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This sucks but something like COVID should normalize the idea in the minds of workers that all workers are disposable regardless of education or skill. If you d

This sucks but something like COVID should normalize the idea in the minds of workers that all workers are disposable regardless of education or skill. If you don't own 51% of the company, you are disposable. Zoom had a use for you during COVID, now they don't: bye-bye. You were used, they got what they needed and now it is time to go. That's how workers are treated and people should understand that. You are not George from Engineering, you are employee #3223 and you cost $x per year. Past maybe 20 - 25 people, you are nothing but a number and quickly after you no longer create more value than you are paid, you are out. Unlike others cough Facebook cough Google cough, Zoom actually a reason to scale during COVID; they were relatively new, they had crazy demand, and the access to money to do it. Zoom was given a blank check and leadership would've been worse for _not_ taking it. That happened, now it is waning and it is time to 'right size' (barf) and continue what they were doing before. Good on him for cutting his own salary and comp even if I don't think he is as dumb as Zuckerberg or others for their company's paper growth.

BurningFrog 4y ago
> You were used, they got what they needed and now it is time to go. Both sides got what they needed. The company got work done, and the employee got paid. Calling either side "used" makes no sense to me. Employment is always a temporary relationship that can be ended by either side at will.
- s1artibartfast 4y ago
  I think "used" is fine, but it doesn't imply any gross injustice. I use a worker to build my house, but that doesn't mean I am abusing them. They are using me too. no hard feelings.
  - haswell 4y ago
    > I think "used" is fine, but it doesn't imply any gross injustice. One of the primary definitions of that word describes a scenario where one person exploits another person for their own gain. Any time the word is used to describe the nature of one’s relationship with another person, that definition is going to come to mind. I can’t agree that there is no implication of injustice.
    - s1artibartfast 4y ago
      That is one definition, but not the only. I think it is interesting how people chose which definition to go with. It all comes down to social expectations of if the nature of the transaction. "I used Bob the contractor to build my house" has no implication of injustice. "My ex-wife used me for money" has significant implications. Used has no negative implication if used to describe a honest and mutually beneficial transaction.
      - hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
        "90+ percent of all internet arguments are over semantics." I honestly wish HN would adopt a "no semantics arguments" rule. These debates over what one person thinks a word means vs what another person thinks they mean are just uninteresting and really never lead anywhere, especially when all sides pretty much agree on the underlying issue. A couple days ago I made a comment, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34656626 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34656626 , where I even started off by saying "well, perhaps word X isn't exactly the right word", and still the original commenter felt compelled to reply in 6 different comments why he was so sure his definition of that word was the right one and it was important that everyone else agree with him. :shrug:
        s1artibartfast 4y ago
        Words and language are how humans communicate information so I think it is worthwhile to talk about. That said, I think everyone would benefit from being more Curious and less dogmatic. It is ultimately subjective. I can choose to use the word up to refer to down. It would certainly cause some confusion, but at the end of the day nobody can force me to change. The best that they can do is point out that they use a different definition and why that makes sense to them. That's all I was trying to do here, and in this other more interesting thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34697045 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34697045
        BurningFrog 4y ago
        I sometimes wonder if Americans are uniquely prone to focusing on words rather than the underlying concepts that the words, somewhat imperfectly, attempt to describe. Once you learn a second language, you have to confront this reality. But many Americans only ever use English, and it's maybe easier to never have to think about this then?
- SilverBirch 4y ago
  And in fact almost certainly what happened was the employees got paid to work on a bunch of new exploratory, speculative work that now all needs to get canned.
  - xtracto 4y ago
    There's an AMAZING managing podcast that I never get tired of recommending called Managers Tools [1], where in one of their episodes they talk about hiring/firing: They correctly mention that, as a manager, you should be able/willing to FIRE people when you are asking to HIRE. If you say you need more headcount and thus more money for it, be ready to shrink it when you don't need it anymore. Nothing is forever. That's what a lot of people fail to internalize: If a company is able to grow, then it must equally be able to shrink. Otherwise, you hire contractors or third parties. [1] https://www.manager-tools.com/podcasts https://www.manager-tools.com/podcasts
- time_to_smile 4y ago
  Just because it can be terminated at will doesn't mean people wake up every morning going to work thinking "hmm... wonder if I'll be let go today, or hey maybe I'll quit!" Similarly most non-marriage romantic relationship can be trivially ended "at will", but people get plenty upset when those end early than one party had anticipated. More important though is the inherent asymmetry: it hurts employees much more to be terminated from an employer than the employer hurts when employees leave. You know, unless those employees organize and all leave at the same time. And we know well that companies put a fair bit of energy keeping that from happening. Historically the way to resolve this asymmetry was an implicit understanding that you won't arbitrarily get terminated unless the employer has no other choice. This implicit assumption has been weakening over time.
