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LinkedIn to cut 960 jobs worldwide

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Re: LinkedIn to cut 960 jobs worldwide

#251

Post by prawn »

dmoy wrote: post #248
prawn wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

Where I live, a salaried person will have tax automatically withheld and paid to authorities by their employer each week/fortnight. Someone self-employed usually has an estimate they pay quarterly or monthly, and then adjustments at the end of the financial year if the situation has varied from the estimate. I'm just saying I stockpile between tax bills (holding the cash against my mortgage to minimise interest) and my general style of living/spending means I can just redraw from the mortgage to make tax payments.

Re: LinkedIn to cut 960 jobs worldwide

#252

Post by gregjor »

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…

Full freelance since 2013. I traveled and lived abroad for six years. I wrote some articles about my experience on typicalprogrammer.com.

I make more than many salaried programmers I know, less than quite a few. I work 4 hrs/day, 5 days/wk on average, so by hourly income I do about as well as my friends at Google and Apple.

Re: LinkedIn to cut 960 jobs worldwide

#253

Post by rainyMammoth »

LaundroMat wrote: post #4

960 is 6% of the global LinkedIn workforce. I am baffled by how many people work for LinkedIn.

I'm baffled as well, especially given how mediocre their website is (and yes I know they have more than just their website).

Usually with those type of comments someone replies explaining that we don't get it and that you MUST have 20000 people to support a website like LinkedIn

Re: LinkedIn to cut 960 jobs worldwide

#254

Post by [deleted] »

SkyPuncher wrote: post #75
Nextgrid wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm baffled by that number given how bad the product is. It has a lot of potential, but is completely ruined by the social media aspect and their attempt at making it yet another cesspool like Twitter or Instagram, all the way down to the algorithmic feed, likes and reactions. They should step away from the nonsense and make the tool (because yes it should be seen as a tool and not a lifestyle) easier to use, not har…

> I'm baffled by that number given how bad the product is. That's because the "product" isn't the social network. The "product" is insight and access to much of the professional workforce. Sales and HR use it extensively. The social network aspect is likely to keep people semi-engaged with the platform and voluntarily disclosing things that Sales and HR can use as signals.

[deleted]

Re: LinkedIn to cut 960 jobs worldwide

#255

Post by [deleted] »

kjeetgill wrote: post #127
Nextgrid wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my experience you can opt-out of the bullshit with no ill effects, at least in the software industry. My activity is completely empty, no posts, no likes, etc and that doesn't seem to hurt me. I mostly use the tool as a rolodex to keep in touch with professional connections and be reachable by recruiters. The problem of course is that the platform doesn't seem to understand that and desperately tries to encourag…

Posts like this baffle me. This tool seems to function perfectly well as a rolodex and as a recruiter contact for you (its primary function for myself and most others) but somehow it's problematic for to have other functions for other users. > The problem of course is that the platform doesn't seem to understand that and desperately tries to encourage me to participate which seems pathetic at this point. They have 2…

[deleted]

Re: LinkedIn to cut 960 jobs worldwide

#256

Post by dvirsky »

AdrianB1 wrote: post #223
dvirsky wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard from people who worked there at the time that as part of the stack ranking system, it contributed to a culture of mediocrity and stagnation. The high performers did not want to excel in fear of retaliation from teammates that this was putting at risk, and no one wanted to be at the bottom. So the result was that everyone tried to be mediocre, do exactly as told, not more and not less. I would never want to…

Our company (not Microsoft, but a bit larger) used this model for over 15 years; it worked better than the replacement model, where people only get fired when they are really bad, so really weak people accumulate and re-baseline the competency in the company. On top of that, the new model based on diversity removed almost completely competency from promotions, so it is very easy to stay at the top of the peer group d…

There could be a model where you just define what "bad" is in concrete terms and fire people who are not up to a relatively high standard; yet you aren't required to fire the the "bottom people" if they are good enough. I believe this is what FAANGs are doing.

Re: LinkedIn to cut 960 jobs worldwide

#257

Post by elihu »

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.

I agree that this is pretty normal for any company, though I do wish that there was a bit better balance of risk and reward between the employee and the employer. For instance, if an employer that laid off an employee for anything other than an ethical violation were required to pay out one month of income for every year the employee worked for the company, it would force them to weigh the costs and benefits a bit more.

This is the kind of situation where it would be good to have a union. In the tech industry, it might have to be a different kind of union than exists elsewhere (for instance, I think most of us wouldn't want to do technical work in an environment where people who aren't good at their job can only be fired in reverse order of seniority).

The way I see it, people aren't entitled to good jobs for life from private companies, but neither are companies entitled to a cheap and disposable workforce. There's probably some place we could meet in the middle that has stronger protections for workers than are currently in place in the U.S. (I don't know enough about what protections exist in other countries to comment.)

Re: LinkedIn to cut 960 jobs worldwide

#258

Post by thebean11 »

supernova87a wrote: post #190

A lot of the very big companies are quite reluctant to start layoffs if they think the situation can be survived for a few months. They don't want to be seen as evil firing-their-contractors, people-as-expendable, etc. They are an easy target as "big corp". But if they can see this is going to go on more than the end of 2020, they will start having to confront the need to layoff people seriously. Interestingly, the m…

Or, they've really been wanting to do this for a while, and the economic situation provides political cover.

Re: LinkedIn to cut 960 jobs worldwide

#259

Post by lizardking »

oneoff1777711 wrote: post #230
sillysaurusx wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

5 years experience web development/full stack/mobile here. 29 years old. I’ve never had a salaried job in my life. I’m able to pull down $150/hr for a couple months a year (8 hour days), $125/hr for another 6 months full time, then take a couple months off and I’m making a decent salary when it all shakes out. That’s fully remote and working for friends or friends of friends, occasionally taking a contract with a meg…

I have a similar story, but my rates aren’t quite that great. What part of the country are you in and what stacks are you writing in for contracts that pay at that level? I tend to top out around 100/hr in the Midwest, just short of that post covid.

Re: LinkedIn to cut 960 jobs worldwide

#260

Post by dahfizz »

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.

> a My first reaction to the headline was mild shock that 960 people even worked for LinkedIn. What do 10,000 do at Linked? Netflix has 8,600 and Twitter has less than 5,000 for comparison
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