Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Elastic lays off 7% of employees

elastic.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 251 posts

Re: Elastic lays off 7% of employees

#41

Post by georgemcbay »

Legend2440 wrote: post #27
bigyikes wrote: post #15

Why even bother with such a small layoff? Is there a reason to not just dial up your attrition for a while?

Your best employees are the most likely to leave via attrition, because they have the most opportunity elsewhere. In theory, a small layoff can target the least productive employees.

> Your best employees are the most likely to leave via attrition, because they have the most opportunity elsewhere.

But this remains true after a layoff and the layoff often acts a motivator for your best employees to start looking even if they weren't previously.

Usually they aren't thinking "well, glad I survived that layoff and now my job is safe forever", they are thinking "huh, is this a sinking ship? Maybe I should look around and see what else is out there..."

...speaking as someone that has been at several companies during layoffs...

Re: Elastic lays off 7% of employees

#43

Post by b3kart »

danans wrote: post #39
Avicebron wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know how the social contract between employees/employers gets rebuilt..feels like it needs to though

> I don't know how the social contract between employees/employers gets rebuilt. The only social contract that is guaranteed is the one written into law. That's why we have government, but the problem is that the government is (for a while now) captive to / bought by large corporations, not responsive to employees/workers/voters. Whatever principled social contract you may have thought large corporations upheld was s…

What’s written into law is just “contract”, not “social contract”. Your argument is basically “if it’s not illegal it’s not wrong”.

Re: Elastic lays off 7% of employees

#44

Post by gaiagraphia »

puszczyk wrote: post #2

Makes me sad to read it as an ex-Elastic employee. AI is used to justify the redundancies, and the company still expects to grow in this fiscal year. In the SEC filling the specifically mention more “head count” in “go-to-market” roles [1]. > a reduction of approximately 7% of our workforce > Advances in AI, automation, and technology are reshaping how work gets done, and we're changing with them. (…) That's what thi…

[flagged]

Re: Elastic lays off 7% of employees

#46

Post by Rekindle8090 »

tracerbulletx wrote: post #22

Before the 1980s layoffs were seen as a massive failure of the company and almost never happened to tenured employees unless the company was collapsing. Before we are all made to think this is normal and unavoidable behavior.

"Before the 1980s layoffs were seen as a massive failure of the company and almost never happened to tenured employees unless the company was collapsing. Before we are all made to think this is normal and unavoidable behavior."

Yeah and psychology was considered unserious, computers were still new, civil rights was barely ten years old and most work was unskilled labor.

What is your point? Stop using "not how it was 50 years ago" as an argument because it isn't one.

Re: Elastic lays off 7% of employees

#47

Post by Macha »

keithnz wrote: post #9

This just reaffirms my view is that big companies will lose headcount because of AI, but small and medium companies will (or at least have the potential to) leverage AI to do bigger and better things. This is because big companies could always spend big money on getting what they want made while small companies always have to tradeoff what they can realistically do with the resources they have.

Is elastic a big company? I’d put them somewhere between small and medium…

Re: Elastic lays off 7% of employees

#48

Post by eli_gottlieb »

b3kart wrote: post #43
danans wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't know how the social contract between employees/employers gets rebuilt. The only social contract that is guaranteed is the one written into law. That's why we have government, but the problem is that the government is (for a while now) captive to / bought by large corporations, not responsive to employees/workers/voters. Whatever principled social contract you may have thought large corporations upheld was s…

What’s written into law is just “contract”, not “social contract”. Your argument is basically “if it’s not illegal it’s not wrong”.

No, he's arguing that if it's not legal, it's not enforceable by men with nightsticks.

Re: Elastic lays off 7% of employees

#49

Post by eli_gottlieb »

sandeepkd wrote: post #13
ai_slop_hater wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've grown to hate executives. This is obviously an AI-generated nothing burger. They never mean what they say publicly.

Do not want to sound like as if I am taking their side but the reality is that all these decisions are mandated by some subset of investors in one way or another. These executives are replaceable, and they would be replaced if they do not toe the line. In other words these executives happen to choose a easy and beneficial path rather than standing up for the long term right thing for the company.

Ok so get rid of the investors then.
Post reply on HN