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Layoffs Don't Work

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Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#531

Post by Aeolun »

hibikir wrote: post #289
ltbarcly3 wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 str…

> Tough on call rotations happen, and you might need someone that does well under pressure at 3 am in the morning.

On a stop-the-world production incident at 3am I know that codebase like the back of my hand, and my job very likely doesn’t depend on whether I solve it in the next 30m. There’s barely anything stressful about it.

On an interview, with my future on the line, and presented with an unfamiliar problem?

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#532

Post by int_19h »

grandempire wrote: post #420
ryandrake wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a good point! I never got the chance to vote on whether or not shareholders should get all the votes.

Why do you feel entitled to something someone else built?

Shareholders don't build anything. Employees do.

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#533

Post by milesrout »

suzzer99 wrote: post #480
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.

Yeah, the prospect of layoffs hits a little different when you're in your 50s. I have some non-techie friends in their 50s (sales, project management) who have been looking for a job for years. I've even heard third-hand about some good programmers in their 50s in LA in the same boat, although I don't know them personally. The last time I was looking for a job at age 48, I interviewed at a bunch of startups and only…

If you are in your 50s then your recent years of peak lifetime earning potential overlapped with an industry massively overpaying its workforce.

You shouldn't need a job. You should have FIREd.

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#534

Post by no_wizard »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #385
no_wizard wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 go…

Private companies generally need to be efficient and make money or go out of business. VC funded startups are a VERY small percentage of jobs compared to ALL private company employees. But, sure, there is much shenanigans there. Public companies can play tons of games as well - but the vast majority of people employed at public companies are at relatively efficient and profitable companies. Government services are un…

> Private companies generally need to be efficient and make money or go out of business

They sure need to make money or they’ll go out of business, but efficient is not required. I think nearly anyone who reads HN regularly could tell you multiple stories through their own careers about waste in the private sector, bizarre politically motivated decisions etc. and that’s just this community as a sample size. I’m certain this holds if you cast a wide net

The fact is most businesses are not the paragons of efficiency that is being postulated.

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#535

Post by int_19h »

throwaway3572 wrote: post #477
heeen2 wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of places take vote on what you can buy, eg weed, alcohol, which additives are allowed and so on

The creation and transacting of corporate shares is also highly regulated. But it doesn’t address the question of why a third party should get a vote that helps decide a particular corporate action. Votes that limit the possible actions of all corporations equally are a different thing.

OP was talking about the overall social arrangement. One possibility would be to give employees (of all corporations!) some collective power over the company, as a fundamental requirement of incorporation.

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#536

Post by wilg »

eikenberry wrote: post #403
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, it cannot sustain the overhead of employees. They have to go. No, they don't. During the dotcom bubble my company gave us 2 choices, layoffs or 20% pay cut. We took the latter. Everyone stayed and we had our pay back to previous levels in a couple years and the company remained profitable. You can, in fact, treat people as people and still run a company. > Employees feelings don't…

Surely there are some situations where a pay cut is insufficient because you would like to reorganize the company, for example to wind down an unprofitable initiative or division and there's not a reasonable way to maintain the same headcount?

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#537

Post by shagie »

soerxpso wrote: post #443
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…

That's kind of a chicken and egg issue, isn't it? Why is it that employees can get more money/promotions from a company they have no relationship with, than from a company where they've already been working for multiple years and have more company-specific knowledge than their replacement will? Unlike with government work, years at the company isn't really considered when deciding who layoffs are going to hit. You're…

> Why is it that employees can get more money/promotions from a company they have no relationship with, than from a company where they've already been working for multiple years and have more company-specific knowledge than their replacement will?

Short form: Lack of headcount at the various levels, and the responsibilities at the different levels would skew to "staff developers doing junior tasks because there are no juniors."

--

Many times promotions need an available headcount at that level. The promotion also reflects a change in responsibilities.

The company couldn't have an entire team of staff engineers thinking about things without writing code - so there's an entire setup for "this is how much is budgeted for these roles and these responsibilities."

You could have headcount for 20 developers (1:3 junior to mid), two tech leads, and a staff level architect. That doesn't you could hire / promote 23 staff and have them writing code.

So when a mid level progresses, it isn't always possible to say "you're a tech lead now" as that would mean fewer developers writing code... Unless you're also going to get to the point where your 23 staff engineers are also being tasked with writing the unit tests as if they were a junior developer still learning the codebase.

So in many cases, the mid level developer looking for more has to go somewhere else.

This isn't as much of an issue in a large company where there's more room to move between teams and new positions opening as attrition happens (in the organization I work for, attrition is most likely to happen from retirement).

There's also the aspect of not every company has the same revenue. If you are at the point where you want to make more and the company can't budget for that... then you're looking somewhere else.

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#538

Post by palata »

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…

Have you ever seen a tech company where the workers actually stay? Where you can find employees who have been there for up to 30 years?

I have. You know what striking difference I found with BigTech and their layoffs? These companies don't do layoffs. They are stable, employees feel secure and can evolve in their career without leaving. You know what employees say about their company? "It doesn't give the highest salary, but it's safe and rewarding, and you can actually evolve in your career". Turns out that if people are actually happy, they stay.

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#539

Post by int_19h »

andrewlgood wrote: post #272
trescenzi wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn’t how all layoffs work though. Some, yes they are due to over hiring and a failure of management to plan. They are likely necessary for survival of the firm and generally last course of action. Although even those come with a cost to current and departing employees which harms the business. But the ones being discussed in the article are the consistent ones. The ones you do while you’re ahead to make your ba…

> But the ones being discussed in the article are the consistent ones. I worked at GE when Jack Welch was there. First of all we never had a systematic firing of the bottom 10%. That is a myth. We ranked everyone each year and clearly identified the bottom 10% but they were not always fired. The manager did have to have a development plan for these individuals. More importantly, GE did have consistent layoffs. I asse…

> The manager did have to have a development plan for these individuals.

What percentage of people on PIPs didn't leave the company within a year or two?

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#540

Post by shagie »

jagraff wrote: post #433
al_borland wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve been at my company working in tech for 19 years and I hate the pushing of job hopping as a norm. Job hoppers have no skin in the game. They don’t need support what they build, they don’t get to see where it fell short… they really can’t learn from their experiences and mistakes. What they do isn’t in the best interest of the company, it’s just enough (an MVP if you will) to add to the resume so they can leverage…

I think the solution for this would be for companies to proactively raise wages in order to keep up with the market.

What is the market?

Is it possible that "the market" has wages that are higher than the company's revenue per employee?

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