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GitHub to lay off 10% and close all offices

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Re: GitHub to lay off 10% and close all offices

#511

Post by dragonwriter »

rossdavidh wrote: post #420

Closing all offices, I have to say, makes it way easier to do more layoffs. Having been through layoffs in semiconductor manufacturing in the 90's, when you had to, you know, get the people from work and take them to a place and all that, it involved paying a lot of money for extra security and such. With no offices, it's a lot easier, and you never have to meet the person face to face. Five years from now, I think w…

> Closing all offices, I have to say, makes it way easier to do more layoffs.

Particularly of the people responsible for managing physical offices.

Re: GitHub to lay off 10% and close all offices

#512

Post by ben7799 »

elforce002 wrote: post #427

Well, by this time is clear that company loyalty doesn't exist anymore. I think a new market will rise up from this debacle: companies selling good & services with strong employee loyalty values. These companies will use this as a marketing hack to get the public (mostly middle class)on their side, just like the concept of "parallel economy" is getting people to choose companies aligned with their values.

Company loyalty was gone 20 years ago or more.

Re: GitHub to lay off 10% and close all offices

#513

Post by silvestrov »

gorjusborg wrote: post #474
geuis wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look, you can't have it both ways. People on HN are always talking badly about companies that don't allow work from home, or require at least a couple days in the office. Then a company says it's going entirely remote (not including the layoff context) and people shit on that. Which is it? As for the layoffs, I don't have anything to add to that. There a Microsoft decision.

There are a bunch of different people reacting to a stressful change in economy and its effects on the job market. That's all. It may be 'easier' to fire people when you don't have to deal with their physical presence, but I doubt that factors much into the decision overall. My bet is that companies are battening down the hatches because they see strong headwinds economically (or are using other layoffs as an excuse…

It's difficult for a company to work well when 50% are in office and 50% are remote.

If you can't get enough good employees in office, then it is smarter to go 100% remote as you now have an easier time hiring and working globally.

Re: GitHub to lay off 10% and close all offices

#514

Post by simplicio »

JasserInicide wrote: post #471
geuis wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look, you can't have it both ways. People on HN are always talking badly about companies that don't allow work from home, or require at least a couple days in the office. Then a company says it's going entirely remote (not including the layoff context) and people shit on that. Which is it? As for the layoffs, I don't have anything to add to that. There a Microsoft decision.

I'll contend that while I've been fully taken advantage of remote work (and probably want my next job to be remote too), I still fully believe it's a long term "leading lambs to the slaughter" type of plan. Companies save big on remote in so many ways. No more offices. No more weekly happy hours (just do a company retreat every 6 months). They can now depress salaries even further because they have a wider pool from…

Maybe, but that works both ways. Employees are often reluctant to leave jobs where they have a lot of personal relationships, or if getting a new job would entail moving to a new city/state/country, even if jumping ship would entail a sizable payraise or other improvement in working conditions.

In an industry where remote work is the norm and changing jobs doesn't even require changing offices, people are much less likely to give up some pay to stay where they are.

Re: GitHub to lay off 10% and close all offices

#515

Post by rnk »

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #238
romellem wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not kidding, one of the reasons I left my last job was when our parent company forced Outlook, Sharepoint, and Teams on us (vs. Google mail, Google Drive, and Slack). That change on its own isn't the worst thing of course, there were other reasons why I was considering leaving, but it was definitely one of the last straws. Those MS solutions are just worse than the competition, and getting frustrated at your bugg…

Gmail is so much better than outlook it's honestly insane. The way it handles email chains is infinitely better than outlooks, which often leads to responses just getting lost when someone replies all to a message that wasn't the most recent. Honestly I wouldn't be surprised if this is 'our' fault, as I'm sure someone will point out. But in the years of using Gmail at my last employer, it just worked.

I love gmail, use it every day. But the chat in the paid corp version of email is so painful. I hate it with a passion. Gmail also now has the stupid left side bar where it doesn't show the gmail folders unless you click first. I wish gmail chat would just copy slack.

Re: GitHub to lay off 10% and close all offices

#516

Post by swozey »

0xmarcin wrote: post #384
vinayan3 wrote: post #229

GitHub has had so many outages in the last year. I can't imagine this is going to get better if they are going to lay off 10% of people. So many companies developer productivity relies on GitHub being up. I hope the remaining the folks who were not impacted can make large strides in increasing reliability of GitHub.

If you divide outages / new feature then they are one of the best. Last few years they innovated like crazy. Opening VSCode straight from the repo is still my best feature. CoPilot hype is shadowed by chatGTP, but still it is one of their most impressing inventions. GitHub Actions, entire project management (although I still cannot choose colors for "sticky notes" in the project board). They where very innovative com…

What do you like about GHA over Gitlab CI? I much, much prefer Gitlab. I've used both at companies for 5+ years. GHA are getting much better and the GHA Marketplace is a game changer. Gitlab needs that bad. But I find I have to be much more declarative with GHA (not using pre-mades) and get things done much more quickly with Gitlab.

Gitlabs price increases over the years have been unpleasant though.

Re: GitHub to lay off 10% and close all offices

#517

Post by Salgat »

rossdavidh wrote: post #420

Closing all offices, I have to say, makes it way easier to do more layoffs. Having been through layoffs in semiconductor manufacturing in the 90's, when you had to, you know, get the people from work and take them to a place and all that, it involved paying a lot of money for extra security and such. With no offices, it's a lot easier, and you never have to meet the person face to face. Five years from now, I think w…

Sounds more like it's just easier to use favoritism that's not based on job performance when doing layoffs if you are face-to-face with these folks on a regular basis.

Re: GitHub to lay off 10% and close all offices

#518

Post by andrew_ »

mathverse wrote: post #30

I am absolutely certain this is to suppress wages and employee rights. It is a coordinated effort across the industry and should be immediately investigated.

Disagree. What we saw for the last 4-6 years was a 0% interest rate phenomenon. The bubble has popped, hiring as a measure of growth is over, and things are normalizing.

Re: GitHub to lay off 10% and close all offices

#519

Post by laurels-marts »

simplicio wrote: post #514
JasserInicide wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll contend that while I've been fully taken advantage of remote work (and probably want my next job to be remote too), I still fully believe it's a long term "leading lambs to the slaughter" type of plan. Companies save big on remote in so many ways. No more offices. No more weekly happy hours (just do a company retreat every 6 months). They can now depress salaries even further because they have a wider pool from…

Maybe, but that works both ways. Employees are often reluctant to leave jobs where they have a lot of personal relationships, or if getting a new job would entail moving to a new city/state/country, even if jumping ship would entail a sizable payraise or other improvement in working conditions. In an industry where remote work is the norm and changing jobs doesn't even require changing offices, people are much less l…

>Employees are often reluctant to leave jobs where they have a lot of personal relationships

That sounds like having a life. I guess the alternative is to isolate yourself to a point where you don't have any personal relationships. No hard choices then.

Re: GitHub to lay off 10% and close all offices

#520

Post by vlowther »

ricardobeat wrote: post #486
JasserInicide wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll contend that while I've been fully taken advantage of remote work (and probably want my next job to be remote too), I still fully believe it's a long term "leading lambs to the slaughter" type of plan. Companies save big on remote in so many ways. No more offices. No more weekly happy hours (just do a company retreat every 6 months). They can now depress salaries even further because they have a wider pool from…

If that’s the case then why hasn’t the shift happened sooner?

Covid pandemic proved that most office jobs can be done remotely with little to no loss of productivity.
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