  - noirbot 4y ago
    I mean, I definitely end a fair number of days thinking "I may quit" at various points in my career. I'm happy for the ability to do that. I'm not arguing that layoffs don't suck for those involved, but if offered a contract where I couldn't be laid off or quit for N years, I probably wouldn't take it. Layoffs already have some legal protection in most places that require severance and other things that quitting or firing for cause don't.
- BoorishBears 4y ago
  I feel like this is a pretty naive take. For all the companies like Zoom and Shopify claiming they thought the COVID gravy train would never end, there was never a chance of that. But they hired as if that was the reality because because of the asymmetry: Your output is .000001% of what the company needs to function. Meanwhile even if you're saving 50% of your pay and living on the other 50%, that's many orders of magnitude more need - So yes, either side can walk away tomorrow morning, but who's more likely to be hurt? Definitely not the company, so there's no real punishment for overhiring knowing you'll need to fire. If anything you get rewarded by the market: If company A hires in a sustainable way that can weather headwinds (believe it or not, this used to be somewhat common) and company B goes full "feast or famine", the market rewards B for their growth, then rewards B when they lay off a bunch of people. Meanwhile A is punished for limiting growth, and not really rewarded for not having fired people, since valuations are bad at capturing nuanced ideas like "B just fired their best minds, while A has cultivated an effective workforce" (just check out Zoom's ticker today)
- kerkeslager 4y ago
  > Employment is always a temporary relationship that can be ended by either side at will. No one is confused about this. The disagreement is whether this is how it should be.
EMM_386 4y ago
> You were used, they got what they needed and now it is time to go. That's how workers are treated and people should understand that. I can't tell if all of this is due to the age of people who have joined the workforce over the last decade, when we were in a constant uphill swing. Markets go through cycles, boom and bust. We happen to be in part of the cycle where interest rates are rising, inflation is high, profits margins are tightening and companies are laying off. "You were used" is a bit much. You go to work to earn a paycheck. I'm not sure how many people bought into the whole "we're a family" stuff, but obviously these are for-profit corporations and they are beholden only to their shareholders. There was never the illusion otherwise, unless you truly believed that now that you're in, you're in. I'm older so I've been through a number of these cycles, including having been laid off. Perhaps the decade+ of constant upward tragectory had people disillusioned that this was "normal". It wasn't, and now companies are downsizing.
- MarkMarine 4y ago
  >"You were used" is a bit much. You go to work to earn a paycheck. I'm not sure how many people bought into the whole "we're a family" stuff, but obviously these are for-profit corporations and they are beholden only to their shareholders. There was never the illusion otherwise, unless you truly believed that now that you're in, you're in. There is a lot of corporate ink spilled trying to convince people of exactly this. The counter to this kind of treatment is a strong union. Hopefully this goes a ways toward convincing people they need that level of protection.
  - gitfan86 4y ago
    If people are always "protected" how do you deal with low performing companies? If Zoom becomes unusable because it is crashing all the time and everyone switches to another service where do you think the money is going to come from to pay these "protected" employees? Fire the CEO, sure, but where is the money coming from for the thousands of other employees?
    - andrekandre 4y ago
somedude895 4y ago
> This sucks but something like COVID should normalize the idea in the minds of workers that all workers are disposable I don't know who you're talking about but it should have only taken common sense to know you're disposable as an employee.
ralph84 4y ago
Even if you own 51% of the company you're disposable. The company itself is disposable. The CFO at a lot of Zoom's customers is asking why are we paying so much for Zoom when Microsoft will give us Teams for "free". It doesn't matter if Zoom is better, it's still disposable.
chrstphrknwtn 4y ago
> You were used, they got what they needed and now it is time to go. Workers get paid along the way, not sure that constitutes being "used". I think worker rights aren't great in the United States, but characterising US tech workers who are paid extremely well as having been used is a bit much.
tenpies 4y ago
> If you don't own 51% of the company, you are disposable. If you own 51% of the company, not only are you disposable, but unlike any employee on earth, you can actually lose money by working. You can also work and make $0 for your efforts, and that's not the worst outcome. And there are no worker's rights or Marxist organizations ready to organize a riot for you. There are no shareholder unions either, just increasingly absent regulators, comically incompetent courts, and lengthy legal processes.
johnvanommen 4y ago
> You are not George from Engineering, you are employee #3223 and you cost $x per year. I used to work for a company with nearly 300,000 employees. Our user names in Active Directory were randomly generated. So our user names were just gibberish, like "ughwyrt" I always thought that was a bad PR move on their part, but whatever

