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Changes at YC

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Re: Changes at YC

#551

Post by Jochim »

rizzom5000 wrote: post #525
samtheDamned wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the risk is supposed to lie in the hands of the investors, the founders, and the people who make the decisions. When the risks taken by the people at the top succeed, they profit, when they fail, they tend to push that onto their employees through layoffs and withholding raises. Then they will turn back around saying that they deserve their lavish lifestyles because they are the ones taking the risks. You can…

You have a point. It also seems the job wouldn't have existed without someone willing to take the risk? I myself weigh risk in my decisions frequently. I am full aware that a layoff (or firing) is possible every time I accept a job. I'm also fully aware of what my employers obligations are to me. I'm not sure I've ever felt that my employer 'owed' me more than that. Maybe my life would be better if I did?

I think the thing that makes the recent layoffs so controversial is their context.

Layoffs on this scale are understandable, maybe even justifiable, in the case of a 2008 style market crash.

Layoffs on this scale do not feel understandable or justifiable given that many of the companies are extremely profitable, were hiring during, and have continued to hire afterwards. Add to that the prevalence of stock buybacks and the sheer scale of recent hiring and the question becomes why should the employees be the ones to feel the consequence of this behaviour?

The often billionaire CEO tearing up over how hard it was for him to fire thousands of people but "is using it as an opportunity to take responsibility for his mistakes" is simply the cherry on the cake.

Re: Changes at YC

#552

Post by jq-r »

CRConrad wrote: post #541
jq-r wrote: post #514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or if instead of Nigeria you want more “civilized” examples, look no further than Eastern European governments. Here in Croatia some years ago a statistic came out that we have 4 times more government employees than Germany. Just for comparison: Germany has 83M people, Croatia little less than 4M. I shudder to think about that metric now as I’m sure its even worse.

The respective population numbers are irrelevant, because those “four time more” government employees must already be in terms relative to population size – so that's already taken into account. (Just think about it: Surely Germany has more than a million government employees? If Croatia had over four times that in absolute terms, more than its entire population would work for the government.)

Yeah, that's fair. Thanks for pointing it out.

Re: Changes at YC

#553

Post by hnaccount141 »

lcw wrote: post #123
voz_ wrote: post #46

> Seventeen of our teammates are impacted today. Never allow corporations to speak in passive, weak, blameless terms. Use direct, honest, language, and force them to do the same. "Seventeen of our teammates are impacted today." - > "We laid off 17 employees today" "I was impacted by layoffs" -> "Google laid me off" etc

I think this is just a matter of opinion. When something severe happens it's natural to not use the most harsh term to describe the event. It doesn't seems like something malicious. When describing a death many people will say "they are no longer with us" instead of describing the circumstance of death. When talking about traumatic events we as a society have a natural propensity to not use triggering words. There is…

"John is no longer with us" is a completely reasonable thing to say, unless it's coming from the person who shot John.

Re: Changes at YC

#554

Post by komali2 »

andsoitis wrote: post #523
ScoobleDoodle wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a necessary but not sufficient condition.

Here are 10 billionaires who grew up poor: - Oprah Winfrey ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oprah_Winfrey ) - Howard Schultz ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Schultz ) - Ralph Lauren ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Lauren ) - Larry Ellison ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Ellison ) - Kenneth Langone ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Langone ) - David Murdock ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_H._…

10? So less likely than winning the lottery.

Re: Changes at YC

#555

Post by kensai »

fblp wrote: post #368

Wow. First time I've seen a layoff post that starts with boasting success. Summary: "6% of the companies we invest in are worth a billion dollars. We're laying of 20% of our staff. We appreciate their efforts. No comment on how we're taking care of those laid off or remaining staff"

They have "graduated"... :-/

Re: Changes at YC

#556

Post by t-vi »

jq-r wrote: post #552
CRConrad wrote: post #541

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The respective population numbers are irrelevant, because those “four time more” government employees must already be in terms relative to population size – so that's already taken into account. (Just think about it: Surely Germany has more than a million government employees? If Croatia had over four times that in absolute terms, more than its entire population would work for the government.)

Yeah, that's fair. Thanks for pointing it out.

In fact, counting federal, state and local governments, Germany has some 6 million government employees (~4.8m directly and ~1.2m in public agencies). Also, there might be things that are government provided in one country and private in another (postal service, telcom and utilities, railway, schools, childcare...), which you would need to account for as well.

