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Big Tech is using layoffs to crush worker power

321 points by lisper 4y ago

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
aliqot 4y ago
You mean *consolidate worker power. Critical people don't get layoffs unless they work for a muskcorp.
- giraffe_lady 4y ago
  That's a (maybe intentional?) misunderstanding of what is normally meant by worker power. We're not talking about the individual influence of workers within the organization, but about the group ability of workers to affect the working conditions.
- bheadmaster 4y ago
  > Critical people don't get layoffs unless they work for a muskcorp. Citation needed.
- haswell 4y ago
  Many of the higher profile high performers who are now unemployed would seem to be a direct counter example to this claim. What you’re describing doesn’t seem to match the recent layoffs we’ve witnessed.
  - Ancalagon 4y ago
    Actually it matches what I'm seeing. Are you not seeing all of the recruiters/HR being let go in these layoffs? Seems like there are many more than SRE's (SRE's are what I'd consider to be business-critical). I don't have hard numbers though, even layoffs.fyi doesn't have a great breakdown of who was affected by these layoffs by department. If anyone has hard numbers I'd love to be proven wrong.
    - haswell 4y ago
      I’m not claiming there aren’t reductions happening in non-critical/discretionary roles, but that this does not seem to be the primary target of recent layoffs. This is different than what we’ve seen in some years past where layoffs seemed more about trimming dead weight.
- cfltlayoffs 4y ago
  In the recent layoffs I've seen some very senior high-performing engineers get the axe, because they were very expensive and the org could get two juniors grinding out CRUD for the same value as one super senior architecture astronaut.
  - jack_riminton 4y ago
    Things brings about another question. Will the change in economic climate encourage these companies to ditch over-complicated Rube Goldberg machine stacks in favour of ones that allow Juniors to grind out CRUD. One can but hope
    - lightbendover 4y ago
      I doubt it. Who is going to get a promotion with a sane architecture?
    - haswell 4y ago
      I can’t help but feel this misunderstands why systems become complex, and conflates simplicity with sanity. Ditching an architecture also directly implies adopting a new one. If juniors are at the forefront of that, I don’t think the resulting architecture will somehow get magically simpler. Architecture is a topic to be debated, no doubt. But if anything, I’d expect the departure of senior talent to solidify complexity, not enable some magical escape from it. The risk of changing a system goes up significantly the moment the people who understand the system walk out the door.
- onion2k 4y ago
  Critical people don't get layoffs unless they work for a muskcorp. Google have just let Chris DiBona, Jeremy Allison, and Cat Allman go. I guess you might not consider those people critical to Google's mission, but laying them off is probably going to have an impact on Google's ability to recruit people from the open source community in the future. https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/27/google_open_source/ https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/27/google_open_source/
noorkersz 4y ago
follow up question, why hasn't apple needed to do this? how are they keeping 'tabs' on 'worker power'?
- itsoktocry 4y ago
  >why hasn't apple needed to do this? Yet? There's still a lot of market uncertainty.
- rmorey 4y ago
  Union-busting, NDA’s, restricting new slack channels, non-competes - all the usual ways!
  - noorkersz 4y ago
    This response just turns my question into: why haven't the usual ways been sufficient for the rest of the tech companies? why are the usual ways still sufficient for apple but not for the others???
    - whatshisface 4y ago
      Apple still might do a big layoff.
    - toyg 4y ago
      From what I read, Apple has never been ashamed of running on a model that clearly states "this is not a democracy, Dear Leader has all the power". Because they can attract talent on an ideological level, they just don't need to care on a day to day level. See also all the military-level secrecy, cult-like behavior, etc etc. Other companies try to mealy-mouth their way around the facts of life, most of the time, because they have an "evil" image so wouldn't be able to recruit otherwise.
    - soiler 4y ago
      I think it's not as simple as "action x => result y". it's a messy art more than a science. Apple is trying x, y, and z. Google tried a, b, and c. Both companies have different circumstances, different employees, different shareholder mandates, etc. And of course every CEO would like to be the one who solves Industry-Wide Problem in the best way (less public backlash, more savings, whatever your metric is)
pmarreck 4y ago
This claim violates Hanlon’s Razor “Never attribute to malice, that which can adequately be explained by incompetence.” Over-hiring, over-salarying and not anticipating the consequences of a pandemic and post-pandemic on business might qualify as “incompetence” The thing that bothers me is this tone I'm seeing online and in particular in this discussion where people presume that a salary is owed no matter what, and that withdrawing that salary (as in a firing) is somehow always morally corrupt. I'm Gen X, so when I say "we weren't raised with the expectation that the world owed us anything", I mean it. EDIT: A better discussion of Hanlon's over here: https://fs.blog/mental-model-hanlons-razor/ https://fs.blog/mental-model-hanlons-razor/ "An instance of Hanlon’s razor being proven wrong is the mafia. Prior to the 1960s, the existence of the mafia was considered to be a conspiracy theory. Only when a member contacted law enforcement, did police realize that the malice being perpetrated was carefully orchestrated." (I was not aware of this!)
- jacknews 4y ago
  But they all find themselves in the same predicament all at the same time, across diverse markets and services? As far as I can tell there's is no actual downturn in the market, this is all anticipation. And so it's a 'movement' even if it's not a diffuse, or actual conspiracy.
  - vorpalhex 4y ago
    > As far as I can tell there's is no actual downturn in the market You are dramatically incorrect. Unit sales, free spending, rates and inflation. + https://finance.yahoo.com/news/stocks-poised-hit-lows-survey-010021690.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/stocks-poised-hit-lows-survey... + https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/apple-sales-expected-to-fall-in-bad-week-for-big-tech-jfcvh7gbg https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/apple-sales-expected-to-f... + https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/25/inflation-is-cooling-but-high-prices-will-stick-around.html https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/25/inflation-is-cooling-but-hig...
    - jacknews 4y ago
      https://edition.cnn.com/business/live-news/stock-market-news-today-jobs-2323/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/business/live-news/stock-market-news... It seems like there's a tussle between the finance 'economy' and the actual economy.
gilbert_vanova 4y ago
I had a manager namecheck the layoffs as a reason they don't need to move on addressing any of our team's concerns about working conditions. Same manager invoked the Nuremburg Defense the other day. Trying times.
- kilgnad 4y ago
  Someone should invoke the Unionization defense.
- CoastalCoder 4y ago
  > I had a manager namecheck the layoffs as a reason they don't need to move on addressing any of our team's concerns about working conditions. What does "namecheck" mean in this context?
  - NegativeLatency 4y ago
    Guessing it means they named the companies out loud, presumably to scare employees
    - CoastalCoder 4y ago
      Thanks, the original comment makes sense when I use that definition.
- andsoitis 4y ago
  > addressing any of our team's concerns about working conditions What are some of your team's concerns about working conditions? Are you guys being treated badly?
  - buzzert 4y ago
    I bet this won’t get answered.
  - gilbert_vanova 4y ago
    * Non-competitive pay * No sick leave & limited vacation * Inconsistent and insufficient planning paired with unrealistic expecations
