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

mcsweeneys.net

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

#191

Post by Jensson »

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?

Rent changed in that scenario, not inflation. So the project wouldn't make more since money isn't worth more, you just get more ROI on external investments making internal investments less lucrative in comparison.

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

#192

Post by frfl »

tsunamifury wrote: post #115
leftcenterright wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

They elected to do that because the 1 billion dollar write down yield 300 billion in market value -- firing people literally raised their market cap more than what those people could earn doing a real job earning real revenue. To be clear, this is not people being fired for bullshit jobs. This is people being fired because their 1 billion in revenue is a fraction of the 300 billion in stock price opportunity. Ask me…

...how do you know

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

#193

Post by Ozzie_osman »

hadlock wrote: post #145
Aurornis wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Twitter/X hasn't seen notable user growth since ~2015/16 and has been absolutely flat since then, coming up on a decade now. It was 325 million active users in 2015 and it's still about 300 million active users today (spring 2024). A decade of no growth. I don't know if twitter is functioning exactly the same as it was before, but if you have to pay the bills, cutting 80% of the workforce and holding the line seems t…

As a company grows (in size and age), there is definitely more waste and more bureaucracy. No impact in trimming that. But, larger, older companies also spend a lot of effort on defending their business or uncovering future business. Fire the people who do that, and you won't see any immediate impact to revenue or core metrics... But, you've probably reduced the future viability of the product (lower chance of uncovering new growth, higher chance of being disrupted by a competitor, etc).

You can see this a lot with companies bought by Private Equity firms. They slash costs and save a lot of short-term costs, and all looks good, but the company is now on a path to death.

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

#194

Post by Jensson »

no_wizard wrote: post #187
tick_tock_tick wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you just have a fundamentally different view of what a layoff means then the executives, board of directors, and general shareholders. > I and several others made this case, and yet again, not headed, layoffs hit 6 months later, because all those customers either went belly up or had to downsize themselves, because they were too credit dependent. But what if the customers survived? What if interest rates didn…

>I think you just have a fundamentally different view of what a layoff means then the executives, board of directors, and general shareholders. Most likely, and I personally believe that is part of the problem, not the problem. I recognize how damaging layoffs are to people. Its unfair to act like they aren't. Its people's livelihood and we as humans often make decisions around these things, and when its yanked out f…

> could focus on making the business more generally efficient, cut down on process, and focus on keeping the business nimble and responsive

Every company already tries this as hard as they can, there is no magic button they can press to just make themselves more efficient.

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

#195

Post by ejb999 »

google234123 wrote: post #92
ceejayoz wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“I stopped changing the oil and my car runs fine.” Sometimes problems take time to present themselves.

How about “ I stopped changing my oil every 50 miles and my car runs fine”

that is more like it.

Or we fired 1/2 the scrum masters, so now each project only gets 50% of one instead of a FT one, and BTW, all of a sudden developer meetings get cut in half as a side benefit.

Every large company I have ever worked for could have easily fired 1/3 the staff and ran just fine indefinitely - but only if they fired the right third.

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

#197

Post by CamelCaseName »

This reminds me of Reed Hastings (Netflix Co-Founder) talking about how after he had done layoffs (I think 30%) he found that they actually moved faster because all the dead weight was gone and the talent density had gone up.

This could also just be marketing spin however.

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

#198

Post by chrsw »

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.

"these companies can fire 10% of their workforce and they just keep on chugging without a hitch"

That's not always true though. I've been on both sides of layoffs: laid off and remained. Sometimes the people who remain are asked to do more with less. I was even asked to do more with less pay at one point.

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

#200

Post by boringuser2 »

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.

Yes.

Companies exist at the allowance of a nation-state for the benefit of the people.

If the benefit is attenuated, the people, via government, can sanction the corporations.

If the corporation is succeeding and paying more into the public till by providing fake jobs, what's the problem? They're not succeeding hard enough?

I think the error you've made is that you've mistakenly projected your sense of "fairness" on corporations.

Corporations aren't people my friend.

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