If your company truly has a bloated unproductive staff that lacks direction the problem is at the top of the organization. It sounds like what really needs to happen is the board step in and change senior leadership.
This is the only right answer
Google execs threaten workers with layoffs: ‘There will be blood on the streets’
61–70 of 73 posts
Re: Google execs threaten workers with layoffs: ‘There will be blood on the streets’
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
In my experience the unproductive employees bitch and moan the most, taking valuable time from those who do wish to work and contribute to the company.
That may be true in some cases, but have you ever considered you may be attributing cause and effect to a correlation with another explanation? For instance, perhaps it's not "unproductive employees bitch and moan because they're unproductive and not willing to work", but "employees who are burned out bitch and moan because they're burned out, and also become unproductive because they're burned out"? I.E. not a funda…
Why are you staying there? If you are capable of being a high performer, go somewhere and do that. It's much more rewarding personally and professionally, even if the money is less.
Re: Google execs threaten workers with layoffs: ‘There will be blood on the streets’
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
All of this requires the coasting person to be identified correctly every single time. Some of the team leaders will fire a non-coasting person because that person looked like coasting, while the real coaster looked busy. And then morale crashes even more, and you start looking over your shoulder, especially if you have a boss that does not understand who really carries the load. So much management theory supposes al…
> All of this requires the coasting person to be identified correctly every single time. Isn't there a famous story about Bell Labs, where there was this guy who made others signficantly more productive because he asked good questions? Obvious coaster who should be terminated forthwith!
I remember the time I really hoped Google would be the Bell Labs of our time. This era seems so distant now...
Re: Google execs threaten workers with layoffs: ‘There will be blood on the streets’
#64Executives of large corporations must really have a good understanding of the monetary system and the flow of money through the economy given how quickly and decisively they respond to changes in monetary policy.
Sometimes it seems like macroeconomics are a separate parallel universe and you need to be above a certain size to have access.
Re: Google execs threaten workers with layoffs: ‘There will be blood on the streets’
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
So... people are quitting, and in response, companies are enacting hiring freezes, effectively refusing to compete with each other, to make people more afraid of quitting? Does... does that not sound very collision-y to anyone else?
It could be :) Another possible explanation is: A bad economy lead to a lot of layoffs: https://layoffs.fyi/ . These layoffs resulted in employees being upset and quitting in addition to layoffs. Now there are a lot of job seekers and fewer jobs making it a bad time to quit. IDK :shrug:
When the Great Resignation meets a great recession
Re: Google execs threaten workers with layoffs: ‘There will be blood on the streets’
#66Re: Google execs threaten workers with layoffs: ‘There will be blood on the streets’
#67I remember this royally backfired with Microsoft in '08 and '09. They did some rounds of layoffs, froze raises, etc. whereas all the other major tech companies held off on doing the same. There was _massive_ attrition and Balmer had to do multiple emergency pay bumps to the entire company's engineering roles to keep people from jumping ship in the following years.
It's so very sad watching this all play out again, having tried to warn people but they insisted programming was recession proof, there was no bubble, no recession, etc.
This is why we keep repeating the same mistakes. Those in power do it knowingly and the younger generation of workers knows no better.
Just a few weeks ago I warned of this in the uber hiring freeze post, and there were staunch deniers.
Re: Google execs threaten workers with layoffs: ‘There will be blood on the streets’
#68If your company truly has a bloated unproductive staff that lacks direction the problem is at the top of the organization. It sounds like what really needs to happen is the board step in and change senior leadership.
Exactly. Of course, none of this is going to come down on the heads of the people in the C-suite who are pulling down the hundreds of millions in comp to prevent, at least in theory, _precisely this scenario_. We've built a system where once you're above a certain point in the hierarchy, it doesn't matter how bad you fuck up; Pichai and Zuckerberg and Hastings et al. can just feed their own employees into the woodchipper and keep making stern noises about how everyone else needs to shape up.
Re: Google execs threaten workers with layoffs: ‘There will be blood on the streets’
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
In my experience the unproductive employees bitch and moan the most, taking valuable time from those who do wish to work and contribute to the company.
That may be true in some cases, but have you ever considered you may be attributing cause and effect to a correlation with another explanation? For instance, perhaps it's not "unproductive employees bitch and moan because they're unproductive and not willing to work", but "employees who are burned out bitch and moan because they're burned out, and also become unproductive because they're burned out"? I.E. not a funda…
It's a complex situation, with no universal driver, but I have put thought into it and your suggestions aren't entirely novel.
I'll use a recent situation as an example. Before I do though I wanted to say I am sorry that you're burning out. Knowing this is the first step, and I hope you make a change or find a coping mechanism that helps you. I have been through the same situation a few times now. I'm never quite the same afterwards but I have been able return to being a productive worker without radically rethinking my life.
I worked with someone who in my opinion was extremely entitled, prioritizing activism and social issues above getting work done. This company tolerated a lot of it (California company), however, the reality is that work had to get done. If only this person put as much effort into their workload as they did their complaints it would have been a non-issue.
It killed morale and this person eventually had a negative reputation, and was let go. It was bad. A bunch of meetings, talking with folks, but after about 3 months of work there was a hello world, a readme, and a "demo" app in the wrong language that didn't even showcase the crux of the problem that was targeted.
In my opinion there is a time and place for stuff like this, and we must never forget we get paid to produce work.
Re: Google execs threaten workers with layoffs: ‘There will be blood on the streets’
#70Alphabet has $170 billion in total current assets and they are threatening their employees with possible dismissal. Why don’t they spend some of that money to help the employees improve their productivity, if that is truly an issue.
Examples like this make me snicker when people talk about a corporate job being secure. Those days are long gone.