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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

#771

Post by [deleted] »

grepfru_it wrote: post #299
mardifoufs wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>i) Effective immediately, we will be moving laptop refreshes from three years to four years. 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 Layoffs and having to use teams? Talk about a morale hit

I wonder why they are not talking about the elephant in the room, the AWS spend. Cut back on that and these layoffs probably aren't necessary. The problem is the sheer size of GitHub data and the unreliability of Azure. There is an entire datacenter that is unused because data locality severely limits performance.

[deleted]

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

#772

Post by amyjess »

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.

Yeah, no kidding. First job I had, worked there 2007-2010, we had an office in India where a huge amount of our engineering staff was based (most of the time I was there, fully half of our entire headcount were in the India office, and the India office only had engineering people while the US had every department).

In 2016-2021, I worked at another company that had an office in the Philippines where most of our junior employees worked. In fact, at one point before covid, they started rapidly hiring Tier 1 NOC staff in the Philippines and announced they would no longer hire Tier 1 positions elsewhere and would phase out the US-based Tier 1 staff via attrition... and then a few months later (still before covid) all the remaining US-based Tier 1 staff got unceremoniously laid off out of nowhere.

Mass outsourcing has been happening since long before covid and remote work took off.

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

#773

Post by moomoo11 »

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…

Totes. I can’t remember a single remote colleague from pre Covid days. Either they were slackers so I didn’t associate with them, or they were usually given the work nobody wanted to do and wasnt high priority (but still needed). And they usually preferred to solo content / play single player, then be part of a raiding party trying to clear challenging content. So it was a different attitude. I’m sure there are excellent remote colleagues but I personally didn’t have that experience.

I personally enjoy working from the office. It was a better work environment and there was a clear boundary between work and personal life. The large amount of remote lovers representation on HN are outliers in the real world.

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

#774

Post by riffraff »

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.

Those in Europe and Asia are asking to be paid more. Things will level out, like they did with offshoring.

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

#775

Post by puckerup44 »

acheron wrote: post #770
WoodenChair wrote: post #723

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I always see this parroted by people on HN and it's such a pathetic stance to take.

Every job I've been at I've formed close friends. My closest friends include people from every job and I don't think it's a coincidence. These friendships are just as real (and I'd argue stronger) than your "real" friends.

Maybe the problem is with you and you are just somebody people don't like? Or you think you shouldn't be making friends at work which is kind of sad.

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

#776

Post by puckerup44 »

sanderjd wrote: post #649
oblio wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Very few (but not zero!) of my meaningful relations have been through work.

This is so sad to hear and it's insane how many people on HN are against the idea of forming friendships at work.

Ya'll really are socially inept.

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

#777

Post by tflinton »

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.

Eh, same thing happened in 2000's and 2010's... it's honestly about 3 years late.

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

#778

Post by firecall »

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.

HN isn't one person.

It's a community of individuals having a debate.

But I get your point! :-)

It does seem that way...

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

#779

Post by bsimpson »

phpisthebest wrote: post #556
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.

Laptops are not advancing that much yoy and a 3 year cycle is already aggressive. 4 years was the standard for a long time, these days many companies are moving to 5 or even 6 years for laptops. Hell right now I have employees at 4 years that refuse to change out their laptops because they have no problems with them and want to keep them longer

I was issued a 2015 rMBP and held onto it until the 2022 M1 was available to replace it.

It was barely usable in the end, but I didn't want to be locked into years of crappy keyboard et al when the improvement was Just Around The Corner™.

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

#780

Post by makeitup1818w1 »

puckerup44 wrote: post #775
acheron wrote: post #770

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I always see this parroted by people on HN and it's such a pathetic stance to take. Every job I've been at I've formed close friends. My closest friends include people from every job and I don't think it's a coincidence. These friendships are just as real (and I'd argue stronger) than your "real" friends. Maybe the problem is with you and you are just somebody people don't like? Or you think you shouldn't be making f…

I encourage you to find you’re friends where you want, but where I live, having close friends at work just isn’t done (and never has been).

Despite this, the weekends are always busy with friends from outside of work. I find it builds a strong community.

For my part, I work for a Silicon Valley company and therefore do have some close friends at my job, I get the best of both worlds.

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