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Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

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Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#261

Post by efficax »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #220
gregors wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disney is laying off 7k workers... >>> “While this is necessary to address the challenges we’re >>> facing today, I do not make this decision lightly,” said >>> CEO Bob Iger, " From the same article >>> ...the company released better than expected financial >>> results for the fourth quarter of 2022. Disney revenue in >>> the quarter rose 8% to $23.5 billion, edging past >>> estimates of $23.4 billion Truly they are…

Disney is laying off people because their movies keep bombing in the theaters. All they do is remakes and spinoffs of the famous old IPs they devoured, but that gravy train is coming to a stop. After a while people get tired of watching more half-baked Star Wars and Marvel sequels of bootleg quality. They're running out of franchises to milk, and making something new and original is not in their corporate culture.

the comment you're replying to shows revenue up 8% for them. Is there any evidence of this claim? It seems like everyone is watching Andor, and they're fresh off the new Avatar movie, one of the highest grossing films ever? like i don't watch any of these movies, hate marvel and the new star wars, but you're just wrong?

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#262

Post by qbasic_forever »

If these layoffs were just done to go with the flow and because everyone else in tech is doing it, holy moly will it go down as one of the worst actions a CEO can take in history. Gitlab lives, breathes and dies on customer trust. If I send them money I am betting on them being a good steward of my source code (_the_ most important asset for many companies) and host for my artifacts, CI, etc. Nothing gives me more concern about the near and long term future of the company than a massive layoff out of the blue. How can customers trust Gitlab will even be functioning or exist in a year? If I depended seriously on them today I would be rapidly finding and moving to an alternative.

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#263

Post by mjburgess »

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #157
tedivm wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly- Facebook laid off 7% of their staff and then followed it up with a $40 billion stock buy back. That's over $3,600,000 per laid off employee. The economy isn't the issue here, the companies know that since layoffs in mass are happening they can get away with it without taking the same reputational hit as if they did this on their own.

> Exactly- Facebook laid off 7% of their staff and then followed it up with a $40 billion stock buy back FB laid off about 14% of their staff.

The stock buy-back really exposes the game though... for $20bn they could retained their employees for another Whilst there's good arguments to be made about workforce planning during recessions, and how you need to not have "slack employees" doing nothing... there are similar arguments to be made about stock buy-backs (ie., that having 40bn in reserves is a massive economic cushion).

That they choose to weaken their cash position for the sake of a temporary boost to stock prices shows that their incentives arent well-aligned to most stakeholders in this.

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#264

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

jlmorton wrote: post #190

> The current macroeconomic environment is tough No, it isn't, and it's embarrassing at this point to continue insisting this. The macroeconomic environment is good, particularly in the United States. Business investment is growing at 3% a quarter (annualized), which is better than the average over the past decade. Employment is growing rapidly. Inflation has been tame over the past six months. And wages are growing…

This feels like another semantic argument, this time over what "macroeconomic environment is tough" means.

You are correct in everything you say in your first paragraph. That said, it's fair to say that "sharply rising interest rates" are also part of the macroeconomic environment. You can say that it was silly for all these tech companies and investors to think the free money spigot would go on for so long, but the key driver for all of the fall in tech company valuations and employment levels is rising interest rates.

> If there are problems, they are Gitlab problems, not macroeconomic problems.

Yet literally every big tech company I can think of has had similar levels of layoffs. If these were Gitlab-specific problems you wouldn't expect the slowdowns and layoffs to hit everyone.

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#265

Post by patentatt »

jlmorton wrote: post #190

> The current macroeconomic environment is tough No, it isn't, and it's embarrassing at this point to continue insisting this. The macroeconomic environment is good, particularly in the United States. Business investment is growing at 3% a quarter (annualized), which is better than the average over the past decade. Employment is growing rapidly. Inflation has been tame over the past six months. And wages are growing…

The macroeconomic problems facing all of these corporations are that labor is feeling empowered, that's it. Between union actions, NLRB actions, wages rising, low unemployment, and the whole return to work debate; power has subtly, slightly shifted towards workers. And it scares the shit out of the capital class. In response, they're culling the herd and raising interest rates to discipline workers.

