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LinkedIn to cut 960 jobs worldwide

bbc.com

141–150 of 312 posts

Re: LinkedIn to cut 960 jobs worldwide

#141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this case, they make a disproportionate amount of their revenue on jobs postings and selling recruiters the right to spam us. With less jobs their revenue goes away. They don’t need as many salespeople and internal recruiters. Microsoft has historically been pretty ruthless about annual culls. It used to be in the GE mode of cutting the bottom 5-10% each year. More recently it’s more quiet. I don’t begrudge compan…

I imagine at some point a reputation like this affects hiring ability.

On a sellers market for sure. And who wants to perform top throughout their whole career? Really doesn't sound that interesting to be honest.

Re: LinkedIn to cut 960 jobs worldwide

#143

Companies commonly use layoffs as an easy way to get rid of under-performing staff, realize cost savings from previous investments (e.g., automation) ahead of schedule, or efficiently reorganize divisions whose execs fall out of favor. Not going to say this is good, but a However callous it is, roles on the margin get cut when prospects for growth dim.

In this case, they make a disproportionate amount of their revenue on jobs postings and selling recruiters the right to spam us. With less jobs their revenue goes away. They don’t need as many salespeople and internal recruiters. Microsoft has historically been pretty ruthless about annual culls. It used to be in the GE mode of cutting the bottom 5-10% each year. More recently it’s more quiet. I don’t begrudge compan…

> It used to be in the GE mode of cutting the bottom 5-10% each year.

Hasn't it been demonstrated that GE under Jack Welch was basically a massive fraud?

Re: LinkedIn to cut 960 jobs worldwide

#144
post #37

What the heck do close to 10k people do at LinkedIn? Serious question. Why does this site/company require 10k people?

Last year LinkedIn made $6.8B in revenue. If they hire someone who can make a process .01% more efficient, they would save $680,000. If they pay that person even $400,000/yr plus benefits, they are coming out ahead.

If you find someone who can make things .002% more efficient and pay them $100,000 a year, you've still come out ahead.

At that revenue, it doesn't take much to get an ROI on a new employee.

Re: LinkedIn to cut 960 jobs worldwide

#145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah doesn’t Amazon lay off 10% of devs every year as part of their stack ranking?

That was Microsoft for the longest time and it destroyed their work culture.

But it funded the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Silver lining.

Re: LinkedIn to cut 960 jobs worldwide

#146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've interviewed for roles at several top tech companies and what surprised me was that there were entire teams dedicated to working on what seemed like a tiny feature or functionality. In some cases, two entire teams - one for frontend, one for backend. Granted, I understand there is a HUGE mind boggling level of scale involved. But still, after going on such interviews, and talking with friends who work at FAANG, e…

A lot of small features are needlessly complicated at a FAANG because they reinvent the wheel.

I think it's also that the economics are just different. If you're evaluating a CICD tool at a small company, you're going to find something affordable and bend your process to how it works. A mid-size company might invest a bit into customizing Jenkins hoping that it will pay off in the long run. A giant company might spend millions building a fully custom system from the ground up because gaining 1% more efficiency in developer effort or even build times makes it worth it. And more than that, they may be willing to invest in experiments knowing that some will fail because the chance of success is still worth it.

Re: LinkedIn to cut 960 jobs worldwide

#150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they're there to make more money than they cost. This is the key most people ignore. If each employee generates revenue greater than their cost of employment, why not keep them around? The goal isn't keeping the lights on, its making money.

It's not just about profitability though. I'm a bit rusty with my corporate finance, but internal rate of return (IRR) and weighted average cost of capital (WACC) can dictate that even if an employee is making more than what they cost, the money could still be better allocated elsewhere.

The metric that tends to matter in this is ROIC, but since software/internet companies tend to be pretty "capital light", they generally already have a very high ROIC. Unless the company can deploy that money in new growth projects that they aren't already going after, or in accretive acquisitions (hard to do when tech valuations are so high), it probably makes sense to do what they are doing.
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