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Tell HN: Confluent laying off 8% of staff

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Re: Tell HN: Confluent laying off 8% of staff

#61

Post by scarface74 »

RohMin wrote: post #52
idopmstuff wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely disagree. Not all job losses are the same, and visa status makes an enormous difference in the consequences of losing one's job. I've been laid off. At the time, I had plenty of savings and nobody depending on me besides my dog. I took some time off and was later able to find a new job. The company didn't have any H-1Bs at the time, but if it did they certainly would've been in a much worse situation tha…

I feel that the original post rubbed me the wrong way. The whole "others have it worse, so toughen up" doesn't serve to help anyone.

When I was laid off, I had four months worth of savings and could have scraped by longer. No matter how much money that my coworkers had that are here on H1B, they had to find a job no matter what.

Did you feel any empathy when the Disney CEO was fired with a multi million dollar severance package? Things are different for different people.

Re: Tell HN: Confluent laying off 8% of staff

#62

Post by vasco »

WhatsName wrote: post #49
mtnygard wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can’t comment on whether this is blind following or not. But it’s a real fact that the market will punish you less for layoffs when others are doing it too. It’s like how the best time to reveal a scandal is after someone else has revealed a bigger scandal.

That's wrong. If everyone is doing something irrational that is a big inefficiency in the market and whoever does the opposite eg. hiring will get better outcomes as opposed doing it when all do.

Yeah but in general if you're trying to minimise disaster instead of maximising being the winner, you opt for doing things that avoid revealing you as the being the only wrong one. Being wrong in a crowd is fine. Being the only one wrong is a big deal, "what were they thinking, they knew better than everyone else?!". If everyone does the same mistake, it's just shrugged off as "honest mistake, everyone was doing it."

Plus either way you're cutting expenses and maybe getting rid of some under performers.

Re: Tell HN: Confluent laying off 8% of staff

#63

Post by jwie »

I’m genuinely curious about the language senior management uses to communicate such things in public.

Perhaps it is a disconnect about the audience. The people getting fired are not the audience of the message which communicates their termination. This is inhuman, but what else would one expect from capitalism.

I’ve fired people, for cause and in person, for generic layoffs, and for attrition targets. It is hard, and personal. I never talk about responsibility or blame, or how hard it was for me. I have bad news for you. No need to be flowery about it. I owe them a straightforward conversation.

Re: Tell HN: Confluent laying off 8% of staff

#64

Post by gorbachev »

scarface74 wrote: post #7
voytec wrote: post #3

The real question is: does the CEO take full responsibility?

I don’t get this mentality. From a meta level, Confluent isn’t profitable. In this environment, what would you have Confluent to do? The second point, a job is always transactional, you exchange labor for money and at any given time, either party can stop that transaction Also, if you are a tech person in any major city in the US, you are more than likely making at least twice the median wage in that city. If others…

I make a mistake, I get fired.

CEO makes a mistake, I get laid off. CEO takes full responsibility.

Re: Tell HN: Confluent laying off 8% of staff

#65

Post by thor123rt »

mcv wrote: post #24

I really get the feeling that many companies are just blindly doing whatever other companies do. One starts large layoffs, and suddenly everybody is doing it. At other times, when one goes on a hiring spree, they all go. One tries to reduce salaries, they all do. One pays enormous bonuses, and they all do. It's like CEOs aren't really thinking for themselves, just copying whatever the market does.

Market forces are behind it. Luckily it is very simple to fix. Just bring the interest rates to zero

Re: Tell HN: Confluent laying off 8% of staff

#66

Post by andsoitis »

PuppyTailWags wrote: post #45
scarface74 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t get this mentality. From a meta level, Confluent isn’t profitable. In this environment, what would you have Confluent to do? The second point, a job is always transactional, you exchange labor for money and at any given time, either party can stop that transaction Also, if you are a tech person in any major city in the US, you are more than likely making at least twice the median wage in that city. If others…

should be able to save enough to weather a brief storm is a huge assumption. What do you do if you have dependents or complex medical needs personally? What happens if you have a personal emergency during your job search? What do you do if you have existing debt from a previous emergency, medical crisis, etc?

While what you describe are serious problems and would be very anxiety inducing for many (most?), the truth remains that it isn't someone else's problem or responsibility.

Re: Tell HN: Confluent laying off 8% of staff

#67

Post by ketchupdebugger »

germinalphrase wrote: post #33
andsoitis wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The CEO's job (responsibility) is not to give people jobs, but to steer a company for success on behalf of the owners. If your comment ("CEO takes full responsibility") is suggesting s/he should be fired or compensation reduced because of their misread of the future, that would be quite silly. Companies don't fire people for making mistakes (in fact if you make no mistakes you probably should be let go because you're…

"Reducing comp as punishment would also not make sense, for obvious reasons." If leadership is financially incentivized for positive outcomes, why shouldn't they carry downside financial risk as well?

leadership's financial incentive is basically stocks which does carry the downside of losing value when the stock price goes down. The problem for us normals is that leadership gets paid life changing amounts of money every year, so losing a couple of millions is not that big of a deal.

Re: Tell HN: Confluent laying off 8% of staff

#68

Post by criley2 »

slantedview wrote: post #50
mtnygard wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can’t comment on whether this is blind following or not. But it’s a real fact that the market will punish you less for layoffs when others are doing it too. It’s like how the best time to reveal a scandal is after someone else has revealed a bigger scandal.

It's not just that the market will punish you less. Companies are hoping that the market will actually reward them for layoffs. Unfortunately, these moves can and will be damaging to long term prospects at some companies. But long term thinking isn't something markets generally care about. It's up to companies to push back against market pressure to maintain long term progress, but it's a tough balancing act to do th…

Honestly, I don't think these layoffs (broadly speaking) are dangerous long term.

In fact, and this may be unpopular, I think they will be greatly beneficial long term.

Consider:

- These companies grew at greatly-expanded rates over the past few years. Google notoriously added 20% per year for 7 years straight, doubling their staff from 2017-2023. After layoffs, Google will still be right near ALL-TIME-HIGHS in staffing. Same with most of these firms. Small layoffs following the fastest growth period in their history isn't some catastrophe for their business

- Most roles being reduced at most companies are not product-creating but administrative. Lots of HR, hiring, marketing, middle managers, getting axed. If companies predict less hiring or lower ad budgets... then reducing those divisions makes sense. If you doubled your hiring team while you were hiring 20% per year, but now you expect to stay steady and only replace attrition ... what would you do with all that hiring staff?

The real damage to their long term prospects was over-hiring the past 3 years and saddling their businesses with a major problem.

Re: Tell HN: Confluent laying off 8% of staff

#69

Post by Moto7451 »

scotty79 wrote: post #47
voytec wrote: post #3

The real question is: does the CEO take full responsibility?

Too bad full doesn't include financial.

Some of these “fully responsible” CEOs are going to end up triggering bonuses based on performance at the end of this year. The lip service is strong but the reality is disconnected from these layoffs’ messaging.

A company I consult for is decidedly guilty of this. Not one month ago it was blue skys and calm waters. This week? “Full responsibility.”

Did they get their end of 2022 bonuses? Absolutely. I fail to see how the first two weeks of 2023 could be so different from the last two of 2022. That’s because they had this in the planning stage for a while.

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