8 ms·

Secondments at Zapier

91 points by theresistor 4y ago

paxys 4y ago
This is encouraging, as long as they can successfully implement it. Layoffs have always felt to me like a "cut off your arm to lose weight" solution. Yes the number on the scale went down and you hit your goal, but are you really better off in the long term? Worse because so many companies do indiscriminate layoffs and take on huge costs for doing so, and then just open all these positions back up in a few months.
mindcrime 4y ago
This is one of the more insightful and wise things I've read in a while. I wish all companies understood this concept: And we also realize a downturn is temporary. We worked hard to build our talent acquisition team, growing from 15 to nearly 40 between October 2021 and June 2022. And that team did amazing work, growing Zapier from 550 to over 800 team members in 2022. Did we really want to lose all of that recruiting talent only to spend all of those resources again hiring new people down the road? Laying people off en-masse in response to what is 100% going to be a temporary downturn is just so... wasteful. You lose so much accumulated knowledge and experience, and then - as pointed out - have to turn around and spend even more money to recruit new people later. But with those new people you might get back the skills and head-count you had, but you don't get back the experience, tacit knowledge, domain knowledge, acute knowledge of internal processes and tools, etc. So really it's lose-lose-lose in many ways. Laying people off should really be an absolute last resort, IMO. And by "last resort" I mean, "we do this or the company folds" level stuff. Not "do layoffs or the stock price drops by 0.03% and the investors start squawking."
gnutrino 4y ago
Zapier can afford to do this because their pricing is absurdly high IMO.
ilrwbwrkhv 4y ago
Yes Richard Branson does this and I learnt it from one of his videos. You never fire. You move them around. If they are a good person who is honest and hard working, you can find a job for them.
- boberoni 4y ago
  Did Branson or Zapier adjust compensation based on their new roles and responsibilities?
  - ilrwbwrkhv 4y ago
    I do not know but in my companies I do adjust it. How much depends on how large of a change there is.
    - TylerE 4y ago
      Is there really a difference between firing someone and reassigning them with (let’s be real here) a (probably substantial) pay cut? Certainly most unemployment agencies would consider that constructive dismissal
      - ilrwbwrkhv 4y ago
        This is where I feel if you hire the right person, they can very easily be equally effective in another role within a very short period of time. Business context is key. They have it, so it is much easier for both them and me. Also they don't want to leave the company, that is the critical thing here.
      - readthenotes1 4y ago
        of course there is! For the worker, it can be the difference between homelessness and merely tough times; between covered medical insurance and untreated disease; between hopelessness and a wake-up call. For the company, it can be finding that someone was put into a bad spot and they are now able to shine without having to pay for new talent acquisition.
      - LeonB 4y ago
        There are significant differences between the two, for both the employer and the employee. In terms of economic theory, you’d say that staying within “the firm” (Coase) saves both of them a lot in transaction costs. In normal terms — the employee spent time and money finding the previous job and spent time learning how to exist inside that company. Instead of immediately needing to discard and repay those costs - they can “hit the ground running” in a role that is more suited to them. And so on. To overlook all of the advantages here would be very cynical.
KerryJones 4y ago
I would love to hear about people at Zapier talking about this process -- it sounds delightful. Many companies have a really rough internal transfer process and being able to try out or go into a new role sounds like a really good fit. I've also seen other things that a company puts out that makes it sound delightful (Patreon layoffs, Netflix culture) but talking to people internally gets a very different opinion.
kingastachura 4y ago
good to finally see that someone's first instinct during the difficult times, are not to fire immediately but maybe slow a bit and think about how we can work with what we have + don't hire the excessive number of ppl when the money is good only to later let them go
Moissanite 4y ago
Nice approach. However, my main take-away from the article is that they have 40 recruiters for a company of 800, which seems high. I know a company expecting growth is going to need more recruiters, but still 20:1 feels excessive. Is there a widley-known ratio which is sufficient to make regular turnover of staff manageable?
- bux93 4y ago
  According to this, those 40 recruiters grew Zapier from 550 to 800 in 2022. So they added 250 staff with about 40 recruiters, or 6.25 new hires per recruiter. That means less than 1 new hire per recruiter per month. Gitlab target 4-5 new hires per recruiter per month as per https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/hiring/metrics/ https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/hiring/metrics/
  - solaarphunk 4y ago
    Agree, especially for being a remote company, this number is extremely low. However, other parameters, like compensation, may be affecting their ability to hire.
    - sgarland 4y ago
      Zapier pays at 90th market percentile. Source: I work there, and our pay bands are all internally visible. The pay is quite good.
  - ace32229 4y ago
    [dead]
- Peroni 4y ago
  It's definitely excessive. Realistically, an efficient internal recruiter should be hiring a minimum of 20 people per year to justify their role. If Zapier are planning on at least doubling their headcount, then a team of 40 makes sense.
- code_runner 4y ago
taubek 4y ago
It is nice when you have possibility to move horizontally across the company. It brings a lot of new insights how other teams work. This is good even in small companies.
zht 4y ago
Plaid did something similar during the pandemic but still ended up laying off 20% a couple of years later. It's a noble thing to do (even if it delays layoffs for some). Good on both companies
infinitezest 4y ago
> But the real question they were asking was: "How can I add value? How can I show that I still belong here? How can I make myself a critical part of the team at Zapier during this time when I can't do the things I was initially hired to do?" What? Maybe what they were asking was just "do I need to start looking for an another source of income". Why dress it up in weird corpo-speak?
- idopmstuff 4y ago
  Seems more like asking, "How can I make sure that if there are layoffs, I'm not included in them?"
  - edmundsauto 4y ago
    The best way (far from guaranteed, but the best across a wide range of employment contexts) to avoid layoffs is to create clear value that pushes the org towards its goals. It’s also the best way to earn the trust of leadership and ensure you’re contributing to the company’s goals. The language may be off-putting to some, but the core idea is almost a tautology.
- lloydatkinson 4y ago
  Your quote and this one are both real gems. > We also looked at roles that were being cut from our headcount and saw opportunities for our team to contribute in areas where leaders wanted full-time team members but couldn't make those hires due to budget constraints. Corporate bullshit speak for, we fired people without realising what they were actually contributing and then things started to fall apart, but we can't hire replacements, so we came up with this idea.
  - canucklady 4y ago
    They didn't "cut headcount" by firing people, they just didn't hire new people into those roles. Instead they let people move internally to work on projects where teams wanted more headcount. As someone in a stupidly rigid organization where managers all fight each other to get the limited headcount by inflating their own roadmap, it actually sounds refreshing.
andrew_ 4y ago
> And we also realize a downturn is temporary. Wait, what? We're in a legitimate recession. Are they speaking about a recruiting downturn or an economic downturn here?
- rfrey 4y ago
  What about being a legitimate recession would prevent it from being temporary?
  - andrew_ 4y ago
    How far out do we want to go with this? Do we want to get insanely pedantic and state that the Ice Age was temporary? Would a years-long recession still amount to "temporary downturn"? The questions are ludicrous, including yours.
    - rfrey 4y ago
      The average length of recessions since WWII has been about 10 months. The longest was 18 months. Do you have any reason to think the next recession will be much longer than that?

