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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

#761

Post by Shaggy2000 »

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…

The World Economic Forum have stated in a white paper that Corporations and Governments will be expected as part of climate action to help move more people into cities. So that "15 minute cities" legislation can be implemented world wide. This appears to be nothing but a long term climate lockdown. I personally think that to have everyone working locally in these 15 minute zones in each major city and to have them never leave the zone would require that remote work is the norm beforehand. If people think that remote work equals freedom they are in for one hell of a shock.

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

#762

Post by sokoloff »

daevout wrote: post #754
sokoloff wrote: post #738

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If your employees are going to be pictures on your screen anyway, might as well pick ones that worker harder and complain less. Well, naturally, if that’s the all-else-equal trade that’s on offer, they’d be foolish to not take it.

Of course, the problem is that the trade is on offer at all. In the antiquated view that the government exists for the protection of the people, rather than to coddle corporations and sacrificing at the altar of competitiveness, it would be simply shut down.

If the antiquated view is that people in one country don’t have to compete in a global marketplace but rather are owed a higher-paying job by virtue of birthplace, I’m OK with the new view (even though I had the good fortune to have that birthplace).

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

#763

Post by midoridensha »

rossdavidh wrote: post #705
svachalek wrote: post #595

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Some employers? That seems to be the norm from what I've seen. Team leaders usually know full well how hard it is to find good new people and get them trained, just like the previous comments here say, but somehow upper management never seems to understand this at all. I guess they think that's lower-level management's and HR's problem to solve.

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

#764

Post by japanman425 »

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…

Honestly the latter seems better. Unless it’s my own company I want to turn up do work go home. No more.

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

#765

Post by 0cf8612b2e1e »

turdprincess wrote: post #472
microtherion wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having recently spent a few weeks in large, quite nice, but nearly empty offices (because I wanted to work in office for a change, but most of my cow orkers had other plans), I realized that holding on to oversized offices can backfire, because as nice as the space is, it felt somewhat demoralizing after a while to be nearly alone in such a vast building.

It seems like the thing to do is to downsize offices until they correctly meet usage. So, take your number of employees, multiply by percentage that usually comes into the office, add a buffer for growth, and have an office for that.

Commercial leases are usually multi year affairs, so difficult to titrate this ratio.

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

#766

Post by fsckboy »

DiggyJohnson wrote: post #756
waboremo wrote: post #741

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what ways?

Compensation and strength of job market? (Yes, even with all these layoffs).

it works because high compensation and strength of job market, not "results in". these (high paid) workers have a lot of power individually which balances against the scale power of the organization. Not so for low skill workers. At will employment will not lead to higher wages for low skill workers. It will lead to fuller employment, more overall wages.

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

#767

Post by sokoloff »

fsckboy wrote: post #766
DiggyJohnson wrote: post #756

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compensation and strength of job market? (Yes, even with all these layoffs).

it works because high compensation and strength of job market, not "results in". these (high paid) workers have a lot of power individually which balances against the scale power of the organization. Not so for low skill workers. At will employment will not lead to higher wages for low skill workers. It will lead to fuller employment, more overall wages.

Are you arguing that low-skill workers should then choose to form a union?

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

#768

Post by erik_seaberg »

burlesona wrote: post #112
dangwhy wrote: post #53

when will these layoffs reflect in boom town housing markets ?

SF Housing is already dropping, but unfortunately it's so expensive that even a substantial drop of 10-20% would still leave it as one of the most expensive markets in the country. The supply shortage is so severe that it would take a crushing local depression to balance out.

It’s easy to forget that tech is only about 15%-ish of the Bay Area job market.

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

#769

Post by throwawaylinux »

Aeolun wrote: post #663
ProfessorLayton wrote: post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It doesn't sound like it to me. There's a reason why more responsibly run companies don't blow money on crap like this.

There were similar stories during the dot com bubble, companies and people with more money than sense wasting it. Going on hiring sprees, building opulent abominations of offices, buying toys they don't use, overpaying for celebrity/rockstar employees.

Might be easier to bush off as no big deal when profit (or VC money) keeps pouring in, then when the wind changes you end up closing all your offices and laying off thousands of people.

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

#770

Post by acheron »

WoodenChair wrote: post #723
jabits wrote: post #722

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you’re young maybe, but after ten or fifteen years of “deep social connections”, working remote can be quite peaceful and satisfying. Personally I’ve always been more productive working at home.

Well I'm 35. You can decide if that's young or old. Some people are just more social than others of course.

Being social is fine. That’s what I have real friends for. I don’t need pretend friends at work.
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