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Meta and Salesforce are looking to re-hire some workers they just laid off
- tedivm 3y agoWeb Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20230924232232/https://www.businessinsider.com/salesforce-meta-big-tech-companies-rehire-workers-employees-laid-off-2023-9 https://web.archive.org/web/20230924232232/https://www.busin...
- raverbashing 3y ago> Companies that handled layoffs poorly are likely to have a harder time convincing ex workers to go back, Sandra Sucher, a professor of management practice at Harvard Business School who's studied layoffs, said. Yeah, you don't need an MBA to know that, but good that's being said > Salesforce execs, and Benioff in particular, have over the years encouraged workers to view their colleagues and the company itself as "Ohana," a Hawaiian term referring to family. That's level 8 of drinking your own Koolaid. From Salesforce? I'd consider them only less impersonal than Oracle, and pretty much that's it.
- elzbardico 3y agoBeing laid off and re-hired later is common in blue-collar professions, and that's the way we are moving to in the long term. Be frugal, save money, because the future doesn't look very bright.
- oofta-boofta 3y ago[dead]
- teeray 3y agoCompanies continue to want to pretend like software development is a factory assembly line. Weird how those sprint commitments never get hit in the same way as “we want X cars to roll off the line this month.” It must be the workers. /s
- csomar 3y agoMaybe they can standardize this crap through more abstractions like React using the new AI available LLMs. So that now you pull a 3GB of code to compile just a "Hello World" website.
- kuchenbecker 3y agoFirst to market, get the market share before the competition, and focus on efficiency in V2. Put out 3 ideas in the time it takes another company to put out 1, and optimize the ideas that gain traction.
- eklavya 3y agoBut there is some truth here that the car factories are not trying to change/reinvent their tools every 6 months.
- a-user-you-like 3y agoSave money when the fed can print it all away?
- tombert 3y agoI am not a financial advisor, but I think most financial advisors would not recommend you save all your money in cash, in no small part because of potential inflation. I think the typical rule is to save N months of bills [1] in cash (or something cash-adjacent like a CD or T-Bill), and the rest in an index fund/ETF from something like Vanguard of Fidelity or something like that. This allows you to somewhat "outsource" the problems of inflation to corporations. [1] the size of N probably depends on the person and cost of living and all that fun stuff, but I think it's usually 6.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- truegoric 3y agoThat is very interesting, and I suppose it speaks to the historical amnesia among IT specialists, since I believe the majority of us don’t really see ourselves as belonging to the working class.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- erikerikson 3y agoCar mechanics and manufacturers used to feel this way.
- wenebego 3y agoIf the majority of your income comes from labor, as opposed to interest on capital, you are working class. The non-working class likes more divisions between the working class, so works to perpetuate this misunderstanding.
- pcthrowaway 3y agoMaybe the above poster was referencing the startup founders and early employees on HN, who could be considered to not be working class, depending on their ownership stake and success of their company.
- antisthenes 3y agoThere are only 2 classes, the worker class, and the ownership class that doesn't really have to work (e.g. could stop working tomorrow and be fine until retirement/death)
- tombert 3y agoYeah, I was unemployed for four months this year due to layoffs. It was unpleasant, obviously, but I am extremely glad that I have been really vigilant about saving money for the last few years. It sucks not having an income, but it sucks less if you have a nice, healthy savings to draw from. It moves the problem away from the "how will I eat or afford rent?" territory, and more towards the "I guess I'll buy that thing next year" territory.
- gottorf 3y ago> Be frugal, save money Whether or not the future looks bright, this is sound advice for everyone. As an immigrant to the US, one of my biggest culture shocks was how little the average American saves, and how little it's emphasized in the culture. Perhaps it speaks to how much faith the public has in government-provided social programs, despite the popular notion that the US does very little for its poor and elderly. (Are things different in Western Europe?)
