6 ms·

Is it called a "bet" when you stand to win big, but if you lose it's the people you hired who've lost, and you don't lose basically anything?

tyre 4y ago
You lose great people, you take a huge hit to culture and productivity, you spent a lot of capital that you otherwise wouldn’t have. It create doubts in leadership and cut projects with maintenance debt. People quit after layoffs, which means attrition isn’t as balanced as when the layoffs were planned. Talent isn’t distributed equal to business need, meaning the company will lose great people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Depending on how it’s executed, the company could burn bridges. Even if they do it well, some people would never come back. It’s not like the people hired were working for free so I’ve never personally put much stock in the, “employees were screwed over.” But again, it depends on some of the items above. If a company is doing well, less-direct revenue teams are fine. In a sketchier environment, not so.
anchpop 4y ago
Who lost? Everyone who got laid off wouldn't have had at a job at all if they weren't hired, and they probably got severance packages for more than the average American makes in a year.
- kennywinker 4y ago
  > Everyone who got laid off wouldn't have had at a job at all if they weren't hired Maybe I've been lucky, but every time I've been looking for a job I've had AT LEAST two options. People move cities, sell houses, buy houses, give up apartments, plan their finances, and plan their career around their job all the time. Investing a year learning the ropes at a company, finding ways to fit into the structures, etc. only to have the rug pulled out from under you just as you're starting to get the hang of things... > and they probably got severance packages for more than the average American makes in a year. Maybe I've been unlucky, but I've never had a job where my expectation of a severance package was anything more than 2-4 weeks wages.
  - refurb 4y ago
    Maybe I've been unlucky, but I've never had a job where my expectation of a severance package was anything more than 2-4 weeks wages. The FAANGS have severance of several months pay, which to the OP’s point, is likely more than the annual median wage in the US. These laid off workers have some of the best “job loss” conditions around.
  - GaylordTuring 4y ago
    If you feel like this, you shouldn’t take a job that can’t guarantee in writing that they will keep you for X number of years. If you took a calculated risk and took the job anyway, well that’s on you.
    - krisoft 4y ago
      > If you feel like this, you shouldn’t take a job that can’t guarantee in writing that they will keep you for X number of years. Those jobs don’t exist. If there are they are such a minuscule number of openings it is not worth thinking about them. > If you took a calculated risk and took the job anyway, well that’s on you. Let me break it to you: almost everyone works because otherwise they would go hungry, loose their home and die in sad circumstances. People who don’t are statistical anomalies. Are you saying that by having the misfortune of not being born independently rich and working basically any job the poster “took a risk” which is “on them”?
      - unity1001 4y ago
        > Are you saying that by having the misfortune of not being born independently rich and working basically any job the poster “took a risk” which is “on them”? He is saying that. Its the Puritan Christianity's mentality of blaming the poor for not working hard. Repurposed into the modern free market capitalist ideology where its used to blame the ills of the system on the victims - "You havent worked hard enough" "You werent smart enough" etc...
  - IMTDb 4y ago
    > Maybe I've been lucky, but every time I've been looking for a job I've had AT LEAST two options. You got many offers precisely because a lot of companies were (over)hiring. And the fact that you had many options on the table allowed you to get a better compensation (either because you negotiated, or because everyone else did so the industry standard increased). You benefitted from these hiring binges. When that was the case, I saw a grand total of 0 complains by tech workers that tech companies were hiring too much; it benefitted them immensely but that did not translate in any article praising CEO for taking these risks. Could these companies keep on these workers ? Many can ! But a hallmark of good governance is having a budget and taking care of your expenses. At your household level, you can probably afford to pay for Netflix, Disney+, HBOMax and Amazon prime at the