BurningFrog 4y ago

> You were used, they got what they needed and now it is time to go. Both sides got what they needed. The company got work done, and the employee got paid. Calling either side "used" makes no sense to me. Employment is always a temporary relationship that can be ended by either side at will.

s1artibartfast 4y ago
I think "used" is fine, but it doesn't imply any gross injustice. I use a worker to build my house, but that doesn't mean I am abusing them. They are using me too. no hard feelings.
- haswell 4y ago
  > I think "used" is fine, but it doesn't imply any gross injustice. One of the primary definitions of that word describes a scenario where one person exploits another person for their own gain. Any time the word is used to describe the nature of one’s relationship with another person, that definition is going to come to mind. I can’t agree that there is no implication of injustice.
  - s1artibartfast 4y ago
    That is one definition, but not the only. I think it is interesting how people chose which definition to go with. It all comes down to social expectations of if the nature of the transaction. "I used Bob the contractor to build my house" has no implication of injustice. "My ex-wife used me for money" has significant implications. Used has no negative implication if used to describe a honest and mutually beneficial transaction.
    - hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
      "90+ percent of all internet arguments are over semantics." I honestly wish HN would adopt a "no semantics arguments" rule. These debates over what one person thinks a word means vs what another person thinks they mean are just uninteresting and really never lead anywhere, especially when all sides pretty much agree on the underlying issue. A couple days ago I made a comment, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34656626 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34656626 , where I even started off by saying "well, perhaps word X isn't exactly the right word", and still the original commenter felt compelled to reply in 6 different comments why he was so sure his definition of that word was the right one and it was important that everyone else agree with him. :shrug:
      - s1artibartfast 4y ago
        Words and language are how humans communicate information so I think it is worthwhile to talk about. That said, I think everyone would benefit from being more Curious and less dogmatic. It is ultimately subjective. I can choose to use the word up to refer to down. It would certainly cause some confusion, but at the end of the day nobody can force me to change. The best that they can do is point out that they use a different definition and why that makes sense to them. That's all I was trying to do here, and in this other more interesting thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34697045 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34697045
      - BurningFrog 4y ago
        I sometimes wonder if Americans are uniquely prone to focusing on words rather than the underlying concepts that the words, somewhat imperfectly, attempt to describe. Once you learn a second language, you have to confront this reality. But many Americans only ever use English, and it's maybe easier to never have to think about this then?
SilverBirch 4y ago
And in fact almost certainly what happened was the employees got paid to work on a bunch of new exploratory, speculative work that now all needs to get canned.
- xtracto 4y ago
  There's an AMAZING managing podcast that I never get tired of recommending called Managers Tools [1], where in one of their episodes they talk about hiring/firing: They correctly mention that, as a manager, you should be able/willing to FIRE people when you are asking to HIRE. If you say you need more headcount and thus more money for it, be ready to shrink it when you don't need it anymore. Nothing is forever. That's what a lot of people fail to internalize: If a company is able to grow, then it must equally be able to shrink. Otherwise, you hire contractors or third parties. [1] https://www.manager-tools.com/podcasts https://www.manager-tools.com/podcasts
time_to_smile 4y ago
Just because it can be terminated at will doesn't mean people wake up every morning going to work thinking "hmm... wonder if I'll be let go today, or hey maybe I'll quit!" Similarly most non-marriage romantic relationship can be trivially ended "at will", but people get plenty upset when those end early than one party had anticipated. More important though is the inherent asymmetry: it hurts employees much more to be terminated from an employer than the employer hurts when employees leave. You know, unless those employees organize and all leave at the same time. And we know well that companies put a fair bit of energy keeping that from happening. Historically the way to resolve this asymmetry was an implicit understanding that you won't arbitrarily get terminated unless the employer has no other choice. This implicit assumption has been weakening over time.
- noirbot 4y ago
  I mean, I definitely end a fair number of days thinking "I may quit" at various points in my career. I'm happy for the ability to do that. I'm not arguing that layoffs don't suck for those involved, but if offered a contract where I couldn't be laid off or quit for N years, I probably wouldn't take it. Layoffs already have some legal protection in most places that require severance and other things that quitting or firing for cause don't.
BoorishBears 4y ago
I feel like this is a pretty naive take. For all the companies like Zoom and Shopify claiming they thought the COVID gravy train would never end, there was never a chance of that. But they hired as if that was the reality because because of the asymmetry: Your output is .000001% of what the company needs to function. Meanwhile even if you're saving 50% of your pay and living on the other 50%, that's many orders of magnitude more need - So yes, either side can walk away tomorrow morning, but who's more likely to be hurt? Definitely not the company, so there's no real punishment for overhiring knowing you'll need to fire. If anything you get rewarded by the market: If company A hires in a sustainable way that can weather headwinds (believe it or not, this used to be somewhat common) and company B goes full "feast or famine", the market rewards B for their growth, then rewards B when they lay off a bunch of people. Meanwhile A is punished for limiting growth, and not really rewarded for not having fired people, since valuations are bad at capturing nuanced ideas like "B just fired their best minds, while A has cultivated an effective workforce" (just check out Zoom's ticker today)
kerkeslager 4y ago
> Employment is always a temporary relationship that can be ended by either side at will. No one is confused about this. The disagreement is whether this is how it should be.

