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Layoffs Don't Work

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Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#211

Post by bigtimesink »

atrettel wrote: post #172
Workaccount2 wrote: post #150

Real talk here, and I'm sorry for being "that guy" Why do tech workers get so wrapped around the axle of layoffs when most people are in a chronic state of tech job hopping? I know multiple people who have worked their entire career thus far without ever staying at a place for more than 3 or 4 years. Some no more than two. Tech job culture is practically a mono culture with "hop jobs" being a hallmark. From an employ…

This is an interesting question to ask, though I personally would not attribute it to "culture" as much as it may be a product of the environment people are put in. From my experience, there are a lot of jobs that make it difficult to continue past a few years, so job hopping is the inevitable outcome of that. I think many companies need to examine why they have a lot of turnover instead of attributing it all to indi…

> there are a lot of jobs that make it difficult to continue past a few years

This has been a lot of my career. All my long, successful jobs have lasted around 2-3 years, and it's the time it takes for the company to realize the initiative wasn't worth it. I count four of these stints where I left, and the team was essentially dissolved within a year. I'm not saying I was the key person for the project; I just saw the writing on the wall.

It's been career limiting not having a large-scope project on a growing team, but I don't know if this is something about me, something about the projects I'm a good fit for, or the reality that a lot of projects and teams don't survive 5 years, and I've been exposed to some survivor bias of smart people who have gotten lucky.

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#212

Post by rwmj »

sejje wrote: post #124
EPWN3D wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Top performers have options and value stability. They also know that they rely on their manager to accurately reflect their work up the chain. Some percentage of top performers report to deadbeat managers, so in an environment doing mandatory layoffs, they'll know that it doesn't matter how much they knock it out of the park, their manager will screw them. So of course they'll leave.

If you're a top performer stuck under a deadbeat manager, how are you able to signal to new companies that you're a top performer? I read posts here all the time about how hard it is to hire. How do top performers distinguish themselves as they go out for new jobs? When did this become easy?

The secret is that top performers are hired by word of mouth, they don't go through the usual processes.

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#213

Post by plussed_reader »

filoleg wrote: post #160
Workaccount2 wrote: post #150

Real talk here, and I'm sorry for being "that guy" Why do tech workers get so wrapped around the axle of layoffs when most people are in a chronic state of tech job hopping? I know multiple people who have worked their entire career thus far without ever staying at a place for more than 3 or 4 years. Some no more than two. Tech job culture is practically a mono culture with "hop jobs" being a hallmark. From an employ…

I cannot speak for layoffs in all industries ever, but I agree with your assessment of layoffs in big tech from personal experiences. I have way too many “lifer” friends in big tech who are deadly scared of layoffs and job hopping. They are also the ones who rarely got promoted and havent had a significant pay bump pretty much ever. On another hand, half my team at a big tech company got laid off back at the start of…

What was the age range of the referred 2023 sample of workers?

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#214

Post by giantg2 »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #150

Real talk here, and I'm sorry for being "that guy" Why do tech workers get so wrapped around the axle of layoffs when most people are in a chronic state of tech job hopping? I know multiple people who have worked their entire career thus far without ever staying at a place for more than 3 or 4 years. Some no more than two. Tech job culture is practically a mono culture with "hop jobs" being a hallmark. From an employ…

I've worked over 12 years at the same company. Finding a new job would be difficult as remote pays lower and isn't the best fit for me, my area isn't known for tech job, my spouse doesn't want to relocate, I work for one of the biggest employers in my area (fewer choices outside the company), and we are seeing the highest sector unemployment since the dot com bubble. Oh, and my disability makes it all worse. My job has been an absolute hell hole for the past 2 years, but internal and external job opportunities have been extremely limited.

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#215

Post by srpablo »

alphazard wrote: post #98

There is a theory about large complex systems which seems to be true in biology and maybe applies here. Intentional downsizing during times of stress works when it preferentially targets defective or dysfunctional components of the larger system. The system improves because the worst parts were removed. Layoffs don't help companies unless they can reliably remove the worst parts. At most large public companies, the c…

lmaoooooo buddy "oracle" implies they know something; the people brought in to fire people at Twitter spent almost no time in determining who was good or even how the company worked, completely undermining your thesis. It was madness: people were instructed to print paper copies of their code to bring into an office, like it was 1995. Remember geohot in a Spaces saying "the main problem with Twitter is that you can't run it locally?", as if any company of that size has run that way at any point in the last decade? Additionally, the horrible communication and chaos made it even harder for performers to perform. As others have pointed out, its stock lost a ton of value, it performs worse financially, and as a product by virtually every other metric has gone to hell (outages, CSAM safety, spam, bots...).

