For some demographic groups, labor force participation is significantly lower. This is what I’m referring to. Unemployment only factors in labor force participants. Data: https://www.bls.gov/emp/tables/civilian-labor-force-particip...
Employment to population ratio does not exclude anyone. It is the number of people divided by the number of people who are employed. It is also not 2016 anymore. The prime-age labor force participation rate has risen about a point since then. Labor force participation rate is also not a measure of employment. It is the number of people who are employed plus the number of people who are actively looking for employment…
That ratio varies significantly for African Americans, rural whites and African Americans and Hispanic women.
When I left my previous employer, the reason was absolutely arbitrary. The new one paid more. I didn't have to wait for the old company to not pay me the agreed upon salary, spend months offering them a "compensation improvement plan", and documenting their failure to follow it in fear that they might sue me for leaving for the "wrong" reason. It's amazing how people pretend at-will employment is somehow equal for bo…
> When I left my previous employer, the reason was absolutely arbitrary. The new one paid more. That is literally the inverse of what arbitrary means: existing or coming about seemingly at random or by chance or as a capricious and unreasonable act of will Now: > I didn't have to wait for the old company to not pay me the agreed upon salary, spend months offering them a "compensation improvement plan", and documentin…
b : based on or determined by individual preference or convenience rather than by necessity or the intrinsic nature of something
Seriously, if you cannot see that "fire by email" is far more impersonal and disconnecting than compassionately meeting with the employee 1 on 1 and giving them a definitive exit path along with the financial support to do so, then please do not ever work in HR or be responsible for employing people in the future. To subject ALL your employees to the 50/50 prospect that they will have a job come next working day is t…
"Fire by email" isn't a bad option for layoffs in the double digit percentage as long as the delay between notification and sending the emails is low. Meeting 1 on 1 only works in non targeted low scale layoffs, anywhere else and it just creates hysteria. Also fire by email doesn't mean there isn't a definitive exit path or no financial support. The article itself states the email claimed a minimum of 8 weeks of pay…
> Also it's 90/10 not 50/50.
If 90/10 from the company perspective. From the employee perspective, it sounds like everyone at SpaceX went home on Friday wondering "Do I have a job come Monday?". To each and every one of them, the prospect of having a job versus NOT having a job would have been 50/50 as they had no insight into the decision making process for the layoffs.
Sure, for an employee who may have known they had made a lot of mistakes or were obviously underperforming etc., their knowledge that the chances of them being fired could have been skewed higher, but I am willing to bet that there will be many people thinking "My work is mission critical and I am a hard worker, I think I will be safe..." who will still unexpectedly get the pink slip on Monday.
Seriously, if you cannot see that "fire by email" is far more impersonal and disconnecting than compassionately meeting with the employee 1 on 1 and giving them a definitive exit path along with the financial support to do so, then please do not ever work in HR or be responsible for employing people in the future. To subject ALL your employees to the 50/50 prospect that they will have a job come next working day is t…
> To subject ALL your employees to the 50/50 prospect that they will have a job come next working day is tantamount to playing Russian Roulet How is it 50/50? It is 10%.
As I mentioned above - it is 10% from the company perspective.
However, it sounded like every employee at SpaceX went home on Friday thinking "Do I still have a job come Monday??". Because no other information seemed to have been imparted as to the selection criteria for the redundancies, every single employee wouldn't have known if they would keep their jobs or not.
Unless they knew they were blatant underperformers or had lots of black marks against them on file, their chances of keeping their jobs was the same as the chance they could be on the 'hit list' for redundancy. 50/50. I am willing to bet that even employees who thought their job was as safe as houses and that they were considered good employees would find them self on the 'let go' list.
