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Companies commonly use layoffs as an easy way to get rid of under-performing staff, realize cost savings from previous investments (e.g., automation) ahead of s
by curiousllama 6y ago
Companies commonly use layoffs as an easy way to get rid of under-performing staff, realize cost savings from previous investments (e.g., automation) ahead of schedule, or efficiently reorganize divisions whose execs fall out of favor. Not going to say this is good, but a <10% layoff is not unreasonable for a healthy company, especially when some business units may be stagnating.
However callous it is, roles on the margin get cut when prospects for growth dim.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- wolco 6y agoThe issue not being talked about is the removal of the recruiter from remote roles. Those recruiters paid linkedin thousands a year for premium access. Plus the lower jobs posting overall.
- kevstev 6y agoWhat do you mean? The only remote job I have had used a typical recruiter from the company side. I am sure he had a premium subscription. I didn't use a recruiter from my side as I knew someone that worked there.
- wolco 6y agoThird party recruiters specifically. I've seen so many jobs that send leetcode tests instead as the initial filter and use job boards to find candidates.
- vcanales 6y ago> removal of the recruiter from remote roles What does this mean? What issue is this?
- wolco 6y agoMany remote roles are direct apply/hire from job boards with leetcode tests that act as a filter. Recruiters are being used less.
- sushshshsh 6y agoAs a counterpoint to your post, I was recently hired by a 3000 person company who paid an external recruiter to post a job on LinkedIn and do the initial screening of me, which was extremely light. 8 rounds of interviewing with the company virtually later, I was hired. The interviews involved a mix of live coding, system design, and general questions about commonly used programming languages and frameworks. I personally feel like the recruitment firm was beneficial to the process in getting my foot in the door and accelerating everything. I've seen many people have much worse experiences, but mostly from companies that aren't serious about hiring.
- user5994461 6y agoTesting platforms charge the company tens of dollars per test, so it makes a lot of sense to have a person double check that the resume is relevant rather than sending tests automatically.
- sushshshsh 6y agoI suppose I see where you are coming from but a testing platform was never involved in my journey, just google docs.
- hedora 6y agoI’ve worked with good recruiters. They do a ton of work at the beginning of the hiring funnel. If you got an onsite interview, you probably didn’t even notice the first few filters that the recruiter applied to you. Those early filters eliminate at least 90% of applicants.
- dehrmann 6y ago> a <10% layoff is not unreasonable for a healthy company From what I've read, this was standard practice at Microsoft for over a decade. I think this makes sense during a downturn, but probably wears on morale if it happens every year.
- dvirsky 6y agoI've heard from people who worked there at the time that as part of the stack ranking system, it contributed to a culture of mediocrity and stagnation. The high performers did not want to excel in fear of retaliation from teammates that this was putting at risk, and no one wanted to be at the bottom. So the result was that everyone tried to be mediocre, do exactly as told, not more and not less. I would never want to work in such a culture.
- AdrianB1 6y agoOur company (not Microsoft, but a bit larger) used this model for over 15 years; it worked better than the replacement model, where people only get fired when they are really bad, so really weak people accumulate and re-baseline the competency in the company. On top of that, the new model based on diversity removed almost completely competency from promotions, so it is very easy to stay at the top of the peer group due to lack of competitors.
- dvirsky 6y agoThere could be a model where you just define what "bad" is in concrete terms and fire people who are not up to a relatively high standard; yet you aren't required to fire the the "bottom people" if they are good enough. I believe this is what FAANGs are doing.
- retzkek 6y ago> a <10% layoff is not unreasonable for a healthy company So, almost literally decimate in the classical sense? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimation_(Roman_army) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimation_(Roman_army)
- varjag 6y agoMy knowledge of corporate culture might be outdated, but I believe the former LinkedIn employees get to live.
- maxk42 6y agoDecimate in the classical sense would be to reduce by 90%, not 10%.
- mulander 6y ago> Every tenth man in a group was executed by members of his cohort That is a 10% reduction. Killing nine out of ten would be a 90% reduction but 'in the classical sense' it would also mean that the lucky guy would have to kill the 9 remaining people.
- symlinkk 6y agoYeah doesn’t Amazon lay off 10% of devs every year as part of their stack ranking?
- three_seagrass 6y agoThat was Microsoft for the longest time and it destroyed their work culture.
- atlgator 6y agoBut it funded the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Silver lining.
- mrnobody_67 6y agoBut it gave us Clippy!!
- simonebrunozzi 6y agoNo, never heard of this systematic approach while I was there (AWS, 2008-2014), although the turnaround effect might have been somewhat close to that number just coincidentally.
- pmiller2 6y agoWhat's the "turnaround effect"?
- OkGoDoIt 6y agoI assume they meant “turnover”. Amazon is notorious for burning through employees quickly. And if employees quit voluntarily, the company doesn’t need to pay severance, may reclaim hiring bonus or RSU’s, and it helps them politically/reputationally in aggregate (by being able to claim low lay-off numbers). Of course then you might wind up with those other than your worst performers leaving, so it’s not great in the long term.
- mathattack 6y agoIn this case, they make a disproportionate amount of their revenue on jobs postings and selling recruiters the right to spam us. With less jobs their revenue goes away. They don’t need as many salespeople and internal recruiters. Microsoft has historically been pretty ruthless about annual culls. It used to be in the GE mode of cutting the bottom 5-10% each year. More recently it’s more quiet. I don’t begrudge companies this. They need to move resources where they’re most needed.
- monadic2 6y agoI imagine at some point a reputation like this affects hiring ability.
- michelb 6y agoSeems to not be a problem for Facebook
- curiousllama 6y agoOn the contrary - they pay a premium for tech talent
- monadic2 6y agoI don’t know of many industry veterans who look lovingly over that fence. My impression is that they use an “overwork the eager graduate” style of hiring, like many in the top ten tech companies do. Meanwhile the careerists at Microsoft seem pretty happy, fwiw. My closest friend there seems content to work there for the rest of his life and he seems to be producing good quality work, even if they are pushing him into management.
- raxxorrax 6y agoOn a sellers market for sure. And who wants to perform top throughout their whole career? Really doesn't sound that interesting to be honest.
- pandaman 6y ago
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- cosmodisk 6y agoHaving dealt with LinkedIn, I honestly think there's another 10-15% of people who wouldn't probably have their jobs if LI had better systems in place.
- swivelmaster 6y agoForcing managers to wait until layoffs to get rid of underperforming (and possibly toxic/counterproductive) staff is terrible for the morale of the rest of the team and I wish it wasn't the norm. Better to fire people and just give them the severance package than to drag it out while nobody's happy and then do it anyway.
- elihu 6y agoI agree that this is pretty normal for any company, though I do wish that there was a bit better balance of risk and reward between the employee and the employer. For instance, if an employer that laid off an employee for anything other than an ethical violation were required to pay out one month of income for every year the employee worked for the company, it would force them to weigh the costs and benefits a bit more. This is the kind of situation where it would be good to have a union. In the tech industry, it might have to be a different kind of union than exists elsewhere (for instance, I think most of us wouldn't want to do technical work in an environment where people who aren't good at their job can only be fired in reverse order of seniority). The way I see it, people aren't entitled to good jobs for life from private companies, but neither are companies entitled to a cheap and disposable workforce. There's probably some place we could meet in the middle that has stronger protections for workers than are currently in place in the U.S. (I don't know enough about what protections exist in other countries to comment.)
- dahfizz 6y ago> a <10% layoff My first reaction to the headline was mild shock that 960 people even worked for LinkedIn. What do 10,000 do at Linked? Netflix has 8,600 and Twitter has less than 5,000 for comparison