Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Layoffs Don't Work

thehustle.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

371–380 of 801 posts

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#371

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

pixl97 wrote: post #365
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'll decide where I'm going when I get to the next stop light Surprisingly, this type of iteration can actually work; but the caveat is that the people behind the wheel, and reading the maps, need to be very good, and also, experienced enough to make sound decisions. If mediocre (or inexperienced) people try it, it’s a disaster. From what I can see, the entire tech industry has been institutionalizing mediocrity, s…

Generally you see stuff like this turn into bikeshedding and/or sales features only. Way too often I see companies push for new features because they will generate sales that in the long run cause more customer loss because performance and stability was neglected to implement them.

That's because it's done by folks not up to snuff.

Lots of that, going 'round, these days. Companies are firing (or driving off) all the people that can do it right.

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#372

Post by echoangle »

slackernews9 wrote: post #288
echoangle wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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"...

Well people are also betting on themselves in sport betting so if we account for ignoring the rules, I don't see why the qualfiier that betting on yourself is allowed would be needed.

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#373

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#374

Post by no_wizard »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #364
deviantbit wrote: post #334

This is a terrible opinion piece. Layoffs do work. Cutting hours does not work. I am always amazed how few people understand how a business operates. They think its a community organized event where there is unlimited revenue. There are a few basic accounting principles employees need to understand. It all revolves around Assets = Liabilities + Owner’s Equity. If you think otherwise, take a "Cost Accounting" course.…

At least for public companies, accounting is FAR from the end all be all. Most of the time, company valuations are completely divorced from valuations. And much of what public companies do these days is try to game their stock price. Government employment is 95% the time completely divorced from reality. That being said, private companies employee a lot of people and this is very relevant.

> Government employment is 95% the time completely divorced from reality

This is a pretty big claim to make without any evidence to support it.

The government, whether it be state, local, county federal etc. does in have a different pace and certainly like with any big organizations can have issues such as waste, but to say it’s completely divorced from reality, especially in context of somehow private (as in not government or NGO) companies don’t also act completely divorced from reality is a really big claim

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#375

Post by ElevenLathe »

ajkjk wrote: post #265
clusterhacks wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe that perception that people chronically job hop is not true? I would welcome a data source that shows chronic job hopping is the norm. Anecdotally speaking, I spent 6+ish years at my first "old tech" company. My org in this (very large) company was constantly simmering with resource actions (mostly small scale layoffs). There was lots of negative energy there. I left to take a programming/data analytics gig in…

It seems impossible to think that it's not true given how fundamental it is to (new) tech culture.

I think it's possible that the majority of tech workers aren't hoppers, but the majority of applicants are. This just stands to reason, since hoppers aren't doing much applying and interviewing. This would tend to make interviewers think that this is a dominant strategy even if it isn't really.

It's also the case that the "everything is transactional, fuck your coworkers, leave your job the minute you can plausibly say you learned something and move on, chase impact at any cost because you only have one career" live-to-work contingent is just much louder online, especially here. After all, these are people that are investing a lot in their career, while IME most of my coworkers, even managers (though I don't personally know very many VP-and-up managers) are work-to-live people, mostly interested in their families and hobbies, and seem to rarely post on forums like this.

In any case, I'm fairly certain that there are (or were until recently) Labor Department researchers who have figured this all out empirically and could give us an answer if we knew where to look.

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#376

Post by deviantbit »

yodsanklai wrote: post #370
deviantbit wrote: post #334

This is a terrible opinion piece. Layoffs do work. Cutting hours does not work. I am always amazed how few people understand how a business operates. They think its a community organized event where there is unlimited revenue. There are a few basic accounting principles employees need to understand. It all revolves around Assets = Liabilities + Owner’s Equity. If you think otherwise, take a "Cost Accounting" course.…

> If a company is bleeding revenue Not what happened with some of the recent layoffs. Some big tech companies generate huge revenues, laid off 5-10% of people (sometimes with false pretext of performance), and do keep hiring at the same time or soon after. This happens not to reduce cost but to stress out remaining employees.

[flagged]

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#377

Post by BobbyTables2 »

deviantbit wrote: post #334

This is a terrible opinion piece. Layoffs do work. Cutting hours does not work. I am always amazed how few people understand how a business operates. They think its a community organized event where there is unlimited revenue. There are a few basic accounting principles employees need to understand. It all revolves around Assets = Liabilities + Owner’s Equity. If you think otherwise, take a "Cost Accounting" course.…

Many larger do companies behave as if revenue is unlimited.

Too many times, I’ve seen layoffs followed by acquisitions of 10x the cost reduction from the layoffs — often even in the same quarter. And when parent company has a track record of driving acquisitions into the ground from mismanagement, where is the profit?

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#378

Post by atrettel »

bigtimesink wrote: post #211
atrettel wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

That is a great example of what I was talking about.

Another example is the changing nature of the contracts people are hired under. I'm a scientist, and a lot of positions are inherently term-limited. You end up with a lot of organizations with two different groups of employees: employers who have worked there for decades, and employers who are temporary and work there for a few years hoping to be converted to permanent. Just like in the situation you describe, if you end up on a project that just isn't working out, that does not bode well for your own prospects. That has nothing to do with your own capabilities or how hard you worked on the project. And just like you mention, a lot of the "permanent" people have survivorship bias and do not really understand that they ultimately got lucky and timed the market well.

(Or many of the permanent people were hired as permanent staff originally and do not understand the conditions under which new staff are hired.)

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#379

Post by yodsanklai »

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…

It's a chicken and egg problem. If people feel they could have a meaningful career in a given place, they would stay longer. When you see your teammates getting laid off one after the other - including people with 5-10 years of seniority and history of good performance, you start to wonder whether you should have any sense of loyalty to the company.

I joined my company with the naive hope there would be some sentiment of family/community and that I'd do a big chunk of my career there. But after seeing how they treat employees, I'm looking for the way out.

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#380

Post by callc »

deviantbit wrote: post #334

This is a terrible opinion piece. Layoffs do work. Cutting hours does not work. I am always amazed how few people understand how a business operates. They think its a community organized event where there is unlimited revenue. There are a few basic accounting principles employees need to understand. It all revolves around Assets = Liabilities + Owner’s Equity. If you think otherwise, take a "Cost Accounting" course.…

> Employees feelings don't matter on a Balance Sheet, Income Statement and Cash Flow Statement. There is not a "Employee's Feelings" column on the ledger.

Sure they do. Just in the sense that employees feelings need to be controlled and made to fear any collective action or sense of agency.

Post reply on HN