11 ms·

It's hard not to read some of these stories and not think that somehow some of these companies are free-riding on the ability to do some firings with minimal pu

It's hard not to read some of these stories and not think that somehow some of these companies are free-riding on the ability to do some firings with minimal pushback because of the "well, look at what everyone else is doing!" climate that exists now. I'm having a hard time teasing out how much of this is driven by some sort of fundamental analysis of the economy, some collective BigCo CEO shared thinking, or, at my most cynical, an Overton window that's been pushed outwards by Elon firing an extremely significant quantity of the (comparably tiny) workforce of Twitter with seeming negligible external-facing impact on the core product.

squokko 4y ago
That's what some of these companies have stated on the record. Like Zuck explicitly said that some people shouldn't be here, months before the layoffs.
rufusroflpunch 4y ago
What are you getting at, exactly? Are you implying they don't need to fire these people, they just want to? Or are you saying they think they need it, but they really don't?
- dakiol 4y ago
  Isn't it obvious? They don't need to fire those people.
- burnished 4y ago
  The phrase "hard time teasing out" typically implies that the author doesn't know what to think amidst several options.
- brightball 4y ago
  I think he's suggesting that they want to do periodic layoffs regardless but that there may be a more negative perception of doing so in isolation rather than the current situation of multiple other big tech companies doing it.
- jstummbillig 4y ago
  What I took from it – and I think they might be on to something – is that it's opportunistic firing. Firing people at this scale would have been pretty expensive just a few month back, PR wise. Right now, a lot less so. So you might be tempted to think of the current climate as a good opportunity to shed some fat, to the point where you go into it with the idea of hiring back right away and being able to do so at better conditions. The market has relaxed. Compare it to a few month back, where switching jobs (= firing your employer) was a great way to automagically increase your pay. It works both ways.
  - tensor 4y ago
    PR wise to who though? I don't think any of Microsoft's customers actually care. For developer hiring yeah it will hurt their PR, but at the end of the day sorry to say devs tend to go where the pay is highest irrespective of PR.
    - 1123581321 4y ago
      Even if retail doesn't care, the news would matter to large customers, job candidates, existing employees, and investors. Acquisition targets as well.
    - jstummbillig 4y ago
      > at the end of the day sorry to say devs tend to go where the pay is highest irrespective of PR. I have to assume that, in the same way that glass palace FANG offices and around the clock full-service employee pampering are doing something for (potential) employees, the idea of large scale firings will move the needle in the opposite direction. Clearly, it's not only about who pays most.
    - HideousKojima 4y ago
      >PR wise to who though? To give an example in microcosm, this news about layoffs is affecting my decision of what UI framework to use with .NET projects. .NET MAUI was already low on my list because I don't trust Microsoft to commit to supporting a UI framework long-term, but if any of these cuts are to the MAUI team then it will put it out of the running completely for me. I'm sure there are other devs in similar circumstances (and who likely rank MAUI much higher as a candidate than I do) who will weigh this layoff announcement into their decision. And there will be some who ignore it because they see it as a general symptom of the economy, not a sign of trouble at Microsoft etc.
- mrkeen 4y ago
  He's implying that the company has some kind of duty to treat its employees like humans who would be adversely affected by being fired - or the company would perhaps suffer some PR damage from mass firings. But if everyone's doing it, it's a necessity.
- brundolf 4y ago
  Firing a bunch of people impacts morale, PR, etc. So there may be a bunch of people they'd like to fire but not badly enough to deal with those consequences. But a public narrative of "it's the economy" or "layoffs are just going around" can shield them from those consequences and give them an opportunity.
estebank 4y ago
> seeming negligible external-facing impact on the core product In both technical and product axes Twitter has already deteriorated massively, possibly beyond repair and the company might not make it to 2024, so I wouldn't call that "negligible".
- matusp 4y ago
  In what regards has it deteriorated so much?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - fullshark 4y ago
    Advertising revenue
- phillipcarter 4y ago
  > so I wouldn't call that "negligible". I think the mistake you're making here is assuming that your average tech CEO is paying attention to the same degree you are. They aren't. They don't have time to notice all the many little things that degraded already, they just saw that the site didn't go down a week later and moved on.
  - etc-hosts 4y ago
    If he hires people, if he doesn't fire people, if he doesn't tweet, if he tweets that the flat earth people are out there fighting the woke mob, it doesn't matter, Musk will be hailed as a genius no matter what. Musk has enough money and influence to stress out his employees and userbase for decades.
- hbn 4y ago
  I've continued to use twitter daily since the Elon takeover. If I wasn't in the loop about that I wouldn't have noticed anything. I think early on I heard there was a 2FA outage? That was resolved fairly quickly. The only issue is dumb changes, like the "no linking to other platforms" rule that was announced and then rolled back within the day, or adding view counts that add no value. But none of that is technical issues.
dragontamer 4y ago
