4 ms·

Why is this always the case? I've been on a couple of projects that were complete flops, devs are always first to go. Meanwhile the idiots who actually wasted

by gjolund 11y ago

Why is this always the case? I've been on a couple of projects that were complete flops, devs are always first to go. Meanwhile the idiots who actually wasted all the money and bloated the feature set start working on version "2.0".

pcurve 11y ago
BWC - business worship culture. He who holds the purse string holds the power.
bluepostitnote 11y ago
Those "idiots" are now the ones that learned an expensive set of lessons to apply to that v2
- cesarbs 11y ago
  Still doesn't answer why engineers are let go. It's not like they didn't learn lessons too, and their expertise could be used for "that v2".
  - FilterSweep 11y ago
    From my - perhaps "limited" as it's only been to a few years - experience they aren't _all_ let go. With the rest, its easier to start fresh with lower paid devs than give raises to the older engineers who will begin to request being paid appropriately for their time and commitment.
- gjolund 11y ago
  So the people that came up with the failed idea get to come up with more flops. The people that built the flop get to look for a new job building someone else's future flops. I'm waiting for the surge of native developers fleeing from the food delivery gold rush startups before starting on our native app.
NoCulturalFit 11y ago
Yeah, saw the same thing with the good devs at Nike :-/
- selimthegrim 11y ago
  There were good devs at Nike? When I lived in Portland Nike had a reputation for hiring...ah...those with a bit yet to go on the learning curve, shall we say.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
megablast 11y ago
Simple. If you are a designer, you can go work on another project. If you are a BA, you can go work on another project. If you are a manager, you can go work on another project. If you are an mobile developer/hardware engineer, and they aren't building any more OS/hardware, they can't move you onto another project.
- bduerst 11y ago
  Amazon produces mobile apps for other platforms, and is shipping hardware like Alexa. If anything, these layoffs seem to correllate with some of the commentary in the recent NYT article about Amazon.
  - jon-wood 11y ago
    Theres a difference between making mobile Apps and making a mobile OS. Keeping people with those skills on to work on the Amazon Android app feels to me like hiring Linus Torvalds because you want to release a Linux version of your software.
    - bduerst 11y ago
      Which would make perfect sense if they didn't can the hardware engineers too.
- iofj 11y ago
  And if you believe that this is what protects managers from getting fired, you don't have enough experience. Managers have all sorts of ridiculous beliefs, but the root cause of management incompetence is this: that managers believe that a manager can manage anything. Running a store, developing a phone, building a house, designing a rocket to go to the moon, it's all the same thing according to them. Getting info, negotiate, motivate a team, giving speeches, running projects, ... Some go further in this, and some hold up the idea that something like "management science" exists. This directly leads to the second ridiculous belief, which causes a feedback loop : that they can hire other managers anywhere, absolutely no concern for what they did before, as long as they had slightly less "reports" (so they are "promoted" into their new position), for any management function. Then, of course the second belief leads to negotiation, to trading business efforts for jobs. If you make my department look good (internally "hire" us as consultants because your financial performance is down the crapper anyway and we'll hire you next quarter after your division gets nixed). Nothing is so damaging to companies, as the main thing being traded is making disasters far worse in trade for personal exits, but the people who'd have to do something about it are of course managers, who have negotiated for jobs and have further negotiation in place for moving up. For "some reason" managers never ever start any company. Companies are started by people who actually know what the company is supposed to do. Companies are (were) started by mechanics, by engineers, by traders (ie. shop attendants), by software developers, sometimes by experienced investors, by ... The best companies were started by people who had the skills to do well in 2 different fields. Generally what happens is that at some point a deep and explosive conflict happens between these founders and some employees of their companies, and then someone is brought in to prevent this. In reality, this is normal. Meet enough people, raise the stakes high enough and you will clash very seriously with other people. And the bigger your company gets as a founder, the more is at stake, and the more people you will have to deal with. So a conflict escalating is a matter of time, but it is human nature to compensate : founders will bring in a manager to deal with this sort of thing, and then the job trading begins. As everybody who's held a job at a large company knows, this does not prevent personality clashes, quite the opposite, but once this position trading starts, it is incredibly hard to stop.
ljk 11y ago
i'm guessing the devs are the most expensive?
dragonwriter 11y ago
Because the issue that wasted the money are the ones making decisions about who stays and goes, so, naturally, they stay, and the serfs go. That is rather the whole point of positions of power and influence.