xt00 4y ago
Would be interesting to see if there is a strong relationship between the companies doing layoffs and the companies who did WFH en masse and might be thinking a layoff will “encourage” their compliance to come back to the office.
- GoToRO 4y ago
  One company did exactlly that: everybody must be in the office in 3 weeks, 25% quit, no layoffs needed.
  - jkaplowitz 4y ago
    In countries with strong labor laws, that rapid dramatic unilateral change in working location itself would count as similar to a sudden firing without cause for workers who don't want to accept the change in work location, either for all such workers or for those who can't easily begin or resume a commute to the office on such short notice. I wish the US had stronger labor laws. :(
    - junofan 4y ago
      You can make a constructive dismissal claim if permanent WFH was agreed upon. But doubt that was the case here.
    - pessimizer 4y ago
      The US has extremely strong labor laws in favor of the employer.
      - ye-olde-sysrq 4y ago
        My personal favorite one is where under at-will employment, either party can end the relationship at any time, which generally translates to: At any time: the company is free to simply make do with one fewer person and the employee is free to simply make do without affordable health/dental/vision insurance, a pay check, a retirement account, and other such niceties. Great deal. Very balanced and fair.
Phlarp 4y ago
Guess tech workers should have unionized when they had the chance. As if capital was going to let the most powerful group of workers that's ever existed continue to slip their noose
- Apocryphon 4y ago
  If this thread had been made a year ago, even six months ago, it would’ve truly been a grasshopper and the ants situation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34199176 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34199176
- AnEro 4y ago
  Doubt that will happen, we still go to this VC's website for content aggregation. Most are caught in hustle culter and want to be, and others are doing it for independance and power and won't want a union. Ultimately I don't think our type of nerds will get together on this style of politics
  - toomuchtodo 4y ago
    Important to keep in mind this forum’s audience is a minority in everything except said forum’s viewership. If you’re taking anything from it besides ideas, entertainment, and a dopamine hit, you’re doing it wrong.
    - AnEro 4y ago
      Personally I subscribe to the 'you are what you eat' view of social media, we are social creatures, and we will always adjust ourselves to fit what we feel is THE group. Any media then makes subconscious biases whether we like it or not. I don't think YCombinator is doing brainwashing us or some crazy conspiracy, more we will conform to this audience's thinking which ultimately is about start-ups and tech company's and unions don't fit that narrative. > Important to keep in mind this forum’s audience is a minority in everything except said forum’s viewership. True but acting like Hacker news articles over years isn't one of the best social media based predictor of tech trends is a little silly
Clent 4y ago
Intentional or not, worker power has been crushed by these layoffs.
- ianbutler 4y ago
  Really? It's like not even 10% of the swe workforce. If this crushes you, you had no power to begin with. It's more like a reminder of that fact. It's all BS though, stocks are back to 2019 levels, one of the highest periods ever, in a field where there's still not enough bodies for all the jobs. I'm pretty sure that leverage hasn't changed. Fundamentally however, the success of this role will not last. It's just a matter of time, I just don't think this is that time. Edit: From what numbers I could find layoffs in tech, in 2022 and 2023 so far slightly above 5% of the US SWE workforce, not even worldwide, and since not all of these people laid off were developers It's probably even less. This was two things, a way to shed cheap heads paid for when money was free, now that it's not so free and those heads are not so cheap and a way to induce fear to keep heads in line, but like, that second part is bullshit.
  - 0x457 4y ago
    It doesn't need to be a large chunk. It generates headlines like "XXk laid-off in big name tech company that is has plenty of cash" That creates the idea of job-insecurity in others.
    - ianbutler 4y ago
      No offense, but if that's all it takes to cow someone, again, they never had real power, so nothing to crush. My point is, this shouldn't be all it takes to make people insecure about their position.
      - Apocryphon 4y ago
        The power was never there. What was there was the prospect of being able to head to greener shores. It's not just about layoffs (which are still ongoing, so your numbers are preliminary and not the final tally), but also hiring freezes. For someone who loses their job now, not only are they competing with everyone else from all of these companies let go, there's far fewer positions open than there were before. So the prospect that existed in lieu of power is now gone.
gumby 4y ago
absurd: > “Controlling labor costs via periodic layoffs is like breathing for Silicon Valley: cyclical, necessary for life,” Malcolm Harris The current wave of layoff is unusual, hence being extensively discussed on sites like HN.
- Apocryphon 4y ago
  Layoff for this tech boom but what about before the late 2000s?
  - gumby 4y ago
    You mean the 2008 global financial crisis? Many companies died, some companies did do layoffs but that was in response to an actual financial crisis, something not happening now and unlikely to happen in 2023 or 2024. Nothing like that nitwit was describing.
    - Apocryphon 4y ago
      Weren't periodic layoffs something that happened up to and during the dot-com bust? I'm talking about '80s-'90s Silicon Valley.
      - gumby 4y ago
        I don't remember that at all, and I was working in the Valley through that period. There were a lot in the dotcom crash but that was aperiodic.
Quarrelsome 4y ago
does this imply the lay-offs were a product of collusion at the executive level across the entire sector? If anyone could find evidence of that it would be extremely news-worthy. If I might adorn my hat of tin-foil for a second; at a big corp I used to work at, I heard execs predicting this outcome back in early 2022 in combination with being incredibly relaxed about the employment market being extremely hot at the time.
- pm90 4y ago
  It would be difficult to prove active collusion, its more like institutionalized collusion, and I doubt that's a crime. e.g. the same consulting firms are hired by all companies, and they will give the same advice when dealing with falling revenues, plunging stock prices etc.
  - Quarrelsome 4y ago
    > It would be difficult to prove active collusion Unless an IT admin stumbles across some interesting emails...
    - shagie 4y ago
      A story I heard long ago when I was a contractor at Sun about the default settings for bounced email in sendmail (this was likely the early 90s when it happened - I heard it in '97). At one time, messages that bounced were sent to postmaster - possibly in hopes back then (when things were smaller) that the postmaster would know who it should have been sent to and pass the email on. One of the night shift sysadmins who was responsible for postmaster at Sun got an email that was misaddressed between a few manager+ level people for what would be considered constructed dismissal of a number of people. The following day, the people mentioned in that email found a printout on their chairs. ... and a change request when in to only include the headers(?) of the email message to postmaster rather than the body.
    - rachelbladdow 4y ago
      [flagged]
draw_down 4y ago
[dead]
m3kw9 4y ago
Or maybe it’s just a balance sheet thing
- boringg 4y ago
  Agreed it seems a beyond far fetched here to think that the backlash from the free money pandemic spending period is collusion to shutdown worker power. To me it seems more like all the executives are seriously concerned about their revenue and costs going forward into a recession that was increasingly clear as a function of deteriorating macro economic conditions. There seem to be a lot of easier options to justify the actions than the one in the article. I'm not against tech unionizing I unfortunately find the argument weak however tantalizing for those who might prefer conspiracy theories.
