871–880 of 1001 posts
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In management terms a human and a printer are the same. Both resources that need to be managed. I hate it.
We don't send 10% of our printers to the landfill every year just to motivate the other printers.
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Amazon followed that model heavily until they basically ran out of top talent wanting to work for them. That bit really hard when AI hit and all the top engineers wouldn’t even consider working at Amazon.
When I hear about Amazon, the first thing that comes to kind is "PIP[0] culture" even zo I don't know anyone who worked for them. [0] Performance Improvement Plan aka the chapter where manger together with HR build up the convincing paper trail to fire a person.
The first three of those people seem to have got on well there and mostly enjoyed it. The fourth had a miserable 8 months. Their manager was based in a different office with a 5+ hour time difference and was a complete nightmare, and they left of their own accord to another job on about the same money but without all the extra hours, stress, and terrible management.
I’m guessing Amazon is like other big companies: the quality of your experience will depend to a very large extent on your manager.
This is awkward. Exhibit A - September 2025 - "Help build the future" - Cloudflare hires 1111 interns to "help build the future" [ https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-1111-intern-program/ ] Exhibit B - May 2026 - "Building for the future" - Cloudflare lays off 1100 people, about 20% of their workforce to "continue building the future" [ https://blog.cloudflare.com/building-for-the-future/ ] I'll finish on this quo…
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Why do we need to complicate here? cloudFlare is not making any profit. They are losing money. The board probably wants profit now (they predict less growth) so the management needs to cut the costs. This AI story is a just an excuse. If there is not AI they will say “high gas prices”. Or “inflation”. Or whatever … It is true that the companies like Meta, Oracle and Microsoft are laying off due to AI but because they…
> They are losing money. They have $4b in cash and Q1 FCF $84m, and 70% gross margin. They can become profitable anytime they want.
> They can become profitable anytime they want.
By cutting 1100 workers!
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Before AI, it was impossible to measure productivity. Some tried with misguided metrics like lines of code added but that just incentivized writing obtuse code. What has changed?
vibes maybe? If effective AI enhanced SWEs can ship features in a week, the guys who ship 1 feature a quarter stand out more?
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Is it not fine to just cut for pay rate? That should be easy
Is it legal to cut pay rates based on age? I doubt it. 'We didn't fire them, we cut their six-figure salary to minimum wage'.
After all, they're all just Claudr users now.
> Cloudflare expects second-quarter revenue of $664 million to $665 million, obviously $2.5e9ish/yr is substantial in absolute terms ... but that's it? They intermediate half the internet and only capture $7m/day?
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I’ve seen managers hiring people with an intent to lay them off when winds change to protect themselves and their close circle. I can only imagine they’ve had great KPIs in both cases: first for scaling the team, and then for cutting costs.
This has a name, and also a poster boy. Amazon's well known "hire-to-fire" [1] https://www.inc.com/jason-aten/amazons-controversial-hire-to...
I’ve managed people out. I’m sure I’ll have to do it again. I’ve even let people go during probation but, on the rare occasions that’s happened, I’ve seen it as a failure of the hiring process.
People have families, they have mortgages, bills to pay, and a powerful need to eat (Mal, Serenity?). The last thing I want is for someone to give up a stable job that allows them to do that to come and work for me only so I can fire them and leave them up the creek a few weeks or months down the line.
Our employees are after all people, human beings.
As I result I skew picky during the hiring process: if there’s any doubt there’s no doubt kind of thing.
Just awful behaviour here from Amazon.
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I haven't met any truly skilled person constantly being fired. Sure they may get unlucky once or twice, but talent shines through
Didn’t you just say your landscaper gets fired every year? That would mean they’re not “truly skilled.” So why hire them in the first place if they’re not skilled? Originally you were assigning zero significance to the act of being fired, now you’re backtracking saying it implies something about value.
A landscaper that doesn't have repeat clients is what you are comparing to, which is the signal for unskilled labor.
(If we are just using the landscape ecosystem).
For the Knowledge Worker ecosystem, the seasonality is not summer/winter but say Recession/Growth or Technology Waves. There is definitely at least 3 years gap between Recession/Growth of Technology Waves. So, someone getting fired every 8 months is a red flag just like the Landscaper not getting re-hired the next season.
All these are valid signals but most HNers are blinded by anti-corporation propaganda and can't see the objective reality