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The Layoff

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Re: The Layoff

#71

Post by alemanek »

vasco wrote: post #13

"We won't share a list of the affected employees because some of them might not want the information to be public" was the biggest bullshit I've heard recently - no fiction needed. Discovering that people you worked with for years have been laid off only because you randomly notice their slack is deactivated has to be one of 2024s gifts to humanity.

I really don’t get why companies won’t allow limited access to email at least to send a goodbye message and contact details to their colleagues. You could spin up new email boxes if you are worried about them downloading emails even.

It just seems really cold to not let people say goodbye and point their colleagues to their LinkedIn so they can get some recommendations and such. For the companies that allow this I salute you.

Re: The Layoff

#72

Post by joelegner »

Is that really how these layoffs go? The HR person is belittling ("I need you to focus") and the employee passively takes the belittling. Here's a script the employee could have used.

"Excuse me, I need to pause. I have never met you before this call. We are strangers. You demand my attention because you say you need it. To be fair, your needs are no more important than mine. One of my needs is to be treated with respect. Frankly, since I am no longer an employee, I fail to see why you make any demands of me. But because I am polite and want to hear the details about the severance, I will stay on this call for now. However if you continue to treat me disrespectfully, I will drop from the call, and you can email me the details of the severance."

I realize the bravado of the above, but I was in fact laid off one time, and I did assert myself to the owner who at least had the guts to do it himself. A few months later he calls me and asks me to me to return to work to finish the project (not a software project, a building construction project), and I declined and instead told him I would do it on a contract for twice what he was previously paying me. He had no choice, took the offer begrudgingly, and I finished the project, designed another big project the same way, and then moved on with my life.

Re: The Layoff

#73

Post by j-bos »

_heimdall wrote: post #47
factormeta wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is like traditions chicken farming vs free range chicken farming. Keep in mind while free range chicken farming is better to market, it is also more messy. https://thehensloft.com/free-range-chicken-pros-cons/

Have you ever been inside of an industrial chicken house? Its absolutely, without a doubt, the most disgusting and depressing place I've ever personally seen. Even worse if you're unlucky enough to be there after a single case of avian flu is found anywhere in the area. Chickens can be messy, but that's only an issue with free ranged birds if you don't have enough space for them. Most chickens won't venture too dar f…

It's also a joy at feeding time to see them running home by the dozens.

Re: The Layoff

#74

Post by sys_64738 »

halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #70
sys_64738 wrote: post #56

[Spoiler alert - look away now if you haven't read the story] I'd expect the logical extension to this to wholly be using AI for the managerial aspect of bringing you into the conversation. Employers will have the right to make use of a manger's likeness for reasons they see fit, such as using a bot to layoff their direct reports. Removes the emotional liability from the manager.

These AI doomer predictions get more and more detached from reality.

The naivety of many people still staggers me. Life has a lot to teach you yet, grasshopper.

Re: The Layoff

#75

Post by Frost1x »

halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #70
sys_64738 wrote: post #56

[Spoiler alert - look away now if you haven't read the story] I'd expect the logical extension to this to wholly be using AI for the managerial aspect of bringing you into the conversation. Employers will have the right to make use of a manger's likeness for reasons they see fit, such as using a bot to layoff their direct reports. Removes the emotional liability from the manager.

These AI doomer predictions get more and more detached from reality.

Why do you think a class of folks with asymmetric access to a given resource, because of costs to access and use such resources creating barrier to entry, would not use those very asymmetric resources to their advantage when possible?

So long as the prediction is viable from a technological and execution level, I don’t see why it has to be labeled “doomer.” If it’s possible and people can exploit it to their advantage, they will, that’s humans.

Re: The Layoff

#76

Post by kyrra »

Arbortheus wrote: post #35
vasco wrote: post #13

"We won't share a list of the affected employees because some of them might not want the information to be public" was the biggest bullshit I've heard recently - no fiction needed. Discovering that people you worked with for years have been laid off only because you randomly notice their slack is deactivated has to be one of 2024s gifts to humanity.

Someone at my work created a secret bot that scrapes the outlook contacts list and diffs it from the previous day, each day. This way we get daily updates whenever a new person is onboarded or offboarded. As employees we now have more clarity about the state of layoffs and hiring decisions that most of the management team does. I suggest doing the same within your org if you can.

Google has had a very visible tool internally for this for years. It lists every single person that leaves on a given day. It even has a system set up where the person leaving can email it, and the note would be attached to their leaving notice. You can also search the system and see anybody that's left at any point. So I could look for people that left 15 years ago.

The layoffs the last 2 years have been interesting in that the people aren't officially gone when they are laid off, as Google continues to pay them for 60 or 90 days. So a bunch of people who appear on this list all at once 60 days after they let go.

Re: The Layoff

#78

Post by halfmatthalfcat »

Frost1x wrote: post #75
halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These AI doomer predictions get more and more detached from reality.

Why do you think a class of folks with asymmetric access to a given resource, because of costs to access and use such resources creating barrier to entry, would not use those very asymmetric resources to their advantage when possible? So long as the prediction is viable from a technological and execution level, I don’t see why it has to be labeled “doomer.” If it’s possible and people can exploit it to their advantag…

People have been saying the same thing about off/near-shoring for decades. "X will be replaced by cheaper Y" but that has not materialized in any way. If anything, the opposite has been proven as demand for high-skilled labor continue to push salaries and competition for positions up. The amount of AI is coming for X or AI will replace Y is so unfounded at this point, I'm chalking it up with FSD-levels of hype. It remains to be seen whether it actually proves useful at any _real_ scale.

Re: The Layoff

#80

Post by Frost1x »

halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #78
Frost1x wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think a class of folks with asymmetric access to a given resource, because of costs to access and use such resources creating barrier to entry, would not use those very asymmetric resources to their advantage when possible? So long as the prediction is viable from a technological and execution level, I don’t see why it has to be labeled “doomer.” If it’s possible and people can exploit it to their advantag…

People have been saying the same thing about off/near-shoring for decades. "X will be replaced by cheaper Y" but that has not materialized in any way. If anything, the opposite has been proven as demand for high-skilled labor continue to push salaries and competition for positions up. The amount of AI is coming for X or AI will replace Y is so unfounded at this point, I'm chalking it up with FSD-levels of hype. It re…

> People have been saying the same thing about off/near-shoring for decades. "X will be replaced by cheaper Y" but that has not materialized in any way.

Eh? It absolutely has in many industries. It also has been tried many times in software, it just tends to fail, so the fact the option was there and perceived as an advantage and acted upon is exactly my point. It very well could happen and it absolutely has and has been tried, as soon as it was viable.

When it comes to the above comment about grabbing the likeness of an individual to create an artificial human interface to the layoff process, “deep fake” approaches already exist and are very viable, it’s simply a matter of signing over yet another right in an employment contract. Some groups are already doing this with entertainers and public facing figures because there’s a lot of value in it. So long as it’s cheap to capture a bit of imagery from an employee and cheap enough to overlay and generate video for, how unbelievable is it that a business would simulate a manager figure to lay you off in a conversation pretending to be personable? Technologically we’re not that far away.

At some point you might even be able to crawl internal business conversations to gather personal characteristics and tailor a script or even the appearance of the simulated human to reduce reaction to a layoff message, assuming the risk to cost made sense.

I put nothing off the table of possibilities from groups of sociopaths with power, unless it’s quite literally impossible or too costly to do.

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