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A few days ago we were criticizing Nintendo because it was making too much money per employee and didn't hire enough. Also, we criticize Google for laying peop

A few days ago we were criticizing Nintendo because it was making too much money per employee and didn't hire enough. Also, we criticize Google for laying people off and Amazon for everything else (overhiring?). One wonders why Apple gets high praise for "hiring cautiously".

Jcowell 4y ago
> A few days ago we were criticizing Nintendo because it was making too much money per employee and didn't hire enough. From what I recall Nintendo’s hiring was never the issue but the pay
ceejayoz 4y ago
I like Nintendo's approach, and I like Apple's approach as well. I think it shows a lot more respect for employees than "hire as much as possible, then cut deep ASAP if fortunes change"; big firing rounds can be devastating to both the folks who go and the folks who stay.
- ep103 4y ago
  I've generally found that if you can't measure something well, large American companies act extremely poorly with regards to that thing. Its well understood that layoffs destroy the morale of your employees, and that they drive out a huge percentage of employees, and specifically the ones who have the best alternative options. But I imagine that measuring the impact of brain drain from a layoff after a subsequent overhire compared to potential growth losses from not overhiring during the boom is one of those things that is extremely hard to measure. Good on Apple and Nintendo for having strong enough and competent enough leadership to make that call, instead of the typical metric based CYA.
  - trilobyte 4y ago
    > I've generally found that if you can't measure something well, large American companies act extremely poorly with regards to that thing. You've got it. The number of companies I've worked with who talk about being "data-driven" and who do not use any data for a majority of their decision making is ridiculous.
  - danaris 4y ago
    > I've generally found that if you can't measure something well, large American companies act extremely poorly with regards to that thing. This is true, and goes double (at least) for anything that is at odds with maximizing superficial short-term profits, or with absolute control by management over employees' existences. There are many studies at this point showing how much more productive and profitable companies can be when they treat their employees well and pay them at or above market rate, but the neofeudal mindset and the idea that this quarter's profit growth are the only metric are so deeply ingrained into so many people's heads that it's very, very hard to make any inroads.
Ozzie_osman 4y ago
There are three ways to make more per employee. You can get better at making money. You can have fewer people. You can pay your people less. So as a metric it's very context-dependant.
- nickelcitymario 4y ago
  You can also do all 3 at the same time. They're not mutually exclusive. If priority #1 is shareholder value, then doing all 3 of those makes sense. If priority #1 is something other than money, then maximizing profit can lead to a negative impact on the true mission. So I do agree it's context-dependant, but perhaps a slightly different context than you had in mind?
  - krab 4y ago
    These three things aren't mutually exclusive but they go against each other. For example paying people less might impact your ability to improve your money stream. Similarly having fewer people may lead to some missed opportunities.
zamalek 4y ago
Because there would be praise if they were "firing cautiously."
nickelcitymario 4y ago
I think it would be fair to question those who criticize Nintendo for not hiring enough. Nintendo and Apple are run similarly in this respect. Very cautious companies. But I think if you go back and look at who is criticizing Nintendo, they're not the same people criticizing Google and Amazon. They're opposing sides. It's move-fast-and-break-things versus do-it-right-the-first-time. Both have their merits. But when you move fast and overhire, you upend people's lives when you have to let them go. When you move slow, you provide fewer opportunities for people, but noone upends their lives over it. For my comfort, I choose employers who prioritize keeping the team intact, even if that does mean fewer opportunities during boom times.
asdajksah2123 4y ago
There are many different approaches and some may be good and some may be bad?
version_five 4y ago
It's not immediately obvious which has the greatest net benefit, if one can even think in those terms. Is it worse to make hay when the sun shines and then cut back later? Didn't the good period provide a productive exchange of money for work, that would have been absent in a company that just sat on the sidelines?
pdntspa 4y ago
Tech management has such a hard-on for headcount it is sickening. It is like the managers brag about how many people are under them.
- slt2021 4y ago
  It is in Indian culture. In India the size of organization that you manage signals the status of your position, and since a lot of engineers are from India - no wonder this practice becomes norm in the US If you let manager choose whom to manage: 10 brilliant scientists in a research group, or 100 engineers building a product - almost every Indian manager will choose the latter
etempleton 4y ago
I think Nintendo is a wonderfully run company. They are probably a bit too set in their ways of doing things, but they always seem to be ready to take advantage of an opportunity or minimize the damage of a bad product launch. How many companies could have survived the WiiU?
- mostlysimilar 4y ago
  Not only survived the Wii U but followed it up with a smash hit. The Switch is now the third best selling console of all time, behind only the Nintendo DS and the PlayStation 2.
  - Andrex 4y ago
    Nintendo's secret sauce is their historically-huge (way above average) R&D investment. And for all the slack they get about being too traditional, the one thing I can say about following the company for 20 years is you never know what they're going to do next. Meanwhile, PlayStation 6, Pixel 9, and iPhone 16 are foregone conclusions.
mbesto 4y ago
> One wonders why Apple gets high praise for "hiring cautiously". Have you not read this forum for the past week? It's been riddled with techies ragging on tech CEO's for "blaming the economy" and not blaming themselves for over-hiring.
- LarryMullins 4y ago
  The part I don't quite get (except insofar as it's an understandable emotional reaction) is why people are mad at companies hiring more people than they should have and then eventually laying them off a few years later. Would it have been better for those people if they were never hired in the first place, never had a few years of getting paid for extraneous work? Is the trauma of getting laid off really so great that they wish they had never been hired in the first place? Okay, so the job wasn't the last of your career, you didn't get to commit the rest of your life to the company. But come on, it's not the 1950s anymore. People change jobs all the time, it's normal. If a company overhires for a few years then eventually corrects itself, that's the company screwing itself over but I think workers offended by this are getting emotionally over-invested. You got paid for your time and you got more out of the relationship than the company which never actually needed your labor in the first place. That's a win for you and a loss for the company, but not all good things can last forever.
  - mbesto 4y ago
    I don't get it either. 100% agree with your sentiment. The HN mob in general is pretty level headed, but its like someone kicked over the beehive.
  - lapcat 4y ago
    It all depends. The main problem is that nearly every tech company is now doing mass layoffs nearly simultaneously. This could lead to long-term unemployment for many engineers, even driving some out of the industry altogether, which could wipe out any short-term salary gains of the past couple years. Mass hiring distorts the entire job market. It draws people out of safer, more stable jobs. It draws people into the industry from other industries. It draws students into the industry, and into industry-related academic areas. If the gains were only short-term, that's not necessarily a good tradeoff for employees.

