3 ms·

so in that case, not a failure by leadership whatsoever, it’s actually them doing exactly what they should?

by MuffinFlavored 4y ago

johngladtj 4y ago
Exactly. Layoffs aren't a bad thing.
- fredoliveira 4y ago
  > Layoffs aren't a bad thing. This very much depends on whose perspective you're looking at them from. They are very much a bad thing for all the workers getting let go.
  - zeroonetwothree 4y ago
    Probably not all of them. I know a few people happy to get a paid year off
    - hello_moto 4y ago
      Not in this bad econ timeframe
- santoshalper 4y ago
  I guess if you run a warehouse that's true, but Facebook is a tech company. How many thousands of hours were spent recruiting, hiring, onboarding, and training those employees? How much institutional knowledge left with them? How many decisions took longer to make because managers were focused on picking who got laid off instead of focusing on the work? How many managers became hyper-cautious with their planning because they don't know how many employees they will have? How many hours were lost to employees worrying about job security and prospecting for a new job instead of worrying about solving business problems? How many projects got started because there were ample resources that now have to be shut down abruptly? Large scale hiring and firing in technology is incredibly expensive and not to be taken lightly. Facebook has wasted a huge amount of time, focus, and energy on this and their leadership should absolutely be accountable to shareholders.
  - JAlexoid 4y ago
    It's not just hiring. It's also training and ramp-up.
    - mejutoco 4y ago
      > How many thousands of hours were spent recruiting, hiring, onboarding, and training those employees?
- piva00 4y ago
  Of course they are, the issue is that their side-effects aren't easy to track in pure quantitative terms and even less in the short/medium-term. Layoffs affect morale, in R&D you see that directly on engineers' productivity and how product managers start to behave. PMs either get risk-averse (don't rock the boat, don't mess with profit-making schemes) which stifles innovation, or they get afraid on being on the next round of layoffs if they don't make an impact quickly, they start to push teams to deliver into their reactionary mode, catering more for short-term impact rather than long-term strategic value. It's a complete mess that you won't see in pure financial terms, it will have long ripple effects into the company, some companies bounce back, others get crippled by those ripples. Employees that aren't engaged and don't trust their employers won't do their best work, employees motivated by anxiety and fear won't produce their best work. They will produce whatever they need to keep employed, that's not the best thing for a company.
  - kcplate 4y ago
    > Layoffs affect morale This is temporary in my experience. Especially in an organization that emerges from layoffs with better financial footing in an growing industry. Morale doesn’t bounce back when the survivors feel that the industry or company is dying. I doubt Meta and social media is going away anytime soon.
    - piva00 4y ago
      The morale effect is temporary, the ripple effects of it, in my experience, linger for a very long time. That was my point, those are harder to visualise, quantify, but if you live the day-to-day in R&D/operations you see how people react to it over time. The analogy used in some layoffs discussions of cutting off a limb is fitting here too, your body can still perform some functions but some skills are harder to perform, some movements aren't possible or are very impaired, etc. You are still alive but you aren't the same anymore, for a company it can create really weird side-effects like some examples I brought up on the previous comment.
      - kcplate 4y ago
NotYourLawyer 4y ago
Yes. The figure of merit is profit, not how nice you are to your new hires.
- mschuster91 4y ago
  You know, back in the golden ages, employers had actual relationships with their employees and the communities they served both as a provider of goods and a provider of employment. That was the time when the economy actually worked for the people.
  - zeroonetwothree 4y ago
    I don’t think this golden age ever existed exempt in your imagination. Have you seen working conditions in the 1800s?
  - greedo 4y ago
    Workers had little mobility or options, that's why they stuck around forever (that and pensions).
- santoshalper 4y ago
  I'm not going to bother engaging with you from the perspective of morality and ethics, since it seems unlikely that would resonate with you. Instead, I will point out how wrong you are purely from a financial lens. The goal of a CEO of any company is to generate long term shareholder value - eg. to make the company more valuable than they found it. Mark Zuckerberg has been the only CEO that Facebook has ever known, and obviously he has created a lot of shareholder value during his tenure. On the other hand, Facebook has also lost about half of its value in the last year or so. A dropping valuation is typically a lagging indicator of a major strategic blunder or disruption. The market is essentially saying that he has done a rather poor job for the past 2-3 years and the outlook of investors is diminished accordingly. And yes, hiring a ton of people and then having to lay them off in a short time frame is a huge part of this. In a tech company, profits today are the result of long term execution of strategies and represent a return on capital investment. A designer or engineer hired today is not going to deliver much that will create revenue or profit this year. There is an old axiom in tech companies - if you want a little profit today, hire a sales exec. If you want a lot of profit in three years, hire an engineer. Bulking up your technology team only to have to skinny it down later is a massive strategic and employee distraction and is absolutely a sign of mismanagement.
davidw 4y ago
This is why they call people 'resources' rather than people.

