Live data from Hacker News

Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

about.gitlab.com

301–310 of 622 posts

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#301

> 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…

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…

Revenue alone is a bad way to judge how a mature company is doing. Their net profit margin is under 1%.

And the best way to capitalize on high revenue is to cut costs--layoffs.

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#302
post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Layoffs are about projected profits not past profits.

So the plane has been flying over valleys at record altitude and we see a couple of mountains ahead that we will easily clear. Despite being absolutely no where near crashing, let's throw a couple of crew overboard so that we can continue to climb to new heights and keep the hype engines of our overvaluation going?

There was one time that Kodak made record profits and now they exist in name only.

"Past performance is not indicative of future results"

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#303

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.

It's just the first cut (for all companies). You can't do 50% right away as you don't know what will happen, so you need to do in steps. If they were just 7% over hired then they could just do attrition + a bit tougher perf reviews, or close a few teams over the course of a year but there is high chance for all companies they are not 10% or 7% or 15% over hired but 50%

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#305

Layoffs make sense if you need to extend runway past the current economic climate (valuations are down and it could be very painful to raise now). Basically if it's make or break. That doesn't describe the big tech companies who will certainly suffer greater than 10% lost productivity and opportunity cost and could easily weather a long down trend.

Weathering the trend only really makes sense when you know there is growth on the other side. Maybe a lot of these companies grew to accommodate the explosive growth caused by working from home and they are no longer certain they really need the extra workforce in the coming few years?

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#306

GitHub is also going fully remote (zero offices, current offices will close at end of lease) and reducing headcount by 10% :( Statement will be coming out shortly I guess. I wonder if they knew Gitlab were going to be doing layoffs too and so waited them out.

Is that part of the Microsoft layoff?

It was announced this morning- during the initial Microsoft layoffs they were told GitHub wasn't impacted.

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#307

> 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…

> Inflation has been tame over the past six months. No, I don’t think so. 6.5% [0] is still an absurdly high rate compared to the past 30 years. It is nowhere near tame and may still fluctuate quite a bit. [0] https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/inflation-cpi

That is the trailing twelve months rate, and inflation was very high in the first six months of the trailing twelve months.

Core inflation actually fell last month [1], and the producer price index has been very low the past several months [2]

[1] https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/core-pce-price-in... [2] https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/core-producer-pri...

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#308
post #118
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My issue with analyses like this is they argue that layoffs are a bad idea and it's just companies shooting themselves in a foot. That's what people want to hear, so it gets a lot of clicks and citations. But, this also means that all the big companies (and that's a lot of them) that just announced layoffs made a obviously bad move. Are they all stupid? I find it hard to believe. It's more plausible, that yeah, layof…

> they make shareholders rich In that regard, I wonder if it becomes a Wall Street meme--layoffs for the sake of doing layoffs. Companies that performed layoffs made shareholders rich, so therefore if your company isn't doing layoffs in a layoff climate it's assumed that shareholders are better off putting their dollars somewhere else.

This is what’s currently happening at all levels. It’s why you see so many companies doing ~5% layoffs while still actively hiring for some roles.

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#309

GitHub is also going fully remote (zero offices, current offices will close at end of lease) and reducing headcount by 10% :( Statement will be coming out shortly I guess. I wonder if they knew Gitlab were going to be doing layoffs too and so waited them out.

Is that part of the Microsoft layoff?

Not that I am aware of. Microsoft did not include GitHub in their numbers so I am thinking this is in addition.

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#310

> 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…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN