8 ms·

Red Hat layoffs spark calls to unionize, CEO wades in

80 points by Dotnaught 3y ago

jleyank 3y ago
I thought Apple finally floated or at least talked about layoffs. Is there any tech company (or any other than Apple) that hasn't whacked a slug of people right now? Does this indicate their management can't really plan properly and over-hires or just hires people to keep them off the street? Or that they can't count and over-fire/layoff? Or it's just me-too to satisfy Wall Streets short-term fixation? How many people are really required to keep the lights on and even create new things vs. how many people have been hired and now laid off to drive the stock price?
- jopolous 3y ago
  > Is there any tech company (or any other than Apple) that hasn't whacked a slug of people right now? I don’t think Adobe has had general layoffs yet
  - doodlesdev 3y ago
    Yup How Adobe’s CFO is avoiding mass layoffs: ‘We don’t want our employees worried about when the next shoe is going to drop’ https://fortune.com/2023/03/22/adobe-mass-layoffs-tech-industry-trends/
    - jleyank 3y ago
      Good for them. They’re older, more established than some and might actually give a sh*t about their staff.
    - solarkraft 3y ago
      Seems like companies are either friendly to their customers or their staff. I guess this makes sense since it's largely about the allocation of resources.
- rcme 3y ago
  I don’t even think this about over hiring. That was certainly part of it in the beginning, but why wouldn’t you fire people now? The tech labor market is very soft. You could rehire people a few months down the line for similar roles at a fraction of the price.
  - yarg 3y ago
    > but why wouldn’t you fire people now? Trust. If you want people to want to work for you, you shouldn't be seen getting rid of people for no reason at all.
    - rcme 3y ago
      This isn’t the 60s. Trust hasn’t been part of the employment equation for a long time.
      - aaomidi 3y ago
        It was in this sector. It’s now lost in this sector.
      - Brian_K_White 3y ago
        It hasn't, but this is a bad thing and it's right to call it a bad thing.
      - lenkite 3y ago
        But the statements made by the CEO's always talk about employee trust and being a family.
      - janosd 3y ago
        At Red Hat, it was. The culture was such, for the most part, that you never had to be worried about getting fired unless you really badly messed up. People felt safe. Many said that Red Hat would never do layoffs. There were many boomerangs who went to other companies and came back for the culture. I guess that feeling of safety is now gone. Source: I just left Red Hat unrelated to the layoffs.
- YZF 3y ago
  I work at an S&P 500 US tech company and we did not, and do not (fingers crossed), plan to lay people off.
- geodel 3y ago
  Looking from employees' side I don't see it is specially worse that someone got job for few years and then laid off vs never got hired because all companies are super cautious about any economic slowdown that may happen in future. I understand it takes some mystique of brilliance off of CEOs, CFOs and founders and make them seem rather ordinary. However I'd say this is a fact known to most who have given few thoughts about how real world works and how luck / random fluctuation can play a major part in outsize success in life. Of course media can't really put in such plain language as it would just blow up million narrations about man and woman came up on top when all the odds were stacked against them.
  - jleyank 3y ago
    Young, single and renting, yeah, not so bad. Older, married, mortgaged and possibly kids, well, having to uproot and possibly sell a house in a down market and also possibly live apart for a while, sucks. People bet a portion of their lives on their employer and there’s a lot of hassle recovering from unplanned changes. And in the states, cobra can be expensive. Not everybody can run barefoot. Edit: forgot, might have to scramble re immigration upon layoff.
    - tasuki 3y ago
