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GitHub to lay off 10% and close all offices

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

#701

Post by zamadatix »

BluSyn wrote: post #699
geuis wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Probably in minority here; I currently work remote, but miss going to the office. Will consider non-remote roles in the future.

I've found "At your own discretion" jobs are great. The downside is they can be hard for a company to justify unless the space is being used for other means than just "the occasional office space". I'm "100% remote" but can head in to our main office (just under 2 hours away) any time and if it's a multi-day engagement there is a hotel across the street. Far enough away that I never feel like I have to come in for anything but close enough that if something is better done in person/a fun event I can go there without coordinating flights and a rental or driving all day.

My last job had a similar structure but the office was ~15 minutes away so it was harder to push back on some "well let's just all work on this here together for the next 3 weeks since we're local" type asks and didn't work out as well. I don't mind collaborating but after years of not being used to coming in every day coming in is honestly not much better to me than the idea of "my job requires me to fly out for weeks at a time" type travel (which I've also done before).

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

#702

Post by [deleted] »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #680
afro88 wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slowing down laptop refreshes is so short sighted. One of the cheapest productivity boosts you can give someone is a faster laptop. Better than hiring another dev to join a bloated team.

My PC from 2011 still works fine. My 2015 MBP lasted until 2022 (when it broke, it was actually still working fine). So I'm skeptical you really need to be refreshing every 3 years.

[deleted]

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

#703

Post by littlecosmic »

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.

I think thats it is two separate groups piping up with two different opinions on remote work.

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

#705

Post by rossdavidh »

svachalek wrote: post #595
karaterobot wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Five years from now, I think we will not see "remote only" for a large company and think "ooh, they value their employees I guess", but rather, "uh oh, they like to think of their employees as being like virtual servers, easy to spin up and easy to shut down the moment you don't need to pay for that capacity". A lot of people probably believe this is how companies think of employees. I know that at every company I'…

Suppose you've got an average, B-grade engineer who has been doing this job for 3 years. They should have all the technical knowledge tuned to do this job, connections to all the right people they need to work with, and all kinds of institutional memory about why everything is the way it is. You let that person go, and bring in an objectively better, A-grade worker. It's going to take months to find that person, more…

Yes, exactly, employees may not actually be like virtual servers that you can spin up and shut down at will, but some employers will think of them that way.

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

#706

Post by afro88 »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #680
afro88 wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slowing down laptop refreshes is so short sighted. One of the cheapest productivity boosts you can give someone is a faster laptop. Better than hiring another dev to join a bloated team.

My PC from 2011 still works fine. My 2015 MBP lasted until 2022 (when it broke, it was actually still working fine). So I'm skeptical you really need to be refreshing every 3 years.

That's machine durability rather than performance.

Performance translates into more productivity for employees spending most of their time in front of one.

Even JIRA and Confluence are way faster on my 2021 M1 compared to my 2019 MBP due to the javascript runtime being much more performant. Admittedly a bit of a cherry picked example, but still.

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

#707

Post by Jach »

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…

If it enables further specialization that can be a good thing, it's often awkward when companies try to wring out some extra utility from people who really aren't well suited for the other task. (Having people do such things occasionally anyway even if poorly, like devs briefly fielding tier 1 support, can be useful for empathy building at least.) The infatuation with combining dev and QE into a combined hybrid role especially comes to mind. (Though I do think it's at least possible there for the majority to be 'good enough' crossing back and forth that it's more or less worked out, and there are enough generalists, but when you see a specialist in one forced to do the other not nearly as well, it feels like a waste.)

You might enjoy reading The Age of Em. Imagine in 90 years you could literally spin up a copy of the em who wrote the code that's having issues, archived at a time with context full in mind, have them fix the issues or add some new related features, then spin them down again, with most funds probably going to the general clan of related ems.

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

#708

Post by nvr219 »

jonp888 wrote: post #310
nvr219 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've clearly never used Teams. But in all seriousness Teams is fine for chat and video.

I didn't know it did anything apart from Chat and Video. Perhaps that's why I don't have any problem with it. What am I missing?

The whole Sites/Channels thing is annoying. If you ignore that part and just use the 1:1 chats / ad hoc group chats and video calls it's fine.

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

#709

Post by scarface74 »

Rumel57 wrote: post #698
scarface74 wrote: post #614

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Depress salaries” == “Now the person in the middle of Nebraska can make more than he could make before without moving to California”

Oh hey this is literally me. Started working remote in 2015 and really upped my salary in 2020 working for AWS remotely and then moved to an actual good company. Never had to move to California or Washington.

I actually work for AWS remotely (ProServe).

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

#710

Post by Waterluvian »

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…

I don’t want my employment to have any nonsense like loyalty or family or whatnot. Pay me to do work and when you don’t want me to do work I’ll find someone else to pay me to do work for them.

100% remote has become a requirement for me.

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