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FWIW the GP sounds like he's taking a CEO view Companies are ludicrously bloated because caring about it is too much effort for the value; during a downturn,

FWIW the GP sounds like he's taking a CEO view Companies are ludicrously bloated because caring about it is too much effort for the value; during a downturn, they care a bit more This is bang on. There are lots of competing priorities and prioritizing some kind of streamlining rarely rises to the top. Time and cognitive power is usually better spend elsewhere, which is why CEOs can often "intentionally" let the org grow some fat without worrying about it

ChuckNorris89 4y ago
Not only that, but streamlining and trimming the bloat/fat during good times signals to investors that there must something wrong with the org (just look at Intel) which will cause the stock price to go down, so CEOs never do it during good times to signal that the org is "healthy and growing" even though everyone in the trenches knows there's tones of bloat piling up. The last bull run fueled by negative rates lasted far longer than it should, which lead to growth for the sake of growth without efficiency in mind, which lead bloat and inefficiencies to accumulate far more than normal, which nobody dared to address because "line goes up". Now that the line went down, CEOs feel pressured to remove all the ballast they accumulated, which causes the line to go back up.
- dieselgate 4y ago
  Great use of ballast!
lapcat 4y ago
There's a huge difference between "caring" and acting effectively. If the CEO is letting the company get bloated in better economic conditions and self-destructively slashing in worse economic conditions, who cares whether they "care"? One might say that the CEO in both of these cases is merely reactive and not proactive. Anyone can follow the winds as they shift. Also, "the economy" is merely an aggregate, an abstraction. In every economy there are both winners and losers. People tend to forget that one of the most successful products in history, the iPhone, was introduced shortly before the so-called "Great Recession". Of course a lot of workers and consumers were hurting during that time, but apparently there were still plenty of people able to afford new iPhones too. Imagine if Apple had decided to cut back severely rather than investing; that would have been a huge mistake. If you believe in your product, then you need to stick with it.
- cptaj 4y ago
  I think I can put this duality in developer terms. Technical debt. When you're growing fast, you accrue technical debt because you prioritize milestones over quality. The same goes for the hiring process. You might need a big push for some deliverable so you hire more people. After that, you're stuck with the people and whatever structural growth your company went through. Then on the software side, the project gets bloated and grids to a halt so some asshole proposes a refactor in rust. This is largely useless and will further complicate things. Same can happen for layoffs in bloated company. You wanted to streamline but you ended up disrupting the processes you had and losing talent, which leads you to bad performance and rehiring.
  - SkipperCat 4y ago
    Sound like laying off the person who wants to refactor in Rust would be a win-win.
    - version_five 4y ago
      I thought that went without saying
  - karmakaze 4y ago
    OT: Pet peeve 'refactor' is not synonymous with arbitrary (or even deduplicating) change to source code. It's to consciously choose a (different) factor to separate out and allow seams to form around. People who use 'refactor' too generically are often focused more on the form of solution than the problems themselves.
- bombcar 4y ago
  Also if you try to enact layoffs during the “boom times” every single manager will be demanding a “special case” for their team - a big headache. If everyone’s doing it in crunch times, the internal pushback is much less.

ChuckNorris89 4y ago

Not only that, but streamlining and trimming the bloat/fat during good times signals to investors that there must something wrong with the org (just look at Intel) which will cause the stock price to go down, so CEOs never do it during good times to signal that the org is "healthy and growing" even though everyone in the trenches knows there's tones of bloat piling up. The last bull run fueled by negative rates lasted far longer than it should, which lead to growth for the sake of growth without efficiency in mind, which lead bloat and inefficiencies to accumulate far more than normal, which nobody dared to address because "line goes up". Now that the line went down, CEOs feel pressured to remove all the ballast they accumulated, which causes the line to go back up.

dieselgate 4y ago
Great use of ballast!

lapcat 4y ago

There's a huge difference between "caring" and acting effectively. If the CEO is letting the company get bloated in better economic conditions and self-destructively slashing in worse economic conditions, who cares whether they "care"? One might say that the CEO in both of these cases is merely reactive and not proactive. Anyone can follow the winds as they shift. Also, "the economy" is merely an aggregate, an abstraction. In every economy there are both winners and losers. People tend to forget that one of the most successful products in history, the iPhone, was introduced shortly before the so-called "Great Recession". Of course a lot of workers and consumers were hurting during that time, but apparently there were still plenty of people able to afford new iPhones too. Imagine if Apple had decided to cut back severely rather than investing; that would have been a huge mistake. If you believe in your product, then you need to stick with it.

cptaj 4y ago
I think I can put this duality in developer terms. Technical debt. When you're growing fast, you accrue technical debt because you prioritize milestones over quality. The same goes for the hiring process. You might need a big push for some deliverable so you hire more people. After that, you're stuck with the people and whatever structural growth your company went through. Then on the software side, the project gets bloated and grids to a halt so some asshole proposes a refactor in rust. This is largely useless and will further complicate things. Same can happen for layoffs in bloated company. You wanted to streamline but you ended up disrupting the processes you had and losing talent, which leads you to bad performance and rehiring.
- SkipperCat 4y ago
  Sound like laying off the person who wants to refactor in Rust would be a win-win.
  - version_five 4y ago
    I thought that went without saying
- karmakaze 4y ago
  OT: Pet peeve 'refactor' is not synonymous with arbitrary (or even deduplicating) change to source code. It's to consciously choose a (different) factor to separate out and allow seams to form around. People who use 'refactor' too generically are often focused more on the form of solution than the problems themselves.
bombcar 4y ago
Also if you try to enact layoffs during the “boom times” every single manager will be demanding a “special case” for their team - a big headache. If everyone’s doing it in crunch times, the internal pushback is much less.