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Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

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Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#601

Post by michaelcampbell »

softwaredoug wrote: post #63

Listened to a great podcast about layoffs yesterday ( https://hbr.org/podcast/2023/02/why-many-companies-get-layof... ) The takeaway is that layoffs are extremely trust destroying for employees NOT laid off, and in the end not clear they're a financial net positive. Both with direct and indirect costs (lack of engagement from employees, etc).

> and in the end not clear they're a financial net positive

This feels like another instance of Deming's (paraphrased) "People will destroy the enterprise to align to their incentives."

The people who make these decisions may be incented on the _short term_ cost savings. It's a fractally smaller version of the entire org aligning to shareholder expectations at the expense of company growth.

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#602

Post by alldayeveryday »

noelsusman wrote: post #346
alldayeveryday wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

which says a lot if the economy is disconnected from the prosperity and economic outlook of the majority of people. In such a case, a "good economy" is just a synonym for "elite are still doing well."

The bottom 50% have collectively more than doubled their net worth in the last 3 years[1], and their wages have outpaced inflation even at its currently high level[2]. [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WFRBLB50107 [2] https://www.atlantafed.org/chcs/wage-growth-tracker

Inflation began to spike in the U.S. in April of 2021, when it hit 4.2%. Inflation continued to climb, hitting 7% year-over-year by December 2021. Sadly, 2022 didn’t see any slowdown in inflation as the rate peaked at 9.1% in June. Starting in July, inflation began to fall slightly, though it still sat at 7.7% in November.

Your atlantafed link shows unweighted wage increase peaking at 6.7% in August 2022. In what way did wages outpace inflation?

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#603

Post by alldayeveryday »

A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #297
alldayeveryday wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

which says a lot if the economy is disconnected from the prosperity and economic outlook of the majority of people. In such a case, a "good economy" is just a synonym for "elite are still doing well."

This, I think, seems to be the important thing that seems glossed over in news articles. At certain income, the economy is doing great. But that is within the group that, historically, has always done well. When you have enough money, a lot of pain can be made largely removed. Now, it is only anecdata. I am in IL. My household is above average in terms of income for US and my state. We are struggling ( not as much as…

To your point about services reduction, I don't agree. I think more of a re-allocation of where capitol is going is the cure. We should increase or create new social programs that incentivize native births, home ownership, making it possible for most households to have just one person in the workforce, etc - and reduce the money that goes towards foreign wars, foreign agitation, welfare for nations across the world, etc. And I agree, tax hikes but targeted at the financial system which makes money in parasitic ways. In short, the economy needs to be optimized to the benefit of the lower and middle classes, the working class, and no longer to the 1%. This all probably requires heavy nationalization of banking and major industry. I dont see this as an evil and mistrust those that tell me to fear putting the power back in the hands of the people and away from the elite.

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#604

Post by SergeAx »

blagie wrote: post #592
SergeAx wrote: post #590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Knowing performance of their team members is a manager's primary responsibility. Without it manager cannot plan anything and execute anything on time.

A manager's primary responsibilities are: - to find a way to keep their job through layoffs - to find a way to move up to director - to have fun at work - to maintain work-life balance ... and so on.

Manager should deliver on time and budget in order to keep their job. It is easier to do having performing team. Performing team consists of performing ICs. Easy as that.

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#605

Post by SergeAx »

blagie wrote: post #591
SergeAx wrote: post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every IC has their direct manager: team lead or something like that. Every decent manager knows who is underperforming in their team and secretly dreams about firing the slacker and hiring someone better instead, but rarely has such freedom. Now, the layoff is suddenly breaking. It's a no-brainer to jump the train and finally make it for the sake of the entire team.

Layoffs are coming. You're a manager. You have ten employees: - Grumpy. Grumpy doesn't like you, and you don't like Grumpy. He doesn't keep you updated, and seems to sit in an office with a closed door. He complains a bit. - Happy. Happy is your best friend, and tells everyone what a great manager you are. If all your employees were like Happy, you'd have perfect job security! - Cheery. Cheery goes out and showcases…

I am a manager indeed. I more or less familiar with whereabouts of my reports, I know a lot about their performance and performance of their teams (some of them are team leads). I also know who is looking at the market for opportunities, who recently became parent, who is interested in relocation from their current country. I know who is safe to lay off from their teams, who is underperforming and who is currently vulnerable and it would be ethical to let them stay.

This is my job.

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#606

Post by jlmorton »

mostertoaster wrote: post #588
lame-robot-hoax wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? When did the Biden administration change the methodology behind measuring unemployment?

