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It seems like just about every tech company is doing 15% layoffs. > They include the development of technology for Dexcom’s G6 and G7 continuous glucose monito
by code_duck 4y ago
It seems like just about every tech company is doing 15% layoffs.
> They include the development of technology for Dexcom’s G6 and G7 continuous glucose monitors (CGM), the smallest CGMs of their kind.
That’s very cool! I have worn a Dexcom for 2 years and I had no idea. CGMs are extremely helpful for people who need them. While the market is fairly small for t1 diabetics, it’s expanding to people engaged in fitness.
- MuffinFlavored 4y ago> It seems like just about every tech company is doing 15% layoffs It's "selection" bias or confirmation bias or some kind of fancy word bias that we see headlines posted here (or other places) about ____ doing 15-20% layoffs. If you combined all the headlines we've seen past 6-12 months about layoffs, what % of companies out there would that represent total? 5%? 10% max? How routine is 1/10th of every tech company in the country doing 15-20% layoffs in terms of business cycles as far as history goes? Quite common? Are we overblowing the significance?
- thrashh 4y agoPeople keep talking about tech companies like tech is itself an industry. A tech company in the energy industry is going to be affected by world events differently than a tech company focused on, say, the medical industry.
- lumost 4y agoHistorically it’s been unfortunately common. Folks tend to avoid companies with past layoffs as the company has a suboptimal cap table from a down round - or is public and only cares about profits. Either option is limiting for a tech worker. So historically successful companies have tried to avoid layoffs like the plague. This has likely lead to some excesses in firms who haven’t adjusted over time.
- johannes1234321 4y agoWon't that the the place to join? - The parts where they hire is where they see the business going, which might be more stable than a random corner in a corporation, which didn't the rif, yet.
- lumost 4y agoMaybe, but if it’s a series D or less that means that most of the growth potential/capital has been spent. The company will be focused on profitability which in some cases may never occur at the level required to justify the previous valuation. VC firms don’t want to disclose losses, so they’ll happily keep the company private and barely profitable indefinitely. Mega caps struggle to understand what matters and what doesn’t - the track record for mega caps is that once they start layoffs, they don’t really stop until the company is irrelevant. See IBM.
- twelve40 4y agoIronically, unlike getting decimated Google and Facebook-style, IBM's stock went up in the past year and they seem to be doing ok (hundred plus years into it). Some parts of IBM are still very relevant, many others are depressing, but it's more like a whole country of different people than a "company" that I can comprehend. Also, curious that their headcount went down from mind-boggling 466k in 2011 to 282k, talk about downsizing (quietly fired 200 thousand people?)
- johannes1234321 4y ago> Also, curious that their headcount went down from mind-boggling 466k in 2011 to 282k, talk about downsizing (quietly fired 200 thousand people?) IBM spun off quite a few businesses, like more parts from Lenovo and what is now Kyndryl.
- nebula8804 4y agoI guess layoffs.fyi would give you that data?
- code_duck 4y agoYeah, there are rarely headlines like “this tech company didn’t layoff 15% of their staff“.
- marcinzm 4y agoThis level of layoffs only happens during major economic downturns. Last one was 2008 and before that was the dot-com crash. So once a decade or so.
- lamontcg 4y agoThis isn't a major economic downturn... yet.
- red-iron-pine 4y agoThere were two continuous quarters of negative growth... so the regulatory orgs changed the definition of 'recession'
- code_duck 4y agoWhat I wonder is how it's affected by almost every commentator, analyst and corporation in the world saying "we're expecting very poor economic conditions". Id' theorize that hearing that makes people less likely to commit to purchases and hiring. Pretty much a self-fulfilling prophecy.
- tempsy 4y agono
- gretch 4y agoCorporate compositions are similar. There’s a natural ratio of engineering to sales to recruiting to finance. Also all these companies exist in the same environment- interest rates are pretty much the same for everyone, so is inflation
- tempsy 4y agowell in this case it seems like Alphabet is finally getting more disciplined around spending when it comes to all these unprofitable “moonshots” that have largely gone nowhere. i don’t think Google has announced layoffs yet.
- chrisweekly 4y agoVerily is not a moonshot.
- munk-a 4y agoI think being more disciplined about moonshot investments is actually a terrible thing. Tech in our modern society has some absolutely ridiculously profit margins - since those margins aren't being taxed in a sane manner it'd be nice if they at least went to far out there research and development that occasionally produced interesting and novel tools for us to use. Tech companies are also in a really unique situation when it comes to layoffs as a way to appear economically healthy. Outside of critical infrastructure like ops and a few other key tasks required to maintain tool quality - development can pretty much be full stopped for a few months without seriously degrading the quality of the product or expected revenue - yes, continued feature development and maintenance is needed to keep a company relevant in the long term but in the short term nobody is going to notice if the maintenance patch that would've been released this week is delayed until June. Our (as in customers, even power users like HN folks) ability to comprehend code rot in the products we're using is extremely weak - sure you might subscribe to the git repo of a tool or two that you're specifically interested in, but it's infeasible to track the good news about every single application that passes through your hands on a daily basis. And, while this isn't true for everyone, I think it's reasonable to assume that even most of us tech literate HN users only really notice software patches when they break things. Humans are very biased to noticed negative changes.
- kneebonian 4y agoI didn't know this either that's kind of a bummer they are laying of people from one of the few alphabet subsidiaries that is without a doubt improving life for people.
- zombiwoof 4y agothat's what they want you to think. what has it delivered that is worth the investment and number of people? it's a bloated org full of researchers talking about big ideas.
- dmreedy 4y agoSpeaking as someone whose life has been saved several times by a Dexcom G6 (for whatever role they had in that one), and is looking forward to the Dexcom G7 (which they seem to have a larger role in), I'm pretty grateful for their big ideas.
- kneebonian 4y agoWell I know the Dexcom G6 made it so my wife could have a pregnancy with far fewer complications, so ya. I'd say it delivered investment for me.