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Our Company Is Doing So Well That You're All Fired

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Re: Our Company Is Doing So Well That You're All Fired

#31

Post by carlosjobim »

matusp wrote: post #10

If the company fires hundreds or thousands of people and there is no visible dip in the productivity, is it really a bad thing? One thing that is baffling to me is that these companies can fire 10% of their workforce and they just keep on chugging without a hitch. The bullshit job phenomenon is the problem here.

If the people working for the company has finished making the product, then after that they would have to be tasked with making a new product. So, yes, if the product is delivered then there shouldn't be any dip in revenue if you fire the people who made it.

Companies keep these productive people if they want to grow and deliver even more products. They fire these productive people if they're not aiming for more growth at the moment.

I use some old software that nobody has been working on for a decade and it still works perfectly, to give an example.

Re: Our Company Is Doing So Well That You're All Fired

#32

Post by yladiz »

Fin_Code wrote: post #21

I'm pretty sure a lot of this is connected to the bond market. Companies are running out of operating capitol. When they try and get an operating loan the terms are onerous. Rather than refinance they are electing to perform layoffs to maintain solvency. It does not matter how good you are doing in contrast to previous years. If your loan comes due and you can't afford another one to keep that revolving credit going…

I mean, if companies like that didn’t run such a huge deficit, they might be able to get more favorable loan terms.

Re: Our Company Is Doing So Well That You're All Fired

#33

Post by kayo_20211030 »

matusp wrote: post #10

If the company fires hundreds or thousands of people and there is no visible dip in the productivity, is it really a bad thing? One thing that is baffling to me is that these companies can fire 10% of their workforce and they just keep on chugging without a hitch. The bullshit job phenomenon is the problem here.

The discrepancy is time i.e. time for things to happen. All organizations have inertia and they will continue as they will until they don't - slowly, until all at once in the end. Maybe that company will retool with a new cadre of recruits, and catch up, or maybe they won't. That's the bet the mgmnt are making. Can I anticipate the next inflection, and if it's later than I expect, will I be somewhere else and outside of the blast radius?

Re: Our Company Is Doing So Well That You're All Fired

#34

Post by ipython »

Swizec wrote: post #18
ipython wrote: post #9

Ah. I'm old enough to remember the last time automation was going to eliminate all the jobs.. back in the 80's, when robots entered the chat and manufacturing jobs got outsourced to Japan. (side note, interesting to read that the nikkei finally surpassed the previous record set in 1993 or so). But now, it's interesting because, well, for one, I'm actually old enough for it to matter to me now. And two, I actually wor…

> when robots entered the chat and manufacturing jobs got outsourced FWIW: Car manufacturers have started moving back away from robots because productivity gains have not quite materialized. Turns out humans are really really good at solving small problems in real time without needing a bunch of hand holding. > Research in a highly automated German car body production plant found as many as 20 to 30 human interventio…

This was not apparent in the mid 1980s when the robot panic was definitely in full swing. You're looking back with almost 40 years of hindsight. The view in the 80s was that the entire assembly line was going away to be replaced with nothing but robots. We were taught to expect that our jobs would be to maintain and service the robots.

Heck in the 90s I remember going to a museum somewhere where McDonald's was demonstrating a fully robotic kitchen for its restaurants. This was a real widespread fear at the time. Thirty to 40 years later, maybe we can look back and recognize that it didn't quite turn out that way, but at the same time we can't know what's going to transpire by 2050 based on today's fears of AI outsourcing "information work" either.

Re: Our Company Is Doing So Well That You're All Fired

#35

Post by no_wizard »

matusp wrote: post #10

If the company fires hundreds or thousands of people and there is no visible dip in the productivity, is it really a bad thing? One thing that is baffling to me is that these companies can fire 10% of their workforce and they just keep on chugging without a hitch. The bullshit job phenomenon is the problem here.

Why is anyone so quick to take the company side?

For starters, productivity is a broad term, so without defining what it means in context it isn’t doing anyone any favors.

You won’t feel the dip or record it until after the event happens, and often not right away. When productivity drops a year from now for example, that could be due to layoffs. It’s not always immediate in its impact.

I also question this from the other side: why are executives who set the company priorities not also axed? They are the ones that ultimately messed up as they had poor strategic vision. Their ineffectual leadership is how it got there in the first place, if they aren’t gone how on earth do you know that it wasn’t their responsibility for the decrease in productivity? Logically one would think that axing the executives first and then seeing how productivity increases or decreases with new leadership would make more sense

Re: Our Company Is Doing So Well That You're All Fired

#36

Post by notahacker »

davesque wrote: post #17
matusp wrote: post #10

If the company fires hundreds or thousands of people and there is no visible dip in the productivity, is it really a bad thing? One thing that is baffling to me is that these companies can fire 10% of their workforce and they just keep on chugging without a hitch. The bullshit job phenomenon is the problem here.

For the sake of argument, does that mean all those employees were useless or does it mean the management isn't doing a good job of allocating them to effective work? I've been at a few companies that were rudderless and yeah, letting go of people wouldn't have made much difference because the leadership didn't know what to do with them anyway.

Not to mention that those bullshit jobs that don't really impact the company's earnings initially tends to include stuff like fixing the IT systems and handling customer issues within an acceptable time frame...

Re: Our Company Is Doing So Well That You're All Fired

#37

Post by leftcenterright »

Fin_Code wrote: post #21

I'm pretty sure a lot of this is connected to the bond market. Companies are running out of operating capitol. When they try and get an operating loan the terms are onerous. Rather than refinance they are electing to perform layoffs to maintain solvency. It does not matter how good you are doing in contrast to previous years. If your loan comes due and you can't afford another one to keep that revolving credit going…

but this is not true of the giants like Microsoft and Google right?

They chose to fire thousands and yet have sufficient to invest further into markets all over the world.

Burn and churn is just much easier and lax labor laws do not prohibit such tendencies!

Re: Our Company Is Doing So Well That You're All Fired

#38

Post by silverquiet »

Fin_Code wrote: post #21

I'm pretty sure a lot of this is connected to the bond market. Companies are running out of operating capitol. When they try and get an operating loan the terms are onerous. Rather than refinance they are electing to perform layoffs to maintain solvency. It does not matter how good you are doing in contrast to previous years. If your loan comes due and you can't afford another one to keep that revolving credit going…

I work for a company that does something that I guess is a bit unusual - they use the revenue from our customers to pay employee salaries. If you would have asked me, this would seem like the obvious way to do things, but I'm told that debt is very important for some reason or other. As Homer Simpson has been known to say, "I don't know how the economy works".

Re: Our Company Is Doing So Well That You're All Fired

#39

Post by lokar »

yladiz wrote: post #32
Fin_Code wrote: post #21

I'm pretty sure a lot of this is connected to the bond market. Companies are running out of operating capitol. When they try and get an operating loan the terms are onerous. Rather than refinance they are electing to perform layoffs to maintain solvency. It does not matter how good you are doing in contrast to previous years. If your loan comes due and you can't afford another one to keep that revolving credit going…

I mean, if companies like that didn’t run such a huge deficit, they might be able to get more favorable loan terms.

It’s not about running a deficit (most are free cash flow positive), it’s about improving returns on capital with leverage.
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