101–110 of 310 posts
Deleting the post, I no longer wish to discuss this.
> it seems insensitive to tell 100k+ ppl Google or Amazon fired them because "well everyone is doing it!" Is that any more insensitive than CEOs and C-suites telling laid off workers they "take full responsibility" and "had to make a difficult decision" while facing no consequences themselves?
I love this point: "The tech industry layoffs are basically an instance of social contagion, in which companies imitate what others are doing." I really wish for a less supine tech press. I've not seen any of these titans of industry being held accountable for the apparent major mistakes of overhiring. And I'm not even talking actual consequences here; these people will surely get bonuses for this. I'd just like to s…
Do we have any evidence that the over-hiring was a mistake? Could companies not have seen the free money and decided to beef up their staff for short term gains in their roadmap, with the knowledge and intention that they will likely be cutting later while getting to keep all that intellectual output? I don't see why we put this past them.
Intellectual output or technical debt?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Staff turnover in most companies is more than 15%. The same staff reduction could have been achieved by implementing a hiring freeze, moving people to strategic projects and putting underperforming staff on a performance management plan. However, as layoffs are now normal, it can be done without looking weak.
But if everyone is freezing far fewer people will leave.
I've been on both sides of several layoff cycles. I've rarely seen any correlation with worker capabilities. I have, however, seen incompetent management cause employees to stall out and flounder.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do we have any evidence that the over-hiring was a mistake? Could companies not have seen the free money and decided to beef up their staff for short term gains in their roadmap, with the knowledge and intention that they will likely be cutting later while getting to keep all that intellectual output? I don't see why we put this past them.
Anecdotally, I've heard multiple stories of companies hiring staff, but not having any useful work to fill their time. Cases like product managers being hired but not assigned to any actual products, or engineers hired to infrastructure teams before the company has decided what infrastructure it wants. Although, these anecdotes are mostly from startups trying to scale and grow, not from FAANG-tier companies.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t think the math checks out: Salary isn’t the only expense, so you might be looking at a 15% wage cut to keep 10% of the workforce. With stock performance, I’ve already taken a 10% wage cut. Cut another 15% in cash and I’m gonna be super unhappy about my comp.
> With stock performance, I’ve already taken a 10% wage cut This is such a weird attitude to me. If it goes up you expect the gains, if it goes down the company is letting you down. Stock is supposed to involve some risk. It's not cash, and you will only be disappointed if you build your lifestyle around it being a certain price.
BigTech specifically has lured people with the promise of stock appreciation on top of already great base. When stock prices collapsed last year many companies offered “top ups”. The implicit agreement was that stocks only had upside.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So because of a situation you claim is unprecedented, you are advocating for doing the same old sweeping layoffs CEOs have done for decades? Personally, I think the situation is an entirely precedented change in growth expectations that comes around a tightening of monetary policy and a possible recession. But assuming that you're right, on what basis are you claiming that the standard playbook will get new and bette…
>So because of a situation you claim is unprecedented I claim? Do you remember any other global pandemics that reshaped the tech industry?
Your claim is that this is driven by the pandemic. I think that's pretty suspect. China excepted, pandemic restrictions ended quite a while ago. I think this is much better explained by the usual shifts in the overall economic cycle, especially the Fed's recent increases in interest rates as they seek to quench inflation, plus the matching stock downturn. An easy check on this: Google's announcement of layoffs doesn't even mention the pandemic. Another one is that layoffs are happening across the industry, not just in companies that were especially boosted by the pandemic.
But even if it were purely driven by pandemic growth and then the retreat of growth, changes in growth expectations are not unprecedented. Unless you have numbers that show different, I expect the changes in growth rates are not unusual at all compared with other major economic phenomena.
We most likely see the same people at work, behind the same spreadsheets looking at the same variables (interest rates, current stock prices), the same control variable (labor costs) and having the same incentives (future stock price) and coming to the same conclusion: just get some people out the door.
Business models, management quality, growth potential and other so-called "alpha" factors are meaningless when we are obviously at the late phase of a bubble where all the ugliness (from non-sensical bets to outright fraud) comes to the surface.
[0] https://www.ft.com/content/4beafb70-ec1a-41d3-b18e-33a85bf2a...
instead of giving 100% of the pain to 10% of the people, they give 100% of the people 10% of the pain. This causes stress to 100% of people which makes the best or on the edge of their income lifestyle to quit.