out. It appears there will be a lawsuit. https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/09/05/tech/elon-musk-adl-lawsui...
> Staffing is the “single biggest cost” after fees paid to app distribution platforms like Apple Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google, according to Arison. This is a hilarious quote. It's a software company! What other major costs are there besides the staff to make and manage the software? I think I even find it a little disturbing that fees paid to Apple and Google are higher than salary paid to staff.
American Railroad ideology is that the most "efficient" railroad owns no track and runs no trains. American businesses believe they should be able to spend zero money and yet still make all the profit.
or maybe, as employees->0, revenues->∞
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're overlooking the main issue with firing half your staff: you've just lost a huge swath of your institutional knowledge. That's what turns your living codebase into legacy code. A new hire, even a fantastic code ninja guru rockstar 10x unassailable god king new hire, is going to have to spend a lot of time learning your codebase. Even when they are at a level when they can productively dig through it to do bugfi…
I agree - but I think this decision was made pretty consciously. As in, they did internal equivalent of PE buyout. Accept you're not growth company, get rid of large portion of the staff, cut all new developments and prospects, rest of remaining stuff just supports existing business. And extract all the wealth from this position that you can.
If I got a business to a few million in recurring revenue it would be very tempting to slice expenses down to just maintenance mode, take a huge salary while riding it into the dirt for a few years and then retire.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Elon Musk says Twitter’s ad revenue is down 50% and cash flow is negative" https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/15/business/twitter-cash-flow-el...
That has absolutely nothing to do with the number of staff. It is directly related to the ADL’s campaign of convincing advertisers to pull out. It appears there will be a lawsuit. https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/09/05/tech/elon-musk-adl-lawsui...
For anyone else confused, RTO = "Return to Office". First thing that came to mind for me was "Recovery Time Objective."
Thanks! I was familiar with RTO since my employer is doing it by gradually increasing required # days in the office. But not everyone will know what it is .
- People have to identify with the company more. When asked about the details of that they complained that a lot of people just log in, work on their issues and log off. So basically doing what they are paid for. I answered that this is not a bad thing, which was not well received.
- People need to socialize more. According to them everyone needs to be more friendly with their peers. I think that I am friendly to my peers and direct reports, but I admit that not everyone can do that level of socializing online. OTOH I will not be able to socialize as well in person. Also, while I'm generally friendly I never join events for exactly that reason.
- Silos between different departments. According to them there is bad blood between some departments and they hope to resolve this if everyone get to know each other better. I can't really confirm this, as all my interactions with different departments always go well. However, since there is no mandated day I can't understand how this will tear down the silos.
- Onboarding of new colleagues is considered hard/not as successful as it should be. Again, in can't confirm this as three people joined my team in March and they are doing pretty damn solid.
- According to them, before covid when everyone was in the office things were better. I asked them how many employees there were at that time: 50. Currently we are ~160. IMHO it is kinda obvious that communication and peership is better with 50 than with 160 people and office presence will not improve this.
- According to them, meetings and workshops are better in person. I can't really agree on that as I feel that since moving to HO, meetings have been way better and a lot more productive.
Some other things to consider: from 7 people in my team 3 are located in India, so they will not be able to come to the office anyway. Also we have two office locations in Germany, so we will not be able to everyone anyway. Also some people have 100% HO contracts and they will not come to the office since they live a few hundred km from each location -> kinda unfair IMHO.
I think all their reasons are frankly pretty bullshit and coming to the office will not improve any of those. As the situation will not improve by this I expect them to go up with the days in the office since "we need to do more to improve things!11".
I'm not so happy about this.