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Elastic lays off 7% of employees

elastic.co

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Re: Elastic lays off 7% of employees

#11

Post by kev009 »

msteffen wrote: post #6

I wonder if some of these CEOs are anticipating a big crash and trying to lay people off now, so that (1) they can raise/hoard cash while the money-go-round is spinning and (2) their eng organization is already lean and used to it if/when the money-go-round stops. “Because of AI” indeed.

I think it's just the relative cost of money. Credit, debt, raises, revenue all rely on it. The tech industry got used to zero interest rate and then Covid-era stimulus. Now, suddenly, cashflow matters, but the companies are still run by the same people that only know perception management. Eventually they too will get cycled out.

Re: Elastic lays off 7% of employees

#12

Post by Ancalagon »

kev009 wrote: post #11
msteffen wrote: post #6

I wonder if some of these CEOs are anticipating a big crash and trying to lay people off now, so that (1) they can raise/hoard cash while the money-go-round is spinning and (2) their eng organization is already lean and used to it if/when the money-go-round stops. “Because of AI” indeed.

I think it's just the relative cost of money. Credit, debt, raises, revenue all rely on it. The tech industry got used to zero interest rate and then Covid-era stimulus. Now, suddenly, cashflow matters, but the companies are still run by the same people that only know perception management. Eventually they too will get cycled out.

not to mention SaaS stocks are down making the cost of borrowing against their stock more expensive

Re: Elastic lays off 7% of employees

#13

Post by sandeepkd »

ai_slop_hater wrote: post #4
puszczyk wrote: post #2

Makes me sad to read it as an ex-Elastic employee. AI is used to justify the redundancies, and the company still expects to grow in this fiscal year. In the SEC filling the specifically mention more “head count” in “go-to-market” roles [1]. > a reduction of approximately 7% of our workforce > Advances in AI, automation, and technology are reshaping how work gets done, and we're changing with them. (…) That's what thi…

I've grown to hate executives. This is obviously an AI-generated nothing burger. They never mean what they say publicly.

Do not want to sound like as if I am taking their side but the reality is that all these decisions are mandated by some subset of investors in one way or another.

These executives are replaceable, and they would be replaced if they do not toe the line. In other words these executives happen to choose a easy and beneficial path rather than standing up for the long term right thing for the company.

Re: Elastic lays off 7% of employees

#16

Post by wolvoleo »

keithnz wrote: post #9

This just reaffirms my view is that big companies will lose headcount because of AI, but small and medium companies will (or at least have the potential to) leverage AI to do bigger and better things. This is because big companies could always spend big money on getting what they want made while small companies always have to tradeoff what they can realistically do with the resources they have.

Also big companies spend tons and tons of time and money on useless busy work.

I work in IT and when we needed something new we'd just implement or build it.

Now we have long certification processes for anything new, checking if it complies with hundreds of pages of policies. A lifecycle management program which we constantly have to keep updated. Governance teams that are constantly looking over our shoulders. All shit that has nothing to do with IT whatsoever.

As a result we spend 90% of time doing busywork jumping through hoops these guys set up for us. Only 5% is real technical work and a lot is outsourced or consulted out to a friend of the vice president who spends all day chatting in his office for 1000 bucks a day. Or a Deloitte guy who looks great in a suit and has no idea what he's talking about. Because companies hate employing people who have actual knowledge.

I really hate IT work now. Not sure about the rest of the industry but this change happened about 10 years ago. Until then we still were able to do actual useful work.

I can only imagine how awful a place to work it will become when they will use AI to dream up even more inhibiting policies to keep us down with.

Oh and meanwhile the CEO still goes around how innovative we are even though any innovation is absolutely killed by all this bureaucracy. Most of the time we come up with a great idea it doesn't move ahead because nobody wants to deal with years of pencil pushing to get it approved.

I can totally see how startups can do actual work with little money and we can't do anything.

Re: Elastic lays off 7% of employees

#17

Post by lcnPylGDnU4H9OF »

cyanydeez wrote: post #8
nozzlegear wrote: post #3

This announcement spends remarkably few words talking about the what (7% of the company's workforce was laid off), and a great deal of words talking about how bright the future of the company is and how they're going to hire more people.

which is why most corporations should be classified as sociopaths, at a minimum.

Well, sort of. That anthropomorphizes them and allows the sociopaths running the corporations to pawn the responsibility of their decisions to the corporation, which is actually a legal fiction that is incapable of independent thought or expression.

Re: Elastic lays off 7% of employees

#19

Post by skeeter2020 »

nozzlegear wrote: post #3

This announcement spends remarkably few words talking about the what (7% of the company's workforce was laid off), and a great deal of words talking about how bright the future of the company is and how they're going to hire more people.

If you were realigning your SaaS company to ignore your technology short-comings and technical debt, and isntead focus on selling as much "AI-enabled " while the rush still looks like gold, this would be a great strategy & announcement.

Re: Elastic lays off 7% of employees

#20

Post by georgel »

wolvoleo wrote: post #16
keithnz wrote: post #9

This just reaffirms my view is that big companies will lose headcount because of AI, but small and medium companies will (or at least have the potential to) leverage AI to do bigger and better things. This is because big companies could always spend big money on getting what they want made while small companies always have to tradeoff what they can realistically do with the resources they have.

Also big companies spend tons and tons of time and money on useless busy work. I work in IT and when we needed something new we'd just implement or build it. Now we have long certification processes for anything new, checking if it complies with hundreds of pages of policies. A lifecycle management program which we constantly have to keep updated. Governance teams that are constantly looking over our shoulders. All s…

This has been the case forever in corporate environments, even before AI. I worked for 3 years on an app that in startup land should have taken a couple months at best.
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