> with seeming negligible external-facing impact on the core product. Twitter is said to have lost $2.5 Billion/year in advertiser money, largely because Twitter's sales teams have not been returning emails from worried Advertisers. That's a pretty huge impact on Twitter's #1 revenue stream (estimated to be $5 Billion in 2021). Twitter's core product is advertisements. Without sales staff to keep the advertisers, they're clearly losing a ton of money. Advertising was always degenerating. I know that over the past year, I've been seeing more and more pornographic material in Twitter, and I'm pretty sure advertisers don't like that kind of stuff. But instead of having teams working out those kinks (pun intended), those teams have been simply fired. So advertisers know that there's no hope for these issues to be fixed anymore, and are now leaving the platform. There's simply not enough developers left to change Twitter or combat the rise of unsavory material. --------- There's been many a blogpost about "Airline advertiser didn't want to have its ads appear next to Airline disasters". (Ex: Southwest's shutdowns cause thousands of flight cancellations, it will be talked about on Twitter... does Southwest want its advertisements being shown next to that??). These are the kinds of things that Twitter's teams worked to prevent. You know, mundane issues but require _constant_ coding to identify as news events cause a rapid change to the online discussion. And its fair: there's no reason why Southwest's advertisements should be shown in a negative light... or for Southwest to be paying for that kind of negative publicity.
- adam_arthur 4y ago
  Interesting that Twitter is shipping features faster than ever after 80% layoffs. Don't think Twitter's revenue issues have anything to do with sales staff. Advertising channels/campaigns can and should be 100% automated.
  - dragontamer 4y ago
    But not the features that retain advertisers. Which were the silent issues that no one talked about before. And indeed, advertisers aren't talking about it now. They're just leaving the platform in droves. There's no one _to_ talk about it with. Entire teams (including high ranking executives) that kept relationships with advertisers have been fired. Twitter doesn't even have anyone answering / categorizing the complaints anymore. > Don't think Twitter's revenue issues have anything to do with sales staff. Advertising channels/campaigns can and should be 100% automated. You can't automate news. News is constantly changing. Advertisers _constantly_ are complaining about "X is being shown next to Y news event. Please stop that", and its impossible to predict X, or Y.
shmatt 4y ago
Corporate Americas' bloat has been the butt of many jokes for decades. Big tech is just as guilty. They still do want to keep high performers, which is usually why its not just a layoff announced, but a "re-organization", aka lets move all the high graded employees to other orgs and fire the lower graded ones
- WWLink 4y ago
  Naw I think it's more "let's get rid of all these heavily overpaid employees and replace them with cheaper ones" :D Especially the ones that spend all day bragging about how they're a top performer on hackernews. :D
onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
It's hard to see how so many companies could grow their headcounts far in excess of their revenue growth, and people didn't see at some point, they'd start cutting.
- pengaru 4y ago
  > It's hard to see how so many companies could grow their headcounts far in excess of their revenue growth, and people didn't see at some point, they'd start cutting. It's hard to separate the wheat from the chaff without hiring both and sorting after the fact when you're actually informed by experience. The economic downturn just gives excellent cover for what's an arguably necessary part of a cycle akin to forests burning.
mc32 4y ago
It can be that but also it can be that they see some of the competition cooling so they don't have to spend as much to keep up with their competition. It's like airline pricing. One airline has a sale, others follow (competition heating up), then, one airline hikes fares, others follow (as competition cools down).
jh00ker 4y ago
Or maybe it's some collective BigCo board of directors shared thinking that they need to show to shareholders that they are being proactive on that Overton window. $MSFT ticking up ...
birdymcbird 4y ago
msft is a business..not charity. my experience at two big tech companies said this extremely overdue. especially since about 2012.. lots of added head count. managers and sr. managers and directors #1 priority on increasing head count to grow empires and get promotions. it elephant in the room supported by easy US fed policy. uncomfortable truth these people dont want to admit. what is vision for these new teams? if stock price is $100/share does director X’ org contribute $.50 or $1 or $10? many teams are negative contributors to this equation. actually much of $ attribution and downstream impact was gamed. the founders and their protege slowly left and replaced with professional managers. no vision. no obsession with features. little thought to value. instead they see prestigious job. “i have 150 people report to me.” that kind of discourse mainstream. indirect way of bragging “look how important i am.” maybe 15% of employees at both companies providing actual value building new things that bring revenue. another 15-20% just support legacy cruft with software patches. no feature work. no innovation. large teams of engineers and managers resting and vesting. it is honestly entitlement and horrible joke. why these people entitled to $200-500k+ salaries??? its like this country built fake economic class of worker. little to no economic output.
- daveslash 4y ago
  re >> #1 priority on increasing head count to grow empires and get promotions. I'm sure that's the case always, but I'm convinced it's the case more often than many of us realize. I also recall this being discussed in David Graeber's book "Bullshit Jobs"
  - daveslash 4y ago
    Edit: It's been too long, so I can't edit my comment. But I meant to say "not the case always".
bilsbie 4y ago
I assumed this was obvious.
chiefalchemist 4y ago
In the current climate, layoffs are good for the share price and therefore the shareholders. Sure leadership and deviation from the norm would be refreshing (and smart), but that's that the era we're in.
voisin 4y ago
> some of these companies are free-riding on the ability to do some firings with minimal pushback because of the "well, look at what everyone else is doing!" In finance circles it is referred to as “taking a big bath”. When everyone is doing it, you write off past goodwill from bad acquisitions, lay off redundant employees, etc, all to emerge clean on the other side. Having used the cover of everyone doing it, you aren’t punished.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
randomdata 4y ago
There was also the situation where companies were hiring simply so that the competition couldn't. Now that the competition isn't hiring, you can free the people you were hoarding.

