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The Broken Microsoft Pact: Layoffs and Performance Management

danielsada.tech

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Re: The Broken Microsoft Pact: Layoffs and Performance Management

#61

Post by TiredOfLife »

hackthemack wrote: post #24

I wish people were not so adverse to unions. The company will never be your friend. You will almost never have much leverage over what the company wants to do. The information you have will most likely be very asymmetrical to what the company has insight into, putting you at a disadvantage. Unions are imperfect. Unions will have its own inside politics. You will pay a union fee. I think humans are fundamentally flawe…

Being in union doesn't protect from layoffs. Part of the recent layoffs were in a union

Re: The Broken Microsoft Pact: Layoffs and Performance Management

#62

Post by squatin64 »

why does this not mention ai? these layoffs are essentially only because of ai both indirectly and directly, perhaps not because of current impactful productivity gains but realignment of strategic resources to invest in ai infrastructure (capital vs labor) and then also likely preparation for the continued exponential improvement of models and coding agents which will require humans to get out of the loop

essentially imo all 'pacts' between employers and companies is going to change because basically the entire category of economic work we are doing as a society will become not necessary over the next decade due to this

its just that software development is going to come earlier due to its critical nature to the roadmap of model improvement and increasing lab research speed. also due to the fact that RL works quite well for software development, including the more advanced applications like model research

also as a preemptive rebuttal for anyone saying i have no idea how swe/ai research works i am a swe who also does ai research work

Re: The Broken Microsoft Pact: Layoffs and Performance Management

#63

Post by giingyui »

cheschire wrote: post #47
xivzgrev wrote: post #17

As a manager I’m going thru performance management myself. It’s a hard experience. What I learned is: you need to hold a high bar, because people can do anything to keep their job, and often not what you want them to do What you want is someone who is open to feedback, understands it, and takes effective action. Outside of that, there’s a whole gamut of people. Some get defensive. Some are politely open to feedback b…

I would much rather work for a place where the culture allows people to be humans, and 1x and 10x people can coexist under the same management. But hey I am judging off of basically one sentence you wrote so what do I really know about your situation?

You are not being paid by a company “to be human”. You are being paid to produce. If you don’t produce it makes sense they don’t want to pay you, especially if it’s easy to find someone else to produce in your place.

Re: The Broken Microsoft Pact: Layoffs and Performance Management

#65

Post by piva00 »

giingyui wrote: post #63
cheschire wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would much rather work for a place where the culture allows people to be humans, and 1x and 10x people can coexist under the same management. But hey I am judging off of basically one sentence you wrote so what do I really know about your situation?

You are not being paid by a company “to be human”. You are being paid to produce. If you don’t produce it makes sense they don’t want to pay you, especially if it’s easy to find someone else to produce in your place.

You've perfectly described why most corporations get low-engagement employees producing whatever is asked without much questioning because they simply don't care. You pay me, I produce what you asked, no matter how shit it is since I'm not paid to be a human with qualities that could produce something better.

It's a two-way street.

Re: The Broken Microsoft Pact: Layoffs and Performance Management

#66

Post by giingyui »

piva00 wrote: post #65
giingyui wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are not being paid by a company “to be human”. You are being paid to produce. If you don’t produce it makes sense they don’t want to pay you, especially if it’s easy to find someone else to produce in your place.

You've perfectly described why most corporations get low-engagement employees producing whatever is asked without much questioning because they simply don't care. You pay me, I produce what you asked, no matter how shit it is since I'm not paid to be a human with qualities that could produce something better. It's a two-way street.

[dead]

Re: The Broken Microsoft Pact: Layoffs and Performance Management

#67

Post by FirmwareBurner »

Arainach wrote: post #37
armada651 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Software developers have enjoyed decades of high demand for their skills and the companies that hired them have enjoyed decades of an abundance of capital against a low interest rate. You didn't need a union because you had leverage due to the demand for your skills and companies didn't need to be particularly efficient. This was a time where companies were hiring talented developers just to deny them to their compet…

You need a union when there's demand precisely because there will be down times.

People were never good at thinking about a pessimistic future to plan ahead BEFORE the shit hits the fan. Those who did were sidelined as naysayers or buzzkills.

Just look at European government run pension systems which are basically legal pyramid schemes, that everyone knows are unsustainable the way things are going right now, but nobody wants to do anything about it when it's more convenient to kick the can down the road until it become a problem under someone else's watch.

Re: The Broken Microsoft Pact: Layoffs and Performance Management

#68

Post by FirmwareBurner »

TiredOfLife wrote: post #61
hackthemack wrote: post #24

I wish people were not so adverse to unions. The company will never be your friend. You will almost never have much leverage over what the company wants to do. The information you have will most likely be very asymmetrical to what the company has insight into, putting you at a disadvantage. Unions are imperfect. Unions will have its own inside politics. You will pay a union fee. I think humans are fundamentally flawe…

Being in union doesn't protect from layoffs. Part of the recent layoffs were in a union

This. In Germany there have been and still are plenty of layoffs happening, most at jobs part of strong unions like the auto industry. Strong unions just means better severance packages than those not in unions when you get laid off, not that you're protected from ever being laid off. To me that's a pretty fair balance IMHO.

IIRC, only in France unions can prevent companies from doing redundancies if their bottom line looks good, but that's probably also why many companies aren't hiring much in France to begin with, why skilled wages are lower and youth unemployment higher there compared to other equally developed economies like Netherlands or Germany for example.

Re: The Broken Microsoft Pact: Layoffs and Performance Management

#69

Post by sarchertech »

wenc wrote: post #21

Most financial advisors tell you to keep a rainy day fund with a 3-6 month runway. Given what's been happening in the tech industry and the economy at large, I now keep a 1-year emergency fund in a money-market fund at 4% (Fidelity SPAXX). I'm probably losing out on some growth (SP500 grew 11% over the past year, despite the massive drop in April 2025), but at least I have liquidity in case I get laid off. That's the…

If you only have a little more than a year in total assets that probably makes sense.

But if you have much more than that, there’s no reason to keep an entire year in such a low return investment.

Money in say an S&P500 ETF can be liquid in 1-3 days.

Re: The Broken Microsoft Pact: Layoffs and Performance Management

#70

Post by saagarjha »

geodel wrote: post #57
mrheosuper wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

maybe that's why their AI/Assistant suck

LOL. Could be. But why then Xcode sucks. Surely there is no shortage of Xcode engineers there.

Guess what they have a shortage of.
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