You tell a decent story at the start, but your choice of example couldn't be worse.

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#216

Post by ltbarcly3 »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #187
filoleg wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cannot speak for layoffs in all industries ever, but I agree with your assessment of layoffs in big tech from personal experiences. I have way too many “lifer” friends in big tech who are deadly scared of layoffs and job hopping. They are also the ones who rarely got promoted and havent had a significant pay bump pretty much ever. On another hand, half my team at a big tech company got laid off back at the start of…

This story is changing. There is now an oversaturation of us ex-BigCo people in the market. I quit Google before the layoffs, after being there for 10 years and sick of it. The first year was serious ego boost, having Google on the resume opened doors all over the place. Then my ex-coworkers started getting laid off and things began to shift. Now I know people I used to work with who have been without work for many m…

Its not that the market is saturated, its that a lot of incompetent ex googlers are interviewing now. People usually have a pretty good idea they can't do their job. They find a niche where a manager is not paying attention, or they can obfuscate and take credit for others work, etc. These people don't usually job hop, the interviews are way too hard and then they are very unlikely to find another long term safe niche to hide in. So previously seeing google on a resume correlated highly with strong competence. A lot of people laid off from google are complete incompetents. A lot were hard working geniuses too, but it doesn't take many interviews where a exgoogler is completely useless to spoil the brand.

The reputation for googlers on the market right now is very bad, and it will keep getting worse as the group of ex googlers who are basically unemployable keep interviewing over and over and over.

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#217

Post by generic92034 »

no_wizard wrote: post #185
Workaccount2 wrote: post #150

Real talk here, and I'm sorry for being "that guy" Why do tech workers get so wrapped around the axle of layoffs when most people are in a chronic state of tech job hopping? I know multiple people who have worked their entire career thus far without ever staying at a place for more than 3 or 4 years. Some no more than two. Tech job culture is practically a mono culture with "hop jobs" being a hallmark. From an employ…

The tech industry also doesn’t reward loyalty, even at big tech. There’s a reason for the low tenure at most firms and it’s primarily due to the lack of rewarding experience and depth of field knowledge at most companies. When you have to get a new job just to get a salary increase that keeps up with inflation you are going to see a lot of job hopping when the skills of the workforce are generally in demand. How ofte…

> Where the fuck is the company showing any loyalty to its workforce?

They have been and are out there. But all it takes is a change on C level and cost cutting suddenly is everything, loyalty a thing of the past. That is, you cannot count on loyalty anymore, even if the company you are working for is currently showing it (or seems to).

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#218

Post by bigtimesink »

marto1 wrote: post #46
andrenotgiant wrote: post #44

> After the early-2000s dotcom bust, Bain researchers found that stock prices for S&P 500 companies that had no layoffs or laid off less than 3% of their workforce increased an average of 9% in the next year. Meanwhile, stock prices were flat in companies that laid off between 3%-10% of their workers, and prices plummeted 38% for companies that laid off more than 10%. Failing companies go through layoffs. Companies l…

> But everyone knows that's not what killed them. Another addition I'd like to add here is more often then not wrong people get booted while the "dead weight" tends to stick around and becomes even deader due to a motivation fall from the layoff. So maybe it doesn't kill, but for sure exacerbates an already bad situation.

This happened to me. There was a layoff, I got overwhelmed with work that had to get picked up, lost motivation, and burned out.

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#219

Post by ghaff »

Eextra953 wrote: post #128
Avicebron wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately as I've seen countless times, it's also writing on the wall to the management team "TIME TO MOVE ON CAUSE DAMAGE TO ANOTHER COMPANY", I don't know why we don't expect management's head on the chopping block. If a captain orders a course into an iceberg, idk why we can't just hang the captain and course correct.

That's how I feel about it too, the times I've been around layoffs management and the executives all talk about a difficult economic environment and making the organization leaner by firing a bunch of IC's. Never once have I seen a C level say hey we steered the company in the wrong direction its time for new management or hey our CFO failed to communicate the economic environment and caused us to overspend so we're…

Execs go on to "pursue new interests" or "spend more time with family" all the time. They may get pretty good packages to do so but it absolutely happens.

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#220

Post by tetromino_ »

RicoElectrico wrote: post #4

The other question is why C-suite does even need to tell the respective division management to lay off employees if the actual goal is cost reduction. Shouldn't they impose a budget reduction target instead and trust them to allocate the savings between capex, opex and salary budget according to specific situation at hand?

But then you will still get short-sighted layoff decisions getting made, only by directors instead of C-suite.
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