squokko 4y ago

That's what some of these companies have stated on the record. Like Zuck explicitly said that some people shouldn't be here, months before the layoffs.

rufusroflpunch 4y ago

What are you getting at, exactly? Are you implying they don't need to fire these people, they just want to? Or are you saying they think they need it, but they really don't?

dakiol 4y ago
Isn't it obvious? They don't need to fire those people.
burnished 4y ago
The phrase "hard time teasing out" typically implies that the author doesn't know what to think amidst several options.
brightball 4y ago
I think he's suggesting that they want to do periodic layoffs regardless but that there may be a more negative perception of doing so in isolation rather than the current situation of multiple other big tech companies doing it.
jstummbillig 4y ago
What I took from it – and I think they might be on to something – is that it's opportunistic firing. Firing people at this scale would have been pretty expensive just a few month back, PR wise. Right now, a lot less so. So you might be tempted to think of the current climate as a good opportunity to shed some fat, to the point where you go into it with the idea of hiring back right away and being able to do so at better conditions. The market has relaxed. Compare it to a few month back, where switching jobs (= firing your employer) was a great way to automagically increase your pay. It works both ways.
- tensor 4y ago
  PR wise to who though? I don't think any of Microsoft's customers actually care. For developer hiring yeah it will hurt their PR, but at the end of the day sorry to say devs tend to go where the pay is highest irrespective of PR.
  - 1123581321 4y ago
    Even if retail doesn't care, the news would matter to large customers, job candidates, existing employees, and investors. Acquisition targets as well.
  - jstummbillig 4y ago
    > at the end of the day sorry to say devs tend to go where the pay is highest irrespective of PR. I have to assume that, in the same way that glass palace FANG offices and around the clock full-service employee pampering are doing something for (potential) employees, the idea of large scale firings will move the needle in the opposite direction. Clearly, it's not only about who pays most.
  - HideousKojima 4y ago
    >PR wise to who though? To give an example in microcosm, this news about layoffs is affecting my decision of what UI framework to use with .NET projects. .NET MAUI was already low on my list because I don't trust Microsoft to commit to supporting a UI framework long-term, but if any of these cuts are to the MAUI team then it will put it out of the running completely for me. I'm sure there are other devs in similar circumstances (and who likely rank MAUI much higher as a candidate than I do) who will weigh this layoff announcement into their decision. And there will be some who ignore it because they see it as a general symptom of the economy, not a sign of trouble at Microsoft etc.
mrkeen 4y ago
He's implying that the company has some kind of duty to treat its employees like humans who would be adversely affected by being fired - or the company would perhaps suffer some PR damage from mass firings. But if everyone's doing it, it's a necessity.
brundolf 4y ago
Firing a bunch of people impacts morale, PR, etc. So there may be a bunch of people they'd like to fire but not badly enough to deal with those consequences. But a public narrative of "it's the economy" or "layoffs are just going around" can shield them from those consequences and give them an opportunity.

