I am absolutely certain this is to suppress wages and employee rights. It is a coordinated effort across the industry and should be immediately investigated.
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GitHub to lay off 10% and close all offices
661–670 of 907 posts
Re: GitHub to lay off 10% and close all offices
#662Closing 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.
People shit on companies for talking one way and acting another. It's simple.
Re: GitHub to lay off 10% and close all offices
#663Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's not really extravagant. I'm assuming it's just a meeting/work room with an oval office theme. It's a very cheap imitation of the oval office. They would have had to buy a lot of the same furniture pieces either way. They just had some fun with it.
I was at their offices back then too. They had and entire section of the office for printing custom t-shirts and an animation room — yes an actual room for 2D animation with the backlit light boxes for paper animation. Also a fully decked out broadcasting room for streaming. They also had grab-and-go apple products on the walls, like mice, keyboards etc. (Memory is foggy on if they had bigger ticket apple products to…
Honestly, if you are already building a 2K people office, adding a few rooms like this seems like a rounding error.
While getting everyone talking about it.
Re: GitHub to lay off 10% and close all offices
#664Earlier 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.
I am not sure why you would say that. I mean it is true, but I am not sure how it is relevant here. If one avenue is not there, ones that crave it badly enough will venture forth. If I don't go to work and WANT to engage with others so badly, I will. And besides, meaningful relations is a meaningless term.
Example. My parent has neighbors. They have lived closely to one another. So closely and long, in fact, they had to sue to resolve some outstanding issues. In other words, neither prolonged proximity or meaningful relationship is a useful metric. I will trade those for a new neighbor every year.
Humans work like they always worked. Their predilections move them. If those are not satisfied, they are channeled.
Re: GitHub to lay off 10% and close all offices
#665Closing all offices? That means remote-only right? Sounds like a great place to work once the layoffs are a distant memory
Re: GitHub to lay off 10% and close all offices
#666Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's not really extravagant. I'm assuming it's just a meeting/work room with an oval office theme. It's a very cheap imitation of the oval office. They would have had to buy a lot of the same furniture pieces either way. They just had some fun with it.
I was at their offices back then too. They had and entire section of the office for printing custom t-shirts and an animation room — yes an actual room for 2D animation with the backlit light boxes for paper animation. Also a fully decked out broadcasting room for streaming. They also had grab-and-go apple products on the walls, like mice, keyboards etc. (Memory is foggy on if they had bigger ticket apple products to…
This doesn't actually seem extravagant: Assuming they bought (or rented), rather than built, their office, they probably just had a bunch of extra space. Even if they didn't, only a company expecting growth to completely die would build an office with only as many rooms as necessary for the company at that moment in time.
What's more efficient than empty rooms? Giving departments a bunch of rooms to do cool stuff with. The expected return on pretty much anything at GitHub's scale is higher than the cost of stocking a room full of equipment.
Re: GitHub to lay off 10% and close all offices
#667Earlier quoted context omitted.
On the seal: "melius simul quam solus" means: "better together than alone." On the scale of extravagant perks and celebrations of success it is a fairly minor and inexpensive one.
The original seal said "United Meritocracy of GitHub", until they removed it after a backlash https://readwrite.com/github-meritocracy-rug/#awesm=~otS2Mwn...
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Re: GitHub to lay off 10% and close all offices
#668Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not kidding, one of the reasons I left my last job was when our parent company forced Outlook, Sharepoint, and Teams on us (vs. Google mail, Google Drive, and Slack). That change on its own isn't the worst thing of course, there were other reasons why I was considering leaving, but it was definitely one of the last straws. Those MS solutions are just worse than the competition, and getting frustrated at your bugg…
> getting frustrated at your bugged technology because the parent company decides it can save some money It doesn't even save money - the cost is just shifted from subscription expenses to lower dev team productivity. Management can't measure the latter as easily as the former, and arguing against switching is a much more complex argument to understand than "this number is bigger than that one".
Management can't measure the latter as easily as the former, and arguing against switching is a much more complex argument to understand than "this number is bigger than that one".
There's a very appropriate classic quote for that sort of situation: "Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted, counts."
Re: GitHub to lay off 10% and close all offices
#669Closing 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…
Remote means they trust their employees to perform without physical eyes on them. "Open office" layout is designed to have eyes on your screen providing constant pressure to actually work, nothing else.
Market currently says that employees pay to work remote. When I was shopping around for jobs recently, every offer I got for remote work was less than a similar in-person job. At my current job, I got a pay cut for moving out of the Bay Area (worth it), and my manager said he's only ok with this because I'm a very active worker.
Re: GitHub to lay off 10% and close all offices
#670A 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.
Hey, there is always GitLab!
GitLab also just announced layoffs: https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2023/02/09/gitlab-news/