same time. And maybe you did during COVID because you were watching TV more. But now that you are back to doing more "real life" things, you maybe don't need them all. It's not that you risk being evicted because you can't pay rent; you are probably still saving a bit of money every month. But that is not a reason to not ask yourself "do I really need these all now ?" and if the answer is negative, to do something about it like cutting one or two. What is someone then told you "But look, you can currently afford all these streaming services ! You should keep paying for them all for as long as you can, and since you have them, make sure you reorganise your life to schedule some time to watch them all !".
- lelanthran 4y ago
  > Everyone who got laid off wouldn't have had at a job at all if they weren't hired, Incorrect. Many of those people already had a job when the moved to Amazon/Microsoft/wherever. Since no one makes a horizontal movement, all the roles they vacated when moving where lower roles. And this argument goes recursively when the old company fills those roles. This means that most people who did not have a job prior to the hiring explosion and had a job after the hiring explosion, had low-paying jobs, in very low roles.
  - sokoloff 4y ago
    People take lateral moves quite frequently.
- Yoric 4y ago
  Please don't forget all the people who lost their job outside of the US.
- cmrdporcupine 4y ago
  This is nonsense because the people that were laid off at Google (as one example) were not selected by their tenure or having been hired during pandemic or during the remote phase, nor was it based on performance reviews. People who had been there 12, 13, 16 years; people who had been just promoted. People who were senior management. People who were engineers. People who were on mat leave... Management there effectively fed people's employee numbers through a random generator. And people who (IMHO naively/foolishly) gave their lives to the company suffered. Decisions to overhire during the pandemic impacted people who had nothing to do with that decision. And not just because of the layoffs, but also because the company growth during that period was so intense that it led to onboarding and project mgmt difficulties as well.
  - ifyoubuildit 4y ago
    Not to minimize how much it must suck to get laid off when you haven't prepared for it, but when you say: > And people who (IMHO naively/foolishly) gave their lives to the company suffered. they didn't "give their lives" for nothing, right? Didn't they trade it for an incredibly desirable compensation package?
    - cmrdporcupine 4y ago
      Yes, Google's compensation is extremely generous. But my experience when working there is that there are definitely people whose emotional (and physical) engagement with their jobs goes well beyond just what is required to get that compensation.
  - moneywoes 4y ago
    Apparently all support check in were targeted so it was performance based
midoridensha 4y ago
Depends: did you really get that much value out of those new people in the time you had them employed? It usually takes a while for a new tech employee to become productive, and just hiring a person costs a lot of money. If you, for instance, hired 10,000 new engineers and then laid them off after only 1 month, you would definitely lost a LOT of money, and not have gained anything for it.
kortilla 4y ago
You lose 30+% of your valuation. Those investments weren’t free.
Yoric 4y ago
Textbook capitalism is a society in which (among other things) companies belong to investors. In other words, when a company bets, it is typically with other people's money. In that case, it's other people's jobs, which extends a bit this textbook case, but not by much. edit Rewritten to take into account sokoloff's remarks, thanks!
- sokoloff 4y ago
  Capitalism defines nothing about whether the money invested in a company is yours or other people’s. In practice, it often is, but “in practice” is not nearly the same as “by definition”.
  - Yoric 4y ago
    Good point. Edited.
scarface74 4y ago
I don’t get it. What did they lose? They got paid good money during the mean time and have the fact that they worked for $BigTech on their resume. What did they spend all of the money on? Coke and strippers? I was also hired for a remote role at $BigTech in mid 2020. Fortunately I didn’t get laid off. But I wouldn’t exactly be bitter that I got paid 50% more during the interim. I save/invested/paid off debt with 80% of the difference in take home pay. Yes, I’ve been laid off before when I was making a lot less in 2012. I made sure I had savings then

