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Layoffs Don't Work

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Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#651

Post by elliotto »

ssssvd wrote: post #396
mock-possum wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Americans don't exactly dig EU/UK workers, right? I’m actually curious to hear your take on it - what’s your experience been?

UK was horrible. No real protection for workers - just layers of mandatory legal mumbo-jumbo with zero actual chances for people to keep their jobs. It was like ripping off the band-aid 1mm at a time for four months. Spain/France were an employer’s nightmare. Anyone without another job lined up secured a "special deal"—workers have massive leverage, they know it, and they’re actively litigious. People on parental lea…

When I hear things like this, where one person has been given command of the plane and tanked it straight into the ground, with dire consequences particularly for the middle east employees you have mentioned, I am filled with concern about the stability of our systems in general. It often feels like in the history books when you read about the land the King built and then his son inherits it and burns it to the ground. This can't be a sustainable way to run a society.

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#652

Post by sfn42 »

lr4444lr wrote: post #254
lumost wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I agree, but I look at it like trying out for an athletic team. Once you're on the team, you are mostly practicing plays, doing clinics, and simulating competition, but to get on the team in the first place you have to prove your general fitness by running, say, a 6 minute mile. You may not be able to do that again easily right away once you've been on the team for a while because you don't practice running for pure…

In my experience, coding interviews are more like checking that you can stand up and walk, maybe a short light jog.

They're not testing your limits, they're testing for basic competency.

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#653

Post by fzeroracer »

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…

Typically speaking, when you encounter a problem in excess I believe you should start to assume that perhaps the problem is on your side.

For context, back when I was interviewing I encountered many interviewers who process involved simple questions with simple solutions but with extra gaslighting on top. 'Are you SURE that's the right solution?' while I'm in the middle of throwing out a correct answer. It's actually very easy to guide someone away from a correct solution into the wrong one by simply making them second guess themselves under pressure.

It was something that I started to be extra cognizant about when I was the one interviewing people, that it's really quite easy to throw someone off track.

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#654

Post by genewitch »

musicale wrote: post #570
milesrout wrote: post #533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> massively overpaying its workforce As I understand it, tech employees are typically paid a small fraction of the revenue that they bring into the company. Outside of tech, employees are underpaid, and wages haven't tracked productivity growth since the 1970s. Profit growth has greatly exceeded wage growth since the early 2000s, with the exception of the 2008 recession.

Minimum wage, fairly, should have been around $32 in 2019 or so. I haven't run numbers lately because it's depressing, but I bet it's worse now.

You can't go off mcdonalds sandwiches, and you can't use the economic indicators that ignore food and fuel.

I've heard wild numbers from "the dollar is worth 50¢ compared to 20 years ago" to "the dollar has lost 98% of its value in the last N years."

I'm not an economist, but I do know my electric bill has been thr exact same dollar amount for 12 years, and I've halved my usage twice in those years. That puts the dollar purchasing power for power at 25% of 2013.

Gasoline changes prices so much I can't really say, it's about twice as expensive for 87 here as 12 years ago, but 93 is 2.5+ times higher.

Food? Don't get me started.

I live in the rural south. I don't really care about price fixing in Los Angeles or silicon Valley.

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#655

Post by beefnugs »

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…

Really you dont see the difference between the little guy who has a family and barely affords rent and food doing all the extra work and calculating and saving to make the risky jump when he feels comfortable, vs a giant corporation sitting on 10 years of runway no matter what they do indiscriminately cutting and shoving dozens of "little guys" into unplanned for stress and upheaval?

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#656

Post by darkwater »

throwaway151883 wrote: post #588
darkwater wrote: post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you were rejected at a Metà interview after you previously worked at Facebook for 4 years? Or were you interviewing for some other FAANG?

Yeah, rejected after previously working there. Was also going for a different role than I previously had. To their credit, I respect that they don't just hand out free passes back in.

I would not expect a free pass but at least going directly to second/third stage. I mean, they could check your committed code internally, no?

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#657

Post by genewitch »

margalabargala wrote: post #617
andrewlgood wrote: post #606

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> I do disagree with your assertion that “Life is much harder for some of us.” It sounds like what you think you wrote, is not in fact the words of yours that everybody has been reading.

My phone will drop contractions, and that would be charitable.

A double negative is risky without typos, though.

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#658

Post by ltbarcly3 »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #644
ltbarcly3 wrote: post #642

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, they have solid resumes. Top companies and relevant experience on paper. They claim skills with the right tools. They are just idiots.

"claim" kills? Isn't part of the HR screening about some litmus test to make sure they aren't very obviously lying? And yes, this is part of why the obsession with FAANG on resume is very overrated. Very few companies require the skillsete FAANG needs. Some of thst FAANG culture is orthogonal to what medium/small sized companies require.

I don't think you read the thread. They did have those jobs, and presumably they were on teams that did vaguely what is on their resume. No HR doesn't investigate candidates or do background checks before you interview them, that would be very expensive and silly.

I feel like you kind of vaguely are aware of these topics but have never actually had a job or something because you seem completely unfamiliar with the basics of how hiring is done in the industry. Are you from Eastern Europe maybe?

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#659

Post by jwarden »

This article’s main point is that companies who do layoffs subsequently have poor financial performance relative to companies who don’t.

Well obviously.

It’s like saying surgery doesn’t work, because people who have recently undergone surgery are more likely to be experiencing health issues.

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#660

Post by physicsguy »

DanielHB wrote: post #95
JadoJodo wrote: post #74

Having lived in the Boise (Idaho) area, I saw this happen over and over with Micron and HP. I knew dozens of people who had worked for one or the other (and sometimes both) and were then let go in those companies frequent mass layoffs. One person I knew had been laid off → rehired by Micron 3x in the span of 10-years. I think the biggest issue is that it is far too often the _first_ tool that companies reach for, ins…

In Europe where most countries are notoriously hard to fire people they don't do layoffs like that "just to be safe", they instead just cut-back on hiring more people during though times. It has an impact of morale, but not nearly as bad I imagine. I wonder if that is one of the reasons why Europe companies tend to be smaller companies, while US tend to be bigger. Expansion is easier when you can fire at any time, sm…

Yes, this is happening at the company I work for. Total hiring freeze, people leaving through retirement or attrition aren't necessarily replaced. Salary raises are lower than inflation. Because no growth in staff, there's limited progression opportunity - you can't take a step up by moving to a new team since the business isn't expanding. It does have an impact in that ambitious people get frustrated and end up leaving.
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