6 ms·

Can someone explain how burning out your employees, freezing hirings, possibly laying off a large number of your employees, in a market where people are activel

Can someone explain how burning out your employees, freezing hirings, possibly laying off a large number of your employees, in a market where people are actively quitting en masse... is supposed to increase productivity? Or are company execs just under the impression that "the beatings will continue until morale improves" was seriously good leadership advice?

AnimalMuppet 4y ago
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a tool for beating your employees... or something.
Ferrotin 4y ago
The unproductive employees aren’t the ones quitting.
- IceMetalPunk 4y ago
  ...I mean, all I have to go on is my own experience and what I've seen from the workers around me, but your claim doesn't line up with that data at all. For instance, my team just lost three (out of 8) of its most talented and most productive developers (including our lead developer) who quit over corporate policy changes, including WFH changes. Obviously, to reiterate, this is a small sample size and sampling bias, but... it certainly doesn't support your claim. EDIT Sorry, I misread your comment. I fail to see how "only the productive people are quitting" supports "therefore, fire as many unproductive people as you can". Doesn't that just leave you with... zero people?
  - aetherson 4y ago
    Your claim supports your parent's claim -- that the productive employees are the ones quitting, and the unproductive ones are those who are not quitting.
    - IceMetalPunk 4y ago
      Yep, I misread; my bad. I edited my reply.
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
    High performers will never have an issue finding work and they know this.
  - bena 4y ago
    I can see how it's a scare tactic in general. You try and scare the unproductive people into being more productive. And you try and scare the productive people into staying by implying that the market may not be all that hot outside. Or whatever. Scare tactics don't exactly rely on rational thinking. Also, you are reclaiming the work being done by the fired. That work can be reassigned to the people not fired. And hopefully, those people will be too busy to quit.
    - IceMetalPunk 4y ago
      > And hopefully, those people will be too busy to quit. Too busy to quit vs too overworked to stay... talk about a hell of a gamble.
- nh23423fefe 4y ago
  the denominator is afraid
arberx 4y ago
> actively quitting en masse won't happen in a downturn/recession. Employers will have all the leverage.
- IceMetalPunk 4y ago
  It is currently happening shrug
- PuppyTailWags 4y ago
  I don't actually know if we're in a downturn proper. At most people salaries offered might be less aggressive... but someone leaving for a more fulfilling job and are a high performer from Google probably don't need to worry about being paid their worth even in a weak job market.
aetherson 4y ago
People aren't quitting en masse.
- IceMetalPunk 4y ago
  If you Google "tech industry quitting", all the results seem to paint a different picture. Some articles even call it "The Great Resignation".
  - aetherson 4y ago
    Yep, those articles have been discredited. The labor market has been tight! There was a wave of job changes back a year ago -- but to be clear, those were not people who were leaving the labor force, they were people who got new, better jobs. That wave is definitively over in tech, and has been for about four to six months. The labor market in tech is slacker than it has been in a decade: it's harder now to get a new job in tech than it has been in the duration of many people's careers. And since people are not leaving the labor force, the quitting (to take another job) stuff is now much diminished. This does not mean, of course, that there are not still people getting hired or people changing jobs -- just much less than before.
    - IceMetalPunk 4y ago
      That's weird, then, given my personal experience of several major team members quitting basically one after another in the past few months, and my managers' inability to find any suitable replacements. Shrug Guess my company just extra sucks then.
    - hackerfromthefu 4y ago
      These are interesting claims, can you provide sources and references I can investigate rather than just personal assertions?
icedchai 4y ago
I know guys who've gone from job to job basically doing nothing, just collecting a fat check. It's incredible how much dead weight there is in these companies.
- IceMetalPunk 4y ago
  And... how is that relevant?
  - tmpz22 4y ago
    Your grandparent comment insinuates that executive measures to increase productivity are broad and actually hurt productivity. I agree for what its worth. But what these executives and their supporters think is that productive employees will stay the same productive employees with the changes, and that only the unproductive employees will face consequences. Of course this is ass backwards and we all know it, the innocent are always somehow the biggest victims in war ("blood in the streets" as this executive cheerily calls it).
    - IceMetalPunk 4y ago
      Ah, gotcha. Yeah, from various discussions with the VP of my department, it's become clear to me that execs and other higher-ups have very... fantastical ideas, to put it lightly, about what actually happens in their employees' daily lives, and how their policies will affect those workers. I've had my own fantasies recently about telling the execs to spend two weeks sitting in the office between us devs and taking notes about what actually happens, to use as reference material when discussing policy changes. But then I realize that the very idea of requiring evidence to support one's decisions is what separates the lowly devs like me from the big-shot execs with name plaques on their office desk and a few extra zeroes on their paycheck deposits. Which is... quite depressing when you consider we're a STEM field, so evidence and logic should matter throughout our hierarchy, but then again, capitalism and corporatocracy have perverse incentives, I guess.
