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Twitch.tv Lays of 400 Employees

blog.twitch.tv

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Re: Twitch.tv Lays of 400 Employees

#171

Post by edanm »

machinawhite wrote: post #170
justapassenger wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can understand layoffs when your business is running at a loss, not when it's growing. Do you revisit your personal budget only once you run out of money, or once your income changes?

Do you also employ people and managers and use your personal budget solely to make profit instead of buying food? Stop the weird analogies

It's not a weird analogy, it's a great analogy.

Companies don't use their budget only for profit and not to "buy food", that's a ridiculous assertion. Companies get income, the use it to pay for all the operations that went into making that income, usually mostly salaries. Only what's left over is profit.

And if a company sees that next year, when it expected income of 100m, it instead will only get 80m, that difference has got to affect it somehow.

Re: Twitch.tv Lays of 400 Employees

#172

Post by machinawhite »

edanm wrote: post #171
machinawhite wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you also employ people and managers and use your personal budget solely to make profit instead of buying food? Stop the weird analogies

It's not a weird analogy, it's a great analogy. Companies don't use their budget only for profit and not to "buy food", that's a ridiculous assertion. Companies get income, the use it to pay for all the operations that went into making that income, usually mostly salaries. Only what's left over is profit. And if a company sees that next year, when it expected income of 100m, it instead will only get 80m, that differe…

Nope. Try again.

Re: Twitch.tv Lays of 400 Employees

#173

Post by raydev »

bottlepalm wrote: post #165
chatmasta wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a better version: > Everyone else is firing people. So it seemed like a good time to fire some people. > We found 400 people to fire, which sounded like a good number because it's not as big as 500. None of them seemed to be doing anything useful, so we fired them. > The product will not be affected and as a user you will notice no difference whatsoever. > Signed, some anonymous guy who took over after our CEO…

> there’s a looot of employees here we don’t like. Instead of going through the whole PIP/HR dance we’ve decided to give every manager a blank check to fire a few of you. The whole ‘economy’ situation is a perfect cover to do this now. Adios.

> we’ve decided to give every manager a blank check to fire a few of you

This hasn't been common in a lot of recent layoffs. Low level managers aren't getting input, the decision comes from the top and it's random.

Re: Twitch.tv Lays of 400 Employees

#174

Post by vineyardmike »

geodel wrote: post #111
kibwen wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should be holding the president of a multi-billion dollar corporation to a higher standard than a random HN commenter. If Dan Clancy wants to lie to our faces with this egregiously milquetoast corpo-speak, he does not deserve serious or good faith analysis of his words. He's bullshitting us, plain and simple, and I see no reason to smile, lick my lips, and ask politely for seconds.

Huh. If multi-billion dollar corporation executive is not going to do a corpo-speak, I don't really know who is supposed to be doing that.

Next thing you'll tell me that politicians no longer want to be politically correct!

Re: Twitch.tv Lays of 400 Employees

#175

Post by dusted »

ryandrake wrote: post #58

> Like many companies, our business has been impacted by the current macroeconomic environment, and user and revenue growth has not kept pace with our expectations. In order to run our business sustainably, we’ve made the very difficult decision to shrink the size of our workforce. Let's just take a moment to admire this paragraph. > "our business has been impacted by the current macroeconomic environment" There's th…

I'm impressed that they even needed 400 people to run it in the first place ?

Re: Twitch.tv Lays of 400 Employees

#176

Post by buck4roo »

Panzer04 wrote: post #146
dangus wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The truth of the matter is that companies aren't monetarily incentivized to avoid layoffs. Layoffs cost almost nothing. Companies aren't required to pay full salaries or provide any healthcare/benefits for any reasonable period of time after a layoff. I think even the 3 month notice period from the WARN Act is a pretty crap amount of time to provide for employees who have been terminated. For a software company espec…

You want to make it even harder to get a job? The better the benefits you mandate for firing/leaving employees, the more onerous companies become about bringing on more manpower (and eventually, lower wages as a whole since they have to fund an additional 10% or whatever whenever someone leaves). You're arguing that companies should implement these measures at the cost of just hiring people? "Companies would actually…

Re: shorter benefits

Every corporate downsizing is an example of a "private decision" with clearly visible public costs, unemployment insurance payouts among them. Social and emotional distress have a cost, not just to the employee, but their social group and family.

But, did I catch your opinion correctly? You believe we(society) are(is) providing unemployment benefits for too many months?

