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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

#251

Post by elforce002 »

Ok, this is the reality:

From a business perspective

- Businesses act on behalf of their shareholders. They want to give them tranquility and "peace of mind"

- They (big corporations) want their "power" back, meaning, lower wages, return to office, etc.

- They (big corp) are colluding with the Feds to mitigate inflation.

Do we have to like this? Absolutely no.

Do we have any choice? It depends. As a collective we have some sort of bargaining chip and we could try to win the war on WFH. We could also don't put our money on those same companies. Let them know they need customers/consumers and those come by strengthening the middle class.

Starting a layoff wave will just get people to stop paying for non essential things (streaming, fast food, etc), creating even more layoffs and the cycle repeats until the economy crash.

I'm all for responsible and sustainable capitalism.

The "let the market sort itself out" premise is just plain stupid and dangerous since the ultimate goal of allowing that will be to bring feudalism back. Big corporations having all things and we just work to live.

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

#252

Post by Gibbon1 »

TrainedMonkey wrote: post #114
idopmstuff wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This ignores the morale. I've been in both situations and the pay cut definitely felt like "we're in this rough economic situation together". Compare this with a layoff where I made my peace while waiting for "you still have a job email" and started interviewing shortly after. Of course pay cuts always ignore shareholders as they are really getting the benefit of paying less for same number of people.

Back before shares were liquid assets a shareholder often was required to put money back in the company when it hit a rough patch or lose their shares.

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

#253

Post by ShaunK »

nkozyra wrote: post #39
petilon wrote: post #8

Not all of it is "copycat". During the pandemic consumer spending moved online. People purchased hardware to work from home, ordered more from Amazon and other online stores as opposed to physical stores, used online services such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams more. Tech companies responded to the increased demand by increasing the pace of hiring. Were they wrong to do so? Possibly, because they should have expected th…

> During the pandemic consumer spending moved online. I keep hearing this repeated as canon but is this quantified somehow? Did we really see a spike long enough for hiring sprees? And did it last until ... when? A few months ago? It seems intuitive but I'd really love to see numbers.

The Shopify layoff memo (https://news.shopify.com/changes-to-shopifys-team) has a pretty interesting graph of exactly this effect. Basically a huge leap in e-commerce adoption with a subsequent dip right back to where the pre-pandemic trend line was heading. It’s not hard numbers I suppose, but it was at least the reason shopify gave when explaining their layoffs.

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

#254

Post by raincom »

wpietri wrote: post #4

I love this point: "The tech industry layoffs are basically an instance of social contagion, in which companies imitate what others are doing." I really wish for a less supine tech press. I've not seen any of these titans of industry being held accountable for the apparent major mistakes of overhiring. And I'm not even talking actual consequences here; these people will surely get bonuses for this. I'd just like to s…

Over-hiring was an instance of social contagion, too!!

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

#255

Post by throwaway2048 »

sokoloff wrote: post #44
filoleg wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Were they abnormally liquidating those things at the end of 2021 compared to other years? Asking because I would expect executives to sell "by the 10s of millions" pretty much every year. Especially since they cannot really sell on a whim (in the US), as executives are legally required to file their stock purchase/sell plans with SEC far ahead of time.

10b5-1 plans do not have to be filed with the SEC. (The use of a 10b5-1 is also not technically a legal requirement, but is a workaround to allow planned sales even if you become aware of material, non-public information between the time of entering into the plan and the time of the trade.)

the best thing about them is you can constantly schedule large stock sales, and just cancel the ones that don't favour you.

Look ma, no inside information.