Jcowell 4y ago

> A few days ago we were criticizing Nintendo because it was making too much money per employee and didn't hire enough. From what I recall Nintendo’s hiring was never the issue but the pay

ceejayoz 4y ago

I like Nintendo's approach, and I like Apple's approach as well. I think it shows a lot more respect for employees than "hire as much as possible, then cut deep ASAP if fortunes change"; big firing rounds can be devastating to both the folks who go and the folks who stay.

ep103 4y ago
I've generally found that if you can't measure something well, large American companies act extremely poorly with regards to that thing. Its well understood that layoffs destroy the morale of your employees, and that they drive out a huge percentage of employees, and specifically the ones who have the best alternative options. But I imagine that measuring the impact of brain drain from a layoff after a subsequent overhire compared to potential growth losses from not overhiring during the boom is one of those things that is extremely hard to measure. Good on Apple and Nintendo for having strong enough and competent enough leadership to make that call, instead of the typical metric based CYA.
- trilobyte 4y ago
  > I've generally found that if you can't measure something well, large American companies act extremely poorly with regards to that thing. You've got it. The number of companies I've worked with who talk about being "data-driven" and who do not use any data for a majority of their decision making is ridiculous.
- danaris 4y ago
  > I've generally found that if you can't measure something well, large American companies act extremely poorly with regards to that thing. This is true, and goes double (at least) for anything that is at odds with maximizing superficial short-term profits, or with absolute control by management over employees' existences. There are many studies at this point showing how much more productive and profitable companies can be when they treat their employees well and pay them at or above market rate, but the neofeudal mindset and the idea that this quarter's profit growth are the only metric are so deeply ingrained into so many people's heads that it's very, very hard to make any inroads.

