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Layoffs Don't Work

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Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#231

Post by andrewlgood »

giantg2 wrote: post #225
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…

Yeah, I make the same adjusted for inflation that I did when I got my last/only promotion 10 years ago. I have grey hair, a disability, and a family that relies on the health insurance. Switching or being laid off is a risky proposition for me. It sounds like all your examples are young, childless people (who else could take a month off to go vacationing?). Life is much harder for some of us.

I understand the trade offs you mention. I do disagree with your assertion that “Life is much harder for some of us.” You have chosen a different payoff - your family, certainty of health insurance, etc. You get the benefits that children bring and the joy of being a parent. The “young, childless people” have made a different choice - more freedom in employment decisions but no joy from children. Everyone has their own cost/benefit analyses on these issues. That is life.

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#232

Post by WalterBright »

indigodaddy wrote: post #199
WalterBright wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm unclear what employers are deriving from this exercise at this point It filters out the complete frauds. Yes, there are people who know all the right things to say in a job interview, but cannot code at all. If you hire one of them, it takes a bit to find out they cannot code, and a bit longer to fire them, so you're out $$$$ paying their salaries for nothing. For example, a recruiter I know will ask a tech can…

I get that perhaps you were using the proverbial "I" in your last sentence as an example of something everyone should be willing to do in/for their career, but does someone of your stature even need a real interview, much less a LC test, to obtain a top job? It's kind of funny imagining a young tech bro interviewing you, tbh.

It's an interesting question. I'll try to answer.

I generally do not use clever algorithms in my code. I just use straightforward ones. Rarely, I might need a better one and go looking for it (like a better hash algorithm). I rarely use a data structure more complicated than an array, list, binary tree, hash, or single inheritance.

What I have, though, is decades of experience with what works and what doesn't work. (My favorite whipping boy is macros. Macros look like they are great productivity boosters. It takes about 10 years to realize that macros are a never-ending source of confusion, they just confuse and obfuscate every code base that uses them. I could go on about this! ...)

I have become pretty good at writing modules that minimize dependencies, and pretty good at the user interface design of a language.

But still, if the job wanted a leetcode test, I'd take it, no problem. I'd study up first, though.

If a young tech bro was interviewing me, I'd suggest he show me his best code, and I'd do a review of it :-) The point of that would not be to humilate him, but to demonstrate the value I can bring to improving code quality.

If I was being interviewed for a job writing a faster divide routine (the ones I wrote were shift-subtract, slower but bulletproof), a better random number generator, a cryptographically secure hash function, a tighter compression algorithm, a faster sort, I'm not the right guy for that.

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#233

Post by gwbas1c »

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…

I stayed in the same job for nearly a decade, it got really interesting in the second half; in a way that it never would have gotten if I had job hopped every 3 to 5 years.

That being said, once I got bored in the job, I sniffed out that the parent company wanted to lay a few people off, and hinted that I was open to it. It worked out well for me.

I was just too busy in my personal life to look for a job on the side, and honestly I didn't want to walk away halfway through a project.

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#234

Post by ripped_britches »

A large airline like southwest is one thing but I’m always so surprised at how much over hiring we do in software companies.

Every problem/opportunity seems to just need a few more headcount.

Lots of managers are actively trying to increase their headcount for self promotional reasons.

The whole thing seems really counterproductive.

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#235

Post by andrewlgood »

mym1990 wrote: post #195
munificent wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few months of skiing sounds nice, but not as nice as the profound pleasure of working on a team of people I've know and cared about for over a decade. You're going to spend half your waking life at work. For me, that's too much time to not want to do so at a place where I have real relationships with my coworkers.

This is ultimately what some of the risk comes down to: you invest time(a decade is a long time!) into creating meaningful relationships at work and one day you come in to have your key card de-activated and some corporate speak as to why. There are certainly people working on truly meaningful projects out there, with teams they trust and adore...but for most of the workforce, even in tech, its just work and any fun…

How is this different than the manager who has spent years developing an employee - making sure they are getting the experiences they need to build a better career, hiring the right people to complement the team, fighting for bonuses and pay raises - only to have them quit to join the next company for a 10% raise. It is difficult to build a long-term culture when society seems to expect job hopping to rapidly advance a career.

On a related note, it is odd that HN comments rarely seem to include a manager’s perspective.

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#236

Post by ltbarcly3 »

da_chicken wrote: post #174
dylan604 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your small team in a big company does not directly generate money, then you’d definitely be ripe for elimination. Time and time again we’ve seen examples of trams that are critical to supporting various revenue generating parts of the company while not directly making money themselves get cut as an “obvious” way to save money when only looking at the books. Been there.

The thing is, ending a product that's not making money shouldn't mean eliminating the workers. Those were people you picked, brought in, and have adapted to your culture. It always strikes me as weird when a product fails and the decision is to eliminate everyone from the product manager down... and then make no other changes. Then they bring in completely new people for whatever the new product line is. Sometimes, s…

[flagged]

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#237

Post by margalabargala »

andrewlgood wrote: post #231
giantg2 wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I make the same adjusted for inflation that I did when I got my last/only promotion 10 years ago. I have grey hair, a disability, and a family that relies on the health insurance. Switching or being laid off is a risky proposition for me. It sounds like all your examples are young, childless people (who else could take a month off to go vacationing?). Life is much harder for some of us.

I understand the trade offs you mention. I do disagree with your assertion that “Life is much harder for some of us.” You have chosen a different payoff - your family, certainty of health insurance, etc. You get the benefits that children bring and the joy of being a parent. The “young, childless people” have made a different choice - more freedom in employment decisions but no joy from children. Everyone has their o…

Your good health is an invisible crown that can only be seen by those who do not wear it.

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#238

Post by dehrmann »

csomar wrote: post #27

The layoffs are not the issue. It is the decision makers who took the two decisions to both over-hire and then mass-fire shortly after. GM is a great example. The company was the largest and one of the most innovative car manufacturers in the world. It doesn't stand a chance against BYD today and it is not by a lack of money (though maybe with a C-suite change). So my opinion is, yes, the damage is done (or being don…

If not for tariffs, we'll all be driving BYDs in a decade.

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#239

Post by indigodaddy »

WalterBright wrote: post #232
indigodaddy wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get that perhaps you were using the proverbial "I" in your last sentence as an example of something everyone should be willing to do in/for their career, but does someone of your stature even need a real interview, much less a LC test, to obtain a top job? It's kind of funny imagining a young tech bro interviewing you, tbh.

It's an interesting question. I'll try to answer. I generally do not use clever algorithms in my code. I just use straightforward ones. Rarely, I might need a better one and go looking for it (like a better hash algorithm). I rarely use a data structure more complicated than an array, list, binary tree, hash, or single inheritance. What I have, though, is decades of experience with what works and what doesn't work. (…

Thanks for that very interesting and insightful feedback!

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#240

Post by karparov »

cratermoon wrote: post #190
karparov wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Somebody who is universally hated by their co-workers should just be let go. Nothing to do with a layoff. So everybody who is around has some reason for actually being there. In a well-managed place, that is.

> Somebody who is universally hated by their co-workers How many times have we seen a company fire whoever they consider "dead weight" but keep the universally hated guy because he's a 10x rockstar whatever?

A 10x person who brings down 20 others to a small fraction of their potential and causes other rockstars to leave is still net-negative. Good management understands this.

(And I'm not sure why I'm downvoted for this. Nothing about that should be controversial?)

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