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If you've ever worked someplace with periodic waves of layoffs, you'll know that there is a certain amount of randomness to it all. Wrong role at the wrong tim
by steveBK123 4y ago
If you've ever worked someplace with periodic waves of layoffs, you'll know that there is a certain amount of randomness to it all.
Wrong role at the wrong time. Wrong team at the wrong time.
The decision makers are frequently several steps removed from those being laid off. Sometimes this is done because the layoffs are going through many layers and they don't want middle management aware of the cuts in advance. Other times its because they assume line managers will protect their people too much / be emotional / whatever.
Anyway, this means that once you trim the obvious PIP/officially low rated in reviews people.. the cutters don't really know the precise value the people they are cutting bring to their team/org. They just need to cut 5%/10%/whatever out of an org of 1000s or 10000s, and get on with their day job, golf, etc.
I once worked at a big stupid bank, and the most eye opening experiences were around the randomness of compensation. A senior manager who really shouldn't have been managing people, one day confided to me the process was that HR basically set peoples raises, and he would go in and tweak the top 5-10% of people he knew. This is in an org of 100s of people. Professionally it wasn't a great year for me, but I ended up with my biggest raise there in 5 years. On comp day, my direct manager said, almost verbatim "HR made adjustments to title bands based on market rates, which is why you are seeing this rase". It has been the year after my promotion, so I was for obvious reasons at the bottom end of the band.
So a reminder that a lot of this is arbitrary, stupid, and don't take it too seriously or personally.
- barbazoo 4y ago> So a reminder that a lot of this is arbitrary, stupid, and don't take it too seriously or personally. I 100% agree with that.
- lorecoeur 4y agoAlso in banking. Even if you make simplifying assumptions that managers are rational and objective performance management is possible, this is still entirely true. Large scale layoffs are executed via cascaded headcount targets that affect departments, not people. Usually this entirely disregards relative performance between groups/teams, and forces managers to make local decisions that might be globally poor. Has this just not been a factor in big tech due to growth? I'm struggling to understand why recent threads like this generate so much commentary.
- steveBK123 4y agoI think, they truly haven't. Look at some of the FAANG headcount numbers 2009 (GFC) -> 2019 (pre-COVID) ->2022 (COVID hiring peak) * GOOG went 20k->120k->150k. That is, GOOG added more 150% of their total 2009 staffing level during COVID. * MSFT went 90k->144k->221k. So both companies added over 100K from GFC to today! * Netflix 2k->9k->13k. Small absolute numbers, but 6x their 2009 size? Compare to Wall St. * Bank of America went 284k->208k->208k apparently. So down from GFC and flat during COVID. * Morgan Stanley 61k->60k->75k. So down, then +25%. * JPM went 222k->256k->271k. As a %, much smaller growth, and even in absolute terms, smaller growth. * Goldman 33k->38k->44k. Their growth across the whole firm is roughly the size of what, Amazons Alexa division?!?? LOL. The numbers leave the impression that theres plenty more room to shrink.. If the end of ZIRP is Tech's GFC, then these reductions have only just begun.