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

671–680 of 801 posts

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#671

Post by milesrout »

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.

The labour theory of value that you allude to here makes no sense. People are paid at the market price based on supply and demand, just like other goods and services.

Tech employees don't "bring in" the company's revenue. That makes the mistake of attributing the products and services of a business to its workers.

>wages haven't tracked productivity growth since the 1970s.

Propaganda. Productivity growth literally is just wage growth, by definition. It is impossible for them not to track each other.

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#672

Post by milesrout »

genewitch wrote: post #654
musicale wrote: post #570

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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, bu…

There is no such thing as what minimum wage should be "fairly". What is the minimum amount you should be able to pay someone an hour? Surely it is the amount where if you didn't, someone else would pay them more.

There are many people who do jobs worth much less than $32/hour. That min wage would just make them illegal to employ.

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

You can't use economic indicators that track volatile commodities either. We use baskets of consumer goods and the inflation tracking is very accurate in short time frames but it becomes harder to compare the further out you get. A TV today is much better than a TV even 10 years ago but it is hardly even the same product as one from 1970.

>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."

What is wild about that? If you had 50c then and you had invested it in even relatively poorly performing investments it would be worth much more than $1 now.

>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.

That you are not an economist is obvious.

You are aware that dollars buy more things than energy from your energy provider according to your energy plan, yeah?

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#673

Post by milesrout »

suzzer99 wrote: post #554
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.

Having FIRE doesn't mean you're ready to retire and build ships in a bottle or whatever. I like programming, it puts me in flow state and keeps my brain young. I want to go out on my own terms. Also good luck with FIRE if you're putting kids through college. And thirdly, for those of us at normal companies the pay has been nice, but not FAANG mid-six-figures nice.

You don't have to "put kids through college". If you're in the US, they can borrow to go somewhere decent and affordable. Harvard has never been for you, it has always been for the children of very rich New Englanders.

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#674

Post by guappa »

cratermoon wrote: post #190
karparov wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Somebody who is universally hated by their co-workers should just be let go. Nothing to do with a layoff. So everybody who is around has some reason for actually being there. In a well-managed place, that is.

> Somebody who is universally hated by their co-workers How many times have we seen a company fire whoever they consider "dead weight" but keep the universally hated guy because he's a 10x rockstar whatever?

I've seen the opposite happen: fire the unsocial guys and keep the social guys that do absolutely nothing but flame and troll on slack.

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#675

Post by xyzzy123 »

milesrout wrote: post #671
musicale wrote: post #570

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

The labour theory of value that you allude to here makes no sense. People are paid at the market price based on supply and demand, just like other goods and services. Tech employees don't "bring in" the company's revenue. That makes the mistake of attributing the products and services of a business to its workers. >wages haven't tracked productivity growth since the 1970s. Propaganda. Productivity growth literally is…

https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/

The graph on this page disagrees, can you explain please? I haven't heard anyone say the two concepts are the same before.

As I have heard it "productivity" is roughly gdp/hour, which can be different from wages/hour (but you generally expect the two to be related / correlated).

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#676

Post by sfn42 »

al_borland wrote: post #466
jagraff wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yes, but it also takes some level of patience on the part of the employee. Corporate bureaucracies often move slow, and they also want to see you can do the job first. I’m seeing most younger people don’t seem to have patience for this. They also grossly overestimate their knowledge and ability. I’ve seen a significant number of people talk like they mastered a job after 1 year, then they stared asking me how they co…

I just performed a job hop. I've stayed in the same job for nearly 4 years and I'd be happy to stay if I wasn't being underpaid. I think I've performed pretty well and I know I've had good feedback from colleagues, I've told my voss multiple times that I like my job but I feel like my pay isn't developing fast enough. My raises have been 7% for the first two years and 4% the last year.

So when my team lead quit I decided to look around to see if I was right to think I was underpaid, and the first place I applied offered me more than a 20% raise. I think I've been patient, but I'd much rather have money now that later.

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#677

Post by yodsanklai »

TZubiri wrote: post #486
yodsanklai wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

>This happens not to reduce cost but to stress out remaining employees. Or to cull the low performers. I personally am less stressed when the competition I outperform gets fired.

In my team, two people who got laid off as "low performers" weren't. One was very good but had a bad luck with a very bad project / manager the previous half. The other picked the wrong topic to work on and they weren't well rewarded.

The low performers are usually managed out anyway. The last lay off phase was quite arbitrary.

Also note that high performers often do get promoted, and may become low performers at the next level.

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#678

Post by Aeolun »

lr4444lr wrote: post #569
Aeolun wrote: post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unlike, you know, proving that by the fact my previous employer was happy to retain me for 10 plus years?

You've never worked at a place where someone was an incompetent hanger-on who was an expert at self promotion and stealing credit? Or hired someone like that accidentally? Notwithstanding, I have long argued that a non-profit credentialing body for SWEs offering cerification exams (which also required regular updates) akin to passing the bar or USMLE could go a long way to solving this problem. It would come with oth…

> You've never worked at a place where someone was an incompetent hanger-on who was an expert at self promotion and stealing credit? Or hired someone like that accidentally?

Thinking back on it. Not really. I’ve had a few people be outright incompetent, but I’ve never been at risk of them stealing the credit for stuff. The closest I’ve come is people that should probably be fired, but manage to barely hold on by being experts at self promotion.

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#679

Post by snapcaster »

giantg2 wrote: post #493
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…

Yep. The subliminal message I'm getting from my current managers is that I should just be a good little disabled person and work as a Walmart greeter. It's turning into harassment at this point. Just all sorts of BS. Like telling me they are doing so much for me, when my ADA accommodation is weekly 1-on-1s with the manager and my tech lead. Is that really a lot? There are people without disabilities getting weekly 1-…

At my current job, in the manager training we were told "you should have weekly 1:1 with your direct reports" and i thought "who the fuck needs to be told that?". This is an illuminating comment, seems absurd to me

Re: Layoffs Don't Work

#680

Post by snapcaster »

milesrout wrote: post #671
musicale wrote: post #570

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

The labour theory of value that you allude to here makes no sense. People are paid at the market price based on supply and demand, just like other goods and services. Tech employees don't "bring in" the company's revenue. That makes the mistake of attributing the products and services of a business to its workers. >wages haven't tracked productivity growth since the 1970s. Propaganda. Productivity growth literally is…

>Productivity growth literally is just wage growth, by definition. It is impossible for them not to track each other.

I don't understand what you mean by this. If i own a business, and employee productivity increases but i don't increase wages doesn't that disprove your statement?

Post reply on HN