      > People bet a portion of their lives on their employer and there’s a lot of hassle recovering from unplanned changes. Based on whatever laws protect you as an employee, I don't see why people bet such a large portion of their lives on their employer. My spouse died recently and I was left to care for a toddler by myself. It was rough. I could not work anymore and after some period of unpaid leave, my employer proposed to end our cooperation. I think it was fair. They had paid me well for my work and I was smart enough not to blow it all on big cars and other useless things. Highly paid specialists complaining about the big tech layoffs are either in a better position than me (usually they either have no dependents or have a spouse to help with either the mortgage or the kids), or their bad situation is entirely self-inflicted by their reckless spending.
      - fatfingerd 3y ago
- mensetmanusman 3y ago
  Apple has a McDuck pile of gold. Mass layoffs would kill morale and hurt long term value.
roenxi 3y ago
I'm going to keep saying it - unionising has been a bad stratagy that loses. That has been true pretty much forever. Trying to muscle and threaten the organisation in the world most willing to give you money is wildly silly. Red Hat doing layoffs doesn't change that. Software Engineers have been massive winners of the hyper-capitalist faster-than-regulation world of software. The salaries are outrageous relative to the amount of effort put in. Changing strategies because of a 5% workforce reduction would be stupid. As a body of engineers we all stand to gain far more by breaking the anachronistic guilds in law, medicine and other trades than from unionising in software. We'd see some real progress in medicine if it was easier for people to get in and fix the rather obvious problems that plague the industry. I know that'd do much more good for my family than me avoiding the pain of sending out a lot of resumes every 2 decades. Locking down software companies did not work in Europe. They just ended up playing 2nd fiddle to more cut-throat approaches. It won't help. People might get an emotional kick out of it, but we'll end up paying more and getting less if people keep trying to force companies to make irrational decisions.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- jselysianeagle 3y ago
  > I know that'd do much more good for my family than me avoiding the pain of sending out a lot of resumes every 2 decades. Every 2 decades?! I'd say it's more like every 2-3 years. Also I'm not sure the salaries are "outrageous" except for a select few devs working at FAANGs, and those only make up a small fraction of all developers out there. The majority are making at best a comfortable but not "outrageous" salary wherever they happen to be working.
  - roenxi 3y ago
    If you're getting sacked every 2-3 years, with all due respect, you are doing something wrong. > The majority are making at best a comfortable but not "outrageous" salary wherever they happen to be working. I've talked to a lot of old people, seen plumbers and tradespeople at work and visited Asia a couple of times. Read a bit of history in my spare time. The majority may believe that but they are working from instinct rather than evidence. The evidence is they have one of the most comfortable, low risk existences in the history of humanity. Both in an absolute and relative sense, also when compared to currently living humans. But that isn't even important. What matters here is unionising won't make it better. It'll probably cause them to revert to the mean by driving wealth out of software companies. Companies don't sack people out of a love of sacking people.
encryptluks2 3y ago
[dead]
boomboomsubban 3y ago
>about half of which is paid out in three-year intervals to incentivize commitment to long-term performance "Long term" for an operating system is slightly over three times "long term" for an executive. And I'd bet it's more that negotiating executive salaries every year requires more executives which would cost more, long term incentives aren't the issue.

