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This may shock you, but a company is not a person. Further, there is zero wrong with a company's goal for profit. This is like water, or food, for a living or
by b112 4y ago
This may shock you, but a company is not a person.
Further, there is zero wrong with a company's goal for profit. This is like water, or food, for a living organism, without profit the company will wither, and die.
A company does not "owe you" a job. You do work, they pay, and at any time you or they may walk away.
No one is owed a job.
So what's the beef here? You want some sort of corporate socialism?
- saidinesh5 4y agoBut that's the thing. So many highly skilled people, put to good use can multiply profits no? That's assuming that those 10k are not some part of their new stack ranking system. How would you interpret massive layoffs when a company is not making losses? To me, it looks like their existing projects aren't making the kind of money they want to make and they aren't interested in trying out more things that might give them a chance to make that kind of money.
- b112 4y agoSo many highly skilled people, put to good use can multiply profits no? No. If true, merely having skilled people would immediately lead to a win for any startup. How would you interpret massive layoffs when a company is not making losses? I would only care to try, to spend the hundreds or thousands of hours to analyze google's actions (instead of guessing), if I cared to invest heavily it. To the above I will add, a well run company does not wait to lose money, but manages finances ahead of the game. Beyond that, share price is how google acquires, yes? So if share price plummets, acquisition capability plummets...
- saidinesh5 4y agoBeing put to good use is what multiplies profits imo. Don't get me wrong, i have seen with skilled/learned engineers, taking horrible technical decisions and causing their companies a lot of financial headaches. So I understand what you mean. Especially about "managing finances ahead of the game". But at Google's scale (and profits..) it was a little weird to see(/not see?) no efforts of reorganization before all those layoffs.
- bnegreve 4y ago> This may shock you, but a company is not a person. Corporations are legally treated like people, that is the point actually [1]. Given that they have similar rights, it is not absurd to expect they also behave like people. [1] (from wikipedia) A corporation is an organization authorized by the state to act as a single entity (a legal entity recognized by private and public law "born out of statute"; a legal person in legal context) and recognized as such in law for certain purposes.
- prepend 4y agoLegal people aren’t people. This just means that rights given to people also apply to organizations and groups of people. Otherwise the state could say “yes prepend, you have freedom of speech, but the church you belong to can’t say stuff.” Etc etc.
- b112 4y agoNo, corporations are not people, and legalities which apply in very specific circumstances and not relevant. Do you, as a person, have a CTO by law? Have your value listed on a stock exchange? Can you be sold? Dissolved at the whim of the state? A corporation is only a person in a very, very narrow set of conditions.
- bnegreve 4y agoCorporations are granted the right to sue me. That enough for me to expect that they show some level of human decency. If they behave like psychopaths in a systematic way, I don't think they should be granted that right.
- smcl 4y agoImagine being the guy saying "No one is owed a job" in the comments of a story announcing 12,000 people are being fired.