91 points by theresistor 4y ago

This is encouraging, as long as they can successfully implement it. Layoffs have always felt to me like a "cut off your arm to lose weight" solution. Yes the number on the scale went down and you hit your goal, but are you really better off in the long term? Worse because so many companies do indiscriminate layoffs and take on huge costs for doing so, and then just open all these positions back up in a few months.

mindcrime 4y ago

This is one of the more insightful and wise things I've read in a while. I wish all companies understood this concept: And we also realize a downturn is temporary. We worked hard to build our talent acquisition team, growing from 15 to nearly 40 between October 2021 and June 2022. And that team did amazing work, growing Zapier from 550 to over 800 team members in 2022. Did we really want to lose all of that recruiting talent only to spend all of those resources again hiring new people down the road? Laying people off en-masse in response to what is 100% going to be a temporary downturn is just so... wasteful. You lose so much accumulated knowledge and experience, and then - as pointed out - have to turn around and spend even more money to recruit new people later. But with those new people you might get back the skills and head-count you had, but you don't get back the experience, tacit knowledge, domain knowledge, acute knowledge of internal processes and tools, etc. So really it's lose-lose-lose in many ways. Laying people off should really be an absolute last resort, IMO. And by "last resort" I mean, "we do this or the company folds" level stuff. Not "do layoffs or the stock price drops by 0.03% and the investors start squawking."

gnutrino 4y ago

Zapier can afford to do this because their pricing is absurdly high IMO.

ilrwbwrkhv 4y ago

Yes Richard Branson does this and I learnt it from one of his videos. You never fire. You move them around. If they are a good person who is honest and hard working, you can find a job for them.

boberoni 4y ago
Did Branson or Zapier adjust compensation based on their new roles and responsibilities?
- ilrwbwrkhv 4y ago
  I do not know but in my companies I do adjust it. How much depends on how large of a change there is.
  - TylerE 4y ago
    Is there really a difference between firing someone and reassigning them with (let’s be real here) a (probably substantial) pay cut? Certainly most unemployment agencies would consider that constructive dismissal
    - ilrwbwrkhv 4y ago
      This is where I feel if you hire the right person, they can very easily be equally effective in another role within a very short period of time. Business context is key. They have it, so it is much easier for both them and me. Also they don't want to leave the company, that is the critical thing here.
    - readthenotes1 4y ago
      of course there is! For the worker, it can be the difference between homelessness and merely tough times; between covered medical insurance and untreated disease; between hopelessness and a wake-up call. For the company, it can be finding that someone was put into a bad spot and they are now able to shine without having to pay for new talent acquisition.
    - LeonB 4y ago
      There are significant differences between the two, for both the employer and the employee. In terms of economic theory, you’d say that staying within “the firm” (Coase) saves both of them a lot in transaction costs. In normal terms — the employee spent time and money finding the previous job and spent time learning how to exist inside that company. Instead of immediately needing to discard and repay those costs - they can “hit the ground running” in a role that is more suited to them. And so on. To overlook all of the advantages here would be very cynical.