Maybe they didn’t. Still smoke and mirrors though, we “gained” 500k jobs, even though payrolls would show a decrease in 2.5m. But it was expected we would lose 3m seasonal jobs. So voila! It’s like when the government says we saved 50 billion in spending this year because we were planning on increasing spending by 150 billion, but only increased it by 100 billion instead. I’m not saying Biden is only one that does th…

> But it was expected we would lose 3m seasonal jobs. So voila!

This is not smoke and mirrors, it's a seasonal adjustment. Without these seasonal adjustments, the jobs report would be completely and utterly useless. We always lose a massive number of jobs in January after the holidays, each and every year. Removing that seasonal variation from the jobs report is the only thing that produces a useful signal, and it's something we've been doing for your entire life, so there's no difference in the trend.

The economy is quite good. Record low unemployment, near-record high job openings, very low long-term unemployed, low part-time for economic reasons, rising wages, modest inflation over the past six months, record-high corporate earnings. There are some areas that are weak, particularly manufacturing, but it's just not even remotely true that the economy sucks.

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#608

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0 »

alldayeveryday wrote: post #603
A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This, I think, seems to be the important thing that seems glossed over in news articles. At certain income, the economy is doing great. But that is within the group that, historically, has always done well. When you have enough money, a lot of pain can be made largely removed. Now, it is only anecdata. I am in IL. My household is above average in terms of income for US and my state. We are struggling ( not as much as…

To your point about services reduction, I don't agree. I think more of a re-allocation of where capitol is going is the cure. We should increase or create new social programs that incentivize native births, home ownership, making it possible for most households to have just one person in the workforce, etc - and reduce the money that goes towards foreign wars, foreign agitation, welfare for nations across the world,…

I disagree. The only way to even begin thinking about selling it to the public, which happens to include moneyed interests is 'shared sacrifice' ( similar to how a war effort would be sold ). In pure mathematical terms, we really should be doing both already. We don't because things did not get bad enough yet, but once it starts, it will be a little hard to stop. Shock therapy is necessary to get things under control. And the longer we wait pretending it can be 'managed', the worse it will be later on.

From where to where? I don't automatically disagree, but 'entitlements'(depending on how you define them ) are somewhat protected from touching and 'defense' is even harder. Re-allocation is not going to happen, because even current allocation was a result of heavy compromises.

I disagree based on the information provided so far. If you have math to back up either point, please share. Right now, we are still running US on continuing resolutions suggesting that balanced budget now is just not possible. Something is wrong and it needs to be corrected before it gets much worse.

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#609

Post by SantalBlush »

jldugger wrote: post #580
SantalBlush wrote: post #563

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Okay, you wanna look at SOFR instead? Why would I want to look at the SOFR? That's the epitome of cherry-picked data. I just sent you a list of common economic indicators, and you're willfully avoiding them, which doesn't bode well for your argument. If anything, you should be referencing the yield curve, which is an actual economic indicator and has recently inverted. That would illustrate your point much better.

> Why would I want to look at the SOFR? I'm asking what your preferred metric for interest rates is. Apparently you want to look at the yield curve slope? Which is fine, and commonly used as a leading indicator of recessions. But in a way its about the market predicting a change in the future value of money, rather than economic conditions right now. Sort of a second order effect, and IDK any timeseries that captures…

That isn't a "random listicle", it's a list of major macroeconomic indicators that are very well known. You're free to discover for yourself that housing starts is among the major indicators used by the government and businesses in their determination of the health of the economy.

You're dismissing other indicators, like GDP and unemployment, in favor of the one you personally feel is important; that's called cherry picking. When determining the health of the economy, you need to look at all major indicators.

>But we're not trying to forecast global GDP

This has exactly nothing to do with trying to forecast global GDP; that's not what these indicators are for.

Re: Gitlab to lay off 7% of staff

#610

Post by noelsusman »

alldayeveryday wrote: post #602
noelsusman wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bottom 50% have collectively more than doubled their net worth in the last 3 years[1], and their wages have outpaced inflation even at its currently high level[2]. [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WFRBLB50107 [2] https://www.atlantafed.org/chcs/wage-growth-tracker

Inflation began to spike in the U.S. in April of 2021, when it hit 4.2%. Inflation continued to climb, hitting 7% year-over-year by December 2021. Sadly, 2022 didn’t see any slowdown in inflation as the rate peaked at 9.1% in June. Starting in July, inflation began to fall slightly, though it still sat at 7.7% in November. Your atlantafed link shows unweighted wage increase peaking at 6.7% in August 2022. In what way…

Click on the button to separate by wage level. Wage growth for the bottom 50% has significantly outpaced wage growth for the top 50%. Their wages grew at around 7.3% over the last 12 months, which outpaces inflation. It may have been a bit under when inflation was at its peak, so it's possible they just came out even with inflation overall, which is still pretty good when you're doubling your net worth at the same time.
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