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“Copycat” layoffs won’t help tech companies or their employees

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Re: “Copycat” layoffs won’t help tech companies or their employees

#161

Post by ejb999 »

tarr11 wrote: post #31

The professor recommends across the board pay cuts as an alternative to layoffs. > One thing that Lincoln Electric, which is a famous manufacturer of arc welding equipment, did well is instead of laying off 10% of their workforce, they had everybody take a 10% wage cut except for senior management, which took a larger cut. So instead of giving 100% of the pain to 10% of the people, they give 100% of the people 10% of…

>>The professor recommends across the board pay cuts as an alternative to layoffs.

Terrible idea imo, there is almost no company that can't cut 5% of their staff without negatively impacting the company as a whole if done more or less right, you cut the people who are lower performers - or average performers who, thru no fault of their own, are not currently assigned to something that matters anymore to the company.

Cutting the pay of the best/better performers, and/or the pay of people that are actively contributing to high value projects, so the less qualified or less needed people can stay employed seems like a huge disincentive to keeping your top performers.

If my manager came to me with that proposal I would give my notice on the spot.

Re: “Copycat” layoffs won’t help tech companies or their employees

#162

Post by Animatronio »

notfromhere wrote: post #120
revlolz wrote: post #33

Deleting the post, I no longer wish to discuss this.

Google printed like $75B in net income, are we going to pretend that they need to do layoffs in order to stay profitable? Google isn't some startup that needs to bump metrics in order to survive until their next tranche.

Yep, they totally should hire 150k people and pay each of them $500k.

Re: “Copycat” layoffs won’t help tech companies or their employees

#163

Post by yucky »

wpietri wrote: post #4

I love this point: "The tech industry layoffs are basically an instance of social contagion, in which companies imitate what others are doing." I really wish for a less supine tech press. I've not seen any of these titans of industry being held accountable for the apparent major mistakes of overhiring. And I'm not even talking actual consequences here; these people will surely get bonuses for this. I'd just like to s…

  > I love this point: "The tech industry layoffs are basically an instance of social contagion, in which companies imitate what others are doing."
Is there any evidence at all of this though? There appears to be a lot of copycat articles and comments on social calling the layoffs copycat behavior, which is a bit ironic.

Meanwhile, everyone of these companies laying people off is worth considerably less than a year ago and what was supposed to be a quick ending to the conflict in Ukraine has turned into a precursor for a larger sale war that may last for years, no doubt having a significant impact on economic growth.

Re: “Copycat” layoffs won’t help tech companies or their employees

#164

Post by danaris »

tarr11 wrote: post #31

The professor recommends across the board pay cuts as an alternative to layoffs. > One thing that Lincoln Electric, which is a famous manufacturer of arc welding equipment, did well is instead of laying off 10% of their workforce, they had everybody take a 10% wage cut except for senior management, which took a larger cut. So instead of giving 100% of the pain to 10% of the people, they give 100% of the people 10% of…

Strategies that favor employees are more humane, more ethical, and more likely to pay off in the long run.

All the investors have in this is money—and the investors who have enough money in it to actually influence decisions have so absurdly much anyway that the amount they would stand to lose based on this strategy or that one is very unlikely to materially affect their lifestyle.

The employees have their whole livelihoods invested in the company, so any decision that is made without regard for their interests and needs is necessarily a heartless and inhumane one.

We should be making decisions based on how they affect humans, not based on how they affect money.

Re: “Copycat” layoffs won’t help tech companies or their employees

#165

Post by super256 »

blagie wrote: post #123
idopmstuff wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the problem with this strategy is that it causes the wrong people to leave. If you're a top performer, you're going to feel like a 10% pay cut is very unfair, and you're going to be able to get another job elsewhere fairly easily, even in this environment. If you're not performing particularly well, it probably doesn't feel as unreasonable, and even if you don't like it, it's tough to leave. When done correct…

Having seen both, I'm much more likely to leave /after/ a layoff than after a 10% paycut. In abstract, if there were a way to rank employees by ROI and contribution perfectly fairly, I might not worry about layoffs personally. However: 1) In my career, I've never seen layoffs which were at all good at selecting the bottom 10%. Who gets dropped is pretty random. 2) I care about other people I work with. A 10% layoff m…

> Having seen both, I'm much more likely to leave /after/ a layoff than after a 10% paycut.