Ozzie_osman 4y ago

There are three ways to make more per employee. You can get better at making money. You can have fewer people. You can pay your people less. So as a metric it's very context-dependant.

nickelcitymario 4y ago
You can also do all 3 at the same time. They're not mutually exclusive. If priority #1 is shareholder value, then doing all 3 of those makes sense. If priority #1 is something other than money, then maximizing profit can lead to a negative impact on the true mission. So I do agree it's context-dependant, but perhaps a slightly different context than you had in mind?
- krab 4y ago
  These three things aren't mutually exclusive but they go against each other. For example paying people less might impact your ability to improve your money stream. Similarly having fewer people may lead to some missed opportunities.

zamalek 4y ago

Because there would be praise if they were "firing cautiously."

nickelcitymario 4y ago

I think it would be fair to question those who criticize Nintendo for not hiring enough. Nintendo and Apple are run similarly in this respect. Very cautious companies. But I think if you go back and look at who is criticizing Nintendo, they're not the same people criticizing Google and Amazon. They're opposing sides. It's move-fast-and-break-things versus do-it-right-the-first-time. Both have their merits. But when you move fast and overhire, you upend people's lives when you have to let them go. When you move slow, you provide fewer opportunities for people, but noone upends their lives over it. For my comfort, I choose employers who prioritize keeping the team intact, even if that does mean fewer opportunities during boom times.

asdajksah2123 4y ago

There are many different approaches and some may be good and some may be bad?

version_five 4y ago

It's not immediately obvious which has the greatest net benefit, if one can even think in those terms. Is it worse to make hay when the sun shines and then cut back later? Didn't the good period provide a productive exchange of money for work, that would have been absent in a company that just sat on the sidelines?

pdntspa 4y ago

Tech management has such a hard-on for headcount it is sickening. It is like the managers brag about how many people are under them.

slt2021 4y ago
It is in Indian culture. In India the size of organization that you manage signals the status of your position, and since a lot of engineers are from India - no wonder this practice becomes norm in the US If you let manager choose whom to manage: 10 brilliant scientists in a research group, or 100 engineers building a product - almost every Indian manager will choose the latter

etempleton 4y ago

I think Nintendo is a wonderfully run company. They are probably a bit too set in their ways of doing things, but they always seem to be ready to take advantage of an opportunity or minimize the damage of a bad product launch. How many companies could have survived the WiiU?

mostlysimilar 4y ago
Not only survived the Wii U but followed it up with a smash hit. The Switch is now the third best selling console of all time, behind only the Nintendo DS and the PlayStation 2.
- Andrex 4y ago
  Nintendo's secret sauce is their historically-huge (way above average) R&D investment. And for all the slack they get about being too traditional, the one thing I can say about following the company for 20 years is you never know what they're going to do next. Meanwhile, PlayStation 6, Pixel 9, and iPhone 16 are foregone conclusions.

mbesto 4y ago

> One wonders why Apple gets high praise for "hiring cautiously". Have you not read this forum for the past week? It's been riddled with techies ragging on tech CEO's for "blaming the economy" and not blaming themselves for over-hiring.

LarryMullins 4y ago
The part I don't quite get (except insofar as it's an understandable emotional reaction) is why people are mad at companies hiring more people than they should have and then eventually laying them off a few years later. Would it have been better for those people if they were never hired in the first place, never had a few years of getting paid for extraneous work? Is the trauma of getting laid off really so great that they wish they had never been hired in the first place? Okay, so the job wasn't the last of your career, you didn't get to commit the rest of your life to the company. But come on, it's not the 1950s anymore. People change jobs all the time, it's normal. If a company overhires for a few years then eventually corrects itself, that's the company screwing itself over but I think workers offended by this are getting emotionally over-invested. You got paid for your time and you got more out of the relationship than the company which never actually needed your labor in the first place. That's a win for you and a loss for the company, but not all good things can last forever.
- mbesto 4y ago
  I don't get it either. 100% agree with your sentiment. The HN mob in general is pretty level headed, but its like someone kicked over the beehive.
- lapcat 4y ago
  It all depends. The main problem is that nearly every tech company is now doing mass layoffs nearly simultaneously. This could lead to long-term unemployment for many engineers, even driving some out of the industry altogether, which could wipe out any short-term salary gains of the past couple years. Mass hiring distorts the entire job market. It draws people out of safer, more stable jobs. It draws people into the industry from other industries. It draws students into the industry, and into industry-related academic areas. If the gains were only short-term, that's not necessarily a good tradeoff for employees.