80 points by Dotnaught 3y ago

I thought Apple finally floated or at least talked about layoffs. Is there any tech company (or any other than Apple) that hasn't whacked a slug of people right now? Does this indicate their management can't really plan properly and over-hires or just hires people to keep them off the street? Or that they can't count and over-fire/layoff? Or it's just me-too to satisfy Wall Streets short-term fixation? How many people are really required to keep the lights on and even create new things vs. how many people have been hired and now laid off to drive the stock price?

jopolous 3y ago
> Is there any tech company (or any other than Apple) that hasn't whacked a slug of people right now? I don’t think Adobe has had general layoffs yet
- doodlesdev 3y ago
  Yup How Adobe’s CFO is avoiding mass layoffs: ‘We don’t want our employees worried about when the next shoe is going to drop’ https://fortune.com/2023/03/22/adobe-mass-layoffs-tech-industry-trends/
  - jleyank 3y ago
    Good for them. They’re older, more established than some and might actually give a sh*t about their staff.
  - solarkraft 3y ago
    Seems like companies are either friendly to their customers or their staff. I guess this makes sense since it's largely about the allocation of resources.
rcme 3y ago
I don’t even think this about over hiring. That was certainly part of it in the beginning, but why wouldn’t you fire people now? The tech labor market is very soft. You could rehire people a few months down the line for similar roles at a fraction of the price.
- yarg 3y ago
  > but why wouldn’t you fire people now? Trust. If you want people to want to work for you, you shouldn't be seen getting rid of people for no reason at all.
  - rcme 3y ago
    This isn’t the 60s. Trust hasn’t been part of the employment equation for a long time.
    - aaomidi 3y ago
      It was in this sector. It’s now lost in this sector.
    - Brian_K_White 3y ago
      It hasn't, but this is a bad thing and it's right to call it a bad thing.
    - lenkite 3y ago
      But the statements made by the CEO's always talk about employee trust and being a family.
    - janosd 3y ago
      At Red Hat, it was. The culture was such, for the most part, that you never had to be worried about getting fired unless you really badly messed up. People felt safe. Many said that Red Hat would never do layoffs. There were many boomerangs who went to other companies and came back for the culture. I guess that feeling of safety is now gone. Source: I just left Red Hat unrelated to the layoffs.
YZF 3y ago
I work at an S&P 500 US tech company and we did not, and do not (fingers crossed), plan to lay people off.
geodel 3y ago
Looking from employees' side I don't see it is specially worse that someone got job for few years and then laid off vs never got hired because all companies are super cautious about any economic slowdown that may happen in future. I understand it takes some mystique of brilliance off of CEOs, CFOs and founders and make them seem rather ordinary. However I'd say this is a fact known to most who have given few thoughts about how real world works and how luck / random fluctuation can play a major part in outsize success in life. Of course media can't really put in such plain language as it would just blow up million narrations about man and woman came up on top when all the odds were stacked against them.
- jleyank 3y ago
  Young, single and renting, yeah, not so bad. Older, married, mortgaged and possibly kids, well, having to uproot and possibly sell a house in a down market and also possibly live apart for a while, sucks. People bet a portion of their lives on their employer and there’s a lot of hassle recovering from unplanned changes. And in the states, cobra can be expensive. Not everybody can run barefoot. Edit: forgot, might have to scramble re immigration upon layoff.
  - tasuki 3y ago
    > People bet a portion of their lives on their employer and there’s a lot of hassle recovering from unplanned changes. Based on whatever laws protect you as an employee, I don't see why people bet such a large portion of their lives on their employer. My spouse died recently and I was left to care for a toddler by myself. It was rough. I could not work anymore and after some period of unpaid leave, my employer proposed to end our cooperation. I think it was fair. They had paid me well for my work and I was smart enough not to blow it all on big cars and other useless things. Highly paid specialists complaining about the big tech layoffs are either in a better position than me (usually they either have no dependents or have a spouse to help with either the mortgage or the kids), or their bad situation is entirely self-inflicted by their reckless spending.
    - fatfingerd 3y ago
mensetmanusman 3y ago
Apple has a McDuck pile of gold. Mass layoffs would kill morale and hurt long term value.

roenxi 3y ago

I'm going to keep saying it - unionising has been a bad stratagy that loses. That has been true pretty much forever. Trying to muscle and threaten the organisation in the world most willing to give you money is wildly silly. Red Hat doing layoffs doesn't change that. Software Engineers have been massive winners of the hyper-capitalist faster-than-regulation world of software. The salaries are outrageous relative to the amount of effort put in. Changing strategies because of a 5% workforce reduction would be stupid. As a body of engineers we all stand to gain far more by breaking the anachronistic guilds in law, medicine and other trades than from unionising in software. We'd see some real progress in medicine if it was easier for people to get in and fix the rather obvious problems that plague the industry. I know that'd do much more good for my family than me avoiding the pain of sending out a lot of resumes every 2 decades. Locking down software companies did not work in Europe. They just ended up playing 2nd fiddle to more cut-throat approaches. It won't help. People might get an emotional kick out of it, but we'll end up paying more and getting less if people keep trying to force companies to make irrational decisions.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
jselysianeagle 3y ago
> I know that'd do much more good for my family than me avoiding the pain of sending out a lot of resumes every 2 decades. Every 2 decades?! I'd say it's more like every 2-3 years. Also I'm not sure the salaries are "outrageous" except for a select few devs working at FAANGs, and those only make up a small fraction of all developers out there. The majority are making at best a comfortable but not "outrageous" salary wherever they happen to be working.
- roenxi 3y ago
  If you're getting sacked every 2-3 years, with all due respect, you are doing something wrong. > The majority are making at best a comfortable but not "outrageous" salary wherever they happen to be working. I've talked to a lot of old people, seen plumbers and tradespeople at work and visited Asia a couple of times. Read a bit of history in my spare time. The majority may believe that but they are working from instinct rather than evidence. The evidence is they have one of the most comfortable, low risk existences in the history of humanity. Both in an absolute and relative sense, also when compared to currently living humans. But that isn't even important. What matters here is unionising won't make it better. It'll probably cause them to revert to the mean by driving wealth out of software companies. Companies don't sack people out of a love of sacking people.

encryptluks2 3y ago

[dead]

boomboomsubban 3y ago

>about half of which is paid out in three-year intervals to incentivize commitment to long-term performance "Long term" for an operating system is slightly over three times "long term" for an executive. And I'd bet it's more that negotiating executive salaries every year requires more executives which would cost more, long term incentives aren't the issue.