Re: Changes at YC

#557

Post by Draiken »

benjaminsuch wrote: post #475
Draiken wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It always astonishes me seeing how ingrained this individualistic capitalistic mindset is on so many. People have been brainwashed. These are people. This could be you, or your friend, espouse, mother, sister... And just because you can bounce back, it doesn't mean this is okay. Even if they have money saved and can use that to find a (hopefully) better next job, that's not easy or guaranteed. It seems that this "cri…

This has nothing to do with being brainwashed. Couldn't we say the same about your stance? Yes they are people, but a company is NOT responsible for them. Where does this come from? An employee has an employment relationship and not a friendship and while it certainly sucks to be let go, it's not the company who is the bad guy. From what I see, you can't take off your personal morale views from business decisions. >…

I guess you could say people are brainwashed about anything. So fair point, I take that back. I was just frustrated because it's such a "default" answer for people when the vast majority doesn't even consider that this is not the only way the world can work.

>Yes they are people, but a company is NOT responsible for them. Where does this come from? An employee has an employment relationship and not a friendship and while it certainly sucks to be let go, it's not the company who is the bad guy.

I agree the company is not fully responsible for them. But they have to have some degree of responsibility. There's an enormous power imbalance in play here and right now companies can just ditch people like garbage and increase stock prices at will just because they can.

The reality is that people don't choose to work. You either work or starve. So when we give companies that much power over our lives, I believe they should have a responsibility for those they employ.

> Is in your opinion no company is allowed to let go people, except if they pamper them with a big severance package? Sorry, but your post reads very childish and naive.

I don't quite get this. My point was that we've been conditioned to believe that letting people go is okay and it's every person for himself.

But you immediately go to the other end of the spectrum saying we can't ever let people go? That's quite childish and naive in my view.

There's a whole range here between basically zero consequences (what happens today) and you can't let people go. But once again it comes back to the conditioning that we all have that this is the system and there's nothing we can do about it. If we can't even imagine how it could be different, nothing will ever change.

Re: Changes at YC

#558

Post by v0idzer0 »

nirui wrote: post #485
joosters wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can't even bring themselves to say the words 'laying off', 'redundancies' or even the milder 'letting go'. The staff are merely 'impacted' by this change in focus! Execs just feel like they need to retreat to the safety of euphemisms in these kind of announcements, after first boasting about how well the company is doing, of course.

If I would guess, this kind of wording reflects a view which is quite common in Silicon Valley companies: an employee is an (human) asset for the company to utilize. Once the skill of the employee is no longer needed, they can be dispose of. If I may guess it further, this view might be shared across many high-paying industries. Tech companies in China had similar mass layoffs in the past few years, which prompted ma…

> an employee is an (human) asset for the company to utilize. Once the skill of the employee is no longer needed, they can be dispose of.

This is exactly accurate and there’s nothing amoral about that. The flip side is a job is just a way to make money and when it’s no longer wanted or needed, the employee is free to dispose of it

Re: Changes at YC

#559

Post by dvt »

Zetice wrote: post #505
dvt wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because you don't understand that a bailout is exclusive to investors in the direct company receiving financial support Yeah, it's clear at this point that not only are you trying to play an annoying little semantic game, but to make things worse, you also have no material domain knowledge. For reference, a bailout explicitly does not serve investors, but rather immediate business counterparties. From the second so…

> From the second source: "A bailout occurs when the government makes payments (including loans, loan guarantees, cash, and other types of consideration) to a liquidity-constrained private agent in order to enable that agent to pay its creditors and counterparties, when the agent is not entitled to those payments under a statutory scheme." So literally not what happened, got it. Of course you don't feel burdened by t…

> Frankly David, you should know better.

Weirdly making things personal is often an indication of losing, not winning, an argument. Either way, I should know better than to get into debates with brand new anon accounts on HN. Cheers.

Re: Changes at YC

#560

Post by CRConrad »

listenallyall wrote: post #548
CRConrad wrote: post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A) Why should any profession lack a union? B) If the problem is that one profession lacks a union, wouldn't the more natural solution be to start one? Problem solved!

Sure, you're welcome to start one. My hat is off to you and/or 'jachee' if it comes to fruition. That takes a lot of real work, however, as opposed to posting a few snarky internet comments and calling it a day.

I don't have to; where I live, we already have one. So yeah, sure, easy for me to post snarky comments. But at least not quite as useless as posting comments that are not only snarky but also idiotic, like comments to the effect that one shouldn't have a union. So what are you doing to start one?
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