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

#256

Post by jmyeet »

janalsncm wrote: post #196
jmyeet wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is, for lack of a better term, "capitalist brain rot". It may even be "American brain rot". I don't mean this in a disparaging way to you, individually, by the way. Myth #1: Most people believe they're "above average". In your post you talk about cutting the "bottom 10%". You feel comfortable with that because you likely believe you're not one of th ebottom 10%. It's yet another example of how true the Steinbeck…

When you say meritocracy is a lie, are you referring to Daniel Markovits by any chance? He had a very stimulating conversation with Sam Harris in 2020 that I’ve recently re-listened to. Meritocracy fails to live up to its promise because high performing parents always help their kids by artificially boosting their competence with e.g. test prep services. So tests tend to measure preparedness for the test, rather than…

Meritocracy is a form of propaganda to keep a compliant populace in general and workforce in particular.

It is the idea that if you work really hard you will be rewarded. It is the basis for most people thinking they're above average. It is why so many people believe they'll be Elon Musk one day so they die on the hill opposing any effort to tax the 10 richest people in America slightly ore because, hey, that will be them some day.

But what this really does is just allows someone to be exploited.

This permeated every aspect of life and starts from a very young age. It's going to better schools (even from a pre-K level), having access to tutors to better your results on standardized testing, getting access to lucrative internships and jobs (eg nepo babies), having social connections, getting into good colleges and so on. And it compounds.

Many fields require you to take jobs that pay nothing or minimum wage (eg a production assistant on a movie set). Having the means to do this gives you an enormous advantage for someone for whom this simply isn't an option.

For example, there's a lot of disagreement about affirmative action in college admissions. This is really the wrong conversation to be having. The right one is about how ~36% of each new undergraduate class at Harvard are legacy admissions and the legacy admission rate is 20% or higher.

It goes beyond wealth and privilege however. So much of the working world isn't about doing the best work or working the hardest. Instead much of it comes down to being liked and that encompasses a lot of things, not the least of which is coming from a similar background.

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

#257

Post by Gibbon1 »

ljm wrote: post #125
idopmstuff wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It will also hurt you more if you’re on a lower salary. 10% on a 300k FAANG salary is a lot different to 10% on an 80k administrative job - you’re going to feel the pinch a lot more on 80k than you are on over a quarter of a million.

I'm reminded partial unemployment is a thing. Perhaps the law should be changed to reward companies for keeping workers on during downturns and ratfuck the ones that lay people off. Like slowly claw it back directly from the stockholders. As in Dunder Miffin's stock has a 12 cent a share clawback due to the previous layoff.

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

#258

Post by smugma »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #248
idopmstuff wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1) In my career, I've never seen layoffs which were at all good at selecting the bottom 10%. Who gets dropped is pretty random. This is very true, and I would say definitely the biggest weakness of my point. In a theoretical world in which you can drop the bottom 10% of performers, I think that's clearly the right thing to do, but obviously practice is not the same as theory. I will say the one other thing about 10…

What tech companies are even doing dividends anymore? I guess Microsoft has a small one?

Apple

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

#259

Post by acdha »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #248
idopmstuff wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1) In my career, I've never seen layoffs which were at all good at selecting the bottom 10%. Who gets dropped is pretty random. This is very true, and I would say definitely the biggest weakness of my point. In a theoretical world in which you can drop the bottom 10% of performers, I think that's clearly the right thing to do, but obviously practice is not the same as theory. I will say the one other thing about 10…

What tech companies are even doing dividends anymore? I guess Microsoft has a small one?

https://investor.apple.com/dividend-history/default.aspx

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

#260

Post by phendrenad2 »

raincom wrote: post #254
wpietri wrote: post #4

I love this point: "The tech industry layoffs are basically an instance of social contagion, in which companies imitate what others are doing." I really wish for a less supine tech press. I've not seen any of these titans of industry being held accountable for the apparent major mistakes of overhiring. And I'm not even talking actual consequences here; these people will surely get bonuses for this. I'd just like to s…

Over-hiring was an instance of social contagion, too!!

It's social contagion all the way down. A lot of people have noted that small tech companies tend to imitate Google. But I think that Google is now looking at the state of the industry and trying to get ahead of trends too (reactive rather than a market maker). So it causes this amplification loop where big tech copies small tech, who are copying big tech.
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