Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

GitHub to lay off 10% and close all offices

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

601–610 of 907 posts

Re: GitHub to lay off 10% and close all offices

#601

Post by Myrmornis »

rossdavidh wrote: post #420

Closing all offices, I have to say, makes it way easier to do more layoffs. Having been through layoffs in semiconductor manufacturing in the 90's, when you had to, you know, get the people from work and take them to a place and all that, it involved paying a lot of money for extra security and such. With no offices, it's a lot easier, and you never have to meet the person face to face. Five years from now, I think w…

Perhaps, but nothing I have ever heard anyone say about the downsides of remote work comes anywhere close to the upsides: e.g. the vastly superior quality of life you get when your job is essentially just a handful of apps on a computer in your house and can be turned on and turned off instantly, and the ability to concentrate on meaningful work tasks in a quiet environment that is under your control and design.

Re: GitHub to lay off 10% and close all offices

#602

Post by kgwxd »

geuis wrote: post #428
rossdavidh wrote: post #420

Closing all offices, I have to say, makes it way easier to do more layoffs. Having been through layoffs in semiconductor manufacturing in the 90's, when you had to, you know, get the people from work and take them to a place and all that, it involved paying a lot of money for extra security and such. With no offices, it's a lot easier, and you never have to meet the person face to face. Five years from now, I think w…

Look, you can't have it both ways. People on HN are always talking badly about companies that don't allow work from home, or require at least a couple days in the office. Then a company says it's going entirely remote (not including the layoff context) and people shit on that. Which is it? As for the layoffs, I don't have anything to add to that. There a Microsoft decision.

It's not a contradiction to say I want to work remotely and I don't want the company to use it against me. A company can choose to go remote for good and bad reasons. If they do it for bad reasons, they get shit on. In the context of layoffs, it's not irrational to consider the motive might be bad.

Re: GitHub to lay off 10% and close all offices

#603

Post by allochthon »

A little depressing to see GitHub join the zeitgeist. Probably mandated from above by Microsoft. The next time I'm on a job search, I'll be de-prioritizing, and possibly even excluding, those tech companies that laid people off in order to signal to investors that they had their finances under control. I was kind of attached to GitHub, though, so this is disappointing.

Re: GitHub to lay off 10% and close all offices

#604

Post by hgsgm »

lampshades wrote: post #5

This really is the techpocalypse, huh? I’m young (35) but I’ve never seen layoffs so continuous. I wonder how far into the year this will go and if we’ll ever come back. Maybe companies truly will start offshoring.

The layoffs are mere fraction of the COVID era hiring. This is a minor correction.

Re: GitHub to lay off 10% and close all offices

#605

Post by Myrmornis »

bagels wrote: post #585
jsdwarf wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Closing all offices enables GitHub to hire in cheaper geographies. Seems that the San Francisco headquarter was their only real office anyway,and I estimate approx 400 GitHubbers were working from there (55000 sqft office space, tech typically uses 150 sqft per employee). Gradually re-hiring those in cheaper geographies plus reduction of perks can mean quite significant savings and is another stab at Silicon Valley.

This is exactly right. All the people clamoring for remote work are asking for us all to get paid less, or nothing at all because the job went to Europe or Asia.

> asking for us all to get paid less, or nothing at all because the job went to Europe or Asia.

You don't think it might be reasonable for the term "us all" to include people in Europe or Asia?

Re: GitHub to lay off 10% and close all offices

#606

Post by bagels »

KerrAvon wrote: post #600
bagels wrote: post #585

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly right. All the people clamoring for remote work are asking for us all to get paid less, or nothing at all because the job went to Europe or Asia.

Yeah, bullshit. Maybe you didn't live through all the panic about offshoring in the 1990's, but all of our jobs would have been sent to Southeast Asia if they could have been by now. Remote changes nothing. They still can't fill positions, and the dwindling population of the active workforce due to COVID will ensure that employees are in the driver's seat for a long, long time.

I did. We'll see.

Re: GitHub to lay off 10% and close all offices

#607

Post by ves »

oblio wrote: post #581
jjeaff wrote: post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, just do some socializing outside of work.

People keep saying that. Humans don't work like that. Almost all meaningful relations are based on prolonged proximity.

even if that were the case, the only place you're getting prolonged proximity to a (relatively) fixed group of people is your workplace? that sounds super not good.

Re: GitHub to lay off 10% and close all offices

#608

Post by imbnwa »

notatoad wrote: post #330
ilyt wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't be surprised if they layed off "bottom 10%" in hopes of replacing them with better when the market for IT workforce is cheaper..

i'm sure there's some of this, but it doesn't seem like the broader trend. if they were really laying off the bottom 10% there wouldn't be so many stories of managers complaining about their direct reports being laid off without any advance warning. it's hard to pick out low performers in any sort of sane way if you're not even asking managers who their low performers are.

Seen 17-year Google vet get hit on Twitter, doubt they were a low performer

Re: GitHub to lay off 10% and close all offices

#609

Post by bagels »

Myrmornis wrote: post #605
bagels wrote: post #585

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly right. All the people clamoring for remote work are asking for us all to get paid less, or nothing at all because the job went to Europe or Asia.

> asking for us all to get paid less, or nothing at all because the job went to Europe or Asia. You don't think it might be reasonable for the term "us all" to include people in Europe or Asia?

It is. Sloppy language. Should have said people working in bay area offices for FAANG companies.

Re: GitHub to lay off 10% and close all offices

#610

Post by corndoge »

shagie wrote: post #133
corndoge wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Teams for video, not so bad. If they were replacing Slack with Teams, that would be horrible.

> ii) We will be moving to Microsoft Teams for the sole purpose of video conferencing, saving significant cost and simplifying cross-company and customer conversations. This move will be complete by September 1, 2023. We will remain on Slack as our day-to-day collaboration tool.

Yes, that is what I was replying to.
Post reply on HN