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“Copycat” layoffs won’t help tech companies or their employees

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Re: “Copycat” layoffs won’t help tech companies or their employees

#201

Post by marcosdumay »

AbrahamParangi wrote: post #197

Saying that layoffs are imitative behavior is no more useful than noticing that almost all behavior can be described as “imitative” If you hear people yelling fire and see people stampeding for the exit, does that mean there actually is a fire? No, certainly not, it could just be a panic. But does that mean that you should stay put and wait and see if everyone else is wrong?

You certainly should stay put long enough to see if there's a fire, where it is, and what is the best exit to use.

People that don't do that have a much higher tendency to die on the accident.

Re: “Copycat” layoffs won’t help tech companies or their employees

#202

Post by untilNxtwk »

grok22 wrote: post #154
broast wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do we have any evidence that the over-hiring was a mistake? Could companies not have seen the free money and decided to beef up their staff for short term gains in their roadmap, with the knowledge and intention that they will likely be cutting later while getting to keep all that intellectual output? I don't see why we put this past them.

Interesting way to look at it. It certainly makes sense that companies hire to capture intellectual output when money is cheap and then tighten spending when access to easy money goes away even if they are making money hand-over-fist in their business.

It certainly challenges the genius tech CEO story when they’re all just copy-pasting each other.

None of the software CEOs are charting a net new course for tech manufacture; they’re just managing data center footprint that host vapid content.

The older crowd is aging away and the younger crowd that grew up with a Gameboy in their face, not WSJ, can start making their own content with ML (like I am).

The emotional temple that is social media is not interesting to the next generation as they know how to Docker pull Twitter and the like into existence. It’s a solved problem from an engineering perspective. We’re bored serving politically correct capitalist memes.

Re: “Copycat” layoffs won’t help tech companies or their employees

#203

Post by di456 »

btown wrote: post #41
di456 wrote: post #7

This misses the main driver. Valuations are no longer based on growth. The entire market has shifted to profitability over growth. Companies with a stronger balance sheet coming out of the recession will be better positioned for the long term. Seems that companies that gained their valuations through growth weren't sustainable in the long run. And at a macro level, economic policy has largely deferred recessions sinc…

The market shifting to profitability over growth was the motive, absolutely. But Elon's decimation of Twitter was the means and opportunity. And I think that copycatting those means of executing layoffs - 7am email notifications for 20-year employees, minimal consultation with lower-level management about who should be retained - will have significant ramifications on the morale of the remaining workforce. Perhaps so…

Twitter isn't mentioned in the article but completely agree that its new CEO does not have a reputation for acting rationally or with empathy.

Personally if my employer was acquired by him or his companies I'd shart shopping for a new job immediately.

Re: “Copycat” layoffs won’t help tech companies or their employees

#204

Post by rightbyte »

grok22 wrote: post #157
wpietri wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another question I'd ask is: why can't the find something useful to do with these people in the meantime? Downturns are definitionally temporary. Can managers really find no way to prepare for the coming good times? Or is there no way to use those staff to gain ground while everybody else is retreating? Workers are getting blamed by many for (claimed) low productivity. But why isn't that seen as a managerial failure?…

I think managers will do that (keep popel around just in case), but businessmen (or CEO's) will optimize for what's best for the business. No? A lower-level manager who actually sees the nitty-gritty of getting something done will not really have as much of a say in the broader business.

> businessmen (or CEO's) will optimize for what's best for the business. No?

Really? I feel most optimize for their short term bonuses. Which makes them take too great risks since they won't owe the shareholders anything if they fail. Like all these overhiring sprees.

