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Elastic lays off 7% of employees

elastic.co

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Re: Elastic lays off 7% of employees

#81

Post by jimt1234 »

zamadatix wrote: post #29
tracerbulletx wrote: post #22

Before the 1980s layoffs were seen as a massive failure of the company and almost never happened to tenured employees unless the company was collapsing. Before we are all made to think this is normal and unavoidable behavior.

I wouldn't have nearly as many complaints about this mindset change if ones life (e.g. insurance) weren't still so deeply tied to who your current employer is.

I'm aware that HN frowns on "THIS", but...THIS!!!

I don't know what the best solution for the current healthcare clusterfuck in the US is, but I think disassociating health insurance from employer/employment is a great first step.

Re: Elastic lays off 7% of employees

#85

Post by danans »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #48
b3kart wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s written into law is just “contract”, not “social contract”. Your argument is basically “if it’s not illegal it’s not wrong”.

No, he's arguing that if it's not legal, it's not enforceable by men with nightsticks.

I was thinking the justice system, but yes the entire concept of government and law is built upon the monopoly of violence. Bringing it into this discussion is reductio ad absurdum. Even property rights are protected by the same monopoly (and even more directly).

My point is that the so called "social contract" has never been upheld by large corporations - it may have seemed that way at times but it was mostly self serving marketing, not anything that would influence their treatment of employees vs their shareholders and executives.

Furthermore I'm arguing that we shouldn't rely on them to uphold it. If we have a belief in what is universally fair or just (i.e minimum wages, no child labor, no slavery), we should encode it in law, not hope corporations find their conscience to renew the social contract.

Re: Elastic lays off 7% of employees

#86

Post by wrs »

rconti wrote: post #54
georgemcbay wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your best employees are the most likely to leave via attrition, because they have the most opportunity elsewhere. But this remains true after a layoff and the layoff often acts a motivator for your best employees to start looking even if they weren't previously. Usually they aren't thinking "well, glad I survived that layoff and now my job is safe forever", they are thinking "huh, is this a sinking ship? Maybe I sh…

yeah, it seems like it would have to be accompanied by a pay bump for the ones you really want to retain... which is challenging from an optics perspective.

Perhaps, but there are optics only when someone sees. It's not unusual to fund retention increases using some of the budget freed up by a layoff, but that won't be explicitly stated in a public announcement.

Re: Elastic lays off 7% of employees

#87

Post by tylerjl »

It's interesting to contrast this announcement with a similar post from the CEO in 2022 [1]: those past layoffs had much more of a victim-of-circumstances tone as ZIRP was beginning to dry up, but apparently those "bad times" versus "good times" during AI mania just accounts for a delta of +6% additional layoffs.

Another commenter questioned what size bucket Elastic falls into these days; in April 2025 their SEC filing [2] cited about 3,500 employees. So not a startup any more but definitely not fully-fledged FAANG-sized.

(not sure whether it even applies here; but full disclosure, I left Elastic in 2022.)

[1]: https://www.elastic.co/blog/ceo-ash-kulkarni-email-to-elasti... [2]: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1707753/000170775325...

Re: Elastic lays off 7% of employees

#88

Post by kev009 »

trgn wrote: post #25
Ancalagon wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not to mention SaaS stocks are down making the cost of borrowing against their stock more expensive

but none of this applies to elastic. it's cash flow positive, and has such a cash hoard it's doing stock buybacks.

They carry $575m in debt, which is around 80-100 devs a year if they are paying something like 4.5% on it, ignoring tax write-offs on either case as well as equity comp. There is some calculus to all that, carrying some debt, doing buybacks, whatever other strategies to manage perceptions sure.

Re: Elastic lays off 7% of employees

#89

Post by Ancalagon »

trgn wrote: post #25
Ancalagon wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not to mention SaaS stocks are down making the cost of borrowing against their stock more expensive

but none of this applies to elastic. it's cash flow positive, and has such a cash hoard it's doing stock buybacks.

As far as I understand companies will take out loans against their own stocks in good times as they expect their stocks to generally go up and to make more money than the payments on the interest of those loans. If their stocks go down they need to make up the shortfall elsewhere. The loans are generally used to keep business operations running smoothly irrespective of actual business cashflow (for example some businesses make most of their profits at certain times of the year). I'm not saying this for sure applies to Elastic but I believe its a pretty common pattern across major businesses.
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