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Who benefitted from the mass hirings? Stock holders, and also workers. Did the workers complain when the job market (esp in tech) was on fire and wages were inc

Who benefitted from the mass hirings? Stock holders, and also workers. Did the workers complain when the job market (esp in tech) was on fire and wages were increasing? No. Did they blame the people at the top for their new job and wages? No. But, now they want to blame leaders when there are mass layoffs. I think the blame is misplaced. The root cause was the stock market, and better yet blame the fed. The incentive was to show growth at all costs, even at the expense of burning cash. Leaders who did not optimize to growth were fired in many cases. But the game changed when stimulus and endless money printing stopped.

f6v 4y ago
> Did they blame the people at the top for their new job and wages? Companies aren’t very upfront about over-hiring.
- alldayeveryday 4y ago
  It wasn't over-hiring given the environment at the time. It was over hiring given current environment. It seems clear that companies who took a more conservative approach to hiring have come out better for it. Not all companies could be so lucky. Some had activist investors who aggressively pushed for growth or else pushed out leaders. Messy world we live in.
  - iancmceachern 4y ago
    It was. It's naive to think that a boom economy will last forever.
sausagefeet 4y ago
I've been thinking about this question as well. Is it better to have not given these people a job at all rather than to have given a job and then fired? I don't know. There are a lot of ways to look at it that all could be right.
moonchrome 4y ago
This - basically both decisions are driven by stock market charades - growth at all costs when interest was low - cost cutting when revenue drops.
dbingham 4y ago
All of these companies laying people off are claiming that they "over hired" or "over extended" themselves during the pandemic and now they need to tighten their belts. Who made the decision to hire more workers than the company needed? Leadership. Who made the decisions to put the company in a position where it would need to lay people off? Leadership. Who bears the consequences of those decisions? It's not the people who made them. It's not like the workers forced the companies to hire them. This is the problem I have with these layoffs. The leadership who made the strategic decisions that put the company in a position to need to lay people off should face significant economic consequences before anyone else. But that is not happening. That never happens. And this also is where I push back on people who say that investors are the ones taking the risk (and should therefor reap the rewards of business). It's the workers who take a greater risk - because they have less information, less power, and less of a buffer if something goes wrong.
- IMTDb 4y ago
  A working agreement is a contract between two parties. Who made the decision to join a company that was seeing sudden, unsustainable growth ? Workers. Who made the decisions to place themselves in a position they maybe aren't that needed? Workers. Who enjoyed significant salary increase due to higher demand for their skills, increasing the cost of their labours while asking for increased benefits such as flexibility, work from home, etc ? Again; workers There are two sides to the coin here.
  - dbingham 4y ago
    No there are not. There's a massive information imbalance. Most companies do not make enough information public for workers to truly assess whether their growth is sustainable or not. Public companies have to file a certain amount of financial information, but they are very good at playing games with that information to mask their true financial health. Workers have no choice when it comes to positions where they might not be needed. That could be true of literally any job someone might take. And workers pretty much never have the information to accurately assess for themselves whether or not they think they are needed until they are in the job. Every job a worker takes is a risk in which they are asked to trust the company hiring them not to turn around and immediately fire them. > Who enjoyed significant salary increase due to higher demand for their skills, increasing the cost of their labours while asking for increased benefits such as flexibility, work from home, etc ? Again; workers Work from home and flexibility are mutually beneficial. Knowledge workers perform better when they are able to do their work in the way that best fits them. This is not some benefit the company pays to hand out, it's the company structuring itself in a way that most benefits it. As for salary, tech workers are still underpaid. Tech work is not factory work. The companies revenues are entirely generated by the knowledge, skills, and work of the workers. There's no physical machine the company is adding that allows the workers to do their work which they couldn't themselves easily acquire. The very fact that profit exists in tech companies tells you that workers are being underpaid. The only thing capital brings to the table in a tech company is the ability to operate in the negative - to scale head count (and thus to some degree productivity) faster than revenue. That is not something any tech worker needs, and most tech companies almost certainly could have grown far more sustainably by growing along with their revenue. That is something capital pushes, hoping for outsized returns on the grown on its investment. So, again, who should be suffering the consequences when the economy turns down? Keep in mind, paper losses of a falling stock market are not true losses for investors. As long as they hold through the fall - assuming the company doesn't go under completely - they'll most likely recover everything and more, but losing a job and therefor income can be life changing for a worker.
pwinnski 4y ago
Recruiters have reached out to you from two different companies. Company A and Company B are both offering compensation greater than you're currently making (which is almost always true for most workers), and you ask questions about the viability of the company (hugely profitable) and the job (very much needed). On what basis are you to know that despite being hugely profitable, Company A is going to get rid of 28,000 employees, while Company B is instead going to cut CEO compensation by 40%? How can you be sure whether you're joining Alphabet or Apple? There is nobody to blame for any of this but the leadership making poor decisions for which they won't face any consequences.
- vineyardmike 4y ago
  > Company A is going to get rid of 28,000 employees, while Company B is instead going to cut CEO compensation by 40%? How can you be sure whether you're joining Alphabet or Apple? As a recently ex-alphabet employee: apple never went on a hiring spree. They had restraint the last few years, with a significantly smaller workforce, and the result is (hopefully) no layoffs. Fast money moves quickly and it might move away from you. We should also be talking about Yelp at the start of the pandemic, who was predictably in a precarious situation. They offered to employ people part time (and still do) instead of mass layoffs. You can work as an SDE at 80% time instead, which gives you a stable (but smaller) income in a scary time, and it gives the employer a discount to save without layoffs. Personally, I would take 80% or maybe even 60% time at my old Google job over a layoff. Everyone comments about “rest and vest” anyways, so 75% may be perceived as appropriate anyways.
  - pwinnski 4y ago
    I'm sorry for you losing your job, since it sounds like it wasn't voluntary. I understand why Apple hasn't done mass layoffs, but I'm still stuck on how you know that during the recruiting process. If Apple tries to hire you in January 2020, how do you know they are going to be more circumspect about hiring over the next three years? Apple hired a large number of people during the last three years, just as Google did. NOW we know it was a MUCH SMALLER "large number of people," but it was still quite a few. If you're talking to recruiters from each, how do you know? I don't blame anyone for taking a job with Amazon, Google, or Facebook. I mean, I wouldn't personally work for any of the three for my own reasons, but I don't think it's fair to blame people taking jobs there for their own layoffs.