- empathy_m 4y ago
  Both, I think. If everybody lays off 6% of staff in strategically low-value projects, there will be a glut of workers willing to take new lower salaries. These jobs are still in high demand, and the company can reset compensation for new hires to a new baseline. Example of this happening here: https://twitter.com/hkarthik/status/1618007542483025923 https://twitter.com/hkarthik/status/1618007542483025923 This saves on labor costs at minimal productivity cost to the company. Great for capital.
  - spacemadness 4y ago
    Right, I’m not sure why people here are assuming there only has to be one reason behind a decision. An overarching strategy, if there is one, needs to look at all results of a decision.
bedhead 4y ago
Ahhh, legacy mainstream media, where tech companies doing desperately needed layoffs just like practically every company in the world over an economic cycle is a nothing more than a singular conspiracy to "crush worker power." Never change my liberal echo chamber journalist friends, never change...
- bitwize 4y ago
  I hear DEI initiatives in HR departments were particularly hard hit. So it's not just capitalists breaking workers' backs, there's a strong current of white resentment as well...
  - p0pcult 4y ago
    Cool story bro.
- Apocryphon 4y ago
  These layoffs have been primarily constrained to tech and finance, not to every company in the world. Maybe for some companies these layoffs are “desperately needed”, but surely not for the most profitable ones, at this scale. At the very least it’s terrible for morale and PR.
boomboomsubban 4y ago
https://archive.is/t1IE4 https://archive.is/t1IE4
JackFr 4y ago
So big tech has 220,000 layoffs and there is not the merest hint of a blip in the unemployment rate. This is not a tragedy - these people are going to find jobs, good jobs. In fact it's quite likely that they will go into roles which might do something other than online advertising. You know, something useful.
- ttobbaybbob 4y ago
  part of the point, too, is that now that there's the pressure of unemployment instead of the moving as opportunistic jump many may be willing to accept a commensurate (possibly lower) salary/tc than they had previously instead of demanding an increase
- area51org 4y ago
  I very much want you to be correct, but having been around for a good amount of time, it's not always as straightforward as you suggest. In many instances, companies are reluctant to hire people who have been laid off, because they imagine that if company A laid the person off, obviously something's wrong with the person. In some cases, someone can take a couple of years or so to finally find a job, and that's enough time to create financial devastation. (I am not talking about myself, full disclosure, but I know people.)
  - killjoywashere 4y ago
    You do not have to divulge the basis of your departure from a company. "Creative differences".
    - rhaway84773 4y ago
      Many people would assume you got laid off if your creative differences happened to coincide with the layoffs.
    - ejb999 4y ago
      hiring managers are not that dumb ... if you prior job is amazon, and you are applying for a new job 2 months after 18K have been laid off - they can put 2 and 2 together pretty easily. Even if you did leave on your own accord, they will likely assume you were let go. It's almost always easier to get a new job, when you still have one.
ding_dang 4y ago
[flagged]
theptip 4y ago
I just don’t buy it. To be clear this is claiming that the CEOs are sitting behind a desk stroking a cat, thinking “now I will crush the labor movement and make all my workers feel less secure”. This is just not a problem that Pichai is facing. Occam’s Razor points to the very simple, non-conspiratorial answer that it really is just stock-price driven (ie market-driven) thinking (one could say “lack of actual strategic thinking”). “The job of Alphabet is to provide solid growth in share price Q on Q for investors, with minimal fluctuations to spook them”, seems a more likely thing for CEOs to be saying, after hearing this from their CFOs. The idea that Google would struggle as hard as it did to meet its aggressive hiring goals over the last few years, then axe strong engineers just to make others scared, really stretches my credulity.
- kyleblarson 4y ago
  This is the LA Times, what do you expect? This is the same paper that called a conservative black gubernatorial candidate in California "the black face of white supremacy".
- jklinger410 4y ago
  And I don't buy the coincidental timing of the fed trying to push us into a recession, which they were not being successful at, following shortly with public companies like Google suddenly finding a bunch of inessential staff to cut. It's not like Google is taking out loans for payroll, or that it was obvious that this move was necessary. These inessential employees have been inessential for years.
  - dehrmann 4y ago
    The standard argument is that tech companies hired-up for 2021 lasting forever, but people spent less time shopping online in 2022. The poster child for this is Peloton. On top of the shift in demand, higher interest rates hit other companies that would otherwise advertise on Google. Did Google need to do layoffs? No. Did it over-hire for revenue that never materialized? Yes.
  - gruez 4y ago
    >It's not like Google is taking out loans for payroll They might not be actively taking out loans, but that doesn't mean they're immune to interest rates. Higher interest rates means that a dollar in 10 or 20 years is suddenly worth less than a dollar today. That means investors suddenly care more about how many profits can be generated today, rather than whatever moonshot projects that google is working on.
irrational 4y ago
I’ve never worked for Big Tech, I’ve never even worked in one of the big tech hubs (Bay Area, anywhere in California, Seattle, Austin, NY, etc.), but I do have a hefty 6 figure salary because of the tech workers in those areas. My worry is my company will start to look at laying us off so they can replace us with laid off tech workers at a much lower rate.
- nicholasjarnold 4y ago
  To add a counterpoint - I've heard senior executives remark about the likelihood that many of those let go are the not the employees that you really _want_ to pickup. The reasoning they've implied there is that these big companies that hire so voraciously have simply made some mistakes along the way and used the current happenings to jettison those mistakenly-hired employees swiftly and efficiently. Note: I'm sure many very talented people were caught up in this tide, too. I'm just relaying some anecdotal opinions that I've heard from hiring managers and execs in my personal and professional circles.
  - tapatio 4y ago
    It also makes logical sense. Why would you let go of a 10X engineer? You'd have to be an idiot.
    - unity1001 4y ago
      > You'd have to be an idiot. Yep. Like someone who could do it through an algorithm. Like how Google did...
      - flavius29663 4y ago
        This is the first I hear of this, do you have a source for that?
        unity1001 4y ago
        It was in one of the articles posted in HN. In the Open Source one I believe. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34558576 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34558576 https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/27/google_open_source/ https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/27/google_open_source/
jimmyjazz14 4y ago
I think this article ignores a lot of realities of the market to reach its conclusion. Many of these companies did record hiring during the pandemic while there stock values have plummeted and while we may not yet be in a recession its pretty clear one is coming. All these factors have investors worried and the reality is that public companies need to placate investors and layoffs are one tool in that toolbox. Do these companies want to "crush worker power"? Maybe but I don't think these layoffs are due that.
- y-c-o-m-b 4y ago
  I agree, I don't think this was the intention behind these lay-offs, but I think they will begin to weaponize layoffs like this at some point to curb salary increases and worker power.
jklinger410 4y ago
And to force a recession.
awill88 4y ago
Nah.
ulizzle 4y ago
