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Macroeconomic changes have made it impossible for me to want to pay you

mcsweeneys.net

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Re: Macroeconomic changes have made it impossible for me to want to pay you

#311

Post by MetaWhirledPeas »

Very funny! I don't think the issue is that simple though, of course. The very quirks that cause these massive layoffs are the same quirks that caused the massive hiring in the first place. Namely, executives playing a macro-level game with their company.

You can have stability where companies don't have the crazy layoffs and insane pay discrepancies, but it might come at the cost of less hiring in the first place, more modest salaries all around, and probably less risk taking and therefore less productivity in general. If you don't think productivity matters ask yourself what products or technologies really do make the world a better place right now, and if you'd be okay with never having those developed in the first place.

Maybe there's a way to make things better without sacrificing productivity. But let's not kid ourselves and pretend that simply expecting executives to "stop being greedy" is a realistic expectation.

Re: Macroeconomic changes have made it impossible for me to want to pay you

#312

Post by xapata »

SturgeonsLaw wrote: post #34
username_my1 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wrong view / comparios ... in a 5% interest rate environment, companies fight for investors money .. if you don't do the cuts and find a way to be efficient investors will put their money somewhere else that's more profitable. this reasoning is pure and simple and correct, you start from the top, not from the fact "they can afford it" because their job is not to spend the money they have their job is to increase valu…

Let's do a little root cause analysis. Why do companies like Google, Microsoft and Amazon, with massive income streams combined with substantial cash holdings, need investor money? Maybe Toyota's "Five Why's" can shed some light on it. We need to fire thousands of people. Why? Because it will make us more attractive for investors. Why? So they put their money in our company. Why? Because that will buoy our stock pric…

Who are the shareholders?

Pension funds, which ensure a decent retirement for a large portion of US residents. Index funds, in which many people have invested their retirement funds.

Re: Macroeconomic changes have made it impossible for me to want to pay you

#313

Post by WalterBright »

ruko wrote: post #302
WalterBright wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So why is their exit equivalent to several mansions and mine is around about a year’s worth of salary? Because their decisions make or break the company, and your's do not. For a well known example, Steve Jobs took over Apple when it was 90 days from bankruptcy. With the same group of workers, he took it to the biggest company in the world. Just by making different leadership decisions. That's why he made the big b…

no, founding a company does not make a person more virtuous or deserving of orders of magnitude more money than people who don't. even if we lived in a fantasy world where everyone had equal opportunity to do this, those people would not actually have a greater claim to a higher standard of living

It's not about virtue. Founding a company is a very risky endeavor, and more risk means more (potential) reward.

Re: Macroeconomic changes have made it impossible for me to want to pay you

#314

Post by xapata »

jujugoboom wrote: post #274
overrun11 wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The median shareholder in Microsoft, Google and Amazon is likely a lower economic class than the median employee at these corporations if I had to guess. The framing of ordinary workers getting the boot so fat cats can buy bigger yachts is seductive but I can just as easily frame it as: Fixed income, middle America boomers entrusted these companies to be good stewards of their capital but it was instead spent on payi…

This is such a poor faith argument that completely ignores any reality. These companies have had a massive last decade or so, and if what you're saying is really the case, then we would see booming levels of wealth in middle america among the elderly. Instead, we see most wealth going to the richest of Americans, with the lions share of wealth created during the last 2 years of resurgent economic boom going to the to…

Your analysis doesn't match the economic measures I've been reading, which indicate that lower income workers in the US have seen real wage gains and that homeowners have seen net worth increases, and are feeling wealthier. Unemployment is very low, despite the recent layoffs, and many categories of employment are still seeing upwards wage pressure.

Social Security is pinned to inflation, so I don't understand why those living on Social Security payments might be in different circumstances now than 5 years ago.

Re: Macroeconomic changes have made it impossible for me to want to pay you

#315

Post by safety1st »

coldpie wrote: post #164
safety1st wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I've lost my heart but it's hard for me to find fault with the way Nadella communicated MSFT's layoffs. They're a business, they need to reallocate capital and headcount, he doesn't shed any crocodile tears, but they are providing above market severance benefits, end of transmission. If I have to be laid off I want it to go something like this.

> They're a business, they need to reallocate capital and headcount Consider this: no, they don't.

I've considered it, and of all the possible takes, I think this is the worst one.

It's simple:

- They are chartered as a for-profit entity

- FAANG workers who are making an average $200K or whatever don't need welfare.

Like I'm all for class warfare, but not between the super rich and the very rich. I don't have any sympathy whatsoever for the $200K class when they get laid off - being worth this much money includes understanding how the game is played and preparing accordingly.

So no, if you get laid off at this level, you are not working class, you are not an average American, the package MSFT gives you is above market and that is good enough. Let's save the extra help for people who actually need it.

