4 ms·

I remembered once working at a large corporation with deep pockets, and lots of people with (cough) questionable value to the company. As soon as we hit a rece

I remembered once working at a large corporation with deep pockets, and lots of people with (cough) questionable value to the company. As soon as we hit a recession there were cries to cut back on the free food and sodas. It sent a very wrong message to me, as many of the people I interacted with on a daily basis were horrible in their jobs. It seemed that pausing hiring recs and a few well-targeted severance packages would have saved more money than cutting back a few freebies.

gowld 4y ago
Well-targeting severance is hard to do.
mwigdahl 4y ago
Similar story -- back when I worked at a physical engineering company, one of their cost-cutting methods when things got tight was to cut down the amount of time they ran the A/C during the day. This applied to all floors of the building except the one where the partners' offices were. This led to a number of people routinely using their breaks to take the elevator up to the "partners' floor" and cooling off / airing their sweaty BO for the bosses' benefit.
- gav 4y ago
  I think that these cost-cutting schemes never really work out, they either cause the best people to leave or trade money for work-done. I worked for a bank where they had terrible coffee on our floor. We used to joke about how bad it was until one day these fancy automatic machines showed up that ground the coffee for each cup, they even had milk! Times were good, we'd walk over to somebody's desk--"I'm running a build, do you want to grab a coffee?"--and we'd chat in the break room about how great these new machines were. Then we had a couple of quarters in a row with bad numbers, cutbacks were being made, if we do this then we don't have to have layoffs, etc. We lost our fancy machines. The impact to morale was huge, we only had had them for a couple of months, taking them away once we got used to them was a huge deal. But more importantly, most people on our floor were now used to drinking partly-decent coffee. A couple times a day we'd go to the nearest coffee shop and buy our own, which involved walking to the elevator, waiting, going 23 floors to the lobby, badging out, walking across the street, getting coffee, walking back, badging in, waiting for the elevator, going up 23 floors, then finally back to your desk. This had to waste at least 20 minutes, more if the elevators were busy.
  - greedo 4y ago
    People have a high level of loss aversion.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- 7402 4y ago
  There are places that do cost-cutting the other way around. I recall from a place a long ago where it was handled by 1) freezing annual raises for everyone, 2) cutting managers' salaries by 5%, 3) cutting executives salaries by 10%. Sometimes that's called, "Leading from the front."
philwelch 4y ago
The implication being that targeted layoffs are less damaging to morale than getting rid of free soda?
- gwbas1c 4y ago
  When someone impacts morale, forcing a team to work with that person is highly damaging. The managers all knew who these people were, so they could have given them severance without calling it a layoff. I'm mostly referring to a situation where everyone else would have been relieved instead of spooked.
  - t-3 4y ago
    Severance may come with it's own difficulties: state unemployment payments, contractual obligations, bureaucratic overhead, manager pushback. I think leadership-oriented types tend to esteem headcount the way nerds esteem CPU core count and frequency - up is fine, down is not acceptable unless you're absolutely forced. Neither is a really rational position, but they overall tend not to be too detrimental so there's no widespread change.
    - candiodari 4y ago
      I've been railroaded into manager hiring, at a huge company everyone knows, and so I've gone over the manager hiring documentation. Assuming you don't fuck up the interview, the level you get hired at as a manager ... is directly related to the number of reports you claimed to have had at your previous position (there is some verification, but nothing "real"). It's not the only factor, but it's by far the most important. Managers fight over headcount because it directly affects their personal ... everything. Career, money, power, ... all are dependent on headcount ("number of reports").
    - titanomachy 4y ago
      If you have 100 useless employees and you offer them each $50k to leave of their own volition, you will reduce the number of bad employees and save money. You won't have any legal obligations because they're leaving on their own. This is how it works at various big, powerful tech companies (although the severance offer often comes with a "performance improvement plan" as the alternative, a bit of a carrot/stick situation which usually gets people out the door pretty quick).

gowld 4y ago

Well-targeting severance is hard to do.

mwigdahl 4y ago

Similar story -- back when I worked at a physical engineering company, one of their cost-cutting methods when things got tight was to cut down the amount of time they ran the A/C during the day. This applied to all floors of the building except the one where the partners' offices were. This led to a number of people routinely using their breaks to take the elevator up to the "partners' floor" and cooling off / airing their sweaty BO for the bosses' benefit.

gav 4y ago
I think that these cost-cutting schemes never really work out, they either cause the best people to leave or trade money for work-done. I worked for a bank where they had terrible coffee on our floor. We used to joke about how bad it was until one day these fancy automatic machines showed up that ground the coffee for each cup, they even had milk! Times were good, we'd walk over to somebody's desk--"I'm running a build, do you want to grab a coffee?"--and we'd chat in the break room about how great these new machines were. Then we had a couple of quarters in a row with bad numbers, cutbacks were being made, if we do this then we don't have to have layoffs, etc. We lost our fancy machines. The impact to morale was huge, we only had had them for a couple of months, taking them away once we got used to them was a huge deal. But more importantly, most people on our floor were now used to drinking partly-decent coffee. A couple times a day we'd go to the nearest coffee shop and buy our own, which involved walking to the elevator, waiting, going 23 floors to the lobby, badging out, walking across the street, getting coffee, walking back, badging in, waiting for the elevator, going up 23 floors, then finally back to your desk. This had to waste at least 20 minutes, more if the elevators were busy.
- greedo 4y ago
  People have a high level of loss aversion.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
7402 4y ago
There are places that do cost-cutting the other way around. I recall from a place a long ago where it was handled by 1) freezing annual raises for everyone, 2) cutting managers' salaries by 5%, 3) cutting executives salaries by 10%. Sometimes that's called, "Leading from the front."

philwelch 4y ago

The implication being that targeted layoffs are less damaging to morale than getting rid of free soda?

gwbas1c 4y ago
When someone impacts morale, forcing a team to work with that person is highly damaging. The managers all knew who these people were, so they could have given them severance without calling it a layoff. I'm mostly referring to a situation where everyone else would have been relieved instead of spooked.
- t-3 4y ago
  Severance may come with it's own difficulties: state unemployment payments, contractual obligations, bureaucratic overhead, manager pushback. I think leadership-oriented types tend to esteem headcount the way nerds esteem CPU core count and frequency - up is fine, down is not acceptable unless you're absolutely forced. Neither is a really rational position, but they overall tend not to be too detrimental so there's no widespread change.
  - candiodari 4y ago
    I've been railroaded into manager hiring, at a huge company everyone knows, and so I've gone over the manager hiring documentation. Assuming you don't fuck up the interview, the level you get hired at as a manager ... is directly related to the number of reports you claimed to have had at your previous position (there is some verification, but nothing "real"). It's not the only factor, but it's by far the most important. Managers fight over headcount because it directly affects their personal ... everything. Career, money, power, ... all are dependent on headcount ("number of reports").
  - titanomachy 4y ago
    If you have 100 useless employees and you offer them each $50k to leave of their own volition, you will reduce the number of bad employees and save money. You won't have any legal obligations because they're leaving on their own. This is how it works at various big, powerful tech companies (although the severance offer often comes with a "performance improvement plan" as the alternative, a bit of a carrot/stick situation which usually gets people out the door pretty quick).