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LinkedIn to cut 960 jobs worldwide

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Re: LinkedIn to cut 960 jobs worldwide

#241

Post by ilamont »

prawn wrote: post #232
quacked wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does your self-employed career compare to a parallel salaried career in your industry across 20 years? (In terms of year-averaged income, hours worked, etc.)

I imagine I've worked a lot, lot more for a lot, lot less, on average. And all while having greater tax/admin obligations. Which is why I don't have any particular sympathy for the undulations in the job market of a salaried employee - at any point, they can freelance like I have to fill the gaps. 960 people fired means 960 people were employed for a given period, but it's often viewed as a horrible and heartless ges…

> Which is why I don't have any particular sympathy for the undulations in the job market of a salaried employee - at any point, they can freelance like I have to fill the gaps.

Congratulations on your successful gig career that gives you great freedom and the means to support yourself. However, not everyone can freelance. They may have skills which have zero demand right now, they are unable to work remotely, or they have mortgages or health/family situations which prevent them relocating or doing gig work.

There's a lot of sentiment on this thread that these people losing their jobs at LinkedIn are deadweight but in my experience the people let go in the midst of a great economic crisis include superstars who have the floor vanish beneath them, through no fault of their own.

Re: LinkedIn to cut 960 jobs worldwide

#242

Post by pandaman »

monadic2 wrote: post #135
mathattack wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this case, they make a disproportionate amount of their revenue on jobs postings and selling recruiters the right to spam us. With less jobs their revenue goes away. They don’t need as many salespeople and internal recruiters. Microsoft has historically been pretty ruthless about annual culls. It used to be in the GE mode of cutting the bottom 5-10% each year. More recently it’s more quiet. I don’t begrudge compan…

I imagine at some point a reputation like this affects hiring ability.

Lucas Arts (the game arm of Lucas Film) has been doing this since the early 2000s. Allegedly, new management came from the film industry and could not comprehend why their game studios kept FTEs between projects. So they started laying off most of the staff at the end of a project to rehire them a few months later. After a couple of iterations they started canceling projects because they could not get enough staff (e.g. the PS3/360 Indiana Jones game could not start because of this, allegedly) and eventually had to shut down their game business all together despite being one of the bigger players at the turn of the century. I have not been working there but have quite a few acquaintances who did and all of them had been out by ~2007. I also had to turn down dozens of their recruiters during those times.

Re: LinkedIn to cut 960 jobs worldwide

#243

Post by swivelmaster »

curiousllama wrote: post #8

Companies commonly use layoffs as an easy way to get rid of under-performing staff, realize cost savings from previous investments (e.g., automation) ahead of schedule, or efficiently reorganize divisions whose execs fall out of favor. Not going to say this is good, but a However callous it is, roles on the margin get cut when prospects for growth dim.

Forcing managers to wait until layoffs to get rid of underperforming (and possibly toxic/counterproductive) staff is terrible for the morale of the rest of the team and I wish it wasn't the norm. Better to fire people and just give them the severance package than to drag it out while nobody's happy and then do it anyway.

Re: LinkedIn to cut 960 jobs worldwide

#244

Post by prawn »

ilamont wrote: post #241
prawn wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine I've worked a lot, lot more for a lot, lot less, on average. And all while having greater tax/admin obligations. Which is why I don't have any particular sympathy for the undulations in the job market of a salaried employee - at any point, they can freelance like I have to fill the gaps. 960 people fired means 960 people were employed for a given period, but it's often viewed as a horrible and heartless ges…

> Which is why I don't have any particular sympathy for the undulations in the job market of a salaried employee - at any point, they can freelance like I have to fill the gaps. Congratulations on your successful gig career that gives you great freedom and the means to support yourself. However, not everyone can freelance. They may have skills which have zero demand right now, they are unable to work remotely, or the…

I wouldn't call my career especially successful. I have slogged for 20 years at this. The one programming language I know how to use is probably the least fashionable and most laughed at around. I'm just saying that the focus in a "cutting x staff" thread is always on the loss of a job and not that the job was provided. I have multiple mortgages and a family that has limited my relocating. Being a small web studio getting eaten away by platforms has been seriously challenging, taking a client to court to get paid is challenging, etc.

Someone with a mortgage losing a job has to cover for the downtime, sure. I've had to cover for the peaks and troughs for 20 years. At no point have I had the safety of a predictable pay cheque.

If superstars were let go, wouldn't they often be in a position to capitalise? Or have the intelligence to up-skill or diversify skill set? My line of work has been savaged by platforms. What was once "We have a $10k budget to build a site" has become "So I've done 99% of my site on [platform] but I can't work out the last bit. My budget for the most annoying and least predictable remaining bit of the job is $100."

An employee is at the mercy of their employer just like I am at the mercy of my clients. Any individual has some responsibility to maintain their skills or diversify (against platforms) or stockpile for hard times. I absolutely have sympathy for someone losing their job but I don't have any particular sympathy given it's the flipside of a coin that sees them get a regular wage for a given period.

