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Tell HN: Confluent laying off 8% of staff

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Re: Tell HN: Confluent laying off 8% of staff

#311

A lot of companies do this just as a matter of course. They call it "trimming the fat", eg, laying off the bottom 5%, 10% or whatever percent of employees, in hopes the future hires will be higher performing.

What makes you think companies actually use performance as a metric to do layoffs? Why makes you think they aren't just using a random number generator to find people to trim?

Re: Tell HN: Confluent laying off 8% of staff

#312
post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a little odd that they pulled the announcement page. But the repo is still available so who knows. Maybe they thought it would be poorly received by other employees after the layoffs? Seems like a stretch.

It was pulled because they used the term "open source", and the Confluent Community License, while being source-available and allows modifications prevents use of the code in a SaaS environment. So kinda not totally open. But it's just the confluent cli - it's not like someone's gonna base their SaaS around it, should just be BSDed or something.

I don't really understand the intensity of folks that insist on open source meaning something very narrow and specific but different strokes. To me something is open source if I can use it and since I have no intention of ever competing with any of these companies in the SaaS space I don't really care that my rights are limited because they effectively aren't.

This is going to sound stupid because I didn't put any real thought into it but: shouldn't open source advocates also be against calling the GPL open source? It doesn't just constrain what you are permitted to do it also obligates you to take certain actions. I like the GPL personally and it's obviously different from these anti-SaaS licenses but isn't all of this really about freedom?

Re: Tell HN: Confluent laying off 8% of staff

#313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a reference to the Google CEO's statement about their layoffs and I think the point is that it's an empty platitude.

Only an empty platitude if one interprets it as meant for those laid off. But if you think about it as a message to remaining employees, the board, and to shareholders, it isn't an empty platitude at all.

Perhaps but even then it's still pointless. Over-hiring was a strategy to take advantage of easy money and layoffs are a strategy to clean it up when the well runs dry. The very act of laying people off indicates that you are taking responsibility for changing direction.

That said, when someone says they're taking full responsibility there's an implication that they're going to take on pain or consequences. I don't say I'm taking full responsibility for washing my car when it gets dirty. Not saying he should be fired or take a pay cut, just that he said something dumb and did a terrible job of reading the room.

Re: Tell HN: Confluent laying off 8% of staff

#314
post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems absurd. I've worked at big companies. They sometimes have staff, often _lots_ of staff, like whole orgs, that are a net drain on the company. What's the alternative in that situation? Granted, getting into that situation was probably "executives making stupid mistakes" -- seems like it usually is -- and granted, they're probably not saying "we have to do these layoffs because I was an idiot last year", and…

> That seems absurd. I've worked at big companies. They sometimes have staff, often _lots_ of staff, like whole orgs, that are a net drain on the company. What's the alternative in that situation? It’s tough. Look at Amazon. They cull the bottom 5% every year. It has a negative affect on morale because everyone is continuously on edge and having a bad month or two can be dangerous. Look at a layoff, it craters morale…

I worked at Amazon (a while ago) and they both (a) did not do that and (b) what firing they did not, imo, affect morale. If anything the fact that really bad engineers were quickly removed was probably a net positive for morale.

There were a couple of dubious episodes, though, where a bad manager tried to do something to people they didn't like. Sometimes it worked (aka, negatively affected people) and sometimes the manager got in trouble instead. So it's not like all good. But it was heavily dependent on the managers you ended up under.

Re: Tell HN: Confluent laying off 8% of staff

#316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe? Depends on the severity of the regression, how much it cost, whether there was negligence or carelessness involved etc. And arguably you'd first fire the person who set up a process that allows regressions to be pushed to prod so easily. Underperformance is not a single mistake. It's a pattern of behaviors that compound.

A CEO looking at the economic climate of 2020-2021 and thinking they needed to hire to support the growth in demand for their products is not being negligent, they simply lacked the crystal ball that would have told them the Fed was going to slam the brakes on the economy last year. Even the Fed said they wouldn't be doing that. In light of what's happened, companies need to get leaner to survive. Now if these CEOs d…

What's the point in paying people tens or hundreds of millions of dollars if they make the same predictions and bad decisions as everyone else? And have exactly one contingency plan if things go sideways? Which is also everyone else's plan btw and not even a very good one. They hired in a seller's market for talent, and are now firing in a buyer's market.

Re: Tell HN: Confluent laying off 8% of staff

#318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe? Depends on the severity of the regression, how much it cost, whether there was negligence or carelessness involved etc. And arguably you'd first fire the person who set up a process that allows regressions to be pushed to prod so easily. Underperformance is not a single mistake. It's a pattern of behaviors that compound.

Yep, we just had this happen with a newer staff member. When we contacted the primary maintainer of the regressed system, they replied “you need to overwrite XYZ binary/config files using the backup build from ABC machine after patching”… like how is this suitable for a prod scenario? We’d have been foolish to fire the new staff member who technically pushed the regression.

Sounds like a lack of accountability. Heads must roll.

Re: Tell HN: Confluent laying off 8% of staff

#320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, but I fail to see nearly 1% monthly inflation in the biggest expense category - shelter - as a sign of "being on the right track".

I agree that's high, even for the last year, and certainly not a good or welcome thing, but I'm very glad it's offset by gas prices coming down. If "being on the right track" means that an increase in one category can't be offset by a decrease in another, that seems like an impossible bar to clear. It's not obvious to me why inflation there has increased even as mortgage rates have skyrocketed due to the fed; people/…

Shelter and wages are the two core sticky categories of inflation. You don’t negotiate your lease or employment terms every month. Even if there is a change in supply/demand dynamics, it won’t be visible in the market immediately.

This is also why the Fed has been trying to engineer a soft recession. As long as labor markets are tight, there will be sustained wage inflation. And as long as there is wage inflation, there will be people willing to pay higher rates for longer.

The dominant unspoken narrative in the financial markets is that the Fed will overplay its hand and cause a hard recession, at which point they’ll reverse their rate hikes. And when that happens, all the money sitting on the sidelines will reenter the market, leading to sustained inflation. No one really thinks that this beast can be tamed so easily.

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