You left out the part where managers are held accountable for failing to help their staff be productive. It’s easy to rant about slackers but in my experience they’re rare (and 100% protected by management) compared to people who are given conflicting or bad incentives or – by far the most common – work which appears simple only from a distance (e.g. how enterprise software developers can take 3 months to add a butto…
> in my experience [slackers are] rare (and 100% protected by management) Can you give an example of how you see slackers being protected by management? I wonder if we have the same definition of the word slacker. In my experience the people protected by management are not doing much in terms of daily work, but they work a lot to always stay on top when it comes to prestige and taking credit from other people's work.…
My thought was just that this doesn’t happen in a vacuum: their management should know that they’re not performing, irrespective of exactly how. I’ve seen some egregious examples (e.g. F500 online store which was down every morning from 5am to whenever the DBA rolled in, a dude who’d head to the bathroom at 9:30 with a coffee mug & the newspaper, someone who went out to lunch 10-3, regularly being VERY drunk, etc.), and in every case this was well known but there were reasons why nothing was done (members of the same frat, having an affair, being drinking buddies, too lazy to do the paperwork, being high enough in the management hierarchy that you’d have to explain not having acted before promoting then, etc.). So while I blame the person for taking a paycheck they weren’t earning, I attribute more blame to the people whose job it is to correct problems like that, especially since they’re paid more and given greater status and authority for [theoretically] improving the performance of the larger group.
It's not unsual to layoff 10% of your workforce in hardware companies but it is unusual for a "growing" company. To put in perspective Pratt and Whitney laid off about 10-15% a couple years ago when they were in between the phasing out of the old engine and ramping up the new engine. Sometimes companies are unlucky because there is a drought where the demand for the new stuff is lower than the demand of old stuff but…
It is normal to layoff about 5% per year, you trim the one in the 20 that is the weakest and it has positive, not negative effects. Going to 10% is a bit stretch, but still workable. In the last companies I worked, if up to 20% of the people left one day it would have an immediate positive impact on the performance, less complexity to deal with and more focus to work on real stuff.
> if up to 20% of the people left one day it would have an immediate positive impact on the performance, less complexity to deal with and more focus to work on real stuff.
Maybe in a fairy tale. In the real world, the 20% that were laid off are unlikely to be the 20% that should have been laid off.
SpaceX switched from carbon fiber construction for their next rocket to stainless steel. My guess is at least a big part of this workforce reduction relates to people involved in cf which are no longer needed. Additionally they had a lot of people working on crew dragon which as it now nears it's launch might not be needed any more( e.g. pica heatshield, electronics, software developers etc). Same goes for the now ma…
I just don't buy the Carbon Fiber vs Stainless construction. They aren't used for the same thing (low weight structural stiffness vs heat conduction, radiation & appearance). From what I understand it was a water tank contactor that did the hopper in Boca Chica... and it will never face lanch/re-entry stresses. That won't replace anyone.
How will they inspect and test all the welds required... I am still shocked that the BFR is not carbon fiber.
There's at-will employment model on one side, and the Japanese Salaryman model on the other side (low vs high loyalty). As usual, the sweet spot is somewhere in between the extremes.
I imagine it's possible that dehumanizing layoffs like this will put SpaceX at a competitive disadvantage, its lunch eventually getting eaten by companies who do care enough about their employees to interact with them in person regarding the business of the company and their place in it, good or bad. This would come out in increased efficiencies due to no surprise-axed-or-not email always threatening to land in their…
What is dehumanizing? Either way is awful, but companies have to make tough decisions and communicating those is not easy. Many people prefer an email over awkward semi-genuine HR discussions. Coworkers and manager will reach out afterwards in private and in person if they really cared about the connection.
It's dehumanizing in the strictest sense of the word: communicated by text on a screen rather than in-person.
I work for GM (for now). 15% layoffs were announced before Christmas... No one knows when the ax will drop. Rumor is Monday or Tuesday. Moral is low and the office has been pretty damn quiet. Meanwhile we just raises earnings forecast today...
The forecast increase is probably a direct result of the layoff and they needed it to "meet the quarter". I have the quarterly cycle. I find it extremely bad for both the society and companies when nobody takes the long term view.
No... It was part of the 2018 announcement. 2018 was better than expected so they revised 2019 forecast.
"Early Friday, GM said 2018 EPS will exceed previous guidance of $5.80-$6.20. It also expects to surpass an earlier view of adjusted automotive free cash flow of $4 billion."