f6v 4y ago

> Did they blame the people at the top for their new job and wages? Companies aren’t very upfront about over-hiring.

alldayeveryday 4y ago
It wasn't over-hiring given the environment at the time. It was over hiring given current environment. It seems clear that companies who took a more conservative approach to hiring have come out better for it. Not all companies could be so lucky. Some had activist investors who aggressively pushed for growth or else pushed out leaders. Messy world we live in.
- iancmceachern 4y ago
  It was. It's naive to think that a boom economy will last forever.

sausagefeet 4y ago

I've been thinking about this question as well. Is it better to have not given these people a job at all rather than to have given a job and then fired? I don't know. There are a lot of ways to look at it that all could be right.

moonchrome 4y ago

This - basically both decisions are driven by stock market charades - growth at all costs when interest was low - cost cutting when revenue drops.

dbingham 4y ago

All of these companies laying people off are claiming that they "over hired" or "over extended" themselves during the pandemic and now they need to tighten their belts. Who made the decision to hire more workers than the company needed? Leadership. Who made the decisions to put the company in a position where it would need to lay people off? Leadership. Who bears the consequences of those decisions? It's not the people who made them. It's not like the workers forced the companies to hire them. This is the problem I have with these layoffs. The leadership who made the strategic decisions that put the company in a position to need to lay people off should face significant economic consequences before anyone else. But that is not happening. That never happens. And this also is where I push back on people who say that investors are the ones taking the risk (and should therefor reap the rewards of business). It's the workers who take a greater risk - because they have less information, less power, and less of a buffer if something goes wrong.