KerryJones 4y ago

I would love to hear about people at Zapier talking about this process -- it sounds delightful. Many companies have a really rough internal transfer process and being able to try out or go into a new role sounds like a really good fit. I've also seen other things that a company puts out that makes it sound delightful (Patreon layoffs, Netflix culture) but talking to people internally gets a very different opinion.

kingastachura 4y ago

good to finally see that someone's first instinct during the difficult times, are not to fire immediately but maybe slow a bit and think about how we can work with what we have + don't hire the excessive number of ppl when the money is good only to later let them go

Moissanite 4y ago

Nice approach. However, my main take-away from the article is that they have 40 recruiters for a company of 800, which seems high. I know a company expecting growth is going to need more recruiters, but still 20:1 feels excessive. Is there a widley-known ratio which is sufficient to make regular turnover of staff manageable?

bux93 4y ago
According to this, those 40 recruiters grew Zapier from 550 to 800 in 2022. So they added 250 staff with about 40 recruiters, or 6.25 new hires per recruiter. That means less than 1 new hire per recruiter per month. Gitlab target 4-5 new hires per recruiter per month as per https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/hiring/metrics/ https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/hiring/metrics/
- solaarphunk 4y ago
  Agree, especially for being a remote company, this number is extremely low. However, other parameters, like compensation, may be affecting their ability to hire.
  - sgarland 4y ago
    Zapier pays at 90th market percentile. Source: I work there, and our pay bands are all internally visible. The pay is quite good.
- ace32229 4y ago
  [dead]
Peroni 4y ago
It's definitely excessive. Realistically, an efficient internal recruiter should be hiring a minimum of 20 people per year to justify their role. If Zapier are planning on at least doubling their headcount, then a team of 40 makes sense.
code_runner 4y ago

taubek 4y ago

It is nice when you have possibility to move horizontally across the company. It brings a lot of new insights how other teams work. This is good even in small companies.

zht 4y ago

Plaid did something similar during the pandemic but still ended up laying off 20% a couple of years later. It's a noble thing to do (even if it delays layoffs for some). Good on both companies

infinitezest 4y ago

> But the real question they were asking was: "How can I add value? How can I show that I still belong here? How can I make myself a critical part of the team at Zapier during this time when I can't do the things I was initially hired to do?" What? Maybe what they were asking was just "do I need to start looking for an another source of income". Why dress it up in weird corpo-speak?

idopmstuff 4y ago
Seems more like asking, "How can I make sure that if there are layoffs, I'm not included in them?"
- edmundsauto 4y ago
  The best way (far from guaranteed, but the best across a wide range of employment contexts) to avoid layoffs is to create clear value that pushes the org towards its goals. It’s also the best way to earn the trust of leadership and ensure you’re contributing to the company’s goals. The language may be off-putting to some, but the core idea is almost a tautology.
lloydatkinson 4y ago
Your quote and this one are both real gems. > We also looked at roles that were being cut from our headcount and saw opportunities for our team to contribute in areas where leaders wanted full-time team members but couldn't make those hires due to budget constraints. Corporate bullshit speak for, we fired people without realising what they were actually contributing and then things started to fall apart, but we can't hire replacements, so we came up with this idea.
- canucklady 4y ago
  They didn't "cut headcount" by firing people, they just didn't hire new people into those roles. Instead they let people move internally to work on projects where teams wanted more headcount. As someone in a stupidly rigid organization where managers all fight each other to get the limited headcount by inflating their own roadmap, it actually sounds refreshing.

andrew_ 4y ago

> And we also realize a downturn is temporary. Wait, what? We're in a legitimate recession. Are they speaking about a recruiting downturn or an economic downturn here?

rfrey 4y ago
What about being a legitimate recession would prevent it from being temporary?
- andrew_ 4y ago
  How far out do we want to go with this? Do we want to get insanely pedantic and state that the Ice Age was temporary? Would a years-long recession still amount to "temporary downturn"? The questions are ludicrous, including yours.
  - rfrey 4y ago
    The average length of recessions since WWII has been about 10 months. The longest was 18 months. Do you have any reason to think the next recession will be much longer than that?