This is just history repeating itself, like with the 2.0 web bubble. Cheap money is dumb money. Dumb money is scaredy-cat money. Let's not pretend that we aren't heading bal...erm I mean, head-first into a recession.
AlwaysRock 4y ago
Right before COVID-19 stay at home order in Chicago, a bunch of improvisers who preformed at the popular i.o theater put together a list of demands which basically asked for a bunch of changes to make the lives of performers better. They were not going to perform until those changes were made. The owner didnt respond for a few days and then said, "Hey! Heard you. Great valid concerns. But I'm actually shutting the theater down." i.o was closed for some period of time (1+ year) and then came back. The changes asked for were not made. Performers were happy just to get on stage again. I think about that a lot when I see people making demands. Sometimes companies can/will just say no or worse find some reason to let the person go. It's frustrating but as the individual its so hard to get any meaningful change when you have no real power.
- dubcanada 4y ago
  This is sadly why you need political power. People with money can afford WAY longer then you to just say "nah..."
  - politician 4y ago
    The power to compel others is dangerous.
    - Retric 4y ago
      Having zero power is vastly more dangerous.
    - wolrah 4y ago
      > The power to compel others is dangerous. When one side already has massive power, it takes massive power to balance it. It is very rare that an individual will ever have the ability to stand up to a multi-billion dollar company on their own, so they need a powerful union who can actually legitimately threaten that company to be able to keep the company in check. Either that or the companies need to have their own power strongly curtailed, which can only be done by a powerful government. Pick your poison.
    - 4y ago
btbuildem 4y ago
The corporate ghouls at our company just announced a non-negotiable RTO, but notably, no layoffs. Since company execs seem to be like a flock of sheep - one gets spooked and they all run in the same direction - I'm betting my company can't afford to do layoffs, even though they'd want to follow suit. From what I hear in the grapevine, we've had a devil of a time trying to hire over the past couple of years.
yodsanklai 4y ago
I wonder how the layoffs will affect raises, RSU refreshers, and future salaries in the big tech companies.
scottLobster 4y ago
Sensationalist. What is "worker power" in this context anyway? As an active software engineer I don't feel my power has been reduced in the slightest. We went through a coronavirus/low interest rate bubble, now things are normalizing. I swear after centuries of capitalism you'd think people would understand that things go down as well as up, and just because they go down once in a while is not a harbinger of the apocalypse or a sign of any grand conspiracy. By the definition of many of these articles the only solution that doesn't "hurt labor" is if the executive suite walks out en masse, apologizes on their knees for being exploitative capitalist pigs, and turns the company into an employee-run non-profit co-cop/adopts European-style labor relations. I fully expect to get laid off at some point in my career due to factors beyond my control. That's part of the deal, and anyone betting on an alternate state of affairs needs to get their shit together. Also buy a goddamn life insurance policy if you have dependents, contribute to your 401k, and save up a few months of expenses so you can deal with being laid off if it happens. None of these should be a problem at the pay scale of engineers at any of these companies that have done layoffs.
alberth 4y ago
It's way more simple, this is purely about Operating Leverage. Essentially, over the last 2-years, many companies Expense growth outpaced their Revenue growth. This is direct result of how Wallstreet holds companies accountable for EPS. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/o/operatingleverage.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/o/operatingleverage.asp
newobj 4y ago
It's just simple economics that if you create a surplus of labor it drives the cost down. Also good for the share price. The only question is if the cost of the churn exceeds the savings by re-hiring out of that pool of laid off workers.
fallingfrog 4y ago
This is exactly what they're doing. The big players have gotten together in a room somewhere and tried to figure out how to push wages down, and they decided to just all fire a bunch of people at the same time. Every industry in the country engages in systematic and widespread price fixing (eggs, insulin, rent...) and this is just an example. They want to push wages down, push prices up, and that's how they make profit. This American Life did an episode where they did a deep dive on a famous incidence of price fixing (it was some chemical in chicken feed). https://www.thisamericanlife.org/168/the-fix-is-in https://www.thisamericanlife.org/168/the-fix-is-in The idea that tech giants dont collude to push down wages is, frankly, fanciful. We know about non-compete agreements and such- this is industry standard practice.
throwaway21t 4y ago
American tech workers should get paid minimum 300k. All i know are very smart and hardworking.
- spacemadness 4y ago
  Is this a bot?
libraryatnight 4y ago
Intentional or not it's palpable that there's a shift in mood as questions in various all hands type meetings shift to layoffs rather than whether or not there will be wage increases to help match inflation etc.
efitz 4y ago
The article didn’t do a very good job providing evidence to make the case for its premise that big tech is trying to keep employees afraid. Overall I think the article itself was a poorly written screed that just threw in lots of anecdotes and assertions but didn’t really have any meat to it. For example, what do climate change etc have to do with unionization? Unions are supposed to be vehicles for worker protections, not ESG. Also, the simple answer is, that shareholders, particularly large influential institutional shareholders, are demanding unreasonable and unsustainable quarterly growth from tech esp as the rest of the economy is sliding into recession. The short term shortsighted way to do that is to cut ongoing costs, and employees are the biggest cost in that bucket at tech companies. No need for a conspiracy when everything is pretty transparent already.
- efitz 4y ago
  Why the downvote?
benreesman 4y ago
TC at Big Tech is generally dominated by equity at the outlier end. Everywhere else it doesn’t look like pay is all that different to 5 or even 10 years ago. So either the effects haven’t shown up yet or else this was just an opportune time to stack rank and yank. If you go on levels.fyi you’ll find that fixed cash (“base”) is the same mid-100s to mid-300s that it was the throughout the last decade for L3/new-grad and L7/L8/principle/staff respectively. Discretionary cash (“bonus”) is the same 10k-100k, though 100k is rare and always was. Fixed equity (“initial grant”) is about what it’s been. People making crazy money were always doing it with discretionary equity (“long-term incentive” or LTI). That’s where you get engineers making 7 figures, and those people are not remotely worried about being laid off, or getting hired through a hiring freeze somewhere else with another great package. It would be pretty nice to be one of those people :P Too many people got into software without being truly passionate about it because money, Big Tech absorbed a bunch of people who crammed the standardized test but weren’t really producers, and a soft macro situation is a great excuse to clear cut for tech CEOs looking at weak market caps and need to show shareholders and the street that they’re doing something. I very much doubt that the folks left have lost much bargaining power, but time will tell.
- staticcaucasian 4y ago
  Around these parts a lot of the affected laid off were the upper end of that equity range. Expensive long-timers or over-hires who aren't producing at the level they negotiated. I don't feel bad for them.
ffggvv 4y ago
Agree with this but its less about unions and more about resetting the empoloyer/employee dynamic after a period of time the employees clearly had an upperhand. they are tired of allowing flexible work and giving 2 yoe people 300k. they want power back. its not about evil-y stroking a cat, or meeting in a smoke filled room. its as easy as just reading the moment in time and taking advantage.

