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Layoffs Are Cruel and Don't Work

matduggan.com

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Re: Layoffs Are Cruel and Don't Work

#261

Post by Aeolun »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #224
Aeolun wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno, I have my retirement investments in stocks and mutual funds. Whether Apple earns 20B in profits or 24B in profits doesn’t make a whit of difference to me. If they improve their stock price by only 1% this year so they’re in a position to improve it by 6% next year, then that’s a good thing. Conversely, companies that immediately fire people because their stock gain was less than the 3% they expected, are too…

Sure it doesn't matter too much if apple makes 4B more. But in aggregate if the whole market starts caring about profit significantly less it's going to slow down growth of your investments. And so 30 years from now when you earned only 2% returns you might think, "hmm I wish those companies had tried to be more efficient".

Well, maybe not since I live in a socialist paradise. If the whole investment thing falls through I'll just have less money, not nothing.

I'd love it if the market stopped caring about profits to much and instead focused on quality. We might actually get to a post scarcity society that way.

Re: Layoffs Are Cruel and Don't Work

#262

Post by SturgeonsLaw »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #222
ricardobeat wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re assuming downsizing is a consequence of financial trouble. It has not been the case for almost every layoff that happened recently.

How do you reckon that? All the big tech companies had huge income declines.

Oh no, poor Alphabet, they only made $23 billion in profit Q4 2022. The wolves are really at their door.

Re: Layoffs Are Cruel and Don't Work

#263

Post by creakingstairs »

techsupporter wrote: post #119
fsociety wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one is saying you should have 100% job security, or never be let go / fired. People are saying that these mass layoffs and the way they are conducted are harmful to society and not as beneficial to the business as CEOs and investors want to believe. Layoffs are not always a result of declining performance. We have seen several now where quarterly results point to increased performance but layoffs still occur as an…

> People are saying that these mass layoffs and the way they are conducted are harmful to society and not as beneficial to the business as CEOs and investors want to believe. Exactly this, though I also propose as the end of your sentence, "...as CEOs and investors claim." We get told a lot of false or true-but-in-the-abstract motives. The McSweeney's article[0] nails it perfectly for me. I am in the gap in the middl…

I guess I'm "lucky" that I was born in a country who tops the OECD ranking for elderly poverty. Even though I moved to a country with an okay pension scheme, I've never counted on that to last. So I've been saving and investing as much as possible because, as you've said, I've "always known [I'm] screwed unless [I] can horde as much as possible in as little time as possible."

But I hate that I have this mindset. It’s useful to a degree but it’s almost become a compulsion for me. Incidentally, I think this is the main reason why my home country has the lowest birth rate in the world. I really wish we could all just, enjoy life without having to worry about poverty in the future.

(My home country is South Korea)

Re: Layoffs Are Cruel and Don't Work

#265

Post by jjav »

oconnore wrote: post #17

This is incredibly dumb. > The downsized companies, however, were outperformed consistently by the nondownsized ones during the initial two years following the downsizing. Can you think of any confounding factors in this analysis? How do you control for important factors like, say: whether the board is in enough financial trouble to downsize ?

> Can you think of any confounding factors in this analysis? How do you control for important factors like, say: whether the board is in enough financial trouble to downsize?

You're correct, obviously, on the general correlation aspect of companies having financial trouble and having to do layoffs.

The thing with many of these tech layoffs though, is these are in some cases companies with no trouble whatsoever. Companies with so many billions in the bank that they could continue to pay all salaries to everyone for a century without breaking a sweat. So they have zero need to reduce expenses.

Re: Layoffs Are Cruel and Don't Work

#266

Post by whitemary »

recursive wrote: post #147
cuteboy19 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If an action makes no difference then it makes no sense to actively do it.

Companies do layoffs when things are bad. "makes no difference" != "ended up in the same place"

>Companies do layoffs when things are bad.

Recent history has shown companies also do layoffs when things aren't bad.

Re: Layoffs Are Cruel and Don't Work

#267

Post by [deleted] »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #232
blamazon wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no way to make a mistake here because there are essentially no consequences -- entities of this scale can rehire as easily as they fire. At a lower average compensation rate too, most likely. These companies are basically refinancing their labor force using cruelty and fear. It is working because they're all doing it, because we let them. System working as intended.

> entities of this scale can rehire as easily as they fire. It's not exactly true. It actually takes quite a long time to hire competent employees, particularly more senior ones. Hence why it was so hard to hire in 2020-2021.

[deleted]

Re: Layoffs Are Cruel and Don't Work

#268

Post by foobiekr »

technick wrote: post #252

I feel what you're putting out and hopefully one day we will be a better species. I worked for a company in 2013 which will always be the benchmark that I compare other companies against. They treated me like a person that mattered and the members of my team were definitely my family. The company cared enough to give everyone catered breakfast and lunch, massages twice a week, a game room, and the freedom to work on…

What company was this?

Re: Layoffs Are Cruel and Don't Work

#269

Post by anon7725 »

atomicUpdate wrote: post #194
ok_coo wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree with this perspective, these companies go out of their way to market to their employees to make the job their whole identity. They are not blameless.

Burger King ends every commercial with “you rule!”. I don’t believe them and build my life around what they say either.

So you spend a good portion of your waking hours at Burger King and feed and clothe yourself from the money that you make there?

Re: Layoffs Are Cruel and Don't Work

#270

Post by anon7725 »

vivegi wrote: post #201

This is obviously false. Layoffs do work. 2003 - 2007 is not a sufficiently long enough period to assess layoff impacts on a company. For example: >Apple Computer Inc. said late Friday it was slashing its work force by 4,100 in a last-ditch effort to save the troubled computer maker. > Out of the total number affected, about 2,700 are full-time workers. The remainder are part-time and contract employees. The cuts wil…

None of the large tech companies conducting layoffs have had their back against the wall.

They are mostly just purging after their irrational pandemic hiring as well as doing galaxy-brained copycat layoffs. Isn’t it remarkable that “economic conditions” lead dozens of companies to need to cut the same 5-7% of staff?

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