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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

#861

Post by Aeolun »

throwawaylinux wrote: post #769
Aeolun wrote: post #663

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I’m mostly convinced that is more about signaling than actual inability to do so.

If I can spend a few percent of my net worth on random crap for the fun of it, and not be materially affected, that must be true for people/corporations with a million times more money as well.

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

#862

Post by JoshCole »

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.

You claimed: we must have it one way or the other. This is false. Game theory says you are wrong and has proofs that you are wrong in the form of proofs of mixed strategies being optimal equilibrium strategies. In these strategies we have the assumption of having it both ways - the probabilities have to add one, but they don't have to be binary.

Lets use a much simpler decision problem to show that you are wrong to not think of things as happening in both ways.

Consider rock paper scissors.

If I want to pick rock, because I'm worried about them picking paper, it doesn't mean I can't be wary of scissors, because I'm worried about them picking rock. For, were I to not be wary of them picking scissors, they could always pick scissors, and therefore, because I had it only one way, I would be exploitable. So now I have to be wary of them picking scissors, but what if I am only wary that they pick scissors? Then I will now play rock. Yet now they can play paper. So what if am I only wary they play paper? Then I must play scissors. Yet if I do, they play rock. So what if I am only wary they play rock? Then I must play paper. Yet now if I do, they can play scissors.

So actually, it isn't that you can't have it both ways, but that you must have it all ways. Anything else and you can't reason properly about the expectations.

> People on HN are always talking badly about companies that don't allow work from home

This is also false. People on Hacker News are not always doing this, they are sometimes doing this, and then sometimes doing other things. There are also many people on Hacker News and each commenter may have a different opinion. Some people on Hacker News prefer working from home. Some people on Hacker News do not prefer working from home.

I feel that you are trying too hard to set up a 'it has to be one way' dichotomy to make your decision problems simpler, but it isn't actually true that making your problems simpler and easier to reason about means that you are doing more correct reasoning. Demanding that others simplify their thinking in a similar way is a request, not for correct thinking, but for use of a time savings technique that you prefer.

Being very clear on that will probably make it more obvious to you that what you are requesting is not as necessary as you seem to think it is: for he calculated his expectation with regard to how exploitable this could make us, then gave you that expectation. This cost you almost nothing to incorporate into your own estimates, so on the whole, it saved you time, at the cost of his time, a cost which you are not paying, but which you benefit from in expectation through correction of the estimates of your faster to calculate yet more exploitable false dichotomy.

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

#863

Post by Dopameaner »

johnbellone wrote: post #408
Dopameaner wrote: post #144

An observation, Microsoft subsidiaries are being told to use teams. Cisco subsidiaries are being told to use webex in place of slack. We might be in a new world of chaos

Why is this surprising?

The surprising part of it is, it took so long to dogfood their products.

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

#864

Post by dantyti »

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…

This is an interesting angle I haven't considered before.

I've been working remotely for a few years now and I do agree that there are some issues there, like dedicating some of my personal space to work, the employer basically outsourcing office management to me and saving on rent, but the time savings and lack of distraction are definitely worth it for me.

I guess the lack of personal contact and informal connections will also weaken any labor organizing efforts and might silo people off in a way that many won't even be aware that layoffs are happening, since there's no watering hole where people from different departments mingle and gossip.

Nevertheless, it still beats spending 2 unpaid hours on a bus every day just to get to work.

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

#865

Post by dantyti »

WoodenChair wrote: post #711
simplicio wrote: post #514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, but that works both ways. Employees are often reluctant to leave jobs where they have a lot of personal relationships, or if getting a new job would entail moving to a new city/state/country, even if jumping ship would entail a sizable payraise or other improvement in working conditions. In an industry where remote work is the norm and changing jobs doesn't even require changing offices, people are much less l…

> Employees are often reluctant to leave jobs where they have a lot of personal relationships, or if getting a new job would entail moving to a new city/state/country, even if jumping ship would entail a sizable payraise or other improvement in working conditions. Yeah you know I’d much rather work in a place where I have a very limited relationship with the people I spend at least 8 hours a day with. That was sarcas…

>Yeah you know I’d much rather work in a place where I have a very limited relationship with the people I spend at least 8 hours a day with.

