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All these companies have vastly overhired. Think of your own peers and colleagues. How many are a) utterly useless or b) competent but don't have anything to do
by datalopers 4y ago
All these companies have vastly overhired. Think of your own peers and colleagues. How many are a) utterly useless or b) competent but don't have anything to do so they spend time working on mostly pointless projects to improve their CV?
- SkyPuncher 4y agoI literally cannot name a single person like this in my entire career. Yes, less than ideal performs, but nobody that's utterly useless or spending all day on side projects.
- boredtofears 4y agoSame here until my most recent job that I took just this year. The amount of brain waste is staggering.
- watwut 4y agoI knew an utterly useless guy. He was good at making impression of a good programmer - read right blogs and had correct opinions. Probably reads HN and definitely knows all the fads. It is just that, he never produced anything. I worked with him twice. They moved him between teams and both times he got absurd amount of benefit of doubt (one of the companies was firing people quickly, but not him). Anyway based on what I heard, he did nothing whole his career. But like, he was definitely not a norm.
- acdha 4y agoIn 3 decades I think I’ve met a couple of programmers like that, but about a dozen managers and at least half of the consultants. It’s pretty hard to pull off in a position which usually has some kind of directly-measurable product.
- onion2k 4y agoHow many are a) utterly useless or b) competent but don't have anything to do so they spend time working on mostly pointless projects to improve their CV? I hope my colleagues aren't reading this and looking at me.
- bombcar 4y agoIf you don't know who the useless colleague is, it's probably you! Not entirely true, but I think most people can (if they're being honest) get 70% or more correct when guessing who will be laid off. The only wildcard usually is when entire teams are let go, and sometimes those are predictable, sometimes surprising.
- datalopers 4y ago> get 70% or more correct when guessing who will be laid off. What happens when it's the managers themselves who are useless, overpaid, and can't evaluate the team for actual efficacy?
- BoorishBears 4y agoOne comment in the Stripe layoff thread was someone who's manager didn't get to put any input into the process. Honestly its funny reading threads like this with people beating their chest about useless coworkers. Instead of thinking of useless coworkers and colleagues, think about what percent of the entire industry that's working on things with no hard output, no interest in profitability, banking on free money that's drying up... If you're working somewhere with so many incompetent colleagues you think 13% layoffs is not trimming anyone useful, odds are your entire unit is in trouble.
- bombcar 4y agoYeah, I should have clarified - useless doesn't necessarily mean the employee sucks at the job they're doing; it could also mean they're an expert at doing a useless job, even if the skillset could be utilized quite valuably. I feel there's a lot of this in crypto, where you have absolutely amazing developers doing amazing code for no point.
- hef19898 4y agoI consider myself to be rather decent at what I do. I also know that, all things considered, I am mostly useless as an employee right know. Wjy? Because in reality my skill set is simply noy needed at the moment, nor will it be for quite some time to come. Things changed since I was hired, lucky for me current management doesn't have the stomach to announce a x % layoff, even if they should IMHO. Not that I complain so, for now.
- djur 4y agoI can't think of a single person I work with or have worked with recently who meets this description.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- superfrank 4y agoNo idea if it's true, but in my mental model, remote work plays into this as well. Pre-covid, large companies were restricted to hiring the talent in their area. If there weren't enough talented people near the company, they would often end up hiring people who were under qualified, just to fill seats. Remote work made the talent pool bigger which means more qualified candidates. These layoffs are allowing large companies to lay off some of those under qualified local hires.
- jasonlotito 4y ago> How many are a) utterly useless or b) competent but don't have anything to do so they spend time working on mostly pointless projects to improve their CV? I bet the people who hired them get to keep their jobs despite failing to a) hire useful people or b) competent people that can work on useful projects and c) burning cash while d) not turning a profit because e) they are just a gambling mechanism for investors.
- spacemadness 4y agoI absolutely will never conduct interviews for a company again if I’m going to be punished depending on how they work out. Some people interview well and their behavior on the job does not match what you expected due to a large number of reasons from team fit to personal issues.
- anonymoushn 4y agosir the promo criteria say to do complex things that require coordinating a lot of people
- hef19898 4y agoYou have promotion criteria?
- fortuna86 4y agoEvery tech company has only a fraction of the works that traditional companies have compared to their value.
- spamizbad 4y agoI strongly disagree. Many companies (maybe not tech companies) are posting very strong profits. Employee surveys also show people feeling the pressure of being given additional responsibilities due to labor shortages. I suppose you could make the argument companies are both over-working their employees and over-hiring if you're willing to concede these companies are poorly managed... which I think has a kernel of truth to it.
- dcolkitt 4y agoWouldn't this be explained by the "quiet quitting" hypothesis? If 10-20% of the employees in an org pretty much stop working completely, then it's pretty natural that the remaining 80-90% are going to feel overworked making up the slack. Also explains why companies are laying off the dead weight resuming hiring almost immediately (like Tesla).