so in that case, not a failure by leadership whatsoever, it’s actually them doing exactly what they should?

johngladtj 4y ago

Exactly. Layoffs aren't a bad thing.

fredoliveira 4y ago
> Layoffs aren't a bad thing. This very much depends on whose perspective you're looking at them from. They are very much a bad thing for all the workers getting let go.
- zeroonetwothree 4y ago
  Probably not all of them. I know a few people happy to get a paid year off
  - hello_moto 4y ago
    Not in this bad econ timeframe
santoshalper 4y ago
I guess if you run a warehouse that's true, but Facebook is a tech company. How many thousands of hours were spent recruiting, hiring, onboarding, and training those employees? How much institutional knowledge left with them? How many decisions took longer to make because managers were focused on picking who got laid off instead of focusing on the work? How many managers became hyper-cautious with their planning because they don't know how many employees they will have? How many hours were lost to employees worrying about job security and prospecting for a new job instead of worrying about solving business problems? How many projects got started because there were ample resources that now have to be shut down abruptly? Large scale hiring and firing in technology is incredibly expensive and not to be taken lightly. Facebook has wasted a huge amount of time, focus, and energy on this and their leadership should absolutely be accountable to shareholders.
- JAlexoid 4y ago
  It's not just hiring. It's also training and ramp-up.
  - mejutoco 4y ago
    > How many thousands of hours were spent recruiting, hiring, onboarding, and training those employees?
piva00 4y ago
Of course they are, the issue is that their side-effects aren't easy to track in pure quantitative terms and even less in the short/medium-term. Layoffs affect morale, in R&D you see that directly on engineers' productivity and how product managers start to behave. PMs either get risk-averse (don't rock the boat, don't mess with profit-making schemes) which stifles innovation, or they get afraid on being on the next round of layoffs if they don't make an impact quickly, they start to push teams to deliver into their reactionary mode, catering more for short-term impact rather than long-term strategic value. It's a complete mess that you won't see in pure financial terms, it will have long ripple effects into the company, some companies bounce back, others get crippled by those ripples. Employees that aren't engaged and don't trust their employers won't do their best work, employees motivated by anxiety and fear won't produce their best work. They will produce whatever they need to keep employed, that's not the best thing for a company.
- kcplate 4y ago
  > Layoffs affect morale This is temporary in my experience. Especially in an organization that emerges from layoffs with better financial footing in an growing industry. Morale doesn’t bounce back when the survivors feel that the industry or company is dying. I doubt Meta and social media is going away anytime soon.
  - piva00 4y ago
    The morale effect is temporary, the ripple effects of it, in my experience, linger for a very long time. That was my point, those are harder to visualise, quantify, but if you live the day-to-day in R&D/operations you see how people react to it over time. The analogy used in some layoffs discussions of cutting off a limb is fitting here too, your body can still perform some functions but some skills are harder to perform, some movements aren't possible or are very impaired, etc. You are still alive but you aren't the same anymore, for a company it can create really weird side-effects like some examples I brought up on the previous comment.
    - kcplate 4y ago

NotYourLawyer 4y ago

Yes. The figure of merit is profit, not how nice you are to your new hires.

mschuster91 4y ago
You know, back in the golden ages, employers had actual relationships with their employees and the communities they served both as a provider of goods and a provider of employment. That was the time when the economy actually worked for the people.
- zeroonetwothree 4y ago
  I don’t think this golden age ever existed exempt in your imagination. Have you seen working conditions in the 1800s?
- greedo 4y ago
  Workers had little mobility or options, that's why they stuck around forever (that and pensions).
santoshalper 4y ago
I'm not going to bother engaging with you from the perspective of morality and ethics, since it seems unlikely that would resonate with you. Instead, I will point out how wrong you are purely from a financial lens. The goal of a CEO of any company is to generate long term shareholder value - eg. to make the company more valuable than they found it. Mark Zuckerberg has been the only CEO that Facebook has ever known, and obviously he has created a lot of shareholder value during his tenure. On the other hand, Facebook has also lost about half of its value in the last year or so. A dropping valuation is typically a lagging indicator of a major strategic blunder or disruption. The market is essentially saying that he has done a rather poor job for the past 2-3 years and the outlook of investors is diminished accordingly. And yes, hiring a ton of people and then having to lay them off in a short time frame is a huge part of this. In a tech company, profits today are the result of long term execution of strategies and represent a return on capital investment. A designer or engineer hired today is not going to deliver much that will create revenue or profit this year. There is an old axiom in tech companies - if you want a little profit today, hire a sales exec. If you want a lot of profit in three years, hire an engineer. Bulking up your technology team only to have to skinny it down later is a massive strategic and employee distraction and is absolutely a sign of mismanagement.

davidw 4y ago

This is why they call people 'resources' rather than people.