  - icedchai 4y ago
    Getting rid of those types will increase productivity. You'll get the same work done with less people. Well, probably more, because you won't have guys pretending to do their work and then not actually producing anything.
3throwaway3141 4y ago
I'm a tech worker and I have found the market to be as friendly as ever; I expect to get multiple offers as per usual.
- IceMetalPunk 4y ago
  Oh, I'm sure. Because with tech workers quitting at high rates, companies are giving many offers to try and replace them. It's definitely a candidate's market, not an employer's market, right now in tech.
SpicyLemonZest 4y ago
The attitude of high-pressure tactics is deeply baked into American sales culture. It's conventional wisdom that you need high commissions, and high commissions necessarily entail high stress; you can't have "I can make $20,000 from the right deal" without "I could lose $20,000 if anything goes wrong". So sales organizations will often be brutally honest (and frankly mean) in ways that, you're right, would be a very bad idea in any other context.
correlator 4y ago
Yes, Team of 5 and 1 person is coasting. Get rid of the 1 and you just reduced burn by 20%. You lose the output of the coasting team member, but that's small to begin with by the scenario's setup. If you believe coasting is contagious (why am I working so hard when clearly I don't have to like this other person), you could potentially see a boost in output. Of course, this needs to be weighed against the risk of everyone being upset and leaving after such a decision, but in this market, that risk may be mitigated. PS. It's really hard to make specific statements about vague hypothetical scenarios :)
- Judgmentality 4y ago
  > Of course, this needs to be weighed against the risk of everyone being upset and leaving after such a decision, but in this market, that risk may be mitigated. The market where people are already quitting?
  - correlator 4y ago
    The market is really hot right now, and yes, a lot of people may be quitting. There are also a lot of hiring freezes and layoffs happening at the same time. If a lot of people continue to quit while available jobs continue to decline, the result is fewer people feeling comfortable quitting.
    - IceMetalPunk 4y ago
      So... people are quitting, and in response, companies are enacting hiring freezes, effectively refusing to compete with each other, to make people more afraid of quitting? Does... does that not sound very collision-y to anyone else?
      - correlator 4y ago
        It could be :) Another possible explanation is: A bad economy lead to a lot of layoffs: https://layoffs.fyi/ https://layoffs.fyi/. These layoffs resulted in employees being upset and quitting in addition to layoffs. Now there are a lot of job seekers and fewer jobs making it a bad time to quit. IDK :shrug:
xfitm3 4y ago
In my experience the unproductive employees bitch and moan the most, taking valuable time from those who do wish to work and contribute to the company.
- IceMetalPunk 4y ago
  That may be true in some cases, but have you ever considered you may be attributing cause and effect to a correlation with another explanation? For instance, perhaps it's not "unproductive employees bitch and moan because they're unproductive and not willing to work", but "employees who are burned out bitch and moan because they're burned out, and also become unproductive because they're burned out"? I.E. not a fundamental attribute of their characters, but an environmental cause, leads to both correlating? Because that's kind of where I'm at with my job now. For 3.5 years I've been one of the most productive members of my team, but with recent policy changes over the last 8 months, I've burned out entirely. I'm now one of the least productive on the team (self-admittedly) and also have much to complain about. I haven't suddenly changed who I am or how much I'm willing to work, the environment has changed and caused both effects simultaneously. And I'm sure I'm not the only one with this experience.
  - seti0Cha 4y ago
    Why are you staying there? If you are capable of being a high performer, go somewhere and do that. It's much more rewarding personally and professionally, even if the money is less.
  - xfitm3 4y ago
    It's a complex situation, with no universal driver, but I have put thought into it and your suggestions aren't entirely novel. I'll use a recent situation as an example. Before I do though I wanted to say I am sorry that you're burning out. Knowing this is the first step, and I hope you make a change or find a coping mechanism that helps you. I have been through the same situation a few times now. I'm never quite the same afterwards but I have been able return to being a productive worker without radically rethinking my life. I worked with someone who in my opinion was extremely entitled, prioritizing activism and social issues above getting work done. This company tolerated a lot of it (California company), however, the reality is that work had to get done. If only this person put as much effort into their workload as they did their complaints it would have been a non-issue. It killed morale and this person eventually had a negative reputation, and was let go. It was bad. A bunch of meetings, talking with folks, but after about 3 months of work there was a hello world, a readme, and a "demo" app in the wrong language that didn't even showcase the crux of the problem that was targeted. In my opinion there is a time and place for stuff like this, and we must never forget we get paid to produce work.

