61–70 of 102 posts
Nobody can convince me that big corps are not taking part this "trend" of firing people with the purpose of rehiring them later and keep the compensation of the workforce in check. As many comments have already pointed out, all these companies are sitting on a huge cushion of money, and if you have money the best moment to invest is during a crisis. Companies realized a long time ago that they should find ways of low…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unionization is the correct response here. The incentives of company leaders simply don't account for workers' desire to not lose their jobs. The only way to change this is for workers to change said incentives--by organizing. Of course, easy for me to say as a freelancer. I'm definitely not trying to say unionizing tech would be easy. But it certainly is simple, at least conceptually.
100%. This is the entire point of unions -- to represent the collective interests of the some segment of (or all) a company's workers.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you think these people would have been better off if tech had carried net fewer heads the past couple of years? Having an extra 100k employed for two years is worse than those jobs just never existing?
Maybe for some. The illusion they had of a nice job, especially with lots of money promised, made them take too big a credit for their house or whatever. And now they're doomed. You can always say this is their fault for not having foreseen that, but it probably wouldn't have happened to them if they had another, more regular job.
The average tenure at these companies is what--18 months? Amazon especially.
I think it's delusional to act like a FANNG-gravy train role is something that'll be around in a decade. Especially now.
Super interesting seeing companies grow like wildfire and overspend as returns for investors skyrocket, and then as the market swings downward, they buoy their stock prices a bit by just as quickly cutting heads. The inverted accountability scheme for leaders doing this is another perverse enabling factor; I've complained about this before, but that tends to lead to flames about why founders etc. can't have ownership…
Unionization is the correct response here. The incentives of company leaders simply don't account for workers' desire to not lose their jobs. The only way to change this is for workers to change said incentives--by organizing. Of course, easy for me to say as a freelancer. I'm definitely not trying to say unionizing tech would be easy. But it certainly is simple, at least conceptually.
Super interesting seeing companies grow like wildfire and overspend as returns for investors skyrocket, and then as the market swings downward, they buoy their stock prices a bit by just as quickly cutting heads. The inverted accountability scheme for leaders doing this is another perverse enabling factor; I've complained about this before, but that tends to lead to flames about why founders etc. can't have ownership…
How do mass layoffs work in places like the EU? I know it's much more difficult to fire people in the EU, but is there an exception if it's done as part of a layoff? The only real solution I can think of is regulatory in nature (e.g. requiring paying out 6 months pay during a layoff, which might make companies think twice before "hiring ahead of growth") Because let's face it, "hiring ahead of growth" is the real pro…
Super interesting seeing companies grow like wildfire and overspend as returns for investors skyrocket, and then as the market swings downward, they buoy their stock prices a bit by just as quickly cutting heads. The inverted accountability scheme for leaders doing this is another perverse enabling factor; I've complained about this before, but that tends to lead to flames about why founders etc. can't have ownership…
Unionization is the correct response here. The incentives of company leaders simply don't account for workers' desire to not lose their jobs. The only way to change this is for workers to change said incentives--by organizing. Of course, easy for me to say as a freelancer. I'm definitely not trying to say unionizing tech would be easy. But it certainly is simple, at least conceptually.
Super interesting seeing companies grow like wildfire and overspend as returns for investors skyrocket, and then as the market swings downward, they buoy their stock prices a bit by just as quickly cutting heads. The inverted accountability scheme for leaders doing this is another perverse enabling factor; I've complained about this before, but that tends to lead to flames about why founders etc. can't have ownership…
Unionization is the correct response here. The incentives of company leaders simply don't account for workers' desire to not lose their jobs. The only way to change this is for workers to change said incentives--by organizing. Of course, easy for me to say as a freelancer. I'm definitely not trying to say unionizing tech would be easy. But it certainly is simple, at least conceptually.
That makes sense on the face of it, but if you look back over the other professions that have unionized (steel workers, auto workers, truck drivers), the lives of the actual workers always seems to have suffered post-unionization.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
From Amazon's point of view, this doesn't seem too far removed from their annual firing quotas which I think is already an onerous practice. From the hyper-scale startup point of view, it's blatantly unsustainable and frankly irresponsible to play fast-and-loose with people's careers by hiring them and then making the position redundant, sometimes within less than a year; even six months in some cases that I've known…
Irresponsible for who? Corporations are in the business of their own interests. Employees are a resource to furthering a businesses goals. They aren’t a charity that owes individuals anything. If you think that you’re being naive about what we call at-will employment.
Personally, I find layoffs irresponsible at a corporate level. When they happen they disrupt team relationships, gut out tribal knowledge, break trust, and create friction that trades short term savings for long term cost. The human cost for unemployment is also hard to ignore. For every 1% increase in unemployment there is a 1-1.6% increase in suicides.
I say that as someone who is working at a company that made headlines for layoffs.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How do mass layoffs work in places like the EU? I know it's much more difficult to fire people in the EU, but is there an exception if it's done as part of a layoff? The only real solution I can think of is regulatory in nature (e.g. requiring paying out 6 months pay during a layoff, which might make companies think twice before "hiring ahead of growth") Because let's face it, "hiring ahead of growth" is the real pro…
So basically regulations that you shouldn't hire someone unless you're really really sure you're going to keep them around for a long time?
And it's possible to hire contractors too.
At-will is worse than contract work, because the contractor knows when he will be let go.
Super interesting seeing companies grow like wildfire and overspend as returns for investors skyrocket, and then as the market swings downward, they buoy their stock prices a bit by just as quickly cutting heads. The inverted accountability scheme for leaders doing this is another perverse enabling factor; I've complained about this before, but that tends to lead to flames about why founders etc. can't have ownership…
Unionization is the correct response here. The incentives of company leaders simply don't account for workers' desire to not lose their jobs. The only way to change this is for workers to change said incentives--by organizing. Of course, easy for me to say as a freelancer. I'm definitely not trying to say unionizing tech would be easy. But it certainly is simple, at least conceptually.