Re: “Copycat” layoffs won’t help tech companies or their employees

#205

Post by revskill »

jmyeet wrote: post #90

It makes me physically ill to hear billionaire CEOs "take full responsibility" for the layoffs in an impersonal email while taking no pay cut themselves. Look at Meta as one of the worst offenders. Meta's layoffs will save what? $5 billion a year? Assuming those employees were actually producing some value, the true savings will be less (since you also have to factor in severance costs). Now consider that Meta has sp…

FB failed i think is because the ReactJS codebase is becoming unmaintainable due to some infinite useEffect hook ;)

Re: “Copycat” layoffs won’t help tech companies or their employees

#206

Post by untilNxtwk »

brandall10 wrote: post #171
grok22 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting way to look at it. It certainly makes sense that companies hire to capture intellectual output when money is cheap and then tighten spending when access to easy money goes away even if they are making money hand-over-fist in their business.

I think by and large it comes down to appeasing shareholders. If there is a chance that predicted quarterly metrics are impacted, this type bloodletting acts as a hedge. The whole "we understand we're not where we said we'd be at and as a result we're cutting costs". The issue of course is this is short-sighted thinking.

Yeh. The entire org has to rethink what progress means with such cuts and that takes time, which impacts deadlines.

We’re far too controlled by the short term anxiety of investors. Financiers need to learn more about how the physical world works and not just fetishize abstract math conveniently labeled in politically correct tradition.

The burden should be on finance to prove its value and not be allowed to leverage recent history when the market could only go up as the post-WW2 world was a crater. Other countries have caught up and don’t have to play by the US’s old rules. Why should the next generation within the US? People who lucked into winning have an extraordinary burden of proof their success wasn’t just being born in a time-place.

Re: “Copycat” layoffs won’t help tech companies or their employees

#207

Post by scarface74 »

> Layoffs do not solve what is often the underlying problem, which is often an ineffective strategy, a loss of market share, or too little revenue. Layoffs are basically a bad decision.

I don’t really think that Amazon, Google or Microsoft are suffering from any of those issues.

Facebook on the other hand…

And many of the tech layoffs are coming from unprofitable companies that over hired.

Re: “Copycat” layoffs won’t help tech companies or their employees

#208

Post by 98codes »

tarr11 wrote: post #31

The professor recommends across the board pay cuts as an alternative to layoffs. > One thing that Lincoln Electric, which is a famous manufacturer of arc welding equipment, did well is instead of laying off 10% of their workforce, they had everybody take a 10% wage cut except for senior management, which took a larger cut. So instead of giving 100% of the pain to 10% of the people, they give 100% of the people 10% of…

> except for senior management, which took a larger cut.

There's your trouble -- even if a company would go the "pay cut" route now, there is no chance in a million where the leadership at the top would ever agree to losing a single dime. If anything, it would be performative, with other payment options making up the difference.

Re: “Copycat” layoffs won’t help tech companies or their employees

#209

Post by seb1204 »

escapecharacter wrote: post #119
in_cahoots wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where would you go in this environment? Most of the top-name companies have had layoffs themselves, or at the very least are at the hiring freeze stage of the layoff routine.

In my case, I did the math on my savings and I’m taking 1-3 years working on side projects, by myself and with groups of collaborators

Wow, good on you. I wish you all the best. I wish I had such financial safety net to change jobs

Re: “Copycat” layoffs won’t help tech companies or their employees

#210

Post by hluska »

idopmstuff wrote: post #56
tarr11 wrote: post #31

The professor recommends across the board pay cuts as an alternative to layoffs. > One thing that Lincoln Electric, which is a famous manufacturer of arc welding equipment, did well is instead of laying off 10% of their workforce, they had everybody take a 10% wage cut except for senior management, which took a larger cut. So instead of giving 100% of the pain to 10% of the people, they give 100% of the people 10% of…

I think the problem with this strategy is that it causes the wrong people to leave. If you're a top performer, you're going to feel like a 10% pay cut is very unfair, and you're going to be able to get another job elsewhere fairly easily, even in this environment. If you're not performing particularly well, it probably doesn't feel as unreasonable, and even if you don't like it, it's tough to leave. When done correct…

There’s a lot of evidence that indicates that layoffs will cost you your top performers too. They see layoffs, have options and take them before they get laid off.
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