AnimalMuppet 4y ago

When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a tool for beating your employees... or something.

Ferrotin 4y ago

The unproductive employees aren’t the ones quitting.

IceMetalPunk 4y ago
...I mean, all I have to go on is my own experience and what I've seen from the workers around me, but your claim doesn't line up with that data at all. For instance, my team just lost three (out of 8) of its most talented and most productive developers (including our lead developer) who quit over corporate policy changes, including WFH changes. Obviously, to reiterate, this is a small sample size and sampling bias, but... it certainly doesn't support your claim. EDIT Sorry, I misread your comment. I fail to see how "only the productive people are quitting" supports "therefore, fire as many unproductive people as you can". Doesn't that just leave you with... zero people?
- aetherson 4y ago
  Your claim supports your parent's claim -- that the productive employees are the ones quitting, and the unproductive ones are those who are not quitting.
  - IceMetalPunk 4y ago
    Yep, I misread; my bad. I edited my reply.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
  High performers will never have an issue finding work and they know this.
- bena 4y ago
  I can see how it's a scare tactic in general. You try and scare the unproductive people into being more productive. And you try and scare the productive people into staying by implying that the market may not be all that hot outside. Or whatever. Scare tactics don't exactly rely on rational thinking. Also, you are reclaiming the work being done by the fired. That work can be reassigned to the people not fired. And hopefully, those people will be too busy to quit.
  - IceMetalPunk 4y ago
    > And hopefully, those people will be too busy to quit. Too busy to quit vs too overworked to stay... talk about a hell of a gamble.
nh23423fefe 4y ago
the denominator is afraid

arberx 4y ago

> actively quitting en masse won't happen in a downturn/recession. Employers will have all the leverage.

IceMetalPunk 4y ago
It is currently happening shrug
PuppyTailWags 4y ago
I don't actually know if we're in a downturn proper. At most people salaries offered might be less aggressive... but someone leaving for a more fulfilling job and are a high performer from Google probably don't need to worry about being paid their worth even in a weak job market.

aetherson 4y ago

People aren't quitting en masse.

IceMetalPunk 4y ago
If you Google "tech industry quitting", all the results seem to paint a different picture. Some articles even call it "The Great Resignation".
- aetherson 4y ago
  Yep, those articles have been discredited. The labor market has been tight! There was a wave of job changes back a year ago -- but to be clear, those were not people who were leaving the labor force, they were people who got new, better jobs. That wave is definitively over in tech, and has been for about four to six months. The labor market in tech is slacker than it has been in a decade: it's harder now to get a new job in tech than it has been in the duration of many people's careers. And since people are not leaving the labor force, the quitting (to take another job) stuff is now much diminished. This does not mean, of course, that there are not still people getting hired or people changing jobs -- just much less than before.
  - IceMetalPunk 4y ago
    That's weird, then, given my personal experience of several major team members quitting basically one after another in the past few months, and my managers' inability to find any suitable replacements. Shrug Guess my company just extra sucks then.
  - hackerfromthefu 4y ago
    These are interesting claims, can you provide sources and references I can investigate rather than just personal assertions?

icedchai 4y ago

I know guys who've gone from job to job basically doing nothing, just collecting a fat check. It's incredible how much dead weight there is in these companies.

IceMetalPunk 4y ago
And... how is that relevant?
- tmpz22 4y ago
  Your grandparent comment insinuates that executive measures to increase productivity are broad and actually hurt productivity. I agree for what its worth. But what these executives and their supporters think is that productive employees will stay the same productive employees with the changes, and that only the unproductive employees will face consequences. Of course this is ass backwards and we all know it, the innocent are always somehow the biggest victims in war ("blood in the streets" as this executive cheerily calls it).
  - IceMetalPunk 4y ago
    Ah, gotcha. Yeah, from various discussions with the VP of my department, it's become clear to me that execs and other higher-ups have very... fantastical ideas, to put it lightly, about what actually happens in their employees' daily lives, and how their policies will affect those workers. I've had my own fantasies recently about telling the execs to spend two weeks sitting in the office between us devs and taking notes about what actually happens, to use as reference material when discussing policy changes. But then I realize that the very idea of requiring evidence to support one's decisions is what separates the lowly devs like me from the big-shot execs with name plaques on their office desk and a few extra zeroes on their paycheck deposits. Which is... quite depressing when you consider we're a STEM field, so evidence and logic should matter throughout our hierarchy, but then again, capitalism and corporatocracy have perverse incentives, I guess.
- icedchai 4y ago
  Getting rid of those types will increase productivity. You'll get the same work done with less people. Well, probably more, because you won't have guys pretending to do their work and then not actually producing anything.