estebank 4y ago

> seeming negligible external-facing impact on the core product In both technical and product axes Twitter has already deteriorated massively, possibly beyond repair and the company might not make it to 2024, so I wouldn't call that "negligible".

matusp 4y ago
In what regards has it deteriorated so much?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- fullshark 4y ago
  Advertising revenue
phillipcarter 4y ago
> so I wouldn't call that "negligible". I think the mistake you're making here is assuming that your average tech CEO is paying attention to the same degree you are. They aren't. They don't have time to notice all the many little things that degraded already, they just saw that the site didn't go down a week later and moved on.
- etc-hosts 4y ago
  If he hires people, if he doesn't fire people, if he doesn't tweet, if he tweets that the flat earth people are out there fighting the woke mob, it doesn't matter, Musk will be hailed as a genius no matter what. Musk has enough money and influence to stress out his employees and userbase for decades.
hbn 4y ago
I've continued to use twitter daily since the Elon takeover. If I wasn't in the loop about that I wouldn't have noticed anything. I think early on I heard there was a 2FA outage? That was resolved fairly quickly. The only issue is dumb changes, like the "no linking to other platforms" rule that was announced and then rolled back within the day, or adding view counts that add no value. But none of that is technical issues.

dragontamer 4y ago

> with seeming negligible external-facing impact on the core product. Twitter is said to have lost $2.5 Billion/year in advertiser money, largely because Twitter's sales teams have not been returning emails from worried Advertisers. That's a pretty huge impact on Twitter's #1 revenue stream (estimated to be $5 Billion in 2021). Twitter's core product is advertisements. Without sales staff to keep the advertisers, they're clearly losing a ton of money. Advertising was always degenerating. I know that over the past year, I've been seeing more and more pornographic material in Twitter, and I'm pretty sure advertisers don't like that kind of stuff. But instead of having teams working out those kinks (pun intended), those teams have been simply fired. So advertisers know that there's no hope for these issues to be fixed anymore, and are now leaving the platform. There's simply not enough developers left to change Twitter or combat the rise of unsavory material. --------- There's been many a blogpost about "Airline advertiser didn't want to have its ads appear next to Airline disasters". (Ex: Southwest's shutdowns cause thousands of flight cancellations, it will be talked about on Twitter... does Southwest want its advertisements being shown next to that??). These are the kinds of things that Twitter's teams worked to prevent. You know, mundane issues but require _constant_ coding to identify as news events cause a rapid change to the online discussion. And its fair: there's no reason why Southwest's advertisements should be shown in a negative light... or for Southwest to be paying for that kind of negative publicity.