- spamizbad 4y agoQuiet quitting isn't people refusing to work on the job. It's to merely work hard enough to "meet expectations". So rather than trying to be a straight-A student you only work hard enough to get Cs and Bs. Anyway, I would say if the Quiet Quitting hypothesis is true it definitely points to a business management failure. If an employee joined your organization highly motivated and a year later feels like going above and beyond is not worth it you did something wrong.
- bsimpson 4y ago> If an employee joined your organization highly motivated and a year later feels like going above and beyond is not worth it you did something wrong. So you've also worked at Google?
- bluedino 4y ago>> Quiet quitting isn't people refusing to work on the job. It's to merely work hard enough to "meet expectations". Office Space came out in 1999 so this isn't anything new. That's my only real motivation is not to be hassled, that and the fear of losing my job. But you know, Bob, that will only make someone work just hard enough not to get fired.
- sangnoir 4y agoFundamental attribution error: how many of your colleagues think the same of you? When it come to you, obviously the problem is the "complixities of the problem space" and "blockers" you're dealing with, but when it's someone else on some random team, they are slow because they are useless.
- bluepizza 4y agoWish you were right. Unfortunately, most tech companies have some decent amount of people coasting at the lowest level of effort. My current team has 6 people. 3 are delivering at normal levels, but the other 3 complete one task per week at most. And those are tasks that take a couple of hours at most. This is happening everywhere, and is a clear consequence of overhiring.
- pc86 4y agoHow is it a natural consequence of overhiring that 50% of your team will work 4 hours/week?
- bluepizza 4y agoToo many people for too little task queue. Engineering managers are more than happy to hold on to headcount to justify their own existence.
- mensetmanusman 4y agoAn organization with no slack can’t respond to emergencies in an effective way.
- bluepizza 4y agoExcellent point. This adds a different dimension to the situation, for sure. I can see that the slower crowd would keep the boat afloat while the high performers go and solve the pressing issues. I have seen it happen a couple of times. Still seems a bit wasteful to have half of a team essentially parked.
- jylam 4y agoWeird to put that on the employees if you ask me. It's not like there is exactly 13% of bad employees. Or 25% of bad employees but they decide to just fire 13% for some reason. To me, it seems quite evident, they need to reduce the spending for any reason, so they reduce the workforce. Nothing to do with useless employees. You can be shit at your job or very good, they will have a metric threshold telling them you need to go. Same at Twitter, Meta, Google, whatever. Stop putting that on the employee who spent 3 months to get a job just to be told they wasn't useful. That's 'bad' managing all the way down, nothing to do with the employee, at all.
- gretch 4y ago> they decide to just fire 13% for some reason Maybe they fired some after and evaluation process, and than number came out to be 13%. Or maybe they laid of department X and that department just happened to be 13% of the company. Why are you so sure the 13% was the starting place of all their thought process?
- YetAnotherNick 4y agoGP said they have overhired, which is definitely bad managing, or that employee aren't productive, and if >5-10% employees are non-productive that is a managing or interviewing problem as well. But saying it has nothing to do with employee is also not correct. If someone is signing up for a company that does not manage its finance sustainably, they should expect this. And company would only overpay if they aren't focusing on cost at that moment. So for all the folks who managed to double their CTC in COVID period should be prepared for this case.
- retinaros 4y agowhat are you saying exactly? most of the companies that fire people now are seeing their highest revenue ever in their history.
- testrun 4y agoThey do now, but they are looking at tomorrow. Nobody has a clear idea what is coming down the turnpike at the moment. (China economy, high inflation, Ukraine, unipolar to multi-polar world, interest rates going up, high energy costs, global warming, de-population in some countries, health care costs blow-outs due to boomers going into 65+ age range etc).
- bluedino 4y agoBack in the 90's my step-father worked in a factory, and he and his buddies always joked about a guy there that never did a single lick of work. He took a VHS camcorder in one day, and recorded the guy flipping a piece of metal over on a table a couple times, then moving the piece of metal to a new table. Repeating this over and over throughout a 10/12 hour day.
- nathanvanfleet 4y agoAnd your dad had 10 hours to film him apparently
- bluepizza 4y agoThe camcorder stays still, and you need to press the button twice. Couldn't have taken the guy more than 5 mins.
- pc86 4y ago5 minutes to press a button twice? I'll do it in 4.
- datalopers 4y agoI like that you only went for 4 minutes, giving yourself ample room to demonstrate continued improvement in the future
- bombcar 4y agoUnder promise and over deliver!
- bluedino 4y agoUnion button-pushers.
- cvhashim04 4y agoYour dad should mind his own business rather than worry about someone else’s pockets and/or the work they’re doing.
- forgotusername6 4y agoNot my experience at all. I work for a big company and we've been under staffed for basically as long as I can remember. The default position is not enough people to do what we need to do.
- newaccount2021 4y ago
- tyingq 4y agoThere will also be companies that take advantage of the current buzz around recession and use the opportunity to do a rank/yank disguised as a layoff. Then go and rehire the same amount of people.