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Layoffs Don't Work

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Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#601

Post by giantg2 »

milesrout wrote: post #533
suzzer99 wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

When I get to 50, I will still need some sort of job. Maybe I can get a lower paying or low stress job. That's me being in the industry for my entire career, good credentials, etc. I will have been making somewhat less than the national developer median (about $130k is median). I live in a moderately high cost area. Even the people that live in high cost areas making 2x my salary have significant tax and real estate burdens. Not everyone can FIRE, especially if you're below the median.

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#602

Post by giantg2 »

tocs3 wrote: post #596
bb88 wrote: post #576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you do this? Taxes? Increase worker salaries? Government funded health care? Access to cheap labor is what really drives economies. Market forces are what drive labor salaries. More people cheaper labor. It used to be in the 60s, 70s, and to some extent the 80's a single wage earner was enough in a family. By the end of the 80's it became clear that 2 wage earners was how people got ahead in life.

I don't know and it is a good question. Maybe we need three or four wage earners per household. Maybe 60-70 hour work weeks. I would like to hear some ideas that does not include more grinding down workers for GDP. Maybe another measure for a health society. Growth certainly help lots of people but when an economy is mature maybe more is not necessarily better, at least for the average worker.

The main thing is that the share of GDP per worker has gone down, meaning the distribution is skewed. But I agree that there isn't a good option that I've heard to change this without other negative side effects.

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#603

Post by andrewlgood »

nthingtohide wrote: post #402
andrewlgood wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, I am not young. I just retired and have been thinking about my life, career, etc. I do not have a disability (my wife may disagree) and I agree it makes life more challenging (wouldn’t be called a disability otherwise). I also agree with you that life can be hard, children are born with health challenges, children make poor decisions with terrible consequences, spouse dies, you get cancer, etc. We all need…

The other factor you are missing in your analysis of PE route is the number of musical chairs are limited. There can only be 1 taylor swift not millions. So the choice is not for everyone. Even if everyone made that choice, a million taylor swifts will not happen. Surviorship bias is real.

Great point

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#604

Post by grandempire »

lurking_swe wrote: post #573
grandempire wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Different groups of people. Some confidently job hop, others live in fear of losing a comfortable job. There are deep differences in expectations and attitudes in these areas, driven by family, culture, and upbringing.

i agree with this. However… It’s worth mentioning (as a public FYI) that it’s not smart to _expect_ to stay with a company for 10+ years, from a risk mitigation perspective. At least not in 2025. It’s kind of like picking a stock. Purposely picking just 1 stock for your portfolio carries great risk. Likewise, picking 1 job and/or 1 tech stack and hoping for the best is also high risk. It’s smart to at least dabble in…

I agree. Jobs can go away at anytime for any reason. What really hurts is when people think their devotion and sacrifice means it wont apply to them. Set expectations accordingly.

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#605

Post by bonoboTP »

int_19h wrote: post #523
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…

I worked at Microsoft 2009-2024 and I've seen it a lot. It's rather telling when your own manager tells you that if you want fast promos and raises, the best way to do so is to switch companies every few years. And I've had more than one manager say that. I know many people who did several rounds of Microsoft -> Google -> Amazon -> Microsoft or the like. That said, I don't think one can blame the devs for it, since i…

> I never understood why - intuitively, it doesn't make sense for the company to underpay its devs to the point where they leave for a competitor, and then come back and get rehired at a much higher salary anyway. But it is what it is, and the workforce has caught on.

It's because they are unable to tell who is worth what. So they outsource it to the market. If you managed to pass the interviews and get hired at the other big tech company, that's proof of value.

It's also self-reinforcing. If you don't leave, it's a signal that you don't trust your own market value to be higher.

For every dev that is able to make the "Microsoft -> Google -> Amazon -> Microsoft" circuit, you have n others who look hardly distinguishable to management who can't do that if they tried quitting. In other words, quitting is risky, in game theoretic terms it's a costly signal of competence.

I also wouldn't be surprised if it had some internal politics reasons that there are certain rules/power games around salary raises that don't apply when someone is hired from scratch.

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#606

Post by andrewlgood »

margalabargala wrote: post #363
andrewlgood wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you know I have good health? What an incredibly smug comment meant to silence someone with no basis in fact.

Well, the person you originally replied to mentioned having a disability, and your response was "yeah but you have kids so really you chose this and also I disagree that life is harder for some people." The generous interpretation would be that you have sufficiently good health that you do not have to structure your life around it, and therefore lack understanding of the challenges faced by those who do. The alternat…

I actually agreed with them that a disability makes life harder. I then pointed out other things that an individual did not choose can make life harder as well.

As for bringing up children, I did make the leap that that is generally a big difference between younger employees and older employees.

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#607

Post by MichaelMoser123 »

the key phrase of the article is "Nothing kills your company's culture like layoffs"

I think that company culture stands for a framework that enables internal cooperation within the company. Now i am not sure if cooperation is currently valued over internal competition in the tech industry, but my impression is that the opposite is the case for most shops. So the question is: how did we get here? what are the factors that have led to the prevailing choice of priorities?

The article says its the stock market that values short term gains over anything else. Now maybe its really because running fast and breaking things is the only way we know how to do things in tech?

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#608

Post by andrewlgood »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #434
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…

People don't chose the abilities or disabilities they're born with, nor those they receive at the hands of others. Many also don't have the choice to start a family, no matter how badly they want it.

I never said people choose disabilities. I tried to point out there are other life changing issues that can affect a person that they also did not choose.

As for starting a family, I agree not all can. My mistake was jumping from their assertion that I must be young to mean I did not have the responsibilities of an older worker such as taking care of a family. The less generous interpretation of that accusation is what? I am stupid? Ignorant of life? Not suffering from the impact of issues that I did not choose?

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#609

Post by suzzer99 »

WalterBright wrote: post #587
suzzer99 wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Welcome to the wonderful world of coding under pressure, which almost never occurs in the real world. It's a non-issue when you're young and don't feel the pressure. But when you have grey hairs in your beard and know you're already walking in with two strikes, all of a sudden the fog of war kicks in.

> you're young and don't feel the pressure Wat? Feeling the pressure is even worse when you're young!

It wasn't for me. I guess I was too dumb to know I was supposed to feel pressure.

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#610

Post by mym1990 »

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…

Oh totally! I don't have that perspective from the manager as I am very much an IC, and I have 0 experience job hopping as well as I have basically been with the same company for most of my career. I would say, naively, that part of that difference comes down to job description. If its in a manager's job description to: "make sure they are getting the experiences they need to build a better career, hire the right people to complement the team, fight for bonuses and pay raises", then they should be doing those things. If not, they are going above and beyond and I would certainly consider them a great manager...but the truth is that there are not that many managers out there doing this.
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