4 ms·

Being that the job market is currently favoring employers over employees, I'd say they'll likely have no trouble finding new staff that has no problem with work

Being that the job market is currently favoring employers over employees, I'd say they'll likely have no trouble finding new staff that has no problem with working in the office. They still have enough staff to get the new folks trained up. This would have hurt them a few years ago, but not now.

sarchertech 3y ago
Losing half your staff is going to hurt you no matter what the labor market looks like. It’s likely that they’ll be losing a disproportionate number of high performers, and it’s going to take more than a year to work that many people through the hiring pipeline, and ramp them up fully.
- btbuildem 3y ago
  And good luck hiring anyone respectable after that show of disloyalty.
spacemadness 3y ago
Jokes on the people that stayed. The CEO should thank them for their sacrifice in working overtime constantly “for the good of the company.”
- znpy 3y ago
  The people who stayed can give their two week notice next week and argue that they are way more critical now.
  - hdjjhhvvhga 3y ago
    Unless they do it en masse, it won't work.
    - znpy 3y ago
      actually if they do it one by one it's just better.
Longlius 3y ago
Yeah they can have folks trained up a year from now assuming they can fill the spots immediately. For the next year or so, they'll probably be far below capacity.
OkayPhysicist 3y ago
You're overlooking the main issue with firing half your staff: you've just lost a huge swath of your institutional knowledge. That's what turns your living codebase into legacy code. A new hire, even a fantastic code ninja guru rockstar 10x unassailable god king new hire, is going to have to spend a lot of time learning your codebase. Even when they are at a level when they can productively dig through it to do bugfixes and feature implementations, they'll likely have big holes in their knowledge: Was this weird hack a temporary solution gone permanent, or the result of an important tradeoff between elegance and performance? Is the new hire going to find the relevant pre-existing extension point to add their new feature, or are they just going to build a new one? The reason you hire software engineers on salary instead of just hiring contractors is because you need vessels to store knowledge in. That knowledge can be passed down and maintained with a relatively low rate of turnover, which is the opposite of "in 2 days we're replacing half our workforce".
- KptMarchewa 3y ago
  I agree - but I think this decision was made pretty consciously. As in, they did internal equivalent of PE buyout. Accept you're not growth company, get rid of large portion of the staff, cut all new developments and prospects, rest of remaining stuff just supports existing business. And extract all the wealth from this position that you can.
  - OkayPhysicist 3y ago
    Oh, in this case it was just shameless union busting. Taking an axe to your company yourself is a helluva lot cheaper than hiring the Pinkertons.
    - johnnyanmac 3y ago
      It'a a mix of a declining economy and convinient union busting. Many other companies are ding this sot layoff strategy and don't have looming unions to worry about.
  - ericmcer 3y ago

sarchertech 3y ago

Losing half your staff is going to hurt you no matter what the labor market looks like. It’s likely that they’ll be losing a disproportionate number of high performers, and it’s going to take more than a year to work that many people through the hiring pipeline, and ramp them up fully.

btbuildem 3y ago
And good luck hiring anyone respectable after that show of disloyalty.

spacemadness 3y ago

Jokes on the people that stayed. The CEO should thank them for their sacrifice in working overtime constantly “for the good of the company.”

znpy 3y ago
The people who stayed can give their two week notice next week and argue that they are way more critical now.
- hdjjhhvvhga 3y ago
  Unless they do it en masse, it won't work.
  - znpy 3y ago
    actually if they do it one by one it's just better.

Longlius 3y ago

Yeah they can have folks trained up a year from now assuming they can fill the spots immediately. For the next year or so, they'll probably be far below capacity.

OkayPhysicist 3y ago

You're overlooking the main issue with firing half your staff: you've just lost a huge swath of your institutional knowledge. That's what turns your living codebase into legacy code. A new hire, even a fantastic code ninja guru rockstar 10x unassailable god king new hire, is going to have to spend a lot of time learning your codebase. Even when they are at a level when they can productively dig through it to do bugfixes and feature implementations, they'll likely have big holes in their knowledge: Was this weird hack a temporary solution gone permanent, or the result of an important tradeoff between elegance and performance? Is the new hire going to find the relevant pre-existing extension point to add their new feature, or are they just going to build a new one? The reason you hire software engineers on salary instead of just hiring contractors is because you need vessels to store knowledge in. That knowledge can be passed down and maintained with a relatively low rate of turnover, which is the opposite of "in 2 days we're replacing half our workforce".

KptMarchewa 3y ago
I agree - but I think this decision was made pretty consciously. As in, they did internal equivalent of PE buyout. Accept you're not growth company, get rid of large portion of the staff, cut all new developments and prospects, rest of remaining stuff just supports existing business. And extract all the wealth from this position that you can.
- OkayPhysicist 3y ago
  Oh, in this case it was just shameless union busting. Taking an axe to your company yourself is a helluva lot cheaper than hiring the Pinkertons.
  - johnnyanmac 3y ago
    It'a a mix of a declining economy and convinient union busting. Many other companies are ding this sot layoff strategy and don't have looming unions to worry about.
- ericmcer 3y ago