IMTDb 4y ago
A working agreement is a contract between two parties. Who made the decision to join a company that was seeing sudden, unsustainable growth ? Workers. Who made the decisions to place themselves in a position they maybe aren't that needed? Workers. Who enjoyed significant salary increase due to higher demand for their skills, increasing the cost of their labours while asking for increased benefits such as flexibility, work from home, etc ? Again; workers There are two sides to the coin here.
- dbingham 4y ago
  No there are not. There's a massive information imbalance. Most companies do not make enough information public for workers to truly assess whether their growth is sustainable or not. Public companies have to file a certain amount of financial information, but they are very good at playing games with that information to mask their true financial health. Workers have no choice when it comes to positions where they might not be needed. That could be true of literally any job someone might take. And workers pretty much never have the information to accurately assess for themselves whether or not they think they are needed until they are in the job. Every job a worker takes is a risk in which they are asked to trust the company hiring them not to turn around and immediately fire them. > Who enjoyed significant salary increase due to higher demand for their skills, increasing the cost of their labours while asking for increased benefits such as flexibility, work from home, etc ? Again; workers Work from home and flexibility are mutually beneficial. Knowledge workers perform better when they are able to do their work in the way that best fits them. This is not some benefit the company pays to hand out, it's the company structuring itself in a way that most benefits it. As for salary, tech workers are still underpaid. Tech work is not factory work. The companies revenues are entirely generated by the knowledge, skills, and work of the workers. There's no physical machine the company is adding that allows the workers to do their work which they couldn't themselves easily acquire. The very fact that profit exists in tech companies tells you that workers are being underpaid. The only thing capital brings to the table in a tech company is the ability to operate in the negative - to scale head count (and thus to some degree productivity) faster than revenue. That is not something any tech worker needs, and most tech companies almost certainly could have grown far more sustainably by growing along with their revenue. That is something capital pushes, hoping for outsized returns on the grown on its investment. So, again, who should be suffering the consequences when the economy turns down? Keep in mind, paper losses of a falling stock market are not true losses for investors. As long as they hold through the fall - assuming the company doesn't go under completely - they'll most likely recover everything and more, but losing a job and therefor income can be life changing for a worker.

pwinnski 4y ago

Recruiters have reached out to you from two different companies. Company A and Company B are both offering compensation greater than you're currently making (which is almost always true for most workers), and you ask questions about the viability of the company (hugely profitable) and the job (very much needed). On what basis are you to know that despite being hugely profitable, Company A is going to get rid of 28,000 employees, while Company B is instead going to cut CEO compensation by 40%? How can you be sure whether you're joining Alphabet or Apple? There is nobody to blame for any of this but the leadership making poor decisions for which they won't face any consequences.

vineyardmike 4y ago
> Company A is going to get rid of 28,000 employees, while Company B is instead going to cut CEO compensation by 40%? How can you be sure whether you're joining Alphabet or Apple? As a recently ex-alphabet employee: apple never went on a hiring spree. They had restraint the last few years, with a significantly smaller workforce, and the result is (hopefully) no layoffs. Fast money moves quickly and it might move away from you. We should also be talking about Yelp at the start of the pandemic, who was predictably in a precarious situation. They offered to employ people part time (and still do) instead of mass layoffs. You can work as an SDE at 80% time instead, which gives you a stable (but smaller) income in a scary time, and it gives the employer a discount to save without layoffs. Personally, I would take 80% or maybe even 60% time at my old Google job over a layoff. Everyone comments about “rest and vest” anyways, so 75% may be perceived as appropriate anyways.
- pwinnski 4y ago
  I'm sorry for you losing your job, since it sounds like it wasn't voluntary. I understand why Apple hasn't done mass layoffs, but I'm still stuck on how you know that during the recruiting process. If Apple tries to hire you in January 2020, how do you know they are going to be more circumspect about hiring over the next three years? Apple hired a large number of people during the last three years, just as Google did. NOW we know it was a MUCH SMALLER "large number of people," but it was still quite a few. If you're talking to recruiters from each, how do you know? I don't blame anyone for taking a job with Amazon, Google, or Facebook. I mean, I wouldn't personally work for any of the three for my own reasons, but I don't think it's fair to blame people taking jobs there for their own layoffs.