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LinkedIn laying off nearly 700, mostly from core engineering teams

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Re: LinkedIn laying off nearly 700, mostly from core engineering teams

#281

Post by smsm42 »

slg wrote: post #242
pandaman wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>An actor who refuses to join the union will have a harder time getting work This does not make membership an option, does it then? This is exactly the reason programmers like myself oppose the unions. Bringing up SAG in this context seems to be counter-productive to me but you can do that if you think this increases union's support somehow. So I was wrong on the Jordan's membership, then who was playing in NBA witho…

>This does not make membership an option, does it then? Yes it does. You are just redefining the meaning of "choice" now. There is always going to be pros and cons to any choice including this one. What do you want the non-union membership to look like? There are obviously going to be downsides to not joining the union or else there would be no reason to join the union and if there was no reason to join the union, it…

There can be different kinds of downsides. Not getting union pension plan is one kind of downside, not being able to get hired because union contract mandates preference to union members - another. Which kind are we dealing with here? If the second one then membership is practically a requirement to non-marginal employment, unless you're a superstar that can choose their own projects and doesn't need any security or continued employment.

Re: LinkedIn laying off nearly 700, mostly from core engineering teams

#282

Post by smsm42 »

scruple wrote: post #148
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just look at the amount of sincerely antisocial comments that boil down to effectively what I wrote above It’s disappointing but not surprising

Yes, unsurprisingly I've had these exact sorts of conversations at work (gamesdev). Some of these people truly, truly believe that they are so gifted and so talented that the work opportunities will simply never dry up.

If work opportunities dry up, how the union would help? Unions don't create work opportunities, they only can redistribute who gets the ones that are still there - e.g. by excluding nonmembers or by mandating that less senior members will be fired first, etc. Given that, why "these people" would be sure they aren't ones who'd get the short straw?

Re: LinkedIn laying off nearly 700, mostly from core engineering teams

#283

Post by smsm42 »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #105
hackernewds wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bold of you to assume it's the same people, that will deliver the same quality of work

Doesn't need to be the same quality if it's 1/5th the price. Businesses care about profits - not quality.

In order to get a baby in 1 month just hire 9 women!

Re: LinkedIn laying off nearly 700, mostly from core engineering teams

#284

Post by bluGill »

Apocryphon wrote: post #98
bluGill wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, but it is likely that you will not be able to form a new union and instead be forced to join with an existing one. As soon as a big union hears of your efforts they will step in and demand to be the ones to represent you then they only need a couple people to scream we need to join the big union and they can fight your efforts to be independent in court.

It’s more of the principle of the thing. We work in an industry that aspires to disrupt everything from human relations (social media), to commerce (Amazon, the sharing economy), to biology, nutrition, and the very laws of physics (or at least material science.) Even if a lot of this is just marketing hype, there is still ambition required to come up with such utopian grandiose goals. But whenever the idea of a union…

Some things we disrupt, others we fail, often because the very laws of physics are against it. There are also laws of what makes a union work and they don't point to success. Mind those laws are not as absolute as the laws of physics, but they also place limits on what a union can do, and in turn make me less interested.

Re: LinkedIn laying off nearly 700, mostly from core engineering teams

#285

Post by bumby »

doctorwho42 wrote: post #84
deviantbit wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A union would have done nothing other than accelerate the process. We need laws that if a job is off-shored the company is penalized heavily, where it makes it painful and unbearable.

What free market? We haven't had a free market in decades.

Do you mean specifically in tech or in the broader sense? There’s probably a good case that there has never been much of a free market in the latter

Re: LinkedIn laying off nearly 700, mostly from core engineering teams

#286

Post by Apocryphon »

WalterBright wrote: post #279
Apocryphon wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The East Asian Tigers being a major counterexample: https://hir.harvard.edu/the-east-asian-miracle-where-did-ada... It's basically Ha-Joon Chang's whole deal- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Samaritans:_The_Myth_of_Fr... https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/comment/hajoon-c...

East Asia switched to free markets, which is where their prosperity came from.

Completely unsubstantiated non-response. At least post a link, name a contrary authority, cite some evidence, do something.

