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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

#821

Post by rswail »

fidgewidge wrote: post #808
bambataa wrote: post #793

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder about this too. The UK has lower salaries than west coast US and a large pool of suitable workers. Big tech has a presence but why haven’t they moved their main operations to the UK?

Once you decide to go to "Europe" then the question becomes why the UK and not somewhere vastly cheaper like Romania or Poland. Wages in the UK are lower but wages in eastern Europe are much lower still.

Not as true now as it was even 2 years ago. Slovakian wages are reaching parity with the "West" of Europe, and Romania is climbing as well.

Until the war, Ukraine was also climbing that same ladder. And when the war is over, they will soar. Their skills are at least the equivalent of any developer I've worked with, their language skills are impressive, and their analysis and design skills are as well.

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

#822

Post by rswail »

Shaggy2000 wrote: post #759
JasserInicide wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll contend that while I've been fully taken advantage of remote work (and probably want my next job to be remote too), I still fully believe it's a long term "leading lambs to the slaughter" type of plan. Companies save big on remote in so many ways. No more offices. No more weekly happy hours (just do a company retreat every 6 months). They can now depress salaries even further because they have a wider pool from…

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 ne…

This is nonsense. What they're saying is that we need to start designing habitation to be more localized and less dependent on commuting and endlessly expanding suburbia. Suburbs, particularly the US variety (and Australia) are terrible because of the lack of local facilities, hospitality and retail.

Cities need to downsize but at the same time regionalize. Smaller cities with HSR and equivalent will work to reduce the need for individual vehicles, which saves on costs, environment, energy consumption, and people's overall health.

Working in a local community is much better for everyone involved than people spending 1+ hours each way every day to get from their home to their work and back again.

The same applies to retail, hospitality and most other service industries.

Manufacturing (particularly heavy industry) is better to be localized to transport hubs (rail, river, sea ports) because of the tonnage that has to be moved in and out, as well as localizing the polluting and environmental degradation (no one really wants to live next to a steel mill).

The latest CT is that the WEF is trying to somehow lock people into their suburb and restrict freedom of travel. That's complete and utter nonsense.

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

#823

Post by rswail »

silvestrov wrote: post #513
gorjusborg wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a bunch of different people reacting to a stressful change in economy and its effects on the job market. That's all. It may be 'easier' to fire people when you don't have to deal with their physical presence, but I doubt that factors much into the decision overall. My bet is that companies are battening down the hatches because they see strong headwinds economically (or are using other layoffs as an excuse…

It's difficult for a company to work well when 50% are in office and 50% are remote. If you can't get enough good employees in office, then it is smarter to go 100% remote as you now have an easier time hiring and working globally.

Different types of workers need different levels of face-to-face interaction.

Marketing teams, creatives and other similar groups need more face-to-face interaction because what they're creating is all about interaction, with the company's customers, their consumers (if not B2C), etc.

Those building the product after the marketing and other designers have created their designs don't require as much F2F time. They need whiteboards and C4 diagrams (in IT at least) when architecting systems, as well as some team F2F for thrashing out system level functionality and how it will be implemented (shared services etc).

But an individual developer, writing code, doesn't need F2F time with anyone. They need the capability to be available (video calls, text chat etc), but it's not an inherent requirement.

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

#824

Post by rswail »

hot_gril wrote: post #669
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…

Remote means they trust their employees to perform without physical eyes on them. "Open office" layout is designed to have eyes on your screen providing constant pressure to actually work, nothing else. Market currently says that employees pay to work remote. When I was shopping around for jobs recently, every offer I got for remote work was less than a similar in-person job. At my current job, I got a pay cut for mo…

Open offices were designed to minimize the space per employee.

A "happy side effect" is that it made it easier for micro-managers to micro-manage.

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

#825

Post by rswail »

Shaggy2000 wrote: post #761
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 ne…

Any reason why you saw the need to post this exact comment twice?

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

#826

Post by tibbydudeza »

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…

(WAAS) - work as a service - think contracting is more secure.

Look at twitter and the current mess it is in - institutional knowledge has left the building and now there are all sorts of weird outages surfacing nearly every week like the early days of the 404 whale.

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

#827

Post by msm_ »

Apreche wrote: post #104
nickpeterson wrote: post #51

Just wait till Microsoft starts charging a license for vs code and developers heads implode.

Nah, I'd just stop using it and go to something else.

Isn't vscode open-source? I'm using vscodium with all MS links removed, I don't think MS can charge licenses for that.

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

#828

Post by thinkharderdev »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #683
JasserInicide wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah it's really annoying seeing so many people talk about this recession like it's catastrophic. They clearly were too young for the dotcom bubble, let alone 2008. Getting tired of everyone in their mid 20s to early 30s experiencing baby's first recession and thinking the world is ending.

Technically 2020 was a recession. I guess we forgot already.

By many measures (GDP contraction, unemployment) it was the worst recession since the Great Depression. But it was also a very weird recession since massive stimulus, legal moratoriums on evictions and general pandemic restrictions meant that median income actually went up.

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

#829

Post by bart_spoon »

JasserInicide wrote: post #471
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.

I'll contend that while I've been fully taken advantage of remote work (and probably want my next job to be remote too), I still fully believe it's a long term "leading lambs to the slaughter" type of plan. Companies save big on remote in so many ways. No more offices. No more weekly happy hours (just do a company retreat every 6 months). They can now depress salaries even further because they have a wider pool from…

> No more offices. No more weekly happy hours.

Those sound like benefits to many.

> They can now depress salaries even further because they have a wider pool from which to choose.

This is only a negative for people who were already making absurdly high incomes in HCOL areas. For many people away from the coasts, salaries are now higher because they have access to the kinds of jobs and companies they didn’t before.

> Don't need to bother with those pesky things called relationships because your boss from 500 miles away can lay off your ass without breaking a sweat.

Has this every not been the case? Besides, there are only two kinds of layoffs. Massive ones that do not take performance into account, and rarely take input from your direct manager about who is going and who is staying. On the other hand, for layoffs in which performance is taken into account, I’m sure many prefer the criteria to be more about their work than how chummy they are with the boss and how well they politick.

I can see how these might be disadvantages for a certain kind of worker, but for other kinds they are huge wins.

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

#830

Post by bart_spoon »

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…

No one is saying they can’t make friends at work. They are saying there is a big difference in quality between work friendships and non-work friendships. The point is that if the main reason you are all associating is because you are being paid to, that the relationship can be severed when someone is fired, and that when you take a new job those relationships are quickly replaced by new ones, then it isn’t actually a strong relationship.

Actual friendships aren’t monetarily driven.

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