I would. No sarcasm. With the caveat that I don't have to spend 9 hours a day with them, as I'm not forced into an office space with them.

I've also found that working at companies which push for closer employee social bonds with countless office activities, quarterly teambuilding events, parties, etc. actually diminished my QoL. I realized that what I actually want are deep connections with people I like, not someone someone else hired to work on the same project. All those (imo, meaningless) socializing activities cut into my free time I could have been spending with friends and family. Working remotely also frees up time I would be wasting on commutes.

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

#866

Post by orangecat »

louwrentius wrote: post #831
orangecat wrote: post #575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

65%+ Americans don't have 500 bucks to their name. They are one car breakdown from deep shit. This is of course not true.

Narator: it is true https://www.cbs19news.com/story/34248451/6-in-10-americans-d...

I've seen many articles like that, and they conveniently never show the actual question that was asked. If I had an unexpected expense I'd probably put it on my credit card just for convenience, and then pay it off at the end of the billing cycle incurring no additional fees. But it would be silly to include me in the category of not being able to afford it.

In reality, even most people in the bottom 20% of income have more than $500 in savings: https://www.valuepenguin.com/banking/average-savings-account...

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

#867

Post by bagels »

danaris wrote: post #841
bagels wrote: post #609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is. Sloppy language. Should have said people working in bay area offices for FAANG companies.

Y'know, some time I'd really like to see a poll about where people on HN are located, because honestly, I doubt more than a modest plurality are actually in the Bay Area, or working for FAANG. And yet, it's generally so easy to detect the ones that are, because so many of them have the same attitude you do: that you're the only ones who matter on this site, or even the only ones who matter at all . It gets to be pret…

YCombinator was founded here. Many VCs are here. Google, Facebook, others are headquartered here or Seattle. There's definitely a Bay Area bias.

Regardless, I'm sorry you find it disgusting, and that you drew the inference that I think nobody else matters. I was simply pointing out that not returning to bay area offices is not consequence free.

I have been hiring very capable people in other countries at my startup. It's not just hypothetical to me that people in other regions will be the beneficiaries of this movement.

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

#868

Post by Rumel57 »

scarface74 wrote: post #709
Rumel57 wrote: post #698

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Sorry to hear that. Haha. Nah, it's very org dependent. A bunch of my team all quit around the same time last year. One of my buddies had been happily there for 6 years.

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

#869

Post by rlnorthcutt »

simplicio wrote: post #514
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…

Maybe, but that works both ways. Employees are often reluctant to leave jobs where they have a lot of personal relationships, or if getting a new job would entail moving to a new city/state/country, even if jumping ship would entail a sizable payraise or other improvement in working conditions. In an industry where remote work is the norm and changing jobs doesn't even require changing offices, people are much less l…

That's a really good point. Humans generally don't like big changes, so removing friction to a big change makes it more likely. While remote work might make it a bit easier to fire someone, it totally makes it easier to leave.

Factor in that with the boomers retiring, the workforce is much smaller, especially among those with more experience. Unemployment is expected to stay low for some time (in the US at least), which means workers have more power. This is especially true for work that requires more experience or education. Those roles will be harder to fill overall, and the expected outputs are higher.

As a person working in a fully remote, global company... and as a hiring manager, I can attest to the challenges in hiring and maintaining a remote workforce. Hiring is tough, but keeping employees is also tough... because it is so easy to leave in a time of low unemployment.

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

#870

Post by rlnorthcutt »

xkcd-sucks wrote: post #543
laurels-marts wrote: post #519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Employees are often reluctant to leave jobs where they have a lot of personal relationships That sounds like having a life. I guess the alternative is to isolate yourself to a point where you don't have any personal relationships. No hard choices then.

idk I religiously firewall my work and personal life but still feel a lot of "personal work employment inertia": - I know that everyone doesn't suck to work with - I know who to ask for specific institutional knowledge, or to get something done through unofficial channels - I know who is more or less competent in specific domains - I know what kind of work people do and do not enjoy etc. It's actually the main reason…

This type of knowledge is far more valuable than many people realize. When you see people who get things done, get more raises, or seem to do great work without working so hard... then they know things about how to operate in the organization.
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