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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

#161

Post by beiller »

frankjr wrote: post #65

Should private for-profit companies employ people just because they can?

Sure! Salaries are what people use to exchange money for goods and services that these companies produce in theory. But the free money environment we've lived in the last decade seems to have primed companies to think that operating at a loss is okay. If we just fire the workers, and sales lag and dip, its okay because it will force the fed to lower rates and we can just borrow our way back to the top with no sales!

Imagine though... an AI startup that just trades goods between AIs. We should actually start firing customers!

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

#162

Post by droptablemain »

lp4vn wrote: post #30
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 you have a project/company that's already running well and you fire almost everybody except a skeleton crew, you'd be amused but things don't crumble down instantly. Technical debt piles up and everything goes to maintenance mode, when you need the insight of the good people who left is when you realise that going to the previous state will cost you a lot more time and money than you might possibly predict.

This perfectly describes a scenario I found myself in several years back, down to a tee.

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

#163

Post by Jensson »

no_wizard wrote: post #158
Jensson wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They are the ones that ultimately messed up as they had poor strategic vision Everything is a gamble, the right decision can still lead to a bad result due to randomness. So just because a gamble didn't pan out doesn't mean that it was the wrong thing to do. For example, not hiring extra is also a gamble, it means you gamble on the market not growing and you would lose a ton of money if the market didn't stall.

>For example, not hiring extra is also a gamble, it means you gamble on the market not growing and you would lose a ton of money if the market didn't stall This assumes hiring is the only way to grow the company. More specifically, it assumes ramped up hiring is the only way. There are balances that can be struck, for example, instead of hiring 100 people, maybe hire 20 and see how onboarding and growth pans out? Per…

You assume they were fired due to inefficiencies, but they were fired since the market went down and the US government made software engineers more expensive short term by changing how those investments were taxed. That means they can no longer maintain as many software engineers.

> but what executives did was irresponsible and I knew it even at the time.

Lots of people said this during the entire hiring spree from 2010 to 2020, but most of those people are still there paid and working. If they listened to people like you most of us here would be out of a job since the job market wouldn't have grown that fast.

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

#164

Post by huijzer »

silverquiet wrote: post #38
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".

It's about percentages. If the CFO expects that the company can earn 10% on any capital, and they can borrow at 1%, then they will do that. In effect, this means that they will make 9% for free. Even more so, the CFO's bonus probably depends on the net income, so it's a great deal.

It's all fun and games until the tide goes out. Then you suddenly might need to rollover the debt at new rates like 6% while the company earnings also go down because everyone can spend a bit less. Suddenly, you might lose a few procent (or more!) on the loans. It's a bit of a double whammy.

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

#166

Post by JohnMakin »

tick_tock_tick wrote: post #159
JohnMakin wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They effectively disabled the developer API via absurd pricing. That alone would cancel a ton of projects/teams due to the load that likely placed on their servers. The user experience is also not even close to the same, while they've not really added any new features that likely weren't already in the pipeline. Not even to mention their tanking revenue and valuation. It's not even close to a "working the same as bef…

So what you're saying is everything anyone using Twitter cares about is working just fine.

I guess, unless you're also making the assumption that the number of daily users has remained the same from pre-elon acquisition. I promise you that is not the case. There's also that pesky profitability problem.

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

#167

Post by throwbadubadu »

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.

How long do you allow for evaluating if there is a dip? And will times never change?

And even if there is really none, then sure it makes sense from the company point of view and pure profit perspective. But if the company is well of, why lay off experienced, trusted and loyal workforce still? You always need slack room, like you need some money put aside.

And another level, work puts meaning to our lives.. either we allow for other meaningful things supported by some UBI, or we should rethink if profiting companies really need to ultra-maximize, or how they can also do a little welfare for their employed work force.. imo it's a pity the employee owned model is not more widespread, and it is all for the few.

But anyway, different end of a very wide spectrum. Certainly, struggling companies must get rid of the bloat, bullshit jobs, and evil within, if it needs that to survive and is the actual problem ;)

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

#168

Post by tuckerconnelly »

Aurornis wrote: post #95
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.

Companies reduce initiatives and headcount at the same time. It's usually approached as a budget reduction exercise: Company is reducing budgets by X%. Select which projects get cancelled. Now work with managers to identify enough employees to lay off to reduce headcount spend by X%. Now reorganize remaining employees across remaining projects, with the understanding that a few extra people will leave due to future l…

While X's main use case works, I just tried to run some ads there.

When trying to upgrade to verified org: "An unexpected error occurred"

When trying to change my display name: "An unexpected error occurred"

When trying to run an ad: "Awaiting verification" for a week

Contacting support through messages: No response

Finally finding a way to submit a ticket: 3 day response time with a standard response that didn't resolve the issue.

Responded to that ticket and haven't gotten a response in days.

I don't think they're operating at the same level as they used to :)

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

#169

Post by altruios »

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.

That people have to be employed artificially so they don't starve: is the problem. UBI has the potential to remove a lot of bullshit jobs, companies can run much leaner when they aren't responsible for a citizen's needs.

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

#170

Post by gen220 »

sterlind wrote: post #144
WorkerBee28474 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, SWE who happens to have an MBA here. Theoretically, if a company has money to pay employees it keeps them if the present value of their project is positive, and terminate them if the present value of their projects is negative. Let's say an employee earns $100K this year. The project they're working on this year will generate 40K of revenue in 1 year, 2 years, and 3 years. Is the project worth doing? Let's assum…

But won't the projected value of the project go up with the discount rate? Why would the project still only make $40K on year 3, rather than now making $40K*1.10^3?

In reality, the projected value of many such projects were either never accurately measured, or allowed to differ from the "measured" value for a very long time.

The projections would go something like $0 two years ago, $5k last year, but then $100k next year, $5mm year after that. One day? $1B, easy.

There'd be precious little evidence to support the exponential growth hypothesis, while having 10 assigned engineers earning as much as their peers in more predictable domains.

It's easier to justify such ideas in a big, rich company when the risk free rate of return is near-zero and the profit center of the company is compounding (the growth in Ads justifies the negative ROIC everywhere else).

But when your profit center is wavering and showing worrying signs of stalling out (as Google and Meta did in 2021/22), the calculus shifts dramatically.

When you manage a company not for "growth" but for "value" (which is an inevitable part of the corporate cycle), these projects and the employees behind them are decreasingly seen as a potential source of future profits and more as a waste of increasingly valuable cash.

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