3throwaway3141 4y ago

I'm a tech worker and I have found the market to be as friendly as ever; I expect to get multiple offers as per usual.

IceMetalPunk 4y ago
Oh, I'm sure. Because with tech workers quitting at high rates, companies are giving many offers to try and replace them. It's definitely a candidate's market, not an employer's market, right now in tech.

SpicyLemonZest 4y ago

The attitude of high-pressure tactics is deeply baked into American sales culture. It's conventional wisdom that you need high commissions, and high commissions necessarily entail high stress; you can't have "I can make $20,000 from the right deal" without "I could lose $20,000 if anything goes wrong". So sales organizations will often be brutally honest (and frankly mean) in ways that, you're right, would be a very bad idea in any other context.

correlator 4y ago

Yes, Team of 5 and 1 person is coasting. Get rid of the 1 and you just reduced burn by 20%. You lose the output of the coasting team member, but that's small to begin with by the scenario's setup. If you believe coasting is contagious (why am I working so hard when clearly I don't have to like this other person), you could potentially see a boost in output. Of course, this needs to be weighed against the risk of everyone being upset and leaving after such a decision, but in this market, that risk may be mitigated. PS. It's really hard to make specific statements about vague hypothetical scenarios :)

Judgmentality 4y ago
> Of course, this needs to be weighed against the risk of everyone being upset and leaving after such a decision, but in this market, that risk may be mitigated. The market where people are already quitting?
- correlator 4y ago
  The market is really hot right now, and yes, a lot of people may be quitting. There are also a lot of hiring freezes and layoffs happening at the same time. If a lot of people continue to quit while available jobs continue to decline, the result is fewer people feeling comfortable quitting.
  - IceMetalPunk 4y ago
    So... people are quitting, and in response, companies are enacting hiring freezes, effectively refusing to compete with each other, to make people more afraid of quitting? Does... does that not sound very collision-y to anyone else?
    - correlator 4y ago
      It could be :) Another possible explanation is: A bad economy lead to a lot of layoffs: https://layoffs.fyi/ https://layoffs.fyi/. These layoffs resulted in employees being upset and quitting in addition to layoffs. Now there are a lot of job seekers and fewer jobs making it a bad time to quit. IDK :shrug:

xfitm3 4y ago

In my experience the unproductive employees bitch and moan the most, taking valuable time from those who do wish to work and contribute to the company.

IceMetalPunk 4y ago
That may be true in some cases, but have you ever considered you may be attributing cause and effect to a correlation with another explanation? For instance, perhaps it's not "unproductive employees bitch and moan because they're unproductive and not willing to work", but "employees who are burned out bitch and moan because they're burned out, and also become unproductive because they're burned out"? I.E. not a fundamental attribute of their characters, but an environmental cause, leads to both correlating? Because that's kind of where I'm at with my job now. For 3.5 years I've been one of the most productive members of my team, but with recent policy changes over the last 8 months, I've burned out entirely. I'm now one of the least productive on the team (self-admittedly) and also have much to complain about. I haven't suddenly changed who I am or how much I'm willing to work, the environment has changed and caused both effects simultaneously. And I'm sure I'm not the only one with this experience.
- seti0Cha 4y ago
  Why are you staying there? If you are capable of being a high performer, go somewhere and do that. It's much more rewarding personally and professionally, even if the money is less.
- xfitm3 4y ago
  It's a complex situation, with no universal driver, but I have put thought into it and your suggestions aren't entirely novel. I'll use a recent situation as an example. Before I do though I wanted to say I am sorry that you're burning out. Knowing this is the first step, and I hope you make a change or find a coping mechanism that helps you. I have been through the same situation a few times now. I'm never quite the same afterwards but I have been able return to being a productive worker without radically rethinking my life. I worked with someone who in my opinion was extremely entitled, prioritizing activism and social issues above getting work done. This company tolerated a lot of it (California company), however, the reality is that work had to get done. If only this person put as much effort into their workload as they did their complaints it would have been a non-issue. It killed morale and this person eventually had a negative reputation, and was let go. It was bad. A bunch of meetings, talking with folks, but after about 3 months of work there was a hello world, a readme, and a "demo" app in the wrong language that didn't even showcase the crux of the problem that was targeted. In my opinion there is a time and place for stuff like this, and we must never forget we get paid to produce work.