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#266

Post by travisgriggs »

adamors wrote: post #85
gerhardhaering wrote: post #32

Ok, 7%. With all the cost, I wonder if just stopping hiring and letting normal attrition rate play out would have had almost the same effect.

As someone who was recently laid off at one of these % cuts at another company, these cuts target specific groups, for instance people who have higher salaries. Well paid people won't just quit.

I’ve seen this happen over the years and I’m always curious why there isn’t a discussion beforehand that offers the “overearners” a chance to stay at a reduced salary. I’ve asked people who were in those positions, and they’ve often indicated that they would have stayed at a lower salary, at least for a while.

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#267

Post by [deleted] »

bentlegen wrote: post #255
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disney is laying off people because their movies keep bombing in the theaters. All they do is remakes and spinoffs of the famous old IPs they devoured, but that gravy train is coming to a stop. After a while people get tired of watching more half-baked Star Wars and Marvel sequels of bootleg quality. They're running out of franchises to milk, and making something new and original is not in their corporate culture.

I’m guessing you didn’t read the article because Avatar made in over 2 billion dollars, exceeding even their expectations, becoming the 6th highest grossing film of all time. Or maybe it bombed, beats me.

[deleted]

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#268

Post by zeroonetwothree »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #220
gregors wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disney is laying off 7k workers... >>> “While this is necessary to address the challenges we’re >>> facing today, I do not make this decision lightly,” said >>> CEO Bob Iger, " From the same article >>> ...the company released better than expected financial >>> results for the fourth quarter of 2022. Disney revenue in >>> the quarter rose 8% to $23.5 billion, edging past >>> estimates of $23.4 billion Truly they are…

Disney is laying off people because their movies keep bombing in the theaters. All they do is remakes and spinoffs of the famous old IPs they devoured, but that gravy train is coming to a stop. After a while people get tired of watching more half-baked Star Wars and Marvel sequels of bootleg quality. They're running out of franchises to milk, and making something new and original is not in their corporate culture.

Their movies are making more than ever. Have you actually looked at the figures?

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#269

Post by saurik »

lelanthran wrote: post #207
whatever1 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It takes long time for the layoff effects to hit the company. The main effect is that you lose the trust of the top performers. These will be the in the lookout for new opportunities the day after the layoffs are done. If you cut 10%, expect 10% from the top to flee within a couple of years. The second effect is related to the fact that companies usually target older people with expensive jobs. In an a big org these…

> The only way you can safely pull off layoffs is if you ensure that anything you do in the company requires the experience of a boot camp. That means that everyone is fungible and you can easily swap them. Yes, and that's the number one thing successful small business owners learn. The ones who don't learn this aren't successful. You want as many of your staff as possible to be easily replaced. If you're running a r…

While they certainly have some people who are cogs, all of the small businesses I know are heavily reliant on their owner constantly being around being that person and putting in soul-crushing hours, though, as they can't rely on anyone else and yet simply aren't large enough to have the entire business be built out of cogs. A result of this is that they are businesses that are fundamentally trapped at their current size because of this reliance on their size, and I will claim the only way they grow is by figuring out how to bring on other dedicated strong people to help them get some horizontal scale. I honestly don't think you can try to do the "everyone is a cog" thing until you are at least a medium-sized business.

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#270

Post by sofixa »

xyzelement wrote: post #203
anon20230209 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bet people like that drift into voluntary unpaid overtime.

Or, equivalently, "people like that are paid a lot and are engrossed in their careers." When someone makes $500k+, what does "unpaid overtime" even mean?

> When someone makes $500k+, what does "unpaid overtime" even mean?

It means shit work/life balance, thus missing on a lot of people that would want to have it and results in worse productivity (people need time off or they break).

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