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Elastic lays off 7% of employees

elastic.co

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Re: Elastic lays off 7% of employees

#151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a delusion that US is rich because of capitalism. It is an insult to the people that founded the country and people that developed science/tech/finance etc. in it. And ofc the space, natural resources and isolation from wars. Saying US is rich because capitalism is about as accurate as saying it is rich because it is christian

Do you think those natural resources would have been taken advantage of as well in some other system? Same with the geography and isolation. You are talking about entirely different things. Makes no sense whatsoever. You could make your same argument about any economic system. The natural resources are inputs, not the outcome.

> Do you think those natural resources would have been taken advantage of as well in some other system?

What I mean is those factors can obviously effect a country's success. And can be argued that that do much more easier than arguing about religion or ideology.

Similarly it is easier to argue that proper nutrition, sleep, drug usage etc. can effect an athlete's performance very positively. But you would find it much harder to argue on their religion, place they live, how wealthy were their family etc.

As another example I think it is pretty easy to argue that the Jewish scientists going to US because of Hitler was a massive gain for US and a massive loss for Germany. And there are so many concrete factors like this that, all things considered, ideology seems irrelevant in comparison.

You might say "this is all because US is capitalist in the first place". I want to point out how similar this kind of thinking is to the way some religious people think and how inconsequential it is in real world.

Re: Elastic lays off 7% of employees

#152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 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. Growth companies respond to efficiency by asking "what can we do now that we can get more done." Stagnant companies say "how can we cut costs." The math is pretty simple. If you expect that doing more will have positive ROI, you do mor…

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Re: Elastic lays off 7% of employees

#153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 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. Growth companies respond to efficiency by asking "what can we do now that we can get more done." Stagnant companies say "how can we cut costs." The math is pretty simple. If you expect that doing more will have positive ROI, you do mor…

Essentially what I am suggesting is companies leaving growth phase or who are generally “stagnant” to not just cut employee headcount but instead redeploy them to seek out new opportunities. This is especially true if the company isn’t facing any pressing financial crisis or net loss.

Re: Elastic lays off 7% of employees

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> many parts of the Japanese system of hiring for life This is a terrible strategy. It encourages inefficiency to metastasize throughout the company. No wonder Japan is stuck in a rut since the 90s and its debt-to-GDP ratio is 205% which is one of the highest in the world. Your romantic idea of Japan would get destroyed by just browsing www.reddit.com/r/japanlife/ Japan has one of the worst work culture and low produ…

That’s why I said “many parts” and not “all.” I wouldn’t want to pick up a good number of their practices, but I think a company seeing layoffs as an embarrassing last resort is a positive trait. I also think that concepts like debt to GDP ratio are somewhat detached from corporate policies.

> but I think a company seeing layoffs as an embarrassing last resort is a positive trait.

Don’t most companies think of layoffs as a last resort? I don’t think one ought to be embarrassed about correcting course when you have made a mistake. It takes courage.

Re: Elastic lays off 7% of employees

#155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Of course. But as an old sales guy used to tell me: "In the story, at the end the wolf shows up".

Re: Elastic lays off 7% of employees

#156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> many parts of the Japanese system of hiring for life This is a terrible strategy. It encourages inefficiency to metastasize throughout the company. No wonder Japan is stuck in a rut since the 90s and its debt-to-GDP ratio is 205% which is one of the highest in the world. Your romantic idea of Japan would get destroyed by just browsing www.reddit.com/r/japanlife/ Japan has one of the worst work culture and low produ…

That’s why I said “many parts” and not “all.” I wouldn’t want to pick up a good number of their practices, but I think a company seeing layoffs as an embarrassing last resort is a positive trait. I also think that concepts like debt to GDP ratio are somewhat detached from corporate policies.

> I also think that concepts like debt to GDP ratio are somewhat detached from corporate policies.

Corporate policies ultimately decide growth. More growth leads to higher profits and higher tax collected by the Government which in turn means they don't have to borrow more.

Re: Elastic lays off 7% of employees

#157
Unfortunately Elastic lost -60.54% market value in the last 5 years. Negative net income every year since going public.

The underlying message is a lot clear - they are a public company. They have to do this and more show to net positive income to keep the market value from falling further.

Companies can keep the employees with market value drop but it gets hard with negative income. Salesforce also lost ~37% value in last 5 years but they still print billions in net income every year.

The same story with companies like Gitlab. They lost 75% market value and negative income since going public.

Re: Elastic lays off 7% of employees

#158
> The industry is changing. Advances in AI, automation, and technology are reshaping how work gets done, and we're changing with them

It's never AI. In almost every case, companies that claim it's AI are doing so because reducing headcount due to "automating with AI" sounds better than the real reason, often over hiring, financial troubles and other reasons that might scare investors away.

The correct term is usually AI Washing.

More info: https://www.thehrdigest.com/what-is-ai-washing-and-why-has-i...

Re: Elastic lays off 7% of employees

#159
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

but none of this applies to elastic. it's cash flow positive, and has such a cash hoard it's doing stock buybacks.

Tech companies use RSUs to game the accounting system and then have to do stock buybacks to keep the outstanding shares in line.

Re: Elastic lays off 7% of employees

#160

Looks like Elastic has a lazy CEO https://www.entrepreneur.com/business-news/nvidias-jensen-hu...

So true! It was the same for Gitlab, Cisco, Oracle... every-time they used the AI excuse to explain their laid-off, instead of explaining why they have bad financials. Actually, in all the cases above, the real reason when digging in the financials was the leadership and bad work culture...
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