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Layoffs Don't Work

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Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#281

Post by shortrounddev2 »

sejje wrote: post #49
pclmulqdq wrote: post #41

I remember hearing a take on layoffs that I think is pretty true: When you fire the bottom 10%, you lose another 10% who are from the top performers. The destruction of psychological safety for everyone at the company is irreparable, and you start to bleed your most productive talent, too.

Why do you lose 10% of your top performers?

I have only ever quit jobs in response to layoffs. Layoffs demonstrate to me that the company is apparently low on cash if they need to fire people to make ends meet. If they are not low on cash, it means that they will arbitrarily fire anyone in order to pump up their stock.

Though I've never personally been laid off, it's a black mark on the company that I think you can never recover from. It means I will never trust anything said at a quarterly all-hands. The projections they give us employees are spun to be more positive than they really are.

During COVID, my company told us that we were going to be able to save money by breaking the lease on our office building and stop paying for amenities like the snacks in the break room and catered lunches (since nobody could use them anyways). This, they said, should save us enough money that we don't need to lay anyone off!

10% of the company was laid off a week later. The next day, I would later discover, the company applied for a PPP loan: they had laid people off pre-emptively so that they wouldn't be penalized for it next year when they sought to have their PPP loan forgiven.

It illustrated to me that you can't trust leadership, ever. Once a company initiates a layoff, it's a permanent black mark on that company

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#282

Post by slackernews9 »

woopsn wrote: post #55
roenxi wrote: post #17

> Research has consistently shown he was right about layoffs: They’re damaging to companies... The research is probably misleading. The damage was done to companies when the over-hired people who couldn't add enough value to justify keeping them employed. The layoffs are just when the damage is recognised. It is like borrowing a huge amount of money, using 90% of it it to buy prawns and leaving them out to rot for a…

You don't know what you're talking about. People are fired when they can't add enough value to justify being employed. Sweeping industry-wide layoffs are different. Eg the "damage was done" to the aviation industry in 2001 due to plummeting demand, due (obviously) to new fears and hassle inhibiting travel; the damage currently being done to companies in the economy is from interest rates, inflation, trade uncertainty…

[flagged]

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#283

Post by dghlsakjg »

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…

Citing an airline for longevity is a bit disingenuous.

I’m not sure how it works with support staff, but aircraft crew have contract structures that so heavily favor seniority that most pilots and FAs will never leave a major willingly during their career.

Your observation, to me, seems more like: tech companies reward new employees over old, airlines do the extreme opposite.

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#284

Post by slackernews9 »

encom wrote: post #162
InsideOutSanta wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen this happen. I worked at an extremely efficient company that had a great product. We got acquired, and within months, were part of the acquiring company's yearly mandatory layoffs. They fired a bunch of (apparently random) people to meet the quota. This absolutely destroyed us. Morale was just gone. Within six months, about a quarter of our employees, mainly top performers who could easily find other jobs,…

>yearly mandatory layoffs That sounds grotesque. Who would choose to work at a company with that sort of bullshit dangling over your head?

I mean, being homeless kinda sucks.

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#285

Post by dasil003 »

mykowebhn wrote: post #267
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.

[flagged]

That's a pretty weird and heartless thing to say. Having children is not a vice that deserves to be judged anymore than not having kids is. I could enumerate why fewer kids is bad for our collective future as a whole, but I won't, because the decision to have kids is a personal choice.

Also, having kids is generally not the difference between having to work or not—most people have to work for a living regardless of family status. It's just that the stakes are higher when you have dependents.

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#286

Post by nielsbot »

Former Nintendo CEO Iwata said something similar:

“If we reduce the number of employees for better short-term financial results, employee morale will decrease,” he said. “I sincerely doubt employees who fear that they may be laid off will be able to develop software titles that could impress people around the world.”

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#287

Post by bbqfog »

munificent wrote: post #177
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…

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.

Wow, I couldn't disagree more. My personal life is what I enjoy, the random people I work with to make money and will be gone as soon as I quit or get laid off, well... I just don't want them to be toxic. I already have a ton of friends, I don't need to convert work people into my social life. Skiing for a few months sounds super amazing though!

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#288

Post by slackernews9 »

echoangle wrote: post #104
malfist wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The stock market is like a sports betting pool where the players are allowed to bet on themselves

> where the players are allowed to bet on themselves Wouldn't that be insider trading? You can't short your own company before announcing bad things to make money from it.

If you think the rich people haven't invented a way around those pesky "rules"...

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#289

Post by hibikir »

ltbarcly3 wrote: post #200
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 have done probably 500 to 1000 tech screens for big tech companies (as the interviewer) and this is completely true. I have interviewed many people employed in tech as programmers for their entire career and they can't code. I don't meen leetcode, I mean they get confused trying to write brute force substring search. The nested for loop seems to be too complex for them to keep in their head all at once. I have had…

What is really crazy about this though is that sometimes it really is the interview setting, as people unused to interviews can, at times, emotionally collapse. I have seen people who are actually good programmers get wrecked by simple questions because of their inability to handle stress, and how the lack of interview practice turns a simple exercise into a hellscape.

It's not as if testing for performance under stress is useless: Tough on call rotations happen, and you might need someone that does well under pressure at 3 am in the morning. But the picture you get on a screening isn't as clear as it appears.

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#290

Post by WarOnPrivacy »

giantg2 wrote: post #271
mykowebhn wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I didn't ask for your sympathy. I'm merely responding to someone who doesn't understand that others have factors that affect how hard it is to change jobs.

On a side note, I'm getting whiplash by how fast we go from

    It's your fault for having children [overpop, resource exhaustion]
    to
    It's your fault for not having children [low-birthrates]
    back to
    It's your fault for having children [whatever this is]
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