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Why is every layoff 10-15%?

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Re: Why is every layoff 10-15%?

#161

Post by extragood »

quelltext wrote: post #101
Kibae wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me of a story I heard about Steve Wozniak's time at HP: They were going to lay off 10% of the staff, but instead they decided to reduce everyone's pay by 10% and give them an extra day off every two weeks.

Yeah, let's ignore the extra day but why isn't anybody doing that today instead of the 10-15% layoffs? I guess the fear seems to be that it will lead to uncontrolled attrition of good people. But I would assume hiring freezes in the industry would still prevent this. Also, you will retain the truly "loyal" employees that are willing to suffer a bit for future growth. It also addresses the wasteful folks in a fair way…

I'd heard of something like that at a city government level around 2009 when cash was tight. A friend of mine had a 4 day week every other week. I think they called it a mandatory furlough in that case

Re: Why is every layoff 10-15%?

#162

Post by spaceman_2020 »

bbreier wrote: post #13

> Remote work > Anticipate more mid-size and smaller companies will go back more fully into the office as times get tougher. This will not be one size fits all, but will be an increasing trend. Up to this point in the article, whether you agree or disagree with the points, the author offers some arguments and reasoning supporting each. Here, they simply assert that small and mid-size companies will go into the office…

imo, this isn't a decision that can be made in isolation; it depends entirely on what your competitors are doing. If your competitors are working from an office and out-producing you, you have no choice but to follow suit.

Like in sales, you're much more likely to close the deal if you meet in-person than over a Zoom call. If your competitors are flying out salespeople to meet clients, but you're still stuck on Zoom, you won't catch a bid.

Re: Why is every layoff 10-15%?

#163

Post by heurisko »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #99
bbreier wrote: post #13

> Remote work > Anticipate more mid-size and smaller companies will go back more fully into the office as times get tougher. This will not be one size fits all, but will be an increasing trend. Up to this point in the article, whether you agree or disagree with the points, the author offers some arguments and reasoning supporting each. Here, they simply assert that small and mid-size companies will go into the office…

The cost of office space for tech employees rarely exceeds 5% of pay (for high-paid tech workers). It's not as expensive as you might first expect. To the people who actually go into the office, it's probably well worth it.

If employers offered the same working environment as a home office, it would be much more expensive.

Open plan is only cheap on the books. It costs a lot in decimating the focus of people working there.

Re: Why is every layoff 10-15%?

#164

Post by bawolff »

lll-o-lll wrote: post #84
bawolff wrote: post #12

I think if you only need to get rid of say 3%, then you can probably just do a hiring freeze and wait for natural turn over. If you need to get rid of 40%, doing it all at once is probably too much of a shock to the company (too difficult to figure out who to transfer responsibility to). So 10-15% is just right: enough to be worth it, not too much to cause excessive turmoil.

Hiring freeze is actually a mistake as you trend towards mediocrity. Natural turnover tends to lose you more good people than bad (head hunting, opportunity).

Sure, but i imagine layoffs are even worse for that. The company can pick who to layoff, but once they do i imagine the really talented people start to jump ship.

Re: Why is every layoff 10-15%?

#165

Post by ownagefool »

seanhunter wrote: post #129

When I was running a startup there were lots of times when I felt kind of lost and it's very tempting to listen to things like this because they seem plausible. It's a huge mistake. This kind of generic armchair general "advice"[1] is everywhere when you run a company and is basically completely useless because every company is a complex and unique special case and if you're in charge you don't have to make the decis…

I wouldn't hold any special reverence for McKinsey.

In general with any of the management consultants, you're going to get people with very little actual experience telling you how to run your company.

Whilst some of the stuff, usually more accountancy / factual based, doesn't require experience, and thus may be delivered to a high standard, you're also going to got a bunch of hot takes that don't make sense in reality.

Outsourcing, the Spotify model, and not really agile Agile are all sold by the top tier consultants, even though you basically can't name successful examples.

Re: Why is every layoff 10-15%?

#166

Post by kramerger »

> many companies have had their mission drift during the Trump years and COVID. Rather than founder-led customer-centric mission orientation, companies drifted into a number of other arenas often driven by a small proportion of their most vocal activist employees.

What does this even mean? How would "activist" employees change the company directions and its finances?

Re: Why is every layoff 10-15%?

#167

Post by mvdwoord »

irrational wrote: post #125
Clent wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many or a few? Most software engineers find themselves most effective in work from home. This breaks in favor at 3:4 or higher. The software engineers that want to work in office are the odd-balls. I am interested in the break down when one factors in whatever concept of '10x developers' -- which do the most productive of us prefer?

I haven’t met any SWE that want to go back to the office. Heck, even my managers manager has said she never wants to go back, and she is a complete extrovert. These developers online that claim they want to go back must be as rare as hen’s teeth.

There are dozens of us! DOZENS!!

Re: Why is every layoff 10-15%?

#169

Post by chrisbolt »

bbreier wrote: post #54
chrisbolt wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re right, my apologies. I shouldn’t write comments after a scotch on a long day :)

No biggy my dude, it was clear from the jump that you didn't intend anything combative. Enjoy your scotch

Cheers!

Re: Why is every layoff 10-15%?

#170

Post by dtech »

anotherrandom wrote: post #56
TexanFeller wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but many CEOs will tend to believe that things will go better with everyone back in the office Many of us SWEs believe the same!

What makes you think this? I haven't observed any advantages to an office beyond overexposing the company to real estate (not really an advantage) - there is nothing I could do in person that I haven't been able to do faster in MS Teams (and better - now I have a written record and recording of everything). Another advantage of remote is that nobody ruins my train of thought by tapping me on the shoulder and asking s…

Very little people are advocating that WFH doesn't work better for focus work of clear and specced tasks.

However, in my experience that is maybe 30-90% of software engineering, depending on environment, role and seniority. There are lots of relevant activities that are more challenging remotely, such as 1-on-1 mentoring, pairing for debugging or programming, or designing and collaborating a project or interface across-teams. Maybe you are "lucky" enough to never have to bother with that.

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