Re: LinkedIn to cut 960 jobs worldwide

#245

Post by mathattack »

Zafira wrote: post #143
mathattack wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this case, they make a disproportionate amount of their revenue on jobs postings and selling recruiters the right to spam us. With less jobs their revenue goes away. They don’t need as many salespeople and internal recruiters. Microsoft has historically been pretty ruthless about annual culls. It used to be in the GE mode of cutting the bottom 5-10% each year. More recently it’s more quiet. I don’t begrudge compan…

> It used to be in the GE mode of cutting the bottom 5-10% each year. Hasn't it been demonstrated that GE under Jack Welch was basically a massive fraud?

I’m not sure on fraud but certainly it wasn’t as great as the press. He definitely made a mistake going all-in on financial services going into the financial crisis.

Re: LinkedIn to cut 960 jobs worldwide

#246

Post by mathattack »

monadic2 wrote: post #135
mathattack wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this case, they make a disproportionate amount of their revenue on jobs postings and selling recruiters the right to spam us. With less jobs their revenue goes away. They don’t need as many salespeople and internal recruiters. Microsoft has historically been pretty ruthless about annual culls. It used to be in the GE mode of cutting the bottom 5-10% each year. More recently it’s more quiet. I don’t begrudge compan…

I imagine at some point a reputation like this affects hiring ability.

Depends on the industry. Happens often enough in cyclical industries like retail, consulting and financial services. It’s more shocking when old-line stable companies lay off for the first time. One of the lessons from IBM and HP is the first cut is rarely the last.

Re: LinkedIn to cut 960 jobs worldwide

#247

Post by jamroom »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #226
quacked wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does your self-employed career compare to a parallel salaried career in your industry across 20 years? (In terms of year-averaged income, hours worked, etc.)

Seconding this question. It'd be fascinating to hear a detailed perspective from someone who has spent 20 years working for themselves, without also reaching traditional "success" (i.e. getting rich). It's starting to feel like getting rich is overrated when it requires so much of your life to make it happen. Hearing from someone who ended up with similar freedoms (working for yourself is no small one!) would be cool…

I'm almost 50 and have been doing my "own thing" full time since 2004. I'm not rich, but have been able to be home while my 3 daughters have grown up. I spent 18 months traveling around the country with my wife and kids (we homeschool). I've been lucky enough to work on the things I want to work on, for the most part when I want to work on them. I have had years where my income has been under $12k and years where I've made over $300k - it's been an absolute roller coaster ride. No doubt if I had stayed employed by 401k would certainly be bigger, but the "cost" to me has been 100% worth it.

One thing that really made the decision easier for me when I left my job to do my own thing was that I could have been in many different situations around the world where I would not have even HAD the opportunity to do my own thing - and by NOT doing it I felt it was disrespectful to all those who would take the chance if given the opportunity to be in my place.

Re: LinkedIn to cut 960 jobs worldwide

#248

Post by dmoy »

prawn wrote: post #239
sillysaurusx wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any tax tips? That's an interesting observation. (Thank you!)

Personally I have an offset account against my mortgage and stockpile funds there. Then live well within my means so I can handle tax when it arrives. Someone who doesn't naturally live within their means could estimate in advance and push money to a separate account to isolate it.

Don't you have to pay estimated taxes anyways? Or do you just mean within the quarter between estimated tax payments? (I am salaried and already just budget by quarter for everything)

Re: LinkedIn to cut 960 jobs worldwide

#249

Post by Gene_Parmesan »

ilamont wrote: post #241
prawn wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine I've worked a lot, lot more for a lot, lot less, on average. And all while having greater tax/admin obligations. Which is why I don't have any particular sympathy for the undulations in the job market of a salaried employee - at any point, they can freelance like I have to fill the gaps. 960 people fired means 960 people were employed for a given period, but it's often viewed as a horrible and heartless ges…

> Which is why I don't have any particular sympathy for the undulations in the job market of a salaried employee - at any point, they can freelance like I have to fill the gaps. Congratulations on your successful gig career that gives you great freedom and the means to support yourself. However, not everyone can freelance. They may have skills which have zero demand right now, they are unable to work remotely, or the…

I worked as an attorney for 6 years. The employer I worked the longest for is a major US law firm; you would probably recognize the name. I worked there for four years. Each year I received a high review -- averaged 4.3 out of 5. I had just received a promotion (I wasn't associate/partner track so we worked differently). Then my group started bleeding cash due to an abruptly changing market.

There was no single massive layoff. Instead there was a 6 month period of people slowly fading away. The most bizarre experience of my professional life. Then one Monday, with zero warning, I was brought into a meeting with my supervisor and HR and was told I was being let go. There was an extremely flimsy excuse related to performance; when I asked why it wasn't reflected in my reviews they had no answer.

So from feeling like I had good job stability and support to out of work in about 1 hour flat. I obviously saw the writing on the wall in general but never would have expected me to be one that was asked to leave. My only guess is the promotion made me a target due to higher salary. Luckily I took that as a sign from the universe that it was finally time to attempt the career switch to software dev that I had been planning and working towards for 4 years, and I made it, so for me it was oddly a net positive.

Now I'm not claiming I was some legal superstar. But there were a lot of very good workers that were let go. And the legal job market is brutal. The vast majority of lawyers in this country do not fit your TV view of lawyers. Most of them are your standard 9-5 types working for well under 6 figures with astronomical loan burdens. And good luck telling a lawyer to freelance.

So yes, I agree with you.

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