161–170 of 1001 posts
Seriously, why people in tech are opposed to unions? In Europe, unions and Betriebsrat (works committee) are the norm. Why not in the US?
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Better put, the relationship you have with your employer is a business relation ship. It's not personal. They are not your friends, nor your enemies. It's simply a convenient arrangement between the two of you for as long as that lasts. And it might become convenient for either side to change that arrangement at any point. The more you earn, the higher the risk that at some point somebody decides that they want to sp…
You should add more nuance I think. While this is a respectable way to see employer / employee relationships, it does not apply to every company / employee out there. In particular, I think this is very true for BigCo, where most people are seen as fungible cogs. The smaller the company, the better.
In fairness, anyone can leave at any time. Your employer, regardless of size, has to be prepared for the possibilty that you'll quit for a better job, or for some other reason. It would be inadvisable to get emotionally attached to employees.
The reason you're less likely to get laid off at a small company is that small companies don't have the capital to hire indiscriminately, so they're less likely to have large inefficiencies. The number of employees is already as low as they can get away with, given their current revenue, so only a significant downturn in revenue would justify layoffs.
My firm made billions last year too and just laid off hundreds of engineers (a decent %) Some of the best engineers, those that I respected the most, went. People who make no sense. After last year's layoffs they told us they were "done" and it was "all behind us". Last year then turned out to a better year financially than 2022 (we have access to the top line numbers) You can't trust anything anyone above you in the…
Very sane advice, but unfortunately not always an option.
The likelihood of making real (not paper) life-changing money in a few years has considerably decreased in 5-10 years.
It will only come back with a good pace of IPOs and investor-positive acquisitions.
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I don't know whether your comment is true, but the way to do layoffs while keeping innovation as high as possible is to do one round that is big enough that you can and do give guarantees to the employees that are left behind that they have jobs for life. Multiple rounds of layoffs is what really takes your innovation to zero.
I’ve been through dozens of rounds of layoffs. That part I almost got used to. Staying innovative, and being seen as innovative by my boss, was the way to ensure I wasn’t on that list. What killed it for me was when new management came in, refused to talk to anyone internal, brought in outside hires to be the innovators and change agents, and then shut down any of the legacy employees who tried to speak or bring idea…
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IT salaries are high mostly because the people who can do the job well can also do other jobs well, so if salaries go down then people change careers. For example, most people who can do IT could also become an electrician, for which the demand is currently high. > Also ChatGPT and other AIs increasing developers, artists, etc. productivity - so fewer people can do as much work. This is the sort of thing that increas…
At least where I live it takes ~4 - 5 years education to become an electrician. Do you know people who switched from IT to electrician because their salary got lower?
That's about the same as it is for IT, isn't it? Most decent IT jobs wanting a four-year CS degree.
And changing careers has retraining costs but not for some 18 year old who hasn't picked one yet. Which can balance out the supply and demand five years from now just as well as a 30+ year old changing careers.
> Do you know people who switched from IT to electrician because their salary got lower?
Do you know a lot of people in IT whose salary got lower?
I'm surprised to see so many comments here taking layoffs personally, or talking about how layoffs are stupid. Layoffs are not personal, and the corollary to that is that you should never treat your company as a friend. It's a company trying to maximize value. Also, layoffs do work. Almost every large, successful company has done them at some stage. They are an expected, and necessary, part of operating a company and…
Someone should start an massive incubator that takes in top laid off employees and gives them resources to build a competing product. They will be motivated as hell and have a ton of domain knowledge and generally have a good idea on how to do things in way more efficient way than what their former employer did. For kicks and to save money replace most of mngmnt roles with AI model.
There are often non-compete clauses in employment contracts. Depending on the country, they're not worth the paper they're written on sometimes. In others, legally binding.
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Twitter has lost 70% of its value since Elon took over.
Important business lessons from Twitter: try not to antagonize your biggest customers, because they might stop buying your products. In addition, if this occurs, make sure to blame external factors or wide-ranging conspiracies.