321 points by lisper 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

aliqot 4y ago

You mean *consolidate worker power. Critical people don't get layoffs unless they work for a muskcorp.

giraffe_lady 4y ago
That's a (maybe intentional?) misunderstanding of what is normally meant by worker power. We're not talking about the individual influence of workers within the organization, but about the group ability of workers to affect the working conditions.
bheadmaster 4y ago
> Critical people don't get layoffs unless they work for a muskcorp. Citation needed.
haswell 4y ago
Many of the higher profile high performers who are now unemployed would seem to be a direct counter example to this claim. What you’re describing doesn’t seem to match the recent layoffs we’ve witnessed.
- Ancalagon 4y ago
  Actually it matches what I'm seeing. Are you not seeing all of the recruiters/HR being let go in these layoffs? Seems like there are many more than SRE's (SRE's are what I'd consider to be business-critical). I don't have hard numbers though, even layoffs.fyi doesn't have a great breakdown of who was affected by these layoffs by department. If anyone has hard numbers I'd love to be proven wrong.
  - haswell 4y ago
    I’m not claiming there aren’t reductions happening in non-critical/discretionary roles, but that this does not seem to be the primary target of recent layoffs. This is different than what we’ve seen in some years past where layoffs seemed more about trimming dead weight.
cfltlayoffs 4y ago
In the recent layoffs I've seen some very senior high-performing engineers get the axe, because they were very expensive and the org could get two juniors grinding out CRUD for the same value as one super senior architecture astronaut.
- jack_riminton 4y ago
  Things brings about another question. Will the change in economic climate encourage these companies to ditch over-complicated Rube Goldberg machine stacks in favour of ones that allow Juniors to grind out CRUD. One can but hope
  - lightbendover 4y ago
    I doubt it. Who is going to get a promotion with a sane architecture?
  - haswell 4y ago
    I can’t help but feel this misunderstands why systems become complex, and conflates simplicity with sanity. Ditching an architecture also directly implies adopting a new one. If juniors are at the forefront of that, I don’t think the resulting architecture will somehow get magically simpler. Architecture is a topic to be debated, no doubt. But if anything, I’d expect the departure of senior talent to solidify complexity, not enable some magical escape from it. The risk of changing a system goes up significantly the moment the people who understand the system walk out the door.
onion2k 4y ago
Critical people don't get layoffs unless they work for a muskcorp. Google have just let Chris DiBona, Jeremy Allison, and Cat Allman go. I guess you might not consider those people critical to Google's mission, but laying them off is probably going to have an impact on Google's ability to recruit people from the open source community in the future. https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/27/google_open_source/ https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/27/google_open_source/

noorkersz 4y ago

follow up question, why hasn't apple needed to do this? how are they keeping 'tabs' on 'worker power'?

itsoktocry 4y ago
>why hasn't apple needed to do this? Yet? There's still a lot of market uncertainty.
rmorey 4y ago
Union-busting, NDA’s, restricting new slack channels, non-competes - all the usual ways!
- noorkersz 4y ago
  This response just turns my question into: why haven't the usual ways been sufficient for the rest of the tech companies? why are the usual ways still sufficient for apple but not for the others???
  - whatshisface 4y ago
    Apple still might do a big layoff.
  - toyg 4y ago
    From what I read, Apple has never been ashamed of running on a model that clearly states "this is not a democracy, Dear Leader has all the power". Because they can attract talent on an ideological level, they just don't need to care on a day to day level. See also all the military-level secrecy, cult-like behavior, etc etc. Other companies try to mealy-mouth their way around the facts of life, most of the time, because they have an "evil" image so wouldn't be able to recruit otherwise.
  - soiler 4y ago
    I think it's not as simple as "action x => result y". it's a messy art more than a science. Apple is trying x, y, and z. Google tried a, b, and c. Both companies have different circumstances, different employees, different shareholder mandates, etc. And of course every CEO would like to be the one who solves Industry-Wide Problem in the best way (less public backlash, more savings, whatever your metric is)

pmarreck 4y ago

This claim violates Hanlon’s Razor “Never attribute to malice, that which can adequately be explained by incompetence.” Over-hiring, over-salarying and not anticipating the consequences of a pandemic and post-pandemic on business might qualify as “incompetence” The thing that bothers me is this tone I'm seeing online and in particular in this discussion where people presume that a salary is owed no matter what, and that withdrawing that salary (as in a firing) is somehow always morally corrupt. I'm Gen X, so when I say "we weren't raised with the expectation that the world owed us anything", I mean it. EDIT: A better discussion of Hanlon's over here: https://fs.blog/mental-model-hanlons-razor/ https://fs.blog/mental-model-hanlons-razor/ "An instance of Hanlon’s razor being proven wrong is the mafia. Prior to the 1960s, the existence of the mafia was considered to be a conspiracy theory. Only when a member contacted law enforcement, did police realize that the malice being perpetrated was carefully orchestrated." (I was not aware of this!)

jacknews 4y ago
But they all find themselves in the same predicament all at the same time, across diverse markets and services? As far as I can tell there's is no actual downturn in the market, this is all anticipation. And so it's a 'movement' even if it's not a diffuse, or actual conspiracy.
- vorpalhex 4y ago
  > As far as I can tell there's is no actual downturn in the market You are dramatically incorrect. Unit sales, free spending, rates and inflation. + https://finance.yahoo.com/news/stocks-poised-hit-lows-survey-010021690.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/stocks-poised-hit-lows-survey... + https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/apple-sales-expected-to-fall-in-bad-week-for-big-tech-jfcvh7gbg https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/apple-sales-expected-to-f... + https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/25/inflation-is-cooling-but-high-prices-will-stick-around.html https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/25/inflation-is-cooling-but-hig...
  - jacknews 4y ago
    https://edition.cnn.com/business/live-news/stock-market-news-today-jobs-2323/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/business/live-news/stock-market-news... It seems like there's a tussle between the finance 'economy' and the actual economy.

gilbert_vanova 4y ago

I had a manager namecheck the layoffs as a reason they don't need to move on addressing any of our team's concerns about working conditions. Same manager invoked the Nuremburg Defense the other day. Trying times.

kilgnad 4y ago
Someone should invoke the Unionization defense.
CoastalCoder 4y ago
> I had a manager namecheck the layoffs as a reason they don't need to move on addressing any of our team's concerns about working conditions. What does "namecheck" mean in this context?
- NegativeLatency 4y ago
  Guessing it means they named the companies out loud, presumably to scare employees
  - CoastalCoder 4y ago
    Thanks, the original comment makes sense when I use that definition.
andsoitis 4y ago
> addressing any of our team's concerns about working conditions What are some of your team's concerns about working conditions? Are you guys being treated badly?
- buzzert 4y ago
  I bet this won’t get answered.
- gilbert_vanova 4y ago
  * Non-competitive pay * No sick leave & limited vacation * Inconsistent and insufficient planning paired with unrealistic expecations

xt00 4y ago

Would be interesting to see if there is a strong relationship between the companies doing layoffs and the companies who did WFH en masse and might be thinking a layoff will “encourage” their compliance to come back to the office.

