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Layoffs Don't Work

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Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#291

Post by slackernews9 »

dartos wrote: post #16
dustingetz wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

software development costs are out of control the whole industry is one big grift, there’s no accountability anywhere, 20% of the devs are doing 80% of the work, the business would instantly terminate the 80% for cause if they could only discern the difference, but they can’t, because the business side is also a big grift with the exact same problem all the way up to the founders recursively

Got news for you. It’s not the devs who are bloating development costs. It’s the layers of management making hour long meetings to discuss button placement. It’s the hours of retros, design meetings, and skip-levels designed to remove any personal investment or sense of ownership from everything. Since so few individuals are trusted with real decision making power, you need a lot more people to achieve some kind of c…

Got news for you, too: it's both. It's the useless management, it's the "developers" who send me screenshots of stack traces while they cry and soil themselves because they have no clue what they're doing.

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#292

Post by bbqfog »

andrewlgood wrote: post #235
mym1990 wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

An experienced manager would know that is how the game is played and act accordingly. Don't get emotionally attached to any work relationships. It's transactional, keep that in mind.

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#293

Post by slackernews9 »

Nextgrid wrote: post #163
dv_dt wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big tech companies paying the largest salaries are raking in billions in profits. How does this square with the view that software development costs are out of control? Layoffs today seem more like execs following management fads for easy visible actions and this data would suggest that the actions are actually detrimental to company profits. Juice the numbers for a quarter but add another long term drag to the c…

Just because a company can be overall profitable doesn't mean costs aren't out of control. If you make enough profits, you can literally feed money into a shredder and still come out ahead if you earn profits faster than your shredder can eat them.

So maybe we don't take jobs away from people with families and mortgages then, if all we have to do is sacrifice some profits, yeah? Gee, maybe the company can only make $9 billion instead of $9.5 billion, and everyone can stay employed.

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#294

Post by kbelder »

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]

No sympathy from me either; instead, he gets appreciation. Thank you, OP, for bringing more life into the world. It's hard and (obviously) frequently thankless.

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#295

Post by nielsbot »

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]

I'm curious how you'll feel about this comment in 10 and 20 years from now.

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#296

Post by bbqfog »

lumost wrote: post #167
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…

Big tech interviews tend to be daunting. Many long term employees lose the skill, and fear the impact of work interruption on their resume as well as their ability to get in again. Anecdotally, the LC bar for many firms has risen to the point that passing requires at least one through of the question before. If you Time bound your practice per question to 20 minutes, this means that you can solve most LC problems at…

This is a persistent myth in our industry. If you're a good manager, you can tell within minutes if someone is "for real", if you can't, you aren't qualified to be hiring people. Have you even looked at their GitHub?

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#297

Post by slackernews9 »

Nextgrid wrote: post #168
dpkirchner wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last I heard Twitter is so desperate they've resorted to suing former customers who stopped buying poorly performing ad space. Edit: removed supposition

This has nothing to do with the tech side of things though? In fact the business was always on shaky grounds even before the acquisition. From a tech perspective, the company was indeed massively bloated with tons of people clearly not contributing anything.

There go the goal posts, whooshing by at the speed of sound.

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#299

Post by hakaneskici »

margalabargala wrote: post #237
andrewlgood wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Wisdom speaks. Hidden gem of this thread.

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#300

Post by slackernews9 »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #183

> Companies must invest to train current workers to pick up new tasks — and invest to recruit replacement employees after the economy improves or the company’s financial troubles clear up. It always baffled me how could a businessman fail to understand that loosing a reliably working employee (even of mediocre productivity) is like shooting your own leg - resulting in having to look for a replacement, train them and…

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