tyre 4y ago

You lose great people, you take a huge hit to culture and productivity, you spent a lot of capital that you otherwise wouldn’t have. It create doubts in leadership and cut projects with maintenance debt. People quit after layoffs, which means attrition isn’t as balanced as when the layoffs were planned. Talent isn’t distributed equal to business need, meaning the company will lose great people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Depending on how it’s executed, the company could burn bridges. Even if they do it well, some people would never come back. It’s not like the people hired were working for free so I’ve never personally put much stock in the, “employees were screwed over.” But again, it depends on some of the items above. If a company is doing well, less-direct revenue teams are fine. In a sketchier environment, not so.

anchpop 4y ago

Who lost? Everyone who got laid off wouldn't have had at a job at all if they weren't hired, and they probably got severance packages for more than the average American makes in a year.

kennywinker 4y ago
> Everyone who got laid off wouldn't have had at a job at all if they weren't hired Maybe I've been lucky, but every time I've been looking for a job I've had AT LEAST two options. People move cities, sell houses, buy houses, give up apartments, plan their finances, and plan their career around their job all the time. Investing a year learning the ropes at a company, finding ways to fit into the structures, etc. only to have the rug pulled out from under you just as you're starting to get the hang of things... > and they probably got severance packages for more than the average American makes in a year. Maybe I've been unlucky, but I've never had a job where my expectation of a severance package was anything more than 2-4 weeks wages.
- refurb 4y ago
  Maybe I've been unlucky, but I've never had a job where my expectation of a severance package was anything more than 2-4 weeks wages. The FAANGS have severance of several months pay, which to the OP’s point, is likely more than the annual median wage in the US. These laid off workers have some of the best “job loss” conditions around.
- GaylordTuring 4y ago
  If you feel like this, you shouldn’t take a job that can’t guarantee in writing that they will keep you for X number of years. If you took a calculated risk and took the job anyway, well that’s on you.
  - krisoft 4y ago
    > If you feel like this, you shouldn’t take a job that can’t guarantee in writing that they will keep you for X number of years. Those jobs don’t exist. If there are they are such a minuscule number of openings it is not worth thinking about them. > If you took a calculated risk and took the job anyway, well that’s on you. Let me break it to you: almost everyone works because otherwise they would go hungry, loose their home and die in sad circumstances. People who don’t are statistical anomalies. Are you saying that by having the misfortune of not being born independently rich and working basically any job the poster “took a risk” which is “on them”?
    - unity1001 4y ago
      > Are you saying that by having the misfortune of not being born independently rich and working basically any job the poster “took a risk” which is “on them”? He is saying that. Its the Puritan Christianity's mentality of blaming the poor for not working hard. Repurposed into the modern free market capitalist ideology where its used to blame the ills of the system on the victims - "You havent worked hard enough" "You werent smart enough" etc...
- IMTDb 4y ago
  > Maybe I've been lucky, but every time I've been looking for a job I've had AT LEAST two options. You got many offers precisely because a lot of companies were (over)hiring. And the fact that you had many options on the table allowed you to get a better compensation (either because you negotiated, or because everyone else did so the industry standard increased). You benefitted from these hiring binges. When that was the case, I saw a grand total of 0 complains by tech workers that tech companies were hiring too much; it benefitted them immensely but that did not translate in any article praising CEO for taking these risks. Could these companies keep on these workers ? Many can ! But a hallmark of good governance is having a budget and taking care of your expenses. At your household level, you can probably afford to pay for Netflix, Disney+, HBOMax and Amazon prime at the same time. And maybe you did during COVID because you were watching TV more. But now that you are back to doing more "real life" things, you maybe don't need them all. It's not that you risk being evicted because you can't pay rent; you are probably still saving a bit of money every month. But that is not a reason to not ask yourself "do I really need these all now ?" and if the answer is negative, to do something about it like cutting one or two. What is someone then told you "But look, you can currently afford all these streaming services ! You should keep paying for them all for as long as you can, and since you have them, make sure you reorganise your life to schedule some time to watch them all !".
lelanthran 4y ago
> Everyone who got laid off wouldn't have had at a job at all if they weren't hired, Incorrect. Many of those people already had a job when the moved to Amazon/Microsoft/wherever. Since no one makes a horizontal movement, all the roles they vacated when moving where lower roles. And this argument goes recursively when the old company fills those roles. This means that most people who did not have a job prior to the hiring explosion and had a job after the hiring explosion, had low-paying jobs, in very low roles.
- sokoloff 4y ago
  People take lateral moves quite frequently.
Yoric 4y ago
Please don't forget all the people who lost their job outside of the US.
cmrdporcupine 4y ago
This is nonsense because the people that were laid off at Google (as one example) were not selected by their tenure or having been hired during pandemic or during the remote phase, nor was it based on performance reviews. People who had been there 12, 13, 16 years; people who had been just promoted. People who were senior management. People who were engineers. People who were on mat leave... Management there effectively fed people's employee numbers through a random generator. And people who (IMHO naively/foolishly) gave their lives to the company suffered. Decisions to overhire during the pandemic impacted people who had nothing to do with that decision. And not just because of the layoffs, but also because the company growth during that period was so intense that it led to onboarding and project mgmt difficulties as well.
- ifyoubuildit 4y ago
  Not to minimize how much it must suck to get laid off when you haven't prepared for it, but when you say: > And people who (IMHO naively/foolishly) gave their lives to the company suffered. they didn't "give their lives" for nothing, right? Didn't they trade it for an incredibly desirable compensation package?
  - cmrdporcupine 4y ago
    Yes, Google's compensation is extremely generous. But my experience when working there is that there are definitely people whose emotional (and physical) engagement with their jobs goes well beyond just what is required to get that compensation.
- moneywoes 4y ago
  Apparently all support check in were targeted so it was performance based

midoridensha 4y ago

Depends: did you really get that much value out of those new people in the time you had them employed? It usually takes a while for a new tech employee to become productive, and just hiring a person costs a lot of money. If you, for instance, hired 10,000 new engineers and then laid them off after only 1 month, you would definitely lost a LOT of money, and not have gained anything for it.

kortilla 4y ago

You lose 30+% of your valuation. Those investments weren’t free.

Yoric 4y ago

Textbook capitalism is a society in which (among other things) companies belong to investors. In other words, when a company bets, it is typically with other people's money. In that case, it's other people's jobs, which extends a bit this textbook case, but not by much. edit Rewritten to take into account sokoloff's remarks, thanks!

sokoloff 4y ago
Capitalism defines nothing about whether the money invested in a company is yours or other people’s. In practice, it often is, but “in practice” is not nearly the same as “by definition”.
- Yoric 4y ago
  Good point. Edited.

scarface74 4y ago

I don’t get it. What did they lose? They got paid good money during the mean time and have the fact that they worked for $BigTech on their resume. What did they spend all of the money on? Coke and strippers? I was also hired for a remote role at $BigTech in mid 2020. Fortunately I didn’t get laid off. But I wouldn’t exactly be bitter that I got paid 50% more during the interim. I save/invested/paid off debt with 80% of the difference in take home pay. Yes, I’ve been laid off before when I was making a lot less in 2012. I made sure I had savings then