4 ms·

What if they are laying off to make room for better developers?

pwinnski 4y ago
You are unlikely to successfully hire better developers after getting rid of 7% of your workforce. Better developers will stay away.
- throwawaymaths 4y ago
  Depends on how bad the people you laid off are. Look at it this way, if 20% of programmers are bad, and you lay off the bottom 10%, and rehire let's say at a disadvantage (50% bad), you now have a 75% bad workforce instead of an 80% bad workforce. This assumes you can identify bad workers (for some metric of bad which may or may not be ethical or sensible)
  - wintogreen74 4y ago
    it's way easier to tell if someone is bad after you hire them vs. before though.
    - throwawaymaths 4y ago
      Stats still work out, try it yourself with whatever numbers you care to use. I'm not saying I defend layoffs I'm just pointing out the underlying logic of why a company might want to do them (I think it's missing important factors, but what you claim is not one of them)
  - ithkuil 4y ago
    This also assumes that every company lays off people and thus new hires don't select companies based in whether they recently laid off people
    - throwawaymaths 4y ago
      "rehire at a disadvantage"
  - PuppyTailWags 4y ago
    This also assumes that PagerDuty's hiring process is so shitty that 1 in 5 of their hires suck. In that case there's no guarantee they'll hire better talent, lol
    - Phlarp 4y ago
      On the one hand PagerDuty's hiring process is shitty, but on the other hand the rest of the industry's process for identifying which heads to reduce is worse?
    - ivalm 4y ago
      Start with distribution for employee Good: P(good)=p Bad: P(bad)=(1-p) Have a bad employee detector P(detected as bad|bad)=q1 P(detected as good|bad)=1-q1 P(detected as good|good)=q2 P(detected as bad|good)=1-q2 Fraction of employees detected as good: pq2+(1-p)(1-q1) Fraction of employees detected as bad (and therefore fired) p(1-q2)+(1-p)q1 Suppose you pay a discount on ability to hire new good employees as d (so probability to hire a new good employee is dp instead of p) So you benefit as long as p(1-q2)/((1-p)q1)<dp/(1-dp) Or (1-q2)/q1 < d (1-p)/(1-dp) Plugging in p=.8, d=.5, q1=q2=q (knowing good and bad is equally hard) (1-q)/q < .167 Break even is then q = 1/1.167=.857 So if you start with 80/20 distribution and after a while improve your discrimination to 86/14 then firing benefits you even if you are hiring from a 40/60 pool.
  - Phlarp 4y ago
    If you subscribe to this logic then doesn't it follow that you're trying to rehire only 50% "bad" programmers from a pool that is (again by your definition) newly comprised of individuals a previous company recently identified as 100% "bad"? This not only assumes that you can identify bad workers, but that you can also identify some percent of "good workers that other companies identified as bad workers". Shameless profit taking by executives and shareholders seems a lot more likely. Google and Microsoft providing PR cover for smaller companies to do it under the radar.
    - throwawaymaths 4y ago
      What's bad for one company is not necessarily bad for another company. For example I would think very hard before hiring any senior from FAANG (layoffs or otherwise) at a startup, especially in the pre-100 employees stage. Might even be worse during the rapid growth phase.
paxys 4y ago
If they weren't able to hire these "better developers" in the first place what is going to change now?
- cooperadymas 4y ago
  Maybe those "better developers" were suddenly laid off by even bigger corps? I've noticed a trickle down effect in our very-small hiring queue. I can't help but imagine mid-sized companies are getting access to devs that only wanted to work for FAANG before.
  - paxys 4y ago
    By your logic the people laid off from other companies would also be the kind that weren't worth keeping. If everyone is firing bad developers and looking for good developers, where do all these good developers magically come from?
    - wintogreen74 4y ago
      easy: you add "We only hire rock stars" to your job postings.
    - tesseract 4y ago
      I would not take it as a given that the individuals laid off were the worst performers at the company. It could be that they were highly compensated and deemed too expensive, or happened to work in the wrong department/business unit.
  - wintogreen74 4y ago
    Except by the original train of thought "everyone is laying off bad developers" so if you accept this (IMO flawed) premise you're going to be in a worse position after you get through this gigantic process.
    - bryanrasmussen 4y ago
      unless you have identified a company whose bad developers are better than your bad developers. And if you have developed a process to identify that I think it's time to pivot.
agilob 4y ago
That's illegal in some countries and PG operates in the UK too. I've seen a tech writer being made redundant, then the same company was looking for a tech writer 7 months later. Fired guy won big money for unfair redundancy.
outworlder 4y ago
> What if they are laying off to make room for better developers? If they are firing people for performance reasons during their normal performance review cycle, it's not really a layoff.
equalsione 4y ago
I think this is a joke comment, but I've seen variations of this made in earnest over the past few months. It's clear by now that these layoffs aren't targeting low performers. They're not targeting any individual. They are an accounting exercise with selection based on meeting a formula. The suggestion in some quarters is that there's a kind of collective hysteria driving the layoffs amongst tech companies. Incorrect. The one thing all these companies have in common is that they all have the same pool of institutional shareholder. The layoffs are not about saving money, they are about being seen to save money. The institutional shareholders have demanded this be done, and the boards have complied. The big layoffs - Google, Amazon, MS, etc - are largely pointless and don't make any meaningful savings. And let's not do the "thinning of the herd" bullshit, please. Why have the institutional investors demanded this? 1) because they've become accustomed to make obscene amounts of money and want to continue making obscene amounts of money even when things are slowing down, and they (wrongly) believe laying people off is the way to do this 2) because they can. They hold the real power. Apple have largely avoided doing layoffs because his 40% paycut has soothed the baying suits, and Tim Cook is in a powerful position anyway. Most other CEOs, not so much...

