41–50 of 333 posts
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
If the company is rudderless and unable to allocate effective work to employees, it won't be doing well. This is about companies that are doing well. At least, that's the premise of the article.
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".
https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...
i certainly wasn't
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!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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...
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.
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 demons…