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Layoffs may be needed. But there should be a healthy dose of executives included for making those hiring decisions. And they should do it all at once. Doing it

Layoffs may be needed. But there should be a healthy dose of executives included for making those hiring decisions. And they should do it all at once. Doing it in waves is absolutely brutal.

UncleOxidant 3y ago
I was talking to a neighbor who works at AWS. Asked how it was going and he said so far so good "I've survived 3 layoffs so far". And I was like, "3 layoffs? I thought there was only one so far?" and he replied that there have been a couple others that weren't publicized so much.
- LegitShady 3y ago
  I have a hard time believing it - the journos are interested in the kind of muck and if there have been additional 2 rounds of layoffs how did they keep it quiet?
  - haliskerbas 3y ago
    Might be the difference between a legally disclosed layoff and “my whole org was gutted by our director” but not big enough to require a legal disclosure.
  - PragmaticPulp 3y ago
    Layoffs happen at different scales within a company. Individual departments can have layoffs that aren't newsworthy. If someone's budget gets cut, they might have to layoff a number of people. The reason the big layoffs are newsworthy is that they impact most or all of the company at once. The big layoffs are usually associated with company-wide hiring slowdowns. The individual org/department layoffs are often not really noteworthy in the context of the entire company.
    - LegitShady 3y ago
      I feel like I'd have read about it on twitter or mastodon or whatever else people are using these days.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - vdnkh 3y ago
    Seriously? Just google it, there's plenty of articles. And unless the OP is lying (they're not), they're literally providing you with info from a firsthand source. Whats with HN and sealioning in every freaking comment lately?
    - LegitShady 3y ago
      thats not what a firsthand source is - I would have to trust that two anonymous people were telling the truth. Also, not trusting everything you're told without evidence of some kind isn't sealioning, and nobody is required to trust randoms when they make sourceless claims. Maybe keep your outrage to yourself because you becoming toxic when people don't accept sourceless claims doesn't do anything but show the world you're having trouble being civil in response to...a request for some kind of evidence of a claim by anonymous people. Just relax and move on instead of being outraged.
- trashface 3y ago
  I heard a similar story from someone I know at AWS.
- roym6 3y ago
  Theres been 3 layoffs at Amazon so far, but not all three have been focused on AWS. The first targeted HR/recruiting, the second physical stores and .com, and this current third one is hitting AWS and ads.
rossdavidh 3y ago
I worked for about a decade in the semiconductor manufacturing industry, at a time (90's) when it was mostly moving out of Silicon Valley (and then overseas). There was a clear pattern that companies that hadn't done layoffs very often, were clumsier (which often felt like "brutal" to those affected), and the ones who had done it through several previous downturns were less clumsy at it. One of the lessons that companies learned, is that you should do it all in one wave and be done with it (until the next recession), rather than hoping that a small one is all you will need, and realizing a few months later that you were wrong and need to do it again.
mikrl 3y ago
>they should do it all at once When I was last laid off, the meeting was concurrent with my friend on another team. I was not laid off by my manager but my 2x skip; other members of my team were laid off, presumably at the same time, by someone else in our CoC. So based on these observations, I think for security etc reasons you need to lay people off all at once in batches. Too easy for lag to create ‘insider/outsider threat’ situations. Obviously my points are redundant if you just do it over email.
- dx034 3y ago
  While you cannot fire everyone in the same second, you can have batches over a few days. There's no need for waves that span over months. If anything, the risk of IP theft is much bigger if people have weeks of uncertainty if they'll be affected by the next layoff.
PragmaticPulp 3y ago
Doing one perfect layoff that hits the exact target is ideal in theory, but it's really hard to do at this scale. Meta is so big that it can take many months to sort through everything. Logistically, a couple rounds of layoffs can make more sense than trying to force it all to happen at once. There's also a big risk of cutting too deep. If you try to downsize the company to hit some gloomy economic outlook that turns out to be too pessimistic, you might have to rapidly rehire. It can be better to make a few incremental changes to the company with some time to reassess in between. So yes: One, single, perfect layoff is ideal. But the real world isn't ideal. The real ideal would have been to not overhire in the first place, but everyone is trying to hit a moving target with the economy and the job market. Rolling layoffs are terrible, though. My last company would do seemingly random layoffs every other week for months on end. Orgs would change, spend a few weeks trying to get things back on track with whoever was left, then layoffs would rearrange the company again. Meta is at least being precise about implementations and timing.
- rootusrootus 3y ago
  > My last company would do seemingly random layoffs every other week for months on end. This sounds like my current company. Only a few truly announced layoffs, but every few weeks we quietly lose another round of people, usually entire teams. The rest of us are split between hoping to be in the next round, and just jumping ship.

