171–180 of 251 posts
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As someone who's parents are going through this I cannot disagree more. There are circumstances where it does happen.
That's very sad. Why are they getting divorced if they are happy?
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As someone currently with the company, this description of some mid-level management really resonates with me. I am incredibly skeptical, however, that any round of layoffs attempting to get rid of these people will have a good hit rate. Plenty of really talented engineers and engineering managers will end up losing their jobs too. I a lot of my older peers from university went to work for IBM for a couple years righ…
I wonder how they'll apply this plan in France, where the spirit of the law is, you may massively fire people only if it's part of "plan social", and the only argument is ofthen it's-this-or-we-go-bankrupt. Especially: In those kind of schemes, you must ask who wants to leave, give them a package, avoid those with children, the older ones go last, etc. So I doubt they'd let go of the worst people first.
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The military is especially prone to this problem. I’d hesitate to refer to people as dead weight, but the retirement structure encourages mid-level management to hang-on for twenty. Even if people are burnt out after 10 years, which the military is very capable of doing, many stay even when they and the Service would be better off if they moved on.
The problem with the military is how benefits are set up. There is a big jump in benefits at twenty years. If you put in 10-12 years your benefits aren't significantly better than someone who just did minimal time. If there was a small jump around the ten year point they'd probably see people willing to stop there instead of holding out 8-10 more years.
Or if there was less of a jump at 20.
Any company that has been around for as long as Microsoft, has a huge amount of dead weight in its mid-level management. I mean people whose main skill is mastery of the internal political process. Lest people think I'm singling out Microsoft specifically, this same problem is present at Google as well, but is less of a problem because Google has not been around long enough to pick up the same amount of dead weight p…
Any company that has been around for as long as Microsoft, has a huge amount of dead weight in its mid-level management. I mean people whose main skill is mastery of the internal political process. Lest people think I'm singling out Microsoft specifically, this same problem is present at Google as well, but is less of a problem because Google has not been around long enough to pick up the same amount of dead weight p…
As someone currently with the company, this description of some mid-level management really resonates with me. I am incredibly skeptical, however, that any round of layoffs attempting to get rid of these people will have a good hit rate. Plenty of really talented engineers and engineering managers will end up losing their jobs too. I a lot of my older peers from university went to work for IBM for a couple years righ…
https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2014/07/13/how-the-othe...
The reason engineers and other tech staff will lose their jobs is because 1) politics above them, 2) lack of adequate technical understanding amongst mgmt to recognize how to usefully allocate technical staff, and 3) lack of political capital amongst the technical staff themselves.
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Well, what if you are in another country working for a company (say Microsoft) on a visa, even though you are American. > The H1B is fundamentally broken and I'm amazed that so many people put up with it. Credit to the US for being such a desirable destination, I guess. There are plenty of countries with more broken visa policies (I've lived here for almost 8 years and still don't qualify for permanent residency).
I know people who have lived in the US easily that long and are still stuck on H1B. Countries with worse policies are no excuse for the embarrassment that is the state of US immigration.
However, I cannot get a greencard in the country of my residence (where I have many coworkers with USA greencards, ironically enough), so I think it is not very fair.
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This is why I believe in a Semco type culture where every team member receives a cut of the profits and there is a peer review process of who gets to join / stay in the team. It's the most realistic way a profitably franchise can avoid taking in the political rent seekers. What you spend more on profit share you probably make back on cost savings, and at the very least it buys you a more happy, productive workforce.
Microsoft is a publically traded company, they have a fiduciary responsibility to return their profits to shareholders and not employees, for better or worse.
they have a fiduciary responsibility to return their
profits to shareholders and not employees
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Exactly. And it's not just tech. Most large companies have mid-level workers whose sole job is to not to get laid off (fired). I pity anyone under them cause they are usually the hardest working and first to go. Companies should be looking top-down instead of the usual bottom-up. And man, it gets cut-throat. You know, when I traded, I used to think that was the most cut-throat work environment. Then the firm I was tr…
> And it's not just tech. It also applies to countries. Look at the increasing resources that go to people who produce little or nothing of value to others eg lawyers, lobbyists, politicians, financial engineers, LBO operators etc. Not to mention many of the people on welfare.
Woah, slow down tiger :)
More seriously, please elaborate. Or maybe I am just a bleeding heart.
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This is the #1 reason why I won't stay in the US after my phd. I have no interest in being a random CEO whim away from either having to uproot my life and move back home or frantically try to land a new job all in the short period of 15 days. For those curious the #2 reason is that H1Bs make it hard to do even simple extracurricular activities like writing books or do consulting on the side related to an open source…
Well, what if you are in another country working for a company (say Microsoft) on a visa, even though you are American. > The H1B is fundamentally broken and I'm amazed that so many people put up with it. Credit to the US for being such a desirable destination, I guess. There are plenty of countries with more broken visa policies (I've lived here for almost 8 years and still don't qualify for permanent residency).
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If your assets are worth less than your liabilities, you're technically insolvent. If you can still pay your bills from cashflows, you don't need to claim bankruptcy, but on a long enough timeline without a significant change, you will go bankrupt. There was a long stretch of time post-GFC where this was the case with GE. Banks have to 'mark-to-market' their debt periodically, but since GE wasn't a bank, they didn't…
> If your assets are worth less than your liabilities, you're technically insolvent. No you aren't. It just means you have a negative net worth. insolvent - unable to pay debts owed. Think of people instead of companies. I suspect a majority of people in America have a negative net worth. That doesn't make them insolvent. It just means they have lots of college loans and they are working to pay them back.
A situation where the value of a company's liabilities exceeds its assets. Accounting insolvency looks only at the firm's balance sheet, deeming a company "insolvent on the books" when its net worth appears negative.