GoToRO 4y ago
One company did exactlly that: everybody must be in the office in 3 weeks, 25% quit, no layoffs needed.
- jkaplowitz 4y ago
  In countries with strong labor laws, that rapid dramatic unilateral change in working location itself would count as similar to a sudden firing without cause for workers who don't want to accept the change in work location, either for all such workers or for those who can't easily begin or resume a commute to the office on such short notice. I wish the US had stronger labor laws. :(
  - junofan 4y ago
    You can make a constructive dismissal claim if permanent WFH was agreed upon. But doubt that was the case here.
  - pessimizer 4y ago
    The US has extremely strong labor laws in favor of the employer.
    - ye-olde-sysrq 4y ago
      My personal favorite one is where under at-will employment, either party can end the relationship at any time, which generally translates to: At any time: the company is free to simply make do with one fewer person and the employee is free to simply make do without affordable health/dental/vision insurance, a pay check, a retirement account, and other such niceties. Great deal. Very balanced and fair.

Phlarp 4y ago

Guess tech workers should have unionized when they had the chance. As if capital was going to let the most powerful group of workers that's ever existed continue to slip their noose

Apocryphon 4y ago
If this thread had been made a year ago, even six months ago, it would’ve truly been a grasshopper and the ants situation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34199176 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34199176
AnEro 4y ago
Doubt that will happen, we still go to this VC's website for content aggregation. Most are caught in hustle culter and want to be, and others are doing it for independance and power and won't want a union. Ultimately I don't think our type of nerds will get together on this style of politics
- toomuchtodo 4y ago
  Important to keep in mind this forum’s audience is a minority in everything except said forum’s viewership. If you’re taking anything from it besides ideas, entertainment, and a dopamine hit, you’re doing it wrong.
  - AnEro 4y ago
    Personally I subscribe to the 'you are what you eat' view of social media, we are social creatures, and we will always adjust ourselves to fit what we feel is THE group. Any media then makes subconscious biases whether we like it or not. I don't think YCombinator is doing brainwashing us or some crazy conspiracy, more we will conform to this audience's thinking which ultimately is about start-ups and tech company's and unions don't fit that narrative. > Important to keep in mind this forum’s audience is a minority in everything except said forum’s viewership. True but acting like Hacker news articles over years isn't one of the best social media based predictor of tech trends is a little silly

Clent 4y ago

Intentional or not, worker power has been crushed by these layoffs.

ianbutler 4y ago
Really? It's like not even 10% of the swe workforce. If this crushes you, you had no power to begin with. It's more like a reminder of that fact. It's all BS though, stocks are back to 2019 levels, one of the highest periods ever, in a field where there's still not enough bodies for all the jobs. I'm pretty sure that leverage hasn't changed. Fundamentally however, the success of this role will not last. It's just a matter of time, I just don't think this is that time. Edit: From what numbers I could find layoffs in tech, in 2022 and 2023 so far slightly above 5% of the US SWE workforce, not even worldwide, and since not all of these people laid off were developers It's probably even less. This was two things, a way to shed cheap heads paid for when money was free, now that it's not so free and those heads are not so cheap and a way to induce fear to keep heads in line, but like, that second part is bullshit.
- 0x457 4y ago
  It doesn't need to be a large chunk. It generates headlines like "XXk laid-off in big name tech company that is has plenty of cash" That creates the idea of job-insecurity in others.
  - ianbutler 4y ago
    No offense, but if that's all it takes to cow someone, again, they never had real power, so nothing to crush. My point is, this shouldn't be all it takes to make people insecure about their position.
    - Apocryphon 4y ago
      The power was never there. What was there was the prospect of being able to head to greener shores. It's not just about layoffs (which are still ongoing, so your numbers are preliminary and not the final tally), but also hiring freezes. For someone who loses their job now, not only are they competing with everyone else from all of these companies let go, there's far fewer positions open than there were before. So the prospect that existed in lieu of power is now gone.

gumby 4y ago

absurd: > “Controlling labor costs via periodic layoffs is like breathing for Silicon Valley: cyclical, necessary for life,” Malcolm Harris The current wave of layoff is unusual, hence being extensively discussed on sites like HN.

Apocryphon 4y ago
Layoff for this tech boom but what about before the late 2000s?
- gumby 4y ago
  You mean the 2008 global financial crisis? Many companies died, some companies did do layoffs but that was in response to an actual financial crisis, something not happening now and unlikely to happen in 2023 or 2024. Nothing like that nitwit was describing.
  - Apocryphon 4y ago
    Weren't periodic layoffs something that happened up to and during the dot-com bust? I'm talking about '80s-'90s Silicon Valley.
    - gumby 4y ago
      I don't remember that at all, and I was working in the Valley through that period. There were a lot in the dotcom crash but that was aperiodic.

Quarrelsome 4y ago

does this imply the lay-offs were a product of collusion at the executive level across the entire sector? If anyone could find evidence of that it would be extremely news-worthy. If I might adorn my hat of tin-foil for a second; at a big corp I used to work at, I heard execs predicting this outcome back in early 2022 in combination with being incredibly relaxed about the employment market being extremely hot at the time.

pm90 4y ago
It would be difficult to prove active collusion, its more like institutionalized collusion, and I doubt that's a crime. e.g. the same consulting firms are hired by all companies, and they will give the same advice when dealing with falling revenues, plunging stock prices etc.
- Quarrelsome 4y ago
  > It would be difficult to prove active collusion Unless an IT admin stumbles across some interesting emails...
  - shagie 4y ago
    A story I heard long ago when I was a contractor at Sun about the default settings for bounced email in sendmail (this was likely the early 90s when it happened - I heard it in '97). At one time, messages that bounced were sent to postmaster - possibly in hopes back then (when things were smaller) that the postmaster would know who it should have been sent to and pass the email on. One of the night shift sysadmins who was responsible for postmaster at Sun got an email that was misaddressed between a few manager+ level people for what would be considered constructed dismissal of a number of people. The following day, the people mentioned in that email found a printout on their chairs. ... and a change request when in to only include the headers(?) of the email message to postmaster rather than the body.
  - rachelbladdow 4y ago
    [flagged]

draw_down 4y ago

[dead]

m3kw9 4y ago

Or maybe it’s just a balance sheet thing

boringg 4y ago
Agreed it seems a beyond far fetched here to think that the backlash from the free money pandemic spending period is collusion to shutdown worker power. To me it seems more like all the executives are seriously concerned about their revenue and costs going forward into a recession that was increasingly clear as a function of deteriorating macro economic conditions. There seem to be a lot of easier options to justify the actions than the one in the article. I'm not against tech unionizing I unfortunately find the argument weak however tantalizing for those who might prefer conspiracy theories.
empathy_m 4y ago
Both, I think. If everybody lays off 6% of staff in strategically low-value projects, there will be a glut of workers willing to take new lower salaries. These jobs are still in high demand, and the company can reset compensation for new hires to a new baseline. Example of this happening here: https://twitter.com/hkarthik/status/1618007542483025923 https://twitter.com/hkarthik/status/1618007542483025923 This saves on labor costs at minimal productivity cost to the company. Great for capital.
- spacemadness 4y ago
  Right, I’m not sure why people here are assuming there only has to be one reason behind a decision. An overarching strategy, if there is one, needs to look at all results of a decision.