adam_arthur 4y ago
Interesting that Twitter is shipping features faster than ever after 80% layoffs. Don't think Twitter's revenue issues have anything to do with sales staff. Advertising channels/campaigns can and should be 100% automated.
- dragontamer 4y ago
  But not the features that retain advertisers. Which were the silent issues that no one talked about before. And indeed, advertisers aren't talking about it now. They're just leaving the platform in droves. There's no one _to_ talk about it with. Entire teams (including high ranking executives) that kept relationships with advertisers have been fired. Twitter doesn't even have anyone answering / categorizing the complaints anymore. > Don't think Twitter's revenue issues have anything to do with sales staff. Advertising channels/campaigns can and should be 100% automated. You can't automate news. News is constantly changing. Advertisers _constantly_ are complaining about "X is being shown next to Y news event. Please stop that", and its impossible to predict X, or Y.

shmatt 4y ago

Corporate Americas' bloat has been the butt of many jokes for decades. Big tech is just as guilty. They still do want to keep high performers, which is usually why its not just a layoff announced, but a "re-organization", aka lets move all the high graded employees to other orgs and fire the lower graded ones

WWLink 4y ago
Naw I think it's more "let's get rid of all these heavily overpaid employees and replace them with cheaper ones" :D Especially the ones that spend all day bragging about how they're a top performer on hackernews. :D

onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago

It's hard to see how so many companies could grow their headcounts far in excess of their revenue growth, and people didn't see at some point, they'd start cutting.

pengaru 4y ago
> It's hard to see how so many companies could grow their headcounts far in excess of their revenue growth, and people didn't see at some point, they'd start cutting. It's hard to separate the wheat from the chaff without hiring both and sorting after the fact when you're actually informed by experience. The economic downturn just gives excellent cover for what's an arguably necessary part of a cycle akin to forests burning.

mc32 4y ago

It can be that but also it can be that they see some of the competition cooling so they don't have to spend as much to keep up with their competition. It's like airline pricing. One airline has a sale, others follow (competition heating up), then, one airline hikes fares, others follow (as competition cools down).

jh00ker 4y ago

Or maybe it's some collective BigCo board of directors shared thinking that they need to show to shareholders that they are being proactive on that Overton window. $MSFT ticking up ...

birdymcbird 4y ago

msft is a business..not charity. my experience at two big tech companies said this extremely overdue. especially since about 2012.. lots of added head count. managers and sr. managers and directors #1 priority on increasing head count to grow empires and get promotions. it elephant in the room supported by easy US fed policy. uncomfortable truth these people dont want to admit. what is vision for these new teams? if stock price is $100/share does director X’ org contribute $.50 or $1 or $10? many teams are negative contributors to this equation. actually much of $ attribution and downstream impact was gamed. the founders and their protege slowly left and replaced with professional managers. no vision. no obsession with features. little thought to value. instead they see prestigious job. “i have 150 people report to me.” that kind of discourse mainstream. indirect way of bragging “look how important i am.” maybe 15% of employees at both companies providing actual value building new things that bring revenue. another 15-20% just support legacy cruft with software patches. no feature work. no innovation. large teams of engineers and managers resting and vesting. it is honestly entitlement and horrible joke. why these people entitled to $200-500k+ salaries??? its like this country built fake economic class of worker. little to no economic output.

daveslash 4y ago
re >> #1 priority on increasing head count to grow empires and get promotions. I'm sure that's the case always, but I'm convinced it's the case more often than many of us realize. I also recall this being discussed in David Graeber's book "Bullshit Jobs"
- daveslash 4y ago
  Edit: It's been too long, so I can't edit my comment. But I meant to say "not the case always".

bilsbie 4y ago

I assumed this was obvious.

chiefalchemist 4y ago

In the current climate, layoffs are good for the share price and therefore the shareholders. Sure leadership and deviation from the norm would be refreshing (and smart), but that's that the era we're in.

voisin 4y ago

> some of these companies are free-riding on the ability to do some firings with minimal pushback because of the "well, look at what everyone else is doing!" In finance circles it is referred to as “taking a big bath”. When everyone is doing it, you write off past goodwill from bad acquisitions, lay off redundant employees, etc, all to emerge clean on the other side. Having used the cover of everyone doing it, you aren’t punished.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

randomdata 4y ago

There was also the situation where companies were hiring simply so that the competition couldn't. Now that the competition isn't hiring, you can free the people you were hoarding.