Would you also stay when you get a pay cut, with the only reason being that the company wants to maintain a net margin above 30%? Because that is somewhat happening right now.

Personally: I wouldn't.

Re: “Copycat” layoffs won’t help tech companies or their employees

#166

Post by notfromhere »

revlolz wrote: post #139
notfromhere wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google printed like $75B in net income, are we going to pretend that they need to do layoffs in order to stay profitable? Google isn't some startup that needs to bump metrics in order to survive until their next tranche.

I don't disagree with that sentiment at all. These company's min/max their strategy and operations regardless of the human impact and that is terible. However, I find the sentiment irrelevant to calling out a fallacy in the thinking through the article that layoffs are social contagions.

I wouldn't say all the tech layoffs are a social contagion. But amongst tech companies with extremely healthy balance sheets and income numbers, definitely more social than economic phenomenon.

Re: “Copycat” layoffs won’t help tech companies or their employees

#167

Post by uxp100 »

tarr11 wrote: post #31

The professor recommends across the board pay cuts as an alternative to layoffs. > One thing that Lincoln Electric, which is a famous manufacturer of arc welding equipment, did well is instead of laying off 10% of their workforce, they had everybody take a 10% wage cut except for senior management, which took a larger cut. So instead of giving 100% of the pain to 10% of the people, they give 100% of the people 10% of…

NVIDIA did across the board cuts instead of layoffs in 2009 IIRC.

Re: “Copycat” layoffs won’t help tech companies or their employees

#168

Post by wpietri »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #136
wpietri wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another question I'd ask is: why can't the find something useful to do with these people in the meantime? Downturns are definitionally temporary. Can managers really find no way to prepare for the coming good times? Or is there no way to use those staff to gain ground while everybody else is retreating? Workers are getting blamed by many for (claimed) low productivity. But why isn't that seen as a managerial failure?…

>Isn't it better to have the same number of people and use them much better than a smaller number of people that are just as poorly used? Of course! But that is much easier said than done. If it was as simple as just telling managers find a use that will make money, everyone would do that instead.

Alas, probably not.

A great example here is the NUMMI plant. In brief, Totota was kicking the collective asses of US carmakers. The techniques were not a trade secret; indeed, Toyota was happy to teach anybody. As part of that, they did a joint venture with GM called NUMMI, so they could show how they implemented core principles like "respect for people" and "continuous improvement". And it worked! Using the same building and most of the same people, it went from being one of the worst GM plants to one of the best.

Did GM learn anything? Hell no. Because GM executives valued other things more than productivity and quality and worker happiness.

For the curious, this American Life did a great radio story about it: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/561/nummi-2015

Re: “Copycat” layoffs won’t help tech companies or their employees

#169

Post by PuppyTailWags »

sovnwnt wrote: post #14

> instead of laying off 10% of their workforce, they had everybody take a 10% wage cut except for senior management, which took a larger cut. So instead of giving 100% of the pain to 10% of the people, they give 100% of the people 10% of the pain. This doesn't seem like a good strategy for tech. Cutting everyone's salary will dislodge your top performers who can get a better position even in poor market conditions.

If my skip-level took a bigger paycut than me to ensure that my team keeps their jobs, then I will take the pay cut also. If my skip-level lays off a non-bottom-performing co-worker and then claims "full responsibility" I'm getting the fuck out of there.

Re: “Copycat” layoffs won’t help tech companies or their employees

#170

Post by zxcvbn4038 »

In the US layoffs are a method of getting rid of people who are normally untouchable because they fall into the EEOC protected classifications. As long as the group laid off is statistically diverse you can let them go without getting into individual situations - Bob’s performance was acceptable but we had to let go of X people in every division for economic reasons. Whereas otherwise Bob might sue saying poor reviews or a dismissal was actually discrimination when Bob was just a lackluster employee who happened to fall under one of the EEOC categories.

The last time I was involved in a layoff they gave everyone leaving a thirty-plus page document which broke down the group by every conceivable metric to prove that the layoff didn’t target any particular demographic more then others.

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