Re: Macroeconomic changes have made it impossible for me to want to pay you

#316

Post by WalterBright »

John23832 wrote: post #303
WalterBright wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Supply and demand works best when the data about the market is symmetric. It works efficiently despite information asymmetry. It's called "risk". Risk always factors into prices. You pay more at a dealership because your risk is less. You pay less for a used car because your risk is more. A job that is more secure pays less. A job that is less secure pays more. The market efficiently prices in information asymmetry…

Hello Walter. Nice to see you. Thanks for D. But this is not true. An economically efficient market is one where goods and services produced are delivered at their most valuable. The job market is the antithesis of that. If there is asymmetric information (and asymmetric risk) AND that asymmetry is known by the side with most information (like it my job example), then the side with more data can price more optimally…

You're quite welcome! Enjoy using D!

The risk element goes both ways. An employee factors risk into what salary he'll demand. For example, people going to work for startups are going to demand lots of stock options to compensate for the risk that the startup fails. People accept lower salaries at established companies for the lower risk of the company failing. An employee will demand a higher salary to cover the risk of having to relocate. An employee will demand a higher salary for jobs that entail more personal risk.

It goes on and on. Risk is most definitely a factor in all negotiations, and risk is exactly another word for information asymmetry.

Re: Macroeconomic changes have made it impossible for me to want to pay you

#317

Post by s1artibartfast »

ShroudedNight wrote: post #310
brookst wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apologies if I sounded like I was unsympathetic to the people. I’ve been laid off, I know it hurts. But I guess I don’t see how empathizing with that means. . . What? Microsoft should cancel an investment they think is strategic? Microsoft should keep job roles they no longer things are important? Highly profitable companies like Microsoft are not zero sum. Nobody said “let’s lay people off so that we can invest in o…

There is a third option: Redeploying existing talent to the new strategic objectives. Especially in software, skills are pretty fungible, and most of the support organization's on-going requirements are likely to be highly agnostic of what, specifically, is being engineered.

If the company actually thought they could make more money by redeploying, they would. Positive ROI strategic objectives are not obvious or readily available. If they were, the company would already be pursuing them.

IT does bring up an interesting alternative. What if instead of layoffs, companies provided an ultimatum:

Your employment costs $X. You have 3 months to find a new source of $X+1 revenue that requires your continued labor.

Re: Macroeconomic changes have made it impossible for me to want to pay you

#318

Post by Aunche »

John23832 wrote: post #249
Aunche wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Regulations should exist. Econ 101 is a prerequisite to learning about exceptions to Econ 101, which evidently the general populous has not. This is why people get surprised when the solution of throwing more money at a limited supply of housing and college slots ends up increasing the price of housing and college. You can make a good argument that protections need to be made to protect income workers and that w…

I'll reply down here. > This narrative is counterfactual to how capitalism actually works. Your worth is determined by supply and demand. Investors would never agree to paying American developers twice as much as European developers if they knew they would be on the hook for them until their cash reserves bled dry. Supply and demand works best when the data about the market is symmetric. In the job market it is not.…

>Supply and demand works best when the data about the market is symmetric. In the job market it is not.

Sure, I agree that corporations should be more transparent but this isn't the messaging that I'm getting from these comments. Maybe I'm completely misinterpreting, but this is what it looks like people are trying to say: "These corpos are too damn greedy! If only we pressured these corpos for being greedy, we wouldn't be in this position." My point is that this sentiment completely ignores that this "greed" is what created such a large class of relatively wealthy tech workers in the first place. If companies weren't allowed to lay people off, they would be less willing to hire them in the first place.

Re: Macroeconomic changes have made it impossible for me to want to pay you

#319

Post by s1artibartfast »

moe091 wrote: post #290
brookst wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couple days apart, and they announced an investment, but the $10B figure is rumors. Could be right, could be wrong. But so what? There’s no gotcha here; it’s not like Microsoft or Google or Amazon claimed they were cash poor and could t afford to pay people. They are changing the areas they spend money in. Would it be better if they were only cutting back and not also investing in new areas?

Just because they don't hypocritically claim they care about their employees and only laid them off because they HAD to, doesn't mean we shouldn't criticize them and (if possible) use our leverage as workers to influence them to make better decisions. Just because we know corporations only value profit, to the detriment of human quality of life in general, doesn't mean we should accept it

As someone who holds stocks, I see value and appreciate that those corporations work hard to maximize my returns over providing charity employment.

Shareholders like me are the ones you have to convince, not some CEO or abstract concept of a corporation.

Fair warning, you will have to convince me that it is more important than supporting my children and maximizing my retirement.

Re: Macroeconomic changes have made it impossible for me to want to pay you

#320

Post by s1artibartfast »

jjk166 wrote: post #250
binarymax wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even harsher is that on the same day Microsoft laid off their staff, they announced a 10B investment in OpenAI.

Where do you think they got the money for the investment?

They saved it by not employing unprofitabe workers in past years.
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