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ASML staffing changes could result in a net reduction of around 1700 positions

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Re: ASML staffing changes could result in a net reduction of around 1700 positions

#291

Post by cm2012 »

megablast wrote: post #190
jansan wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Siemens Energy (which meanwhile is completely separated from Siemens) did a massive cleanup of their management overhead two or three years ago. They cut several layers and a lot of managers got downgraded or let go. Looking at their stock performance it seems they did the right thing. I really hope that other German enterprises will use this as an example.

How is stock performance any indication of a company having too many managers.

It means their financials improved

Re: ASML staffing changes could result in a net reduction of around 1700 positions

#292

Post by kakacik »

anal_reactor wrote: post #220
chronid wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work for a very big US company. My team (10 people) has something like 4 PMs and every task is essentially priority 0. They're coming up with a new way to split tasks that seems inspired to a gatcha to prioritize between priority 0 tasks, this is their contribution and solution to the issue, any attempt to make them see how crazy that is has failed. There are daily syncs for things that take weeks to do due to comp…

It suddenly starts making sense when you realize that most people are stupid. My strategy here is that I just adjust my schedule to have tasks take literally 10x time than they should and enjoy my free time while managers argue about shit.

People are not as much stupid as selfish. Nobody is going to threaten their own revenue stream just because their job is bullshit, in fact most double down and see themselves above others.

And another layer I've seen frequently - people somehow need to make their work meaningful to make it part of their core identity, even if its literally moving one pile of dirt to next pile and then reverse, or just adding friction to progress. Strong ego game.

Re: ASML staffing changes could result in a net reduction of around 1700 positions

#293

Post by cm2012 »

101008 wrote: post #202
skrebbel wrote: post #13

The press release ( https://www.asml.com/en/news/press-releases/2026/strengtheni... ) seems remarkably to the point, for CEO press release standards. I'm impressed by their ambition to fire 1700 managers (!) That's a lot of managers! I interviewed with ASML a decade and a half ago and while there was plenty to complain about (eg their tens of millions of lines of absolutely unmaintainable C code), I didn't feel at th…

I am not fan of managers, but these are people with families behind them. 1,700 is a lot of families that may go into stress and who knows what. Let's just now talk about them as if they were just rows in a database. (I am not saying OP is talking like that about them, but I am seeing some responses that do...)

These guys are going to get huge severance packages.

Re: ASML staffing changes could result in a net reduction of around 1700 positions

#295

Post by mns »

budgefrankly wrote: post #171
cmiles8 wrote: post #165

I’m generally supportive of the tech industry’s move to rid itself of too many mangers. Most managers are no longer technical, and just create bloated middle layers that slow everyone else down. The only managers that are decent are the ones that have kept their technical skills sharp. Most others just seem to be able to say “my team will follow-up” and “my team will look into this” and are beyond useless. Few are sh…

> Most managers are no longer technical, and just create bloated middle layers that slow everyone else down. > The only managers that are decent are the ones that have kept their technical skills sharp. Alex Ferguson was a terrible footballer when he was managing Manchester United. Yet they won the premiership in 6 of his last 10 years in that role, and have never won it since he left. The skills that make one great…

He still had a decent player career, and anyhow, this is a completely different field. The issue is that good engineers are not promoted to management positions because their skills are needed or they don't want to get promoted because of politics. But one of the things that I noticed a lot is people "specifically trained" to be managers. Our company is full of project managers and POs that never built anything their entire life, they never led a team, they never did anything except start with something like an assistant or QA and then all of the sudden they want to manage people. This is what I find frustrating, people that never in their life did something productive or build or contribute to something, but their expectation is to be a manager, just because they were "specifically trained in that discipline"

Re: ASML staffing changes could result in a net reduction of around 1700 positions

#298

Post by menaerus »

uxcolumbo wrote: post #290
menaerus wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WhatsApp was not developed by Meta. They just bought it. That said, I don't think Meta/FB is a net-negative, far from it. They contributed back to the community with high quality infra-level software.

Sometimes we in the tech community need to poke our heads out of our tech silos. Once you do, you will see how much societal damage Meta has caused under Zuck's leadership.

In that regard I fully agree. My view was merely from a technical perspective.

Re: ASML staffing changes could result in a net reduction of around 1700 positions

#300

Post by yobbo »

joe_mamba wrote: post #65
kabes wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked for a big Belgian technology company in the past. It was surprisingly lean in terms of management structure. Then Philips television, which had a big division not too far away, went bankrupt and a lot of those people got absorbed into our company. Within a couple of years the Philips people were able to transform the company to be very management/top heavy until nothing worked anymore.

> Within a couple of years the Philips people were able to transform the company to be very management/top heavy until nothing worked anymore You see the same pattern with Siemens and a lot of their spinoffs: Continental(VDO), Infineon, Qimonda, Gigaset, Healthineers (yes, that's a real name that somebody got paid to come up with), etc THe ones without some major moat like trains or energy, got slowly run into the gr…

> bureaucracy and stagnation while the same staff ends up flourishing and producing top notch tech when under a US company like Apple

Apple orders a widget from them which can be sold in an established product with existing customers. The magic was creating the Apple brand and iPhone product.

I think the problem with old European "conglomerates" is that no one has the mandate/legitimacy to make a multi-year/decade tech investment equivalent to the iphone. "Decision makers" are likely to have been promoted from other professions than engineering/products, and people promoted through management/sales lack competence and legitimacy. Their job is to apply old and approved templates for decision-making, while paying dues and respect to appropriate people.

It fails when templates for decision-making don't exist. Spin-offs or acquisitions based on new tech, rather than existing products/markets, can't work with this type of management.

I have also gotten the sense that management positions are given as rewards for "long and loyal service". It is effectively an incentives program, with the implicit assumption that management decisions don't really matter. This is not far from the the truth in old industrial companies with few but huge returning "captive" customers, which is typical in Europe eg Siemens, or high value luxury brands in fashion/jewellery/liquor/etc.

The meaning of the word "verwaltung" is different from the American "management". Verwaltung implies "preservation of stability" whereas "business management" implies something like "figure out how to sell more stuff".

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