Earlier quoted context omitted.
which is why most corporations should be classified as sociopaths, at a minimum.
The corporation actually gave them a job.
Look at what they make you give
Elastic lays off 7% of employees
191–200 of 251 posts
Re: Elastic lays off 7% of employees
#192Earlier quoted context omitted.
but none of this applies to elastic. it's cash flow positive, and has such a cash hoard it's doing stock buybacks.
Tech companies use RSUs to game the accounting system and then have to do stock buybacks to keep the outstanding shares in line.
yep, clearly, just meant they're not cash strapped.
Re: Elastic lays off 7% of employees
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
but none of this applies to elastic. it's cash flow positive, and has such a cash hoard it's doing stock buybacks.
As far as I understand companies will take out loans against their own stocks in good times as they expect their stocks to generally go up and to make more money than the payments on the interest of those loans. If their stocks go down they need to make up the shortfall elsewhere. The loans are generally used to keep business operations running smoothly irrespective of actual business cashflow (for example some busin…
dont know the laws well enough, but would be crazy indeed if companies could borrow against their own stock when they're issuing first new ones with sbc and then buy back on open market.
Re: Elastic lays off 7% of employees
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm sure that level of overhead has nothing to do with the reason Belgian incomes, standards of living, and business outcomes are worse.
vacationing/digital nomading in belgium atm, it looks erhm rich. traveling between brussels, leuven, ghent, bruges, soon antwerp... people dress well, never been anywhere with so many german luxury cars on the road, meals cost about the same as US. I'm sure statistics this and that, but something doesn't translate, sanguine reality is different.
I've worked in the US and now in the Netherlands, and while I earn less in NL it would take a quadruple of what I used to earn in the US to willingly move back there, and even then I'd GTFO as soon as I possibly could. The US is great for getting an absurd amount of money fast, for basically everything else that matters in life I'll take anywhere in the EU over the US.
Re: Elastic lays off 7% of employees
#195Makes me sad to read it as an ex-Elastic employee. AI is used to justify the redundancies, and the company still expects to grow in this fiscal year. In the SEC filling the specifically mention more “head count” in “go-to-market” roles [1]. > a reduction of approximately 7% of our workforce > Advances in AI, automation, and technology are reshaping how work gets done, and we're changing with them. (…) That's what thi…
I've grown to hate executives. This is obviously an AI-generated nothing burger. They never mean what they say publicly.
this is a bit... general? there are companies with bullshit executives for sure, then there are companies who slay it.
i hate to list the details because people start picking on details, but in my mind MS under Satya made a 180 from crap to relevant. All the while i realize what kind of shit goes on inside and if you read Blind your eyes will bleed. Yet Satya took it from a pure 100% bullshit executive and made it relevant. So not all executives are equal.
Re: Elastic lays off 7% of employees
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you were realigning your SaaS company to ignore your technology short-comings and technical debt, and isntead focus on selling as much "AI-enabled " while the rush still looks like gold, this would be a great strategy & announcement.
Tech debt is much less important than many developers think it is. More sales over chasing tech debt almost every time.
“Chasing tech debt” vs “more sales” is a false dichotomy. A dangerous one, too, if you simply expand “chasing tech debt” to “listening to engineering concerns”. That’s how you end up with a Boeing.
Re: Elastic lays off 7% of employees
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have a cousin in Belgium who was laid off following some restructuring and her severance was 52 weeks. Not out of the goodness of the company's hearts, but mandated by law since they gave no notice and she had accrued seniority. US labor laws are a joke in comparison.
I'm sure that level of overhead has nothing to do with the reason Belgian incomes, standards of living, and business outcomes are worse.
I'd like to understand why you are so sure, and what does worse mean here both qualitatively and quantitatively?
Re: Elastic lays off 7% of employees
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
Economics is hardly a reproducible science, but an American company has basically instant access to 350 million consumers (and workers) with no language barrier and little inter-state red tape. It's hard to imagine that this isn't a larger differentiator than the ability to fire hundreds at will.
You would be surprised. Don’t think about it as firing but also being overly cautious. If you run a division in the EU you are overly thoughtful for every single HC you add. You don’t take risks because that HC at minimum is going to cost a year of severance. It’s a balancing act, maybe less new jobs but you get less layoffs.
Presumably you aren’t paying 52 weeks of severance to someone you hired three months ago.
Re: Elastic lays off 7% of employees
#199Re: Elastic lays off 7% of employees
#200Before the 1980s layoffs were seen as a massive failure of the company and almost never happened to tenured employees unless the company was collapsing. Before we are all made to think this is normal and unavoidable behavior.
When Elon fired 80% of the company, I remember a lot of celebration on HN. Some of it was the perceived political bias within the employees and some of it was “The app works fine what were all those employees doing? They probably deserved it.” At the time I remember talking about this becoming a norm as CEOs follow the lead and getting downvoted heavily. Its unfortunate that we are here, but also not surprising, give…
It’s not that surprising there wasn’t much empathy when there was so much bragging about how much people were earning and that it would go on forever.
For what it’s worth I was one of the people questioning why they needed so many people although I never said those let go deserved it.