In your mind, who benefits from decreasing that assistance benefit? Cui bono?

Re: Twitch.tv Lays of 400 Employees

#177

Post by vineyardmike »

hossbeast wrote: post #153
wombatpm wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I propose a weekly lottery. Each week we select 1 billionaire and one person making less than 50k. The peasant gets a gun, 1 bullet, and a free shot from 30ft. Lottery continues until the social contract is restored. There was a time when corporations had principles ahead of maximizing stock holder value. Maybe we should re-examine that.

Which principles would you like the companies that you are invested in to maximize ahead of stockholder value?

While I think the original comment on a CEO, a peasant, and a gun to be crass, I want to note that society wasn't always valuing "shareholder value" so much.

First, I want all companies, regardless of who invests in them, to hold some level of social responsibility to the society around them. Sometimes layoffs are necessary, and companies can't maintain excess costs forever, but there's some value to society to maintain employment.

Second, investments that return a profit to their investors is great, and as an investor, it's something I would want. That said, it's unreasonable to expect exponential growth forever, AND it compromises their ability to focus on other principles. How much return on investment is enough before a company can focus on being a force of good? 10%, 100% 1000%, 1M%?

Third, as an investor, I question if paying execs so much more than rank-and-file employees is good. So thats another example principle. I assume a well paid exec is incentivized to increase short term value, while as an investor I value long-term growth. Having a healthy employee base full of bright talented workers (incentivized by top-tier salary) seems a better solution.

Re: Twitch.tv Lays of 400 Employees

#178

Post by vineyardmike »

chongli wrote: post #166
bg24 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The truth of the matter is that companies aren't monetarily incentivized to avoid layoffs." Very nicely put. Fixing this will help lot of employees.

How do we fix that? Require companies to pay a large severance? Then companies will be heavily disincentivized to hire in the first place due to the risk.

If we required companies to pay a massive severance, then it would disincentivize hiring to an extent. You'd still need to hire as your business grew, it's unavoidable.

If you made hiring more risky, companies may keep their employees for longer, and treat them better since hiring was a gamble. Why hire someone, who could be a liability, when you can retrain an existing employee and invest in their future with you.

Re: Twitch.tv Lays of 400 Employees

#179

Post by buck4roo »

dangus wrote: post #120
lanza wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wait, I thought revenue was growing! How is that not sustainable? If you just leave costs where they are and let revenue grow, you are by definition sustaining/growing the bottom line. Come on man, if you don't understand how a business can be showing signs of unhealthiness while still increasing revenue then don't post. That's such a trivial superficial analysis of reality. I'm not going to pretend to know or unde…

The truth of the matter is that companies aren't monetarily incentivized to avoid layoffs. Layoffs cost almost nothing. Companies aren't required to pay full salaries or provide any healthcare/benefits for any reasonable period of time after a layoff. I think even the 3 month notice period from the WARN Act is a pretty crap amount of time to provide for employees who have been terminated. For a software company espec…

Vote parent up.

Accurately describes the public costs of private for-profit businesses' whipsawing the labor force, and foisting all the consequential costs of periodic waves of unemployment onto the public.

Re: Twitch.tv Lays of 400 Employees

#180

Post by vineyardmike »

raydev wrote: post #173
bottlepalm wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there’s a looot of employees here we don’t like. Instead of going through the whole PIP/HR dance we’ve decided to give every manager a blank check to fire a few of you. The whole ‘economy’ situation is a perfect cover to do this now. Adios.

> we’ve decided to give every manager a blank check to fire a few of you This hasn't been common in a lot of recent layoffs. Low level managers aren't getting input, the decision comes from the top and it's random.

> the decision comes from the top and it's random

As someone laid off from a FAANG, it's not random. They don't lay-off the top performer. They don't lay off the woman who keeps winning peer bonuses, or the one who plays golf with the VP, or the one doing cross-team knowledge sharing sessions. They're not laying off the guy that got an out-of-band pay increase because they're so valuable to the company.

They may not use it as a PIP alternative, but it's not random. If you're an IC, you want your manager to be sharing documents with your name on it to the VP/Director. You want to be getting CC'ed in emergency product discussions. You want the senior leadership to know your name for a good thing. If your manager doesn't include you in meetings, and doesn't talk about your work, and doesn't make your presence known then your in trouble... when layoffs start and a director gets an excel spreadsheet with everyones name on, you want them to recognize your name. They're not axing the people they recognize first.

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