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It's quite simple: If you don't follow the herd, you risk being blamed if you fail. But if you follow the herd and do what everyone else is doing, even if the h
by trentnix 4y ago
It's quite simple: If you don't follow the herd, you risk being blamed if you fail. But if you follow the herd and do what everyone else is doing, even if the herd runs off of a cliff, nobody points any fingers.
You'd think somewhere, in at least one of these larger tech companies, there would be a leader boldly proclaiming "this is our time to increase our investments and beat our competitors!" But it turns out there is even less diversity of thought in tech leadership than there is racial and gender diversity.
That said, Gitlab may be making a very prudent decision given their circumstance. I don’t know enough to conclude one way or the other. But considering what they are doing so closely mirrors what nearly everyone else is doing, skepticism is warranted.
- isodev 4y agoIt makes me sad. These are actual human beings losing their jobs. I guess they don't include “human cost” or “how much pain we inflicted” as a column in financial reports.
- trentnix 4y agoIn many cases, these were people they shouldn’t have hired in the first place. When the herd said “hire 10% more employees!” the same lemmings did as the herd commanded. It certainly isn’t the fault of those being hired, but it might have given them a chance to find employment somewhere that truly needed their skills and didn’t see them as “headcount”.
- moomoo11 4y agoDo you feel bad for the minimum wage and non w2 people whose jobs you automate away being in tech? I’m a highly paid tech employee and idk it’s different feeling bad for someone who lost their $10/hr job vs someone making 400k tc
- Apocryphon 4y agoNon-engineers are being let go as well.
- moomoo11 4y agoTrue but still I mean being a w2 employee at big tech is a pretty good gig.
- nuggets_ 4y agoNo, because the rising tide of automation should, at least ostensibly, lift all boats. If the extra utility created by automation is captured by technocrats, that’s a political and social problem, not a technical one. Pointing out the ways that technology can be abused isn’t an argument against technology - it’s an argument against abuse, and for governance that optimizes the wellbeing of constituents.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- 65 4y agoNobody ever gets fired for buying IBM.
- throwawayyy9237 4y agoExactly what came to mind. If you do what everybody else does, you can blame outside factors if it goes wrong. If you decide to be the one that _doesn't_ follow the trend, if it goes wrong, the blame falls on you.