bedhead 4y ago

Ahhh, legacy mainstream media, where tech companies doing desperately needed layoffs just like practically every company in the world over an economic cycle is a nothing more than a singular conspiracy to "crush worker power." Never change my liberal echo chamber journalist friends, never change...

bitwize 4y ago
I hear DEI initiatives in HR departments were particularly hard hit. So it's not just capitalists breaking workers' backs, there's a strong current of white resentment as well...
- p0pcult 4y ago
  Cool story bro.
Apocryphon 4y ago
These layoffs have been primarily constrained to tech and finance, not to every company in the world. Maybe for some companies these layoffs are “desperately needed”, but surely not for the most profitable ones, at this scale. At the very least it’s terrible for morale and PR.

boomboomsubban 4y ago

https://archive.is/t1IE4 https://archive.is/t1IE4

JackFr 4y ago

So big tech has 220,000 layoffs and there is not the merest hint of a blip in the unemployment rate. This is not a tragedy - these people are going to find jobs, good jobs. In fact it's quite likely that they will go into roles which might do something other than online advertising. You know, something useful.

ttobbaybbob 4y ago
part of the point, too, is that now that there's the pressure of unemployment instead of the moving as opportunistic jump many may be willing to accept a commensurate (possibly lower) salary/tc than they had previously instead of demanding an increase
area51org 4y ago
I very much want you to be correct, but having been around for a good amount of time, it's not always as straightforward as you suggest. In many instances, companies are reluctant to hire people who have been laid off, because they imagine that if company A laid the person off, obviously something's wrong with the person. In some cases, someone can take a couple of years or so to finally find a job, and that's enough time to create financial devastation. (I am not talking about myself, full disclosure, but I know people.)
- killjoywashere 4y ago
  You do not have to divulge the basis of your departure from a company. "Creative differences".
  - rhaway84773 4y ago
    Many people would assume you got laid off if your creative differences happened to coincide with the layoffs.
  - ejb999 4y ago
    hiring managers are not that dumb ... if you prior job is amazon, and you are applying for a new job 2 months after 18K have been laid off - they can put 2 and 2 together pretty easily. Even if you did leave on your own accord, they will likely assume you were let go. It's almost always easier to get a new job, when you still have one.

ding_dang 4y ago

[flagged]

theptip 4y ago

I just don’t buy it. To be clear this is claiming that the CEOs are sitting behind a desk stroking a cat, thinking “now I will crush the labor movement and make all my workers feel less secure”. This is just not a problem that Pichai is facing. Occam’s Razor points to the very simple, non-conspiratorial answer that it really is just stock-price driven (ie market-driven) thinking (one could say “lack of actual strategic thinking”). “The job of Alphabet is to provide solid growth in share price Q on Q for investors, with minimal fluctuations to spook them”, seems a more likely thing for CEOs to be saying, after hearing this from their CFOs. The idea that Google would struggle as hard as it did to meet its aggressive hiring goals over the last few years, then axe strong engineers just to make others scared, really stretches my credulity.

kyleblarson 4y ago
This is the LA Times, what do you expect? This is the same paper that called a conservative black gubernatorial candidate in California "the black face of white supremacy".
jklinger410 4y ago
And I don't buy the coincidental timing of the fed trying to push us into a recession, which they were not being successful at, following shortly with public companies like Google suddenly finding a bunch of inessential staff to cut. It's not like Google is taking out loans for payroll, or that it was obvious that this move was necessary. These inessential employees have been inessential for years.
- dehrmann 4y ago
  The standard argument is that tech companies hired-up for 2021 lasting forever, but people spent less time shopping online in 2022. The poster child for this is Peloton. On top of the shift in demand, higher interest rates hit other companies that would otherwise advertise on Google. Did Google need to do layoffs? No. Did it over-hire for revenue that never materialized? Yes.
- gruez 4y ago
  >It's not like Google is taking out loans for payroll They might not be actively taking out loans, but that doesn't mean they're immune to interest rates. Higher interest rates means that a dollar in 10 or 20 years is suddenly worth less than a dollar today. That means investors suddenly care more about how many profits can be generated today, rather than whatever moonshot projects that google is working on.

irrational 4y ago

I’ve never worked for Big Tech, I’ve never even worked in one of the big tech hubs (Bay Area, anywhere in California, Seattle, Austin, NY, etc.), but I do have a hefty 6 figure salary because of the tech workers in those areas. My worry is my company will start to look at laying us off so they can replace us with laid off tech workers at a much lower rate.

nicholasjarnold 4y ago
To add a counterpoint - I've heard senior executives remark about the likelihood that many of those let go are the not the employees that you really _want_ to pickup. The reasoning they've implied there is that these big companies that hire so voraciously have simply made some mistakes along the way and used the current happenings to jettison those mistakenly-hired employees swiftly and efficiently. Note: I'm sure many very talented people were caught up in this tide, too. I'm just relaying some anecdotal opinions that I've heard from hiring managers and execs in my personal and professional circles.
- tapatio 4y ago
  It also makes logical sense. Why would you let go of a 10X engineer? You'd have to be an idiot.
  - unity1001 4y ago
    > You'd have to be an idiot. Yep. Like someone who could do it through an algorithm. Like how Google did...
    - flavius29663 4y ago
      This is the first I hear of this, do you have a source for that?
      - unity1001 4y ago
        It was in one of the articles posted in HN. In the Open Source one I believe. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34558576 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34558576 https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/27/google_open_source/ https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/27/google_open_source/

jimmyjazz14 4y ago

I think this article ignores a lot of realities of the market to reach its conclusion. Many of these companies did record hiring during the pandemic while there stock values have plummeted and while we may not yet be in a recession its pretty clear one is coming. All these factors have investors worried and the reality is that public companies need to placate investors and layoffs are one tool in that toolbox. Do these companies want to "crush worker power"? Maybe but I don't think these layoffs are due that.

y-c-o-m-b 4y ago
I agree, I don't think this was the intention behind these lay-offs, but I think they will begin to weaponize layoffs like this at some point to curb salary increases and worker power.

jklinger410 4y ago

And to force a recession.

awill88 4y ago

Nah.

ulizzle 4y ago

This is just history repeating itself, like with the 2.0 web bubble. Cheap money is dumb money. Dumb money is scaredy-cat money. Let's not pretend that we aren't heading bal...erm I mean, head-first into a recession.

