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DocuSign to lay off 10% of its workforce, or about 700 employees

cnbc.com

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Re: DocuSign to lay off 10% of its workforce, or about 700 employees

#51

Post by Ekaros »

Honestly 7000 sounds high, but then you need to consider that they have to prove compliance in 188 different countries and 44 languages. And probably need a exactly not small team in each of these. And the customers are enterprise, banks and so on. So everything needs to be negotiated and documented just right and those aren't known to be fast processes. And then you might need separate infra for many of these. Or even many of the customers.

In the end it is not complexity of the product itself, but where and how and by whom it is used. And proving that it ticks all the boxes.

Re: DocuSign to lay off 10% of its workforce, or about 700 employees

#52

Post by c0brac0bra »

wombatpm wrote: post #44
thiscatis wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"An excuse to cut some projects that haven't panned out, dump a bunch of lower performers, and general other cleanup" How is stopping bad projects, letting go non-performers and cleaning up an excuse and not just plain smart business? People in this hackernews bubble are seriously disconnected from the real world.

How long were these bad projects allowed to fester? Why was nothing done sooner? Suddenly these CEOs wake up and decide now is the time panic?

On what basis would you conclude that "now" is not "soonest", other than conjecture?

Re: DocuSign to lay off 10% of its workforce, or about 700 employees

#53

Post by lupyro »

thiscatis wrote: post #31
ShakataGaNai wrote: post #12

At first it seemed like the layoffs were legitimately needed by some companies. But now it feels like "this is a good time" is the reason du jour. An excuse to cut some projects that haven't panned out, dump a bunch of lower performers, and general other cleanup. DocuSign may have laid-off 700 people, but they have 162 open jobs and most of those list "multiple locations" which probably means they will hire more than…

"An excuse to cut some projects that haven't panned out, dump a bunch of lower performers, and general other cleanup" How is stopping bad projects, letting go non-performers and cleaning up an excuse and not just plain smart business? People in this hackernews bubble are seriously disconnected from the real world.

A layoff should be a last resort, sever the arm to save the body type situation.

When projects don't pan out you first try to reallocate those people to more profitable areas. Also use this time to reflect on why these project didn't pan out, learn from those who worked on it and try to avoid making the same mistake in the future.

With bad performers, you put them on a performance improvement plan (pip).

General other cleanup is vague, but in most cases there's a more pragmatic approach.

Again, sometimes things are so bad you have to resort to worse options. We're in a recession, stocks are going to dip, just focus on the fundamentals and it'll be over before you know it. Instead execs are burning their culture and moral for a temporary boost.

Re: DocuSign to lay off 10% of its workforce, or about 700 employees

#54

Post by Pet_Ant »

_vbnz wrote: post #39
myth_drannon wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the price of real remote work culture which started in honest during the pandemic. I'm seeing US based employees replaced by LATAM based one. This is not the outsourcing scare of the 00's, this is real and it works very well.

As a Europoor it might actually increase our wages at least!

This is the first time I've heard the term "Europoor"... despite being ethnically "Europoor" (living abroad).

For those who haven't seen it before, it apparently mean "European, but from one of the poorer European nations, mainly from eastern Europe."

Re: DocuSign to lay off 10% of its workforce, or about 700 employees

#55

Post by tedivm »

myth_drannon wrote: post #30
nivenkos wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hope the employees form trade unions and workers' councils to help stop this bullshit. Look at DigitalOcean - literally doing "layoffs" whilst shifting hiring to Pakistan: https://www.theregister.com/2023/02/15/digitalocean_layoffs/

That's the price of real remote work culture which started in honest during the pandemic. I'm seeing US based employees replaced by LATAM based one. This is not the outsourcing scare of the 00's, this is real and it works very well.

I was hit by layoffs but just got several offers. One thing I've noticed is that startups and smaller companies are moving more junior work offshore but are still keeping the higher roles in house (I'm a Principal). Most of the companies I interviewed with talked about working with teams off shore. I will say that a couple of the companies did this for prototyping but were in the process of reversing it and bringing roles back to the US.

Long term I think this is going to result in some interesting changes- senior people don't just come from no where, they're junior people who gained experience and continued learning.

Re: DocuSign to lay off 10% of its workforce, or about 700 employees

#57

Post by nivenkos »

Pet_Ant wrote: post #54
_vbnz wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Europoor it might actually increase our wages at least!

This is the first time I've heard the term "Europoor"... despite being ethnically "Europoor" (living abroad). For those who haven't seen it before, it apparently mean "European, but from one of the poorer European nations, mainly from eastern Europe."

I'm from Northern Europe, but it became popular in the stupidpol and cscareerquestions subreddits on Reddit as European salaries are so, so much lower.

There was a salary survey in my company and even in Northern Europe - every single European engineer entry was less than half the salary of every single US engineer entry.

Re: DocuSign to lay off 10% of its workforce, or about 700 employees

#58

Post by michpoch »

Pet_Ant wrote: post #54
_vbnz wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Europoor it might actually increase our wages at least!

This is the first time I've heard the term "Europoor"... despite being ethnically "Europoor" (living abroad). For those who haven't seen it before, it apparently mean "European, but from one of the poorer European nations, mainly from eastern Europe."

I don't think Eastern Europe would provide many software engineers nowadays, with the exodus from Russia and war in Ukraine. The poor part of Europe is now south - but I am not seeing many devs there either.

Re: DocuSign to lay off 10% of its workforce, or about 700 employees

#59

Post by mtmail »

mgsk wrote: post #47
trashtestcrash wrote: post #11

Why are the majority of these layoffs around the 10% mark?

I forget where I heard this, but someone put it this way: to the markets, 10% is a positive signal that a company is cutting some cruft, but 25% is a negative signal that a company is in trouble.

After the first dotcom boom I survived two layoff waves of 7%, about 6 months apart. Our branch wasn't loosing money but every office had to report enough employees to headquarters so the 7% can be met because that's the number that was used in the press release and earnings call. As others wrote at the same time company was still hiring (at least engineers) and some marketing positions just moved to an agency which then billed us per hour for the same person.

Re: DocuSign to lay off 10% of its workforce, or about 700 employees

#60

Post by mpwoz »

mpwoz wrote: post #56

This is Docusign’s second round of layoffs in 5 months, they laid off 9% in September: DocuSign to cut workforce by 9% as part of restructuring plan https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33010050

Since I can’t edit, found the original hn thread DocuSign to cut workforce by 9% as part of restructuring plan https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33010050
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