Layoffs may be needed. But there should be a healthy dose of executives included for making those hiring decisions. And they should do it all at once. Doing it in waves is absolutely brutal.

UncleOxidant 3y ago

I was talking to a neighbor who works at AWS. Asked how it was going and he said so far so good "I've survived 3 layoffs so far". And I was like, "3 layoffs? I thought there was only one so far?" and he replied that there have been a couple others that weren't publicized so much.

LegitShady 3y ago
I have a hard time believing it - the journos are interested in the kind of muck and if there have been additional 2 rounds of layoffs how did they keep it quiet?
- haliskerbas 3y ago
  Might be the difference between a legally disclosed layoff and “my whole org was gutted by our director” but not big enough to require a legal disclosure.
- PragmaticPulp 3y ago
  Layoffs happen at different scales within a company. Individual departments can have layoffs that aren't newsworthy. If someone's budget gets cut, they might have to layoff a number of people. The reason the big layoffs are newsworthy is that they impact most or all of the company at once. The big layoffs are usually associated with company-wide hiring slowdowns. The individual org/department layoffs are often not really noteworthy in the context of the entire company.
  - LegitShady 3y ago
    I feel like I'd have read about it on twitter or mastodon or whatever else people are using these days.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- vdnkh 3y ago
  Seriously? Just google it, there's plenty of articles. And unless the OP is lying (they're not), they're literally providing you with info from a firsthand source. Whats with HN and sealioning in every freaking comment lately?
  - LegitShady 3y ago
    thats not what a firsthand source is - I would have to trust that two anonymous people were telling the truth. Also, not trusting everything you're told without evidence of some kind isn't sealioning, and nobody is required to trust randoms when they make sourceless claims. Maybe keep your outrage to yourself because you becoming toxic when people don't accept sourceless claims doesn't do anything but show the world you're having trouble being civil in response to...a request for some kind of evidence of a claim by anonymous people. Just relax and move on instead of being outraged.
trashface 3y ago
I heard a similar story from someone I know at AWS.
roym6 3y ago
Theres been 3 layoffs at Amazon so far, but not all three have been focused on AWS. The first targeted HR/recruiting, the second physical stores and .com, and this current third one is hitting AWS and ads.

rossdavidh 3y ago

I worked for about a decade in the semiconductor manufacturing industry, at a time (90's) when it was mostly moving out of Silicon Valley (and then overseas). There was a clear pattern that companies that hadn't done layoffs very often, were clumsier (which often felt like "brutal" to those affected), and the ones who had done it through several previous downturns were less clumsy at it. One of the lessons that companies learned, is that you should do it all in one wave and be done with it (until the next recession), rather than hoping that a small one is all you will need, and realizing a few months later that you were wrong and need to do it again.

mikrl 3y ago

>they should do it all at once When I was last laid off, the meeting was concurrent with my friend on another team. I was not laid off by my manager but my 2x skip; other members of my team were laid off, presumably at the same time, by someone else in our CoC. So based on these observations, I think for security etc reasons you need to lay people off all at once in batches. Too easy for lag to create ‘insider/outsider threat’ situations. Obviously my points are redundant if you just do it over email.

dx034 3y ago
While you cannot fire everyone in the same second, you can have batches over a few days. There's no need for waves that span over months. If anything, the risk of IP theft is much bigger if people have weeks of uncertainty if they'll be affected by the next layoff.

PragmaticPulp 3y ago

Doing one perfect layoff that hits the exact target is ideal in theory, but it's really hard to do at this scale. Meta is so big that it can take many months to sort through everything. Logistically, a couple rounds of layoffs can make more sense than trying to force it all to happen at once. There's also a big risk of cutting too deep. If you try to downsize the company to hit some gloomy economic outlook that turns out to be too pessimistic, you might have to rapidly rehire. It can be better to make a few incremental changes to the company with some time to reassess in between. So yes: One, single, perfect layoff is ideal. But the real world isn't ideal. The real ideal would have been to not overhire in the first place, but everyone is trying to hit a moving target with the economy and the job market. Rolling layoffs are terrible, though. My last company would do seemingly random layoffs every other week for months on end. Orgs would change, spend a few weeks trying to get things back on track with whoever was left, then layoffs would rearrange the company again. Meta is at least being precise about implementations and timing.

rootusrootus 3y ago
> My last company would do seemingly random layoffs every other week for months on end. This sounds like my current company. Only a few truly announced layoffs, but every few weeks we quietly lose another round of people, usually entire teams. The rest of us are split between hoping to be in the next round, and just jumping ship.