Re: LinkedIn laying off nearly 700, mostly from core engineering teams

#287

Post by smsm42 »

bilekas wrote: post #65
neovive wrote: post #57

> “As we continue to execute on our FY24 plan, we need to also evolve how we work and what we prioritize so we can deliver on the key initiatives we’ve identified that will have an outsized impact in achieving our business goals,” LinkedIn executives Mohak Shroff and Tomer Cohen wrote in the memo. Is this standard business communication lingo for layoffs?

This is one of the worst examples of 'biz-speak' I've ever come across adding insult to injury for those 700 workers being let go.

Would it feel better if they hired a talented writer to write an heartfelt eulogy about how the loss of every single one of these 700 people makes their heart bleed tears of eternal sadness? Nobody would believe it. Everybody knows what it is about - they decided they have X people employed, and they want to have X-700 people employed. That's the beginning and the end of it. If you work for a small company, you will have personal relationship with decision makers, but in a corp where there are several zeroes in staff counts, that doesn't happen. So I don't think there's a point of being insulted about it - it's always going to be "we need less workers, and today it means less you".

Re: LinkedIn laying off nearly 700, mostly from core engineering teams

#288

Post by smsm42 »

JeremyNT wrote: post #164
neovive wrote: post #57

> “As we continue to execute on our FY24 plan, we need to also evolve how we work and what we prioritize so we can deliver on the key initiatives we’ve identified that will have an outsized impact in achieving our business goals,” LinkedIn executives Mohak Shroff and Tomer Cohen wrote in the memo. Is this standard business communication lingo for layoffs?

Complaining about this stuff every time it comes up feels kind of tired, but at some point why do they even bother stating anything at all? I wonder if these execs could just use some internal biz-speak chatbot to generate this nonsense.

Well, they ran whatever calculations they run, and it came out that they need to reduce spending. They decided the best way is to lay off people. It's not like there's a special story each time - it's pretty much always the same story. It sucks for people affected, but there's nothing new or different about it, from time to time.

Re: LinkedIn laying off nearly 700, mostly from core engineering teams

#289

Post by drekk »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #220
postmodest wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No no, you see, all bureaucracy is evil, and thus organized collections of workers-- necessitating an organizational bureau --is evil. If you read my magnum opus, Chronos Shuffled, you would see that individual negotiation by an enlightened majority will reach the same common goal if... um... everyone individually pursues the exact same agreed upon goals... ...shit.

> all bureaucracy is evil, and thus organized collections of workers-- necessitating an organizational bureau --is evil This is the distraction I'm talking about. Unions, in this century, have been effective at one thing: dividing voters from organizing around labor reforms in law.

I really don't understand how you reconcile that with unions pushing for federal and state wide wage / benefit increases that cover non-union employees as well. You need a structure with which to organize labor power. Call it whatever you want—whether it's a union or a soviet or a syndicate it's the same idea.

Voting is literally just the bare minimum bottom of the barrel scraping. You have to also agitate for things to be on the ballot, and there is plenty of pressure to be applied outside of the purely electoral lens. A union gives people a direct benefit for organizing while trying to improve conditions for workers in general.

Re: LinkedIn laying off nearly 700, mostly from core engineering teams

#290

Post by unpopular42 »

idconvict wrote: post #127
unpopular42 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the evidence that they are extremely beneficial to workers Could you please cite the evidence? > While the CEO owns a couple private jets and the company initiates another billion dollar stock buyback Unlike the union leader, the CEO isn't working for you, so that private jet isn't coming out of your pocket, unlike the previously mentioned luxury car

> Could you please cite the evidence? You can google, plenty of sources, but the best evidence is how hard every company fights to prevent companies from forming one. How much has Amazon spent on union busting? > Unlike the union leader, the CEO isn't working for you, so that private jet isn't coming out of your pocket, unlike the previously mentioned luxury car We'll probably disagree on this, but all profit comes f…

> how hard every company fights

This only shows that companies believe that unions are harmful for them. Which I support, as usually unions are bad for both companies and workers

> from the amount workers were underpaid

No, workers are paid in full long before buybacks happen. Shareholders are usually paid last.

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