by gjolund 11y ago

pcurve 11y ago

BWC - business worship culture. He who holds the purse string holds the power.

bluepostitnote 11y ago

Those "idiots" are now the ones that learned an expensive set of lessons to apply to that v2

cesarbs 11y ago
Still doesn't answer why engineers are let go. It's not like they didn't learn lessons too, and their expertise could be used for "that v2".
- FilterSweep 11y ago
  From my - perhaps "limited" as it's only been to a few years - experience they aren't _all_ let go. With the rest, its easier to start fresh with lower paid devs than give raises to the older engineers who will begin to request being paid appropriately for their time and commitment.
gjolund 11y ago
So the people that came up with the failed idea get to come up with more flops. The people that built the flop get to look for a new job building someone else's future flops. I'm waiting for the surge of native developers fleeing from the food delivery gold rush startups before starting on our native app.

NoCulturalFit 11y ago

Yeah, saw the same thing with the good devs at Nike :-/

selimthegrim 11y ago
There were good devs at Nike? When I lived in Portland Nike had a reputation for hiring...ah...those with a bit yet to go on the learning curve, shall we say.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

megablast 11y ago

Simple. If you are a designer, you can go work on another project. If you are a BA, you can go work on another project. If you are a manager, you can go work on another project. If you are an mobile developer/hardware engineer, and they aren't building any more OS/hardware, they can't move you onto another project.

bduerst 11y ago
Amazon produces mobile apps for other platforms, and is shipping hardware like Alexa. If anything, these layoffs seem to correllate with some of the commentary in the recent NYT article about Amazon.
- jon-wood 11y ago
  Theres a difference between making mobile Apps and making a mobile OS. Keeping people with those skills on to work on the Amazon Android app feels to me like hiring Linus Torvalds because you want to release a Linux version of your software.
  - bduerst 11y ago
    Which would make perfect sense if they didn't can the hardware engineers too.
iofj 11y ago
And if you believe that this is what protects managers from getting fired, you don't have enough experience. Managers have all sorts of ridiculous beliefs, but the root cause of management incompetence is this: that managers believe that a manager can manage anything. Running a store, developing a phone, building a house, designing a rocket to go to the moon, it's all the same thing according to them. Getting info, negotiate, motivate a team, giving speeches, running projects, ... Some go further in this, and some hold up the idea that something like "management science" exists. This directly leads to the second ridiculous belief, which causes a feedback loop : that they can hire other managers anywhere, absolutely no concern for what they did before, as long as they had slightly less "reports" (so they are "promoted" into their new position), for any management function. Then, of course the second belief leads to negotiation, to trading business efforts for jobs. If you make my department look good (internally "hire" us as consultants because your financial performance is down the crapper anyway and we'll hire you next quarter after your division gets nixed). Nothing is so damaging to companies, as the main thing being traded is making disasters far worse in trade for personal exits, but the people who'd have to do something about it are of course managers, who have negotiated for jobs and have further negotiation in place for moving up. For "some reason" managers never ever start any company. Companies are started by people who actually know what the company is supposed to do. Companies are (were) started by mechanics, by engineers, by traders (ie. shop attendants), by software developers, sometimes by experienced investors, by ... The best companies were started by people who had the skills to do well in 2 different fields. Generally what happens is that at some point a deep and explosive conflict happens between these founders and some employees of their companies, and then someone is brought in to prevent this. In reality, this is normal. Meet enough people, raise the stakes high enough and you will clash very seriously with other people. And the bigger your company gets as a founder, the more is at stake, and the more people you will have to deal with. So a conflict escalating is a matter of time, but it is human nature to compensate : founders will bring in a manager to deal with this sort of thing, and then the job trading begins. As everybody who's held a job at a large company knows, this does not prevent personality clashes, quite the opposite, but once this position trading starts, it is incredibly hard to stop.

ljk 11y ago

i'm guessing the devs are the most expensive?

dragonwriter 11y ago

Because the issue that wasted the money are the ones making decisions about who stays and goes, so, naturally, they stay, and the serfs go. That is rather the whole point of positions of power and influence.