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Buffer Layoffs

open.buffer.com

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Re: Buffer Layoffs

#401

Post by pascalxus »

It sounds like they handled this layoff both compassionately and professionally, although the founders have a lot to learn about balancing their spending.

But still, every company and employee needs to recognize that your coworkers and company are not your family - this only leads to misplaced expectations.

One of things that makes America so competitive, is the concept of at will employment - the company can fire or lay you off anytime and you can leave at any time too. This is a reality we must accept for capitalism to work at optimum efficiency. I realize this may seem heartless and cruel, but that's why you need to have work/life balance. Ideally work should not account for more than 10 to 20 hours of your life per week. Sadly, for most of us it's 40+ hours. It is outside of "work", where you can form relationships that mirror a family like structure - in volunteer groups (unpaid), friendship circles, hobby groups, book clubs, etc. More of our lives should be dedicated to such organizations for us to remain better balanced.

Re: Buffer Layoffs

#402

Post by odbol_ »

What is with capitalism's obsession with constant growth? Buffer is a great app, I use it every day, but how in the f*ck do they need 100 employees to maintain it?

My company is writing an entire smartwatch OS, including companion apps for iOS and Android, and we're less than 10 people. Buffer needs 100 people just to write one multiplatform app? What is going on here?

Re: Buffer Layoffs

#403

Post by georgeecollins »

Bombthecat wrote: post #307
cyberpanther wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree the whole family thing is ridiculous. However, the performance focus of Netflix is probably too far on the other end and ridiculous too. People are not machines and performance will not always remain high. And also measurements of performance of people are often silly and useless. Performance will fluctuate and change with time. So a level a loyalty in the face of bad performance is still very advantageous ev…

As a company, why should you care about keeping low performers? Just hire new ones.

If someone is always a low performer that makes sense, but the Netflix question is what do you do with people who have been good performers but aren't at the moment. Netflix philosophy is that you cut those people ruthlessly.

Here are some problems with that: A lack of loyalty to your employees can have a corrosive effect on morale. Employees can end up having very short term goals, or manage their careers in ways that they try to keep themselves in advantageous positions rather than the ones that serve the company. Why should a star take on a risky project, if failure results in termination? Firing can also be a lazy way to deal with a variety of management problems.

Re: Buffer Layoffs

#404

Post by odbol_ »

zenlikethat wrote: post #291
dave2000 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're going to get perfectly good developers for $150,000. Are you going to get twice as good ones if you pay twice that, or just greedy ones? Have transparency and let someone else pay the darlings. You'll still get your work done.

This exact "greed" rhetoric is what helps businesses keep dev salaries down. You don't get greedy people for that much, you get smart business people (they know their worth and charge for it).

Some people may be willing to take less pay in order to have more control/freedom in a small startup, rather than just being a cog in the machine at Google or Microsoft.

Re: Buffer Layoffs

#405

Post by btilly »

rhizome wrote: post #344
aioprisan wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by banished from the world of business? I've seen variations of the core principles applied at every company I've worked for so far.

Me too, and I think they cause more problems than they solve.

I agree, but why?

My take is that the advice in those books is great advice for those seeking to gain and hold power in organizations. All else being equal, you should want the person running your organization to have mastered those ideas and be able to apply them productively for your organization.

That said, having an organization full of people who want to gain and hold power is a very, very bad thing. While you want the people at the top to do so, you don't want every Tom, Dick and Harry with a big ego doing so. So you are going to see an anti-pattern where a bunch of people who have no business trying to play Machiavellian games, attempt to do so. And part of the the reason why they should not do so is that they are not suited by temperament or competence.

Re: Buffer Layoffs

#406

Post by mahyarm »

disordinary wrote: post #342
mahyarm wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It trimmed the most recent employees, who decided to take the job after rejecting other job offers. Hiring 60 people in one year and then firing 10 of them in less than a year isn't nice and it doesn't feel nice. It's definitely a screw up in planning. I understand why it can happen for sure, but still sucks.

Yeah, also I get the FIFO idea of firing, but for some people who have given up jobs recently. Or have come out of a startup which has failed and owed them salary it can be really tough. Especially when it can take a couple of months to find a new job if you're committed to the remote lifestyle. The share amount of applications that companies who operate remotely get means that it takes six weeks for them to even get…

FIFO layoffs suck extra hard for the new people.

Re: Buffer Layoffs

#407

Post by jwebb99 »

pascalxus wrote: post #401

It sounds like they handled this layoff both compassionately and professionally, although the founders have a lot to learn about balancing their spending. But still, every company and employee needs to recognize that your coworkers and company are not your family - this only leads to misplaced expectations. One of things that makes America so competitive, is the concept of at will employment - the company can fire or…

> Ideally work should not account for more than 10 to 20 hours of your life per week.

Is this an opinion or is there some kind of rationale behind this? I don't mean to sound antagonistic, I'm just genuinely asking a question.

Re: Buffer Layoffs

#408

Post by [deleted] »

dsacco wrote: post #45
danso wrote: post #7

FWIW, here's their public spreadsheet of salaries and calculations. Not sure if it's been recently updated (on closer look, seems to reflect the founders' stated pay cuts, and new hires as recent as last month): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1l3bXAv8JE5RB9siMq36-... edit: Adding links to their blog posts: https://open.buffer.com/transparent-salaries/ https://open.buffer.com/introducing-open-salaries-at-buffe…

I admire Buffer for being so transparent with their salaries, but I don't think I would ever decide to work for a company that mandated it. In my (admittedly limited) experience, mandating salary transparency tends to increase the salaries of low performers and reduce the salaries of high performers. It usually eliminates the potential for negotiating raises and poses difficult questions about paying some employees m…

[deleted]

Re: Buffer Layoffs

#409

Post by calinet6 »

eloisant wrote: post #367
Bombthecat wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a company, why should you care about keeping low performers? Just hire new ones.

For many reasons: * Because performance vary with time (personal issues, motivation, etc.) so today's low performer may be tomorrow high performer * Because your metrics might not be good enough to actually discriminate low performers from high performers * Because such a policy encourages rivalry between employees instead of cooperation (not in the benefit of the company) And probably other reasons. So I have no pro…

Yep, the problem isn't deciding to keep low performers; it's that it's extremely difficult to identify them or separate them out from the performance of the system surrounding them.

This is basic Deming management wisdom: most of the overall performance of your company comes from the system and environment surrounding individuals, including the individuals themselves. Optimize the whole, not the parts; focusing on individual performance is just a distraction that drives overall performance down the drain.

Re: Buffer Layoffs

#410

Post by calinet6 »

bhuga wrote: post #281
compiler-guy wrote: post #36

This may be a little cynical but: "With our culture of bringing our whole selves to work and seeing team as family, with shared values we live by,..." In the American business world, you are an employee until you aren't. Confusing being an employee with being "family" is a mistake, both for the company and the employee. When times get bad, companies do what it takes to survive, including throwing employees overboard.…

There's plenty of agreement with you, so I'll offer a counterpoint. When a company is small--less than 10 or 20 people--it really can feel like a 'family' in that everyone would rather see the company fail than break apart. "Layoffs" aren't realistic in such an environment; the company is either working or it isn't. As a company grows, these rules necessarily change. It's just a fact of having more people, as the mom…

+1, a team is still a type of deep relationship. It might not be family, but it's still important and human.
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