AlwaysRock 4y ago

Right before COVID-19 stay at home order in Chicago, a bunch of improvisers who preformed at the popular i.o theater put together a list of demands which basically asked for a bunch of changes to make the lives of performers better. They were not going to perform until those changes were made. The owner didnt respond for a few days and then said, "Hey! Heard you. Great valid concerns. But I'm actually shutting the theater down." i.o was closed for some period of time (1+ year) and then came back. The changes asked for were not made. Performers were happy just to get on stage again. I think about that a lot when I see people making demands. Sometimes companies can/will just say no or worse find some reason to let the person go. It's frustrating but as the individual its so hard to get any meaningful change when you have no real power.

dubcanada 4y ago
This is sadly why you need political power. People with money can afford WAY longer then you to just say "nah..."
- politician 4y ago
  The power to compel others is dangerous.
  - Retric 4y ago
    Having zero power is vastly more dangerous.
  - wolrah 4y ago
    > The power to compel others is dangerous. When one side already has massive power, it takes massive power to balance it. It is very rare that an individual will ever have the ability to stand up to a multi-billion dollar company on their own, so they need a powerful union who can actually legitimately threaten that company to be able to keep the company in check. Either that or the companies need to have their own power strongly curtailed, which can only be done by a powerful government. Pick your poison.
  - 4y ago

btbuildem 4y ago

The corporate ghouls at our company just announced a non-negotiable RTO, but notably, no layoffs. Since company execs seem to be like a flock of sheep - one gets spooked and they all run in the same direction - I'm betting my company can't afford to do layoffs, even though they'd want to follow suit. From what I hear in the grapevine, we've had a devil of a time trying to hire over the past couple of years.

yodsanklai 4y ago

I wonder how the layoffs will affect raises, RSU refreshers, and future salaries in the big tech companies.

scottLobster 4y ago

Sensationalist. What is "worker power" in this context anyway? As an active software engineer I don't feel my power has been reduced in the slightest. We went through a coronavirus/low interest rate bubble, now things are normalizing. I swear after centuries of capitalism you'd think people would understand that things go down as well as up, and just because they go down once in a while is not a harbinger of the apocalypse or a sign of any grand conspiracy. By the definition of many of these articles the only solution that doesn't "hurt labor" is if the executive suite walks out en masse, apologizes on their knees for being exploitative capitalist pigs, and turns the company into an employee-run non-profit co-cop/adopts European-style labor relations. I fully expect to get laid off at some point in my career due to factors beyond my control. That's part of the deal, and anyone betting on an alternate state of affairs needs to get their shit together. Also buy a goddamn life insurance policy if you have dependents, contribute to your 401k, and save up a few months of expenses so you can deal with being laid off if it happens. None of these should be a problem at the pay scale of engineers at any of these companies that have done layoffs.

alberth 4y ago

It's way more simple, this is purely about Operating Leverage. Essentially, over the last 2-years, many companies Expense growth outpaced their Revenue growth. This is direct result of how Wallstreet holds companies accountable for EPS. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/o/operatingleverage.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/o/operatingleverage.asp

newobj 4y ago

It's just simple economics that if you create a surplus of labor it drives the cost down. Also good for the share price. The only question is if the cost of the churn exceeds the savings by re-hiring out of that pool of laid off workers.

fallingfrog 4y ago

This is exactly what they're doing. The big players have gotten together in a room somewhere and tried to figure out how to push wages down, and they decided to just all fire a bunch of people at the same time. Every industry in the country engages in systematic and widespread price fixing (eggs, insulin, rent...) and this is just an example. They want to push wages down, push prices up, and that's how they make profit. This American Life did an episode where they did a deep dive on a famous incidence of price fixing (it was some chemical in chicken feed). https://www.thisamericanlife.org/168/the-fix-is-in https://www.thisamericanlife.org/168/the-fix-is-in The idea that tech giants dont collude to push down wages is, frankly, fanciful. We know about non-compete agreements and such- this is industry standard practice.

throwaway21t 4y ago

American tech workers should get paid minimum 300k. All i know are very smart and hardworking.

spacemadness 4y ago
Is this a bot?

libraryatnight 4y ago

Intentional or not it's palpable that there's a shift in mood as questions in various all hands type meetings shift to layoffs rather than whether or not there will be wage increases to help match inflation etc.

efitz 4y ago

The article didn’t do a very good job providing evidence to make the case for its premise that big tech is trying to keep employees afraid. Overall I think the article itself was a poorly written screed that just threw in lots of anecdotes and assertions but didn’t really have any meat to it. For example, what do climate change etc have to do with unionization? Unions are supposed to be vehicles for worker protections, not ESG. Also, the simple answer is, that shareholders, particularly large influential institutional shareholders, are demanding unreasonable and unsustainable quarterly growth from tech esp as the rest of the economy is sliding into recession. The short term shortsighted way to do that is to cut ongoing costs, and employees are the biggest cost in that bucket at tech companies. No need for a conspiracy when everything is pretty transparent already.

efitz 4y ago
Why the downvote?

benreesman 4y ago

TC at Big Tech is generally dominated by equity at the outlier end. Everywhere else it doesn’t look like pay is all that different to 5 or even 10 years ago. So either the effects haven’t shown up yet or else this was just an opportune time to stack rank and yank. If you go on levels.fyi you’ll find that fixed cash (“base”) is the same mid-100s to mid-300s that it was the throughout the last decade for L3/new-grad and L7/L8/principle/staff respectively. Discretionary cash (“bonus”) is the same 10k-100k, though 100k is rare and always was. Fixed equity (“initial grant”) is about what it’s been. People making crazy money were always doing it with discretionary equity (“long-term incentive” or LTI). That’s where you get engineers making 7 figures, and those people are not remotely worried about being laid off, or getting hired through a hiring freeze somewhere else with another great package. It would be pretty nice to be one of those people :P Too many people got into software without being truly passionate about it because money, Big Tech absorbed a bunch of people who crammed the standardized test but weren’t really producers, and a soft macro situation is a great excuse to clear cut for tech CEOs looking at weak market caps and need to show shareholders and the street that they’re doing something. I very much doubt that the folks left have lost much bargaining power, but time will tell.

staticcaucasian 4y ago
Around these parts a lot of the affected laid off were the upper end of that equity range. Expensive long-timers or over-hires who aren't producing at the level they negotiated. I don't feel bad for them.

ffggvv 4y ago

Agree with this but its less about unions and more about resetting the empoloyer/employee dynamic after a period of time the employees clearly had an upperhand. they are tired of allowing flexible work and giving 2 yoe people 300k. they want power back. its not about evil-y stroking a cat, or meeting in a smoke filled room. its as easy as just reading the moment in time and taking advantage.