You are unlikely to successfully hire better developers after getting rid of 7% of your workforce. Better developers will stay away.

throwawaymaths 4y ago
Depends on how bad the people you laid off are. Look at it this way, if 20% of programmers are bad, and you lay off the bottom 10%, and rehire let's say at a disadvantage (50% bad), you now have a 75% bad workforce instead of an 80% bad workforce. This assumes you can identify bad workers (for some metric of bad which may or may not be ethical or sensible)
- wintogreen74 4y ago
  it's way easier to tell if someone is bad after you hire them vs. before though.
  - throwawaymaths 4y ago
    Stats still work out, try it yourself with whatever numbers you care to use. I'm not saying I defend layoffs I'm just pointing out the underlying logic of why a company might want to do them (I think it's missing important factors, but what you claim is not one of them)
- ithkuil 4y ago
  This also assumes that every company lays off people and thus new hires don't select companies based in whether they recently laid off people
  - throwawaymaths 4y ago
    "rehire at a disadvantage"
- PuppyTailWags 4y ago
  This also assumes that PagerDuty's hiring process is so shitty that 1 in 5 of their hires suck. In that case there's no guarantee they'll hire better talent, lol
  - Phlarp 4y ago
    On the one hand PagerDuty's hiring process is shitty, but on the other hand the rest of the industry's process for identifying which heads to reduce is worse?
  - ivalm 4y ago
    Start with distribution for employee Good: P(good)=p Bad: P(bad)=(1-p) Have a bad employee detector P(detected as bad|bad)=q1 P(detected as good|bad)=1-q1 P(detected as good|good)=q2 P(detected as bad|good)=1-q2 Fraction of employees detected as good: pq2+(1-p)(1-q1) Fraction of employees detected as bad (and therefore fired) p(1-q2)+(1-p)q1 Suppose you pay a discount on ability to hire new good employees as d (so probability to hire a new good employee is dp instead of p) So you benefit as long as p(1-q2)/((1-p)q1)<dp/(1-dp) Or (1-q2)/q1 < d (1-p)/(1-dp) Plugging in p=.8, d=.5, q1=q2=q (knowing good and bad is equally hard) (1-q)/q < .167 Break even is then q = 1/1.167=.857 So if you start with 80/20 distribution and after a while improve your discrimination to 86/14 then firing benefits you even if you are hiring from a 40/60 pool.
- Phlarp 4y ago
  If you subscribe to this logic then doesn't it follow that you're trying to rehire only 50% "bad" programmers from a pool that is (again by your definition) newly comprised of individuals a previous company recently identified as 100% "bad"? This not only assumes that you can identify bad workers, but that you can also identify some percent of "good workers that other companies identified as bad workers". Shameless profit taking by executives and shareholders seems a lot more likely. Google and Microsoft providing PR cover for smaller companies to do it under the radar.
  - throwawaymaths 4y ago
    What's bad for one company is not necessarily bad for another company. For example I would think very hard before hiring any senior from FAANG (layoffs or otherwise) at a startup, especially in the pre-100 employees stage. Might even be worse during the rapid growth phase.

paxys 4y ago

If they weren't able to hire these "better developers" in the first place what is going to change now?

cooperadymas 4y ago
Maybe those "better developers" were suddenly laid off by even bigger corps? I've noticed a trickle down effect in our very-small hiring queue. I can't help but imagine mid-sized companies are getting access to devs that only wanted to work for FAANG before.
- paxys 4y ago
  By your logic the people laid off from other companies would also be the kind that weren't worth keeping. If everyone is firing bad developers and looking for good developers, where do all these good developers magically come from?
  - wintogreen74 4y ago
    easy: you add "We only hire rock stars" to your job postings.
  - tesseract 4y ago
    I would not take it as a given that the individuals laid off were the worst performers at the company. It could be that they were highly compensated and deemed too expensive, or happened to work in the wrong department/business unit.
- wintogreen74 4y ago
  Except by the original train of thought "everyone is laying off bad developers" so if you accept this (IMO flawed) premise you're going to be in a worse position after you get through this gigantic process.
  - bryanrasmussen 4y ago
    unless you have identified a company whose bad developers are better than your bad developers. And if you have developed a process to identify that I think it's time to pivot.

agilob 4y ago

That's illegal in some countries and PG operates in the UK too. I've seen a tech writer being made redundant, then the same company was looking for a tech writer 7 months later. Fired guy won big money for unfair redundancy.

outworlder 4y ago

> What if they are laying off to make room for better developers? If they are firing people for performance reasons during their normal performance review cycle, it's not really a layoff.

equalsione 4y ago

I think this is a joke comment, but I've seen variations of this made in earnest over the past few months. It's clear by now that these layoffs aren't targeting low performers. They're not targeting any individual. They are an accounting exercise with selection based on meeting a formula. The suggestion in some quarters is that there's a kind of collective hysteria driving the layoffs amongst tech companies. Incorrect. The one thing all these companies have in common is that they all have the same pool of institutional shareholder. The layoffs are not about saving money, they are about being seen to save money. The institutional shareholders have demanded this be done, and the boards have complied. The big layoffs - Google, Amazon, MS, etc - are largely pointless and don't make any meaningful savings. And let's not do the "thinning of the herd" bullshit, please. Why have the institutional investors demanded this? 1) because they've become accustomed to make obscene amounts of money and want to continue making obscene amounts of money even when things are slowing down, and they (wrongly) believe laying people off is the way to do this 2) because they can. They hold the real power. Apple have largely avoided doing layoffs because his 40% paycut has soothed the baying suits, and Tim Cook is in a powerful position anyway. Most other CEOs, not so much...