I really get the feeling that many companies are just blindly doing whatever other companies do. One starts large layoffs, and suddenly everybody is doing it. At other times, when one goes on a hiring spree, they all go. One tries to reduce salaries, they all do. One pays enormous bonuses, and they all do. It's like CEOs aren't really thinking for themselves, just copying whatever the market does.
> I really get the feeling that many companies are just blindly doing whatever other companies do.
They’d all have had to collude in December for this to happen. Laying off people in large companies takes a sufficient amount of planning, and isn’t accomplished in days. They need to hire external consultants to help, even.
I really get the feeling that many companies are just blindly doing whatever other companies do. One starts large layoffs, and suddenly everybody is doing it. At other times, when one goes on a hiring spree, they all go. One tries to reduce salaries, they all do. One pays enormous bonuses, and they all do. It's like CEOs aren't really thinking for themselves, just copying whatever the market does.
This post agrees that it’s essentially copycat behavior. https://news.stanford.edu/2022/12/05/explains-recent-tech-la...
Viral contagion. Code RED. Put all the CEOs in lockdown. Disable internet access.
I mean, it’s a funny joke. But this attitude only upsets people who thought jobs were not transactional. Kind of reminds me of stories by people who paid for sex and found out the sex worker didn’t want to cuddle afterwards.
The very idea of separating humanity from the system we live in will never sit right with me. Jobs are purely transactional on paper, sure, but in the end, we're not _just_ dealing with jobs, but people and their livelihoods. We're simply lucky enough to be in a field where saving up and building a financial security cushion is doable. In practice, accountability only seems to go up so far. I shortly did consulting f…
I think it could be a bit easier to think of things this way if there were a stronger social safety net, especially in the USA.
Also I think the scale of the company you work at has an impact on this. The larger the company, the less personal treatment I would expect.
I really get the feeling that many companies are just blindly doing whatever other companies do. One starts large layoffs, and suddenly everybody is doing it. At other times, when one goes on a hiring spree, they all go. One tries to reduce salaries, they all do. One pays enormous bonuses, and they all do. It's like CEOs aren't really thinking for themselves, just copying whatever the market does.
Market forces are behind it. Luckily it is very simple to fix. Just bring the interest rates to zero
But then the poors get paid too much and we can't have that. Interest rates rise because the 1% want a larger part of the pie.
The CEO answers to the board, and the board is usually of the type to at least ask the question "Everyone is jumping off a bridge, why aren't we?" And sadly the easiest answer is "we ARE jumping off the bridge, see?"
And it's very reasonable for the board to at least ask: "Why do we think we're so special?" Which may have a good answer. But also may not.
Presumably answered when they were hired to the board?
I really get the feeling that many companies are just blindly doing whatever other companies do. One starts large layoffs, and suddenly everybody is doing it. At other times, when one goes on a hiring spree, they all go. One tries to reduce salaries, they all do. One pays enormous bonuses, and they all do. It's like CEOs aren't really thinking for themselves, just copying whatever the market does.
To quote HN user @badhombres from the original thread: > Not surprising. Every company is going to take the opportunity to trim costs when it doesn't affect their PR as much as it would any other time. I'm pretty sure this is really what's going on here. These CEO's are killing all of these jobs while they can (seemingly without any repercussions). I was talking with my dad about these layoffs and one of the interest…
A lot of this is sourced in the 2021-2022 job seekers market, when everybody and his brother could get a job. There were hiring sprees not because there was an obvious need for a/that particular level of skills and experience, but because there were a lot of companies thinking "if we don't get this guy/gal now, someone else, maybe even a competitor, may". I've witnessed it especially in the blockchain/web3/cryptoBS areas. I know of a company which had a target of min 25 hires/week, and kept that pace for three-four months. When I tried to insert a cost analysis process in their Infra organization, part of an operational model meant to get them to a more mature level than forever startup, I was told that "money was no object", so I should focus my advice in other areas. Of course I left them, soon thereafter, and now I see them in the news, alongside all others, letting people go. Oh, well...
I really get the feeling that many companies are just blindly doing whatever other companies do. One starts large layoffs, and suddenly everybody is doing it. At other times, when one goes on a hiring spree, they all go. One tries to reduce salaries, they all do. One pays enormous bonuses, and they all do. It's like CEOs aren't really thinking for themselves, just copying whatever the market does.
> I really get the feeling that many companies are just blindly doing whatever other companies do. A social contagion if you will. It doesn’t seem rational at all at this point. Hopefully some of the more naive people in the industry learn something from this. Your employer would happily kill your if it were legal and they made a cent more doing so, let alone something less like fire you.
Lets give some good companies credit, they value their employees more. They would hold out for at least a dollar before killing you.
Interesting, earlier today an post was made about confluent cli going "open source" and now they're doing massive layoffs. Was this an "open-source folks will do it for free anyhow" or someone wanting to save their work from obsolence? (Earlier flagged post) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34527670
>Was this an "open-source folks will do it for free anyhow" I doubt it. Open-sourcing anything is a lot of work. Managing open-source projects is a lot of work. There are no guarantees that that project will even get any external development traction or mindshare, and if this is still an important component to you, you'll be paying developers to build it out anyway.
It is a little odd that they pulled the announcement page. But the repo is still available so who knows. Maybe they thought it would be poorly received by other employees after the layoffs? Seems like a stretch.
I really get the feeling that many companies are just blindly doing whatever other companies do. One starts large layoffs, and suddenly everybody is doing it. At other times, when one goes on a hiring spree, they all go. One tries to reduce salaries, they all do. One pays enormous bonuses, and they all do. It's like CEOs aren't really thinking for themselves, just copying whatever the market does.
I get why public companies like google, meta or even confluent is doing layoffs when the stock price falls 50-75%, the employees are unhappy and the shareholders are unhappy. Layoffs is a way to tell shareholders that the leadership is doing something to curb the costs and try to increase profit. But there are also pre-ipo private companies laying people off, that part I don't quite understand, since they have no sha…
Those companies don't have public shareholder pressure but they do have investor pressure. The market downtown and cost of raising money changes investment calculus