EMM_386 4y ago

> You were used, they got what they needed and now it is time to go. That's how workers are treated and people should understand that. I can't tell if all of this is due to the age of people who have joined the workforce over the last decade, when we were in a constant uphill swing. Markets go through cycles, boom and bust. We happen to be in part of the cycle where interest rates are rising, inflation is high, profits margins are tightening and companies are laying off. "You were used" is a bit much. You go to work to earn a paycheck. I'm not sure how many people bought into the whole "we're a family" stuff, but obviously these are for-profit corporations and they are beholden only to their shareholders. There was never the illusion otherwise, unless you truly believed that now that you're in, you're in. I'm older so I've been through a number of these cycles, including having been laid off. Perhaps the decade+ of constant upward tragectory had people disillusioned that this was "normal". It wasn't, and now companies are downsizing.

MarkMarine 4y ago
>"You were used" is a bit much. You go to work to earn a paycheck. I'm not sure how many people bought into the whole "we're a family" stuff, but obviously these are for-profit corporations and they are beholden only to their shareholders. There was never the illusion otherwise, unless you truly believed that now that you're in, you're in. There is a lot of corporate ink spilled trying to convince people of exactly this. The counter to this kind of treatment is a strong union. Hopefully this goes a ways toward convincing people they need that level of protection.
- gitfan86 4y ago
  If people are always "protected" how do you deal with low performing companies? If Zoom becomes unusable because it is crashing all the time and everyone switches to another service where do you think the money is going to come from to pay these "protected" employees? Fire the CEO, sure, but where is the money coming from for the thousands of other employees?
  - andrekandre 4y ago

somedude895 4y ago

> This sucks but something like COVID should normalize the idea in the minds of workers that all workers are disposable I don't know who you're talking about but it should have only taken common sense to know you're disposable as an employee.

ralph84 4y ago

Even if you own 51% of the company you're disposable. The company itself is disposable. The CFO at a lot of Zoom's customers is asking why are we paying so much for Zoom when Microsoft will give us Teams for "free". It doesn't matter if Zoom is better, it's still disposable.

chrstphrknwtn 4y ago

> You were used, they got what they needed and now it is time to go. Workers get paid along the way, not sure that constitutes being "used". I think worker rights aren't great in the United States, but characterising US tech workers who are paid extremely well as having been used is a bit much.

tenpies 4y ago

> If you don't own 51% of the company, you are disposable. If you own 51% of the company, not only are you disposable, but unlike any employee on earth, you can actually lose money by working. You can also work and make $0 for your efforts, and that's not the worst outcome. And there are no worker's rights or Marxist organizations ready to organize a riot for you. There are no shareholder unions either, just increasingly absent regulators, comically incompetent courts, and lengthy legal processes.

johnvanommen 4y ago

> You are not George from Engineering, you are employee #3223 and you cost $x per year. I used to work for a company with nearly 300,000 employees. Our user names in Active Directory were randomly generated. So our user names were just gibberish, like "ughwyrt" I always thought that was a bad PR move on their part, but whatever