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Elastic lays off 7% of employees

elastic.co

101–110 of 251 posts

Re: Elastic lays off 7% of employees

#101

Before the 1980s layoffs were seen as a massive failure of the company and almost never happened to tenured employees unless the company was collapsing. Before we are all made to think this is normal and unavoidable behavior.

In the 80s you didn't have the majority of your employees being white collar and making six figures.

The U.S. is suffering from office worker bloat. They have an increasing growing population of people who know very little about physical labor and most likely won't be able to adapt to upcoming AI induced mass unemployment. I only see the pain getting worse for them.

Not sure what the solution is for them here.

Re: Elastic lays off 7% of employees

#102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The thing is, a profitable company that sees an obvious efficiency staring it in the face is still going to take that efficiency. I don’t think a lot of us employees will be happy to admit that AI is turning out to be a legitimate productivity aid that is allowing individuals to accomplish more work per person. We’d rather sit here and stew about companies “blaming AI for layoffs” but I imagine that is only sometimes…

I’d love to hire for life, but what commitment can an employee give? It can’t be one sided or it’s terrible.

Re: Elastic lays off 7% of employees

#103
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When Elon fired 80% of the company, I remember a lot of celebration on HN. Some of it was the perceived political bias within the employees and some of it was “The app works fine what were all those employees doing? They probably deserved it.” At the time I remember talking about this becoming a norm as CEOs follow the lead and getting downvoted heavily. Its unfortunate that we are here, but also not surprising, give…

That's not from what I remember. I'm sure there was some skepticism about some of the roles that were there. But I do remember Ian Brown just completely dunking on that triobyte on Twitter Spaces. (Ian Brown is an ex-Twitter performance engineer, he pushed Musk on "what is non-performant, and you explicitly define it".. suffice to say gehot and Musk got a little embarassed and kicked him off the stream).

George Hotz’s entire tenure as a Twitter “intern” was so hilariously embarrassing. And the entire preamble at the time about basically “purging the parasites” and Heroic 100x Coders (the search still sucks)

Re: Elastic lays off 7% of employees

#104

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.

Tech debt is much less important than many developers think it is. More sales over chasing tech debt almost every time.

Re: Elastic lays off 7% of employees

#105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't have nearly as many complaints about this mindset change if ones life (e.g. insurance) weren't still so deeply tied to who your current employer is.

I'm aware that HN frowns on "THIS", but...THIS!!! I don't know what the best solution for the current healthcare clusterfuck in the US is, but I think disassociating health insurance from employer/employment is a great first step.

Improving coverage and acceptance by plans in the marketplace would be a good start. Multiple healthcare providers only accept plans from an employer or the state, not individual plans bought in the marketplace. Crazy that in a pro-business country, if you have your own business or you're self-employed, you can't have access to healthcare

Re: Elastic lays off 7% of employees

#106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a cousin in Belgium who was laid off following some restructuring and her severance was 52 weeks. Not out of the goodness of the company's hearts, but mandated by law since they gave no notice and she had accrued seniority. US labor laws are a joke in comparison.

I'm sure that level of overhead has nothing to do with the reason Belgian incomes, standards of living, and business outcomes are worse.

Reminded me of https://youtu.be/ML3qYHWRIZk

Re: Elastic lays off 7% of employees

#107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the Republicans wrecked it by getting rid of the mandate and then not funding the subsidy.

[flagged]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efforts_to_repeal_the_Affordab...

> On November 2, 2017, a bill later known as the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was introduced by Representative Kevin Brady of Texas. Included in the bill was the move to change the tax penalty for not having health insurance mandated by the Affordable Care Act to zero.[62][63] Economists said this would lower interest in obtaining health insurance coverage.[64] The bill was signed into law on December 22, 2017 by Donald Trump,[65] with the loss of individual mandate taxation being set to take effect January 1, 2019.[62]

Re: Elastic lays off 7% of employees

#109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't have nearly as many complaints about this mindset change if ones life (e.g. insurance) weren't still so deeply tied to who your current employer is.

[flagged]

I think you’re on the wrong website. You’re allowed to be conservative here. But, you can’t be conservative and an idiot.
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