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

Layoffs Are Cruel and Don't Work

matduggan.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 279 posts

Re: Layoffs Are Cruel and Don't Work

#71

Post by actionablefiber »

bradleyjg wrote: post #50
actionablefiber wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious about this. My experience is that people in my age bracket (early 20s) have been saying "okay boomer" to the people telling us that being in your 20s and 30s is about hustling to show loyalty to your company, showing up at the office five days a week, ingratiating yourself with your boss, spending late nights at the office and being buddy-buddy with all your coworkers. I have never ever witnessed anyone e…

Trying to make it about capitalism is also silly. Those rant and rave about that have no alternative to offer. At best they suggest Scandavian style welfare capitalism, which has capitalism right there in the name, but call it socialism because it sounds cooler. They should grow up too.

Hot take but I think everyone is allowed to recognize the cutthroat, impersonal nature of corporate hiring and firing and commiserate about it without needing to walk around with a fully-formed proposal for an alternative economic system in their pocket.

Re: Layoffs Are Cruel and Don't Work

#72

Post by hbn »

I do not see myself as a dog and my employer as my owner. It's a very weird/inaccurate analogy, and a bad way of looking at an employer.

Dogs don't choose their owners. Dogs can't leave their owners and find another one if they don't like the current one. Dogs can't educate themselves on which owners are more or less likely to value their skills, and aren't over-adopting dogs because it's the trend to do so in 2021, even though they're obviously not going to want to keep all these dogs around once their absurd growth rate slows down.

The layoffs suck and I hope the people affected land on their feet, but this dog analogy is nonsense.

Re: Layoffs Are Cruel and Don't Work

#73

Post by fsociety »

haswell wrote: post #32
mattikus wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're being a bit uncharitable and jaded here. For many, events like these are actually the catalyst that causes one to "grow up", which is what the author is conveying.

And it’s just one of many ways people can come to realize this over time. I’ve been fortunate enough to avoid the experience of layoffs, but learned the same lesson by pouring too much of myself into a role and burning out. Until you’ve directly experienced the reasons work isn’t a family, etc. it can be hard to avoid falling into the trap of thinking that it is. I would also say that most takes on this are a bit too…

Burning yourself out sucks, but is not an equivalent experience to being laid off. Not sure how you came to this conclusion.

Re: Layoffs Are Cruel and Don't Work

#74

Post by Scoundreller »

I think the way they’re structured in most orgs is dumb for the org.

Layoffs should be an opportunity to embrace and accept the Peter Principle and lower a series of people down a rung until you layoff the least valuable person.

Of course that only works if managers/directors/seniors/whatever can do the job immediately below them. I think they should but many places think “a manager is a manager and can manage any kind of team” which I think is bunk.

Re: Layoffs Are Cruel and Don't Work

#75

Post by BizarreByte »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #31

Nobody likes getting laid off. But it's weird to see all of these think pieces implying that once someone is hired into a job, that job should exist forever. Things change. Company growth isn't monotonically increasing. Not all positions will exist forever. Joining a company was never a guarantee that you'd have a paycheck and work to do until you decided to leave. Also, pointing out that companies that did layoffs h…

> But it's weird to see all of these think pieces implying that once someone is hired into a job, that job should exist forever.

Yah, only the older generation got a chance at that. I wish I could have one lifetime job like my older family members had, but like many things that basically can’t be done now.

Re: Layoffs Are Cruel and Don't Work

#76

Post by gt565k »

Posting social media videos of "a day in the life of FANG" company showcasing the little amount of work people do doesn't work either.

There's a lot of people at these companies who don't do anything meaningful and are getting paid a boat load. There's people like that in almost every company.

Back from the Yahoo peak days I had multiple people tell me that all they did in a week was fix 1-2 small bugs in a day and didn't do jack shit the rest of the week and got paid handsomely. Probably explains in-part the demise of Yahoo as a tech company.

My point is, layoffs typically target workers who are not needed by the company anymore.

People do layoffs in their personal life too. Your house cleaner or landscaper gets laid off when you decide to stop using their services as you try to do the work yourself and save some money.

This ultra-left stance on layoffs being bad is ridiculous. It's part of the business cycle and economic outlook the companies are facing.

Re: Layoffs Are Cruel and Don't Work

#77

Post by DoughnutHole »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #39
dougmwne wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. Nearly everyone I know left college doe-eyed and ready to dedicate a piece of their soul to their shiny new job. Everyone learned otherwise one person at a time. Some worked for “we’re all a family” companies and were able to remain innocent ignorants till the day the axe fell.

> Absolutely. Nearly everyone I know left college doe-eyed and ready to dedicate a piece of their soul to their shiny new job When did you graduate college? In the social media era, the sentiment has been more about "fuck you, pay me" and "H.R. is not your friend" type ideology. This is especially true in recent years, where a lot of college graduates have been exposed to years of /r/antiwork in their daily Reddit br…

People can hold a lot of cognitively dissonant but valid viewpoints at the same time.

I put effort into my work because taking pride in one’s work nourishes the soul.

I try to meet my manager’s expectations because I know him, he’s a good guy, and I know he’s got my back to the extent he is able to.

I also know that my employer as an entity abstracted through a dozen tiers of hierarchy would feed me and my manager both into a woodchipper if it would increase quarterly gains more than the alternative would.

I work to minimise how much of myself I give to my employer, and maximise how much I give to myself and to the relationships I value (which still includes workplace relationships!).

Re: Layoffs Are Cruel and Don't Work

#78

Post by pksebben »

politician wrote: post #23
vikingerik wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no such thing as a labor shortage. There are just insufficient wages.

This statement is missing qualifiers. Consider the extreme counter-example: A small village of a dozen individuals sitting a top a mountain of gold is unlikely to be able to operate an industrial scale gold mining operation. There can be too few people to do certain work. Nuclear plant operators. Ordinance disposal experts. Electricians in my area...

but hold on. "not having people" and "not having people with the skills you need" are different in this regard. Offering more money won't make more people, but it will motivate people to learn skills.

Re: Layoffs Are Cruel and Don't Work

#79

Post by ccn0p »

It seems to me that many tech workers are experiencing, for the first time, the hard reality that:

a) Companies may be formed, operated, and controlled by people, but they are complex systems that do not have feelings and do not care about individuals no matter how much the culture warriors say otherwise. They are systems designed to survive, with or without you.

b) We are not defined by our jobs

I'm not making a case one way or another for capitalism, or layoffs, or the meaning of life, rather pointing out that this is the reality in which we live and once you realize these two points, things will make more sense.

Re: Layoffs Are Cruel and Don't Work

#80

Post by BizarreByte »

commandlinefan wrote: post #54
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #31

Nobody likes getting laid off. But it's weird to see all of these think pieces implying that once someone is hired into a job, that job should exist forever. Things change. Company growth isn't monotonically increasing. Not all positions will exist forever. Joining a company was never a guarantee that you'd have a paycheck and work to do until you decided to leave. Also, pointing out that companies that did layoffs h…

> Nobody likes getting laid off. Much better than being fired for poor performance, too - "laid off because the company wasn't doing well" doesn't look that terrible on a resume.

Right now is the perfect time to get fired if you are having performance problems though. No one is going to think twice if you claim to be a victim of layoffs.
Post reply on HN