Earlier quoted context omitted.
What is memegen?
A Google Monopoly that needs to be broken up and opened to the public (mainly, xooglers).
lol right. I want to rollover my Mcmillen score just like a 401k
Tell HN: Confluent laying off 8% of staff
181–190 of 329 posts
Re: Tell HN: Confluent laying off 8% of staff
#182I really get the feeling that many companies are just blindly doing whatever other companies do. One starts large layoffs, and suddenly everybody is doing it. At other times, when one goes on a hiring spree, they all go. One tries to reduce salaries, they all do. One pays enormous bonuses, and they all do. It's like CEOs aren't really thinking for themselves, just copying whatever the market does.
I would venture that word of mouth is spreading among the elites who are on the boards of all these companies - a storm is coming so everything needs to get tied down - so the CEO’s as captains of the ships are following the advice. Whether the storm actually hits, what gets wrecked, what doesn’t. That is a completely separate issue to these people.
What is the storm they're worried about, if not mass layoffs concentrated within an industry?
Inflation is almost down to normal, employment is still high and will remain so as long as the construction sector avoids layoffs due to the coming cash infusion from federal spending bills.
Seems to me the only storm coming is the one created by these same execs, though I understand each of them is incentivized to follow the crowd.
Re: Tell HN: Confluent laying off 8% of staff
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
The CEO answers to the board, and the board is usually of the type to at least ask the question "Everyone is jumping off a bridge, why aren't we?" And sadly the easiest answer is "we ARE jumping off the bridge, see?"
And it's very reasonable for the board to at least ask: "Why do we think we're so special?" Which may have a good answer. But also may not.
What if the answer was "There's data to show layoffs are counter productive, not just for us but for most of these companies. They're jumping off a cliff and we don't have to follow" ?
Re: Tell HN: Confluent laying off 8% of staff
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know about Confluent, but I can tell you that sales (and therefore revenue) have seen significant drops in most industries. This is wholly expected in a rising rate environment. When sales drop, revenue also falls. When revenue falls, models get re-evaluated and numbers get re-calculated. Reducing expenses becomes a priority. When reducing expenses becomes a priority, SaaS contracts get evaluated very closely…
>When reducing expenses becomes a priority, SaaS contracts get evaluated very closely. Unnecessary seats are removed. Contracts are re-negotiated. Income for SaaS companies like Confluent drop rapidly, and they may continue to drop more. This has been a long time coming. Some of the numbers I have been seeing for these contracts are truly mindblowing for the value delivered. The days of gouging enterprise on these ra…
+1 on this. I know for a fact at a couple F100 organizations, CFOs now want final sign-off on contracts valued around $20k-30k/year and above, whereas before that would be left to a VP. There is a lot of belt tightening happening
Re: Tell HN: Confluent laying off 8% of staff
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
what about accountability to the people who took a risk investing in the company? maybe the CEO didn't predict the future however many months or years ago to get to a point where no layoffs would've been necessary, but maybe this would've been at the cost of less growth, possibly having worse consequences the idea of "humanity" is completely opaque, it's not that hard to look at the reality instead
"The reality" is jobs = people. We don't live in a vacuum. It's seriously not that hard either. Between the hundreds of thousands of regular people losing their livelihoods and some investors losing money ("don't invest what you can't afford to lose" something something), doesn't sound too complicated for me. Humanity is not opaque unless you make it so, like this particular system does. It's just people.
if you don't have money to pay employees then they're out of a job, and if you don't grow you don't get investors and don't hire people
please explain how "humanity" solves this
Re: Tell HN: Confluent laying off 8% of staff
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
>When reducing expenses becomes a priority, SaaS contracts get evaluated very closely. Unnecessary seats are removed. Contracts are re-negotiated. Income for SaaS companies like Confluent drop rapidly, and they may continue to drop more. This has been a long time coming. Some of the numbers I have been seeing for these contracts are truly mindblowing for the value delivered. The days of gouging enterprise on these ra…
Slack is an interesting one. Suppose you're a company spending a lot on it, too much. What are your options? Replacing slack with a comparable like Teams or Gchat is at least a step back in user-friendliness that will be grumbled about by engineers and others, and if you use a lot of integrations there might be significant switching costs. Moving away from instant messaging as a communication pattern sounds great to…
It’s millions a year and ms teams is near free. In a cost cutting environment this is near perfect.
Re: Tell HN: Confluent laying off 8% of staff
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
So I work for a company with "strong cash reserves" and "trajectory to profitability", and I was a child in 2008. We haven't done any layoffs yet, but it's definitely possible. Any advice for someone in my position with no recession experience?
Study up for technical interviews. Do some real interviews for practice. Update your resume. Network. Build a larger emergency fund. Check your budget and plan through how you could lower your expenses if the hammer falls. Think through alternative income you could build.
I'd say lower your expenses now, regardless of layoff there's likely a strong buying opportunity in asset markets that could set them up for life.
Re: Tell HN: Confluent laying off 8% of staff
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean it's not like the sex worker spends the entire session talking about how they're all in it together and they're a team and then at the end releases a public statement about how difficult the decision not to cuddle was for them.
Except the sex workers often literally offer the girlfriend experience, which is, arguably, exactly that, a "make believe" relationship for some agreed time.
Thank God they don't use the 'We're family" angle like companies do ... xD
NB: I'm just playing along for fun, never been involved in any way with sex work or sex workers.
Re: Tell HN: Confluent laying off 8% of staff
#189Well, here’s some great news: The CEO takes full responsibility [1]! > Ultimately, we had optimized some aspects of our operations for a very different world than we found ourselves operating in. The responsibility for that falls squarely on me. [1]: https://www.publicnow.com/view/CEA41F7D5BB5C6CFF1144A3A9C462...
> In our new plan, we expect to grow revenue by approximately 30% in 2023 and exit Q4 2023 with breakeven non-GAAP operating margin.
Interesting plan, too bad operating margin doesn't mean profitable.
In 2022 Q3 the 9month cumulative sums show a revenue of 417M with net loss of 346M. Growing 417M by 30% to say 550M still would be a loss of 204M. If they also cut operating expenses by 33% then they could become profitable though.
Re: Tell HN: Confluent laying off 8% of staff
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's the defined procedure though, without that, you draw more attention. There is a clearly defined playbook at this point, and it WORKS, so why go making up your own words when they just wanna hear the song?
When the playbook has become a meme, I think there's a case to be made for updating it.
Exactly. The expected results of the playbook used to be Compassion, feels.
Now its eyerolls, cynicism.