5 ms·
The issue is that the layoff will disproportionately affect protected groups. Engineering is disproportionately male, east asian, south asian, and white. Compan
by code_biologist 4y ago
The issue is that the layoff will disproportionately affect protected groups. Engineering is disproportionately male, east asian, south asian, and white. Companies with explicit diversity targets make up for this by compensating in other company orgs (HR, marketing, sales, admin) making them disproportionately female, black, and hispanic.
This means when you keep good engineers but lay off HR, marketing, sales, and admin employees, the layoffs look really bad in terms of affected protected groups.
- crackercrews 4y agoBingo. This is the double-edged sword of heavy affirmative action in hiring. If things get tough and you have to make cuts to save the company, the people who you should let go are disproportionately from affirmative action groups.
- ForHackernews 4y agoObviously the answer is to fire the expensive engineers (keep a skeleton crew for maintenance and bugfixes) and keep the sales & marketing folks. If 20 years working in engineering has taught me anything it's that sales and marketing is where the real money is made.
- pyuser583 4y agoFrom what I’ve seen sales works off commission. For the company, this is a curse in good times, and a blessing in bad times.