261–270 of 432 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
lol yea or a few bad jobs reports? I think many got use to the most incredible labor market of a generation or two and we are just now back to something more historically normal.
I don't understand the confidence behind this. Is a good economy only based on having a job? Average people are struggling to make ends meet and racking up debt. The gap between pay and the cost of goods has only grown in recent years. How is that good for anyone?
5% is nothing. Any FANG could lose 30% at least and all metrics would only improve. People working there know this. There's an unbelievable amount of fat in these companies. The main issue is that often during these cuts it's not the fat but the "muscle" that gets cut. The "fat" is good at sticking around.
Over time some cracks might show. Bugs that take longer to fix, issues that take longer to figure out, delayed releases, etc.
New features being implemented would be severely impacted, especially if those need integration from multiple teams.
Does this mean that there's fat? Maybe. Any company I worked for has a level of fat - and that might be a good thing, as demand quite often is not stable over time, you may need to ramp up initiatives without necessarily hiring/training new employees.
When I was an engineering manager there, engineering leadership described performance reviews as, in a large well run engineering organization, you'll probably be firing 5-10% of your employees every year for low performance. (Well, "non regrettable attrition", which includes people who quit when they get pipped.) Lower than 5% at scale would be a red flag, not necessarily wrong, you don't want to "stack rank" with a…
What I have seen in the past was engineers that were performing completely fine being put on PIP-equivalents because there must be a few being PIPped on every department, based off on some bullshit percentage.
In reality, low perforers should be culled, no need to enforce percentages department-wide. That would require managers doing their job properly of course.
Also Microsoft was the first large domino to announce cutting "underperforming" staff and now Meta is doing the same. [1]
Unfortunately, there will be copycats taking notes to use "AI" as an excuse to accelerate more layoffs for AI or cheaper labor.
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It's understandable that in an organization that hasn't tightened its screws on employees, you will be able to find 5% low performers. But do you expect to find 5% low performers even after 5 iterations of these firings? Like eventually you are left only with medium to high performers, and you are just making their lives miserable by turning work into a meaningless Hunger Games season.
Isn't the average tenure low enough that after five years, most of your workforce has turned over?
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Why? Why set an arbitrary number of people who need to be fired as opposed to grading people to a standard? Is your hiring process so flawed that you just accept that you screwed up hiring 5 percent of your people? This smells like the Welchian nonsense that drove GE into the ground.
> Is your hiring process so flawed that you just accept that you screwed up hiring 5 percent of your people? if you only messed up 5% of your hires you'd be a goddamn genius and every company in the world would want to put you in charge of their hiring process the "standard" is more like 20% of hires end up being bad hires
https://www.statista.com/statistics/273563/number-of-faceboo...
^But let's say you messed up hiring 20% of your company, and then you corrected that (layoffs for the past 2 years). You haven't hired enough people to justify perma-cutting 5%. And the number of functioning employees who stop working in a role isn't going to be as high as 5%.
The reality is that most hires are probably fine in the role they're in. And you don't actually need to be this aggressive in cost-cutting.
It seems Zuck is turning into Elon. What's next? closing the European offices? forcing people to return to the office? relocating HQ to Texas?
As critical as I am of Zuckerbergs recent turn a 5% performance determined cut that will be backfilled is hardly the same as what Elon did
When I was an engineering manager there, engineering leadership described performance reviews as, in a large well run engineering organization, you'll probably be firing 5-10% of your employees every year for low performance. (Well, "non regrettable attrition", which includes people who quit when they get pipped.) Lower than 5% at scale would be a red flag, not necessarily wrong, you don't want to "stack rank" with a…
I am lukewarm about unions, but if that shit would be the new work norm I would go hard left. Wouldn’t be every coworker a competitor? How do you plan your life or start a family if you are every year 10% likely of being fired or backstabbed?
Speaking as someone who works at Meta, I certainly don't plan my life as if I'll always be employed by Meta, always earning this high of a wage. The ride could end at any minute, and I plan accordingly.
10% is an overestimate, of being fired or backstabbed in any given year, fwiw. The people getting laid off in any given cycle tend to be heavily skewed towards newcomers in my experience.
When I was an engineering manager there, engineering leadership described performance reviews as, in a large well run engineering organization, you'll probably be firing 5-10% of your employees every year for low performance. (Well, "non regrettable attrition", which includes people who quit when they get pipped.) Lower than 5% at scale would be a red flag, not necessarily wrong, you don't want to "stack rank" with a…
So in the first two weeks of the year Zuck has announced: - Replacing their global policy chief with the company's highest ranking Republican. - Appointing Dana White to the company's board. - Changing content policies to be aligned with the incoming administration. - Elimination of DEI programs in hiring. - Removing tampons from men's restrooms. - Defending all this in a 3 hour Joe Rogan interview. Ranting about the…
I know Zuck wasn't super popular on HN, but until these recent events, I saw him as someone generally reasonable and pragmatic. I can understand that he had to compromise with Trump in order to protect his wealth and company. But it's clearly more than that. I wonder, does he even have values on his owns? will he reinstate the tampons if democrats win in 4 years? My guess is that he's slowing been adhering to the Tru…