- tombert 3y agoFrom what I've read, it actually appears to be somewhat generational; apparently Gen-Z has, broadly speaking, actually picked up some good habits and seems to be saving money at a higher rate than previous generations. [1] Of course, speaking about people in terms of generations is not something I really enjoy doing (especially since it does seem like millennials get a disproportionate level of hate on that front), but I think in the case of Gen-Z a lot of it has to do with the fact that a lot of them grew up right around the 2008 financial crash and realized how important saving money is. [1] https://www.rocketmortgage.com/learn/gen-z-financial-goals-2023 https://www.rocketmortgage.com/learn/gen-z-financial-goals-2...
- consoomer 3y ago[flagged]
- ch4s3 3y agoLet's not be hyperbolic, these people were paid better than 90-5% of workers in the wealthiest country int he world. * [EDIT] since no one seems to understand my point here let me clarify. It is crass and stupid to compare layoffs at big tech to violence against women and human trafficking. Just utterly disgusting and it comes across as entitled and totally disconnected. You can support labor without comparing like wealthy workers to the most vulnerable people in society and pretending you have similar grievance.
- nine_zeros 3y ago> Let's not be hyperbolic, these people were paid better than 90-5% of workers in the wealthiest country int he world. Paying more money doesn't change the poor experience.
- ch4s3 3y agoObviously, but it's a far cry from sexual violence and trafficking and the comparison is gross.
- consoomer 3y agoThat's not what you said though.
- ch4s3 3y agoIt basically is though. I'm pointed out that despite being poorly treated, the people in question are among the wealthiest int he whole world. They are in no way comparable to victims of trafficking. The original comment just came across as hyperbolic, crass, and entitled.
- hedora 3y ago> The advice varied to return but keep looking, don't return, or demand more pay to return. Sounds about right to me. "Return but keep looking" is probably the nightmare scenario for the employer. The worker hasn't found a job yet, and is only going to be 50% paying attention when they come back. (Not judging the employee here. Just the idiot that order the lay off of people the company needed.)
- dghlsakjg 3y agoDemand more pay and keep looking after rehire. If they want to make shortsighted decisions to hit quarterly goals, they should be reminded of the high price of short term thinking.
- gustavus 3y agoLink to another discussion pointing out that M$ layoffs were the result of wall st. investment firms and hedge fund managers wanting to reduce tech salaries. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37643608 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37643608
- lotsofpulp 3y agoWhat evidence is there to indicate the board of directors or CEO of one of the world’s richest and most profitable businesses is controlled by much less powerful and less wealthy Wall St investment firms and hedge fund managers?
- colpabar 3y agoYou could make the same argument about the US government, and yet the "much less powerful and less wealthy" groups still have a ton of influence over it. You are expecting it to make perfect logical sense, when it could all be very easily explained with one word: greed. Stop giving them the benefit of the doubt and stop believing that the ultra rich don't all work together to take more of your money, because they do, they have been forever, and they continue to do so forever.
- lotsofpulp 3y agoInfluence is not control. I will rephrase my comment. A simpler explanation for Microsoft’s actions is that the Microsoft board of directors and CEO wanted those actions to occur, for their own benefit. The whole hedge fund manager and Wall St boogeyman is nonsense. Who even is “Wall St”? Lots of people own shares of Microsoft. There are probably a bunch of people who influence Microsoft’s leaders more than some paper pushers in NYC.
- RandomLensman 3y agoHave you ever been in cost program discussions in the c-suite or with investors?
- FredPret 3y ago
- hk1337 3y agoI could be mistaken and maybe it always just corporate speak but wasn't the original intent of being "laid off" was that it was temporary?
- bink 3y agoThe most common reason I heard in their announcements was that they drastically over-hired during the pandemic and needed to downsize to adjust to "market conditions". Are they saying market conditions have substantially improved?
- thfuran 3y agoI don't think so. If it's meant to be temporary, doesn't it get called a furlough instead? That's the "we're not firing you because we want you to do work for us later, but also we're going to stop paying you" option.
- thinkharderdev 3y agoFurlough can be very different. Usually "furloughed" employees are still employed and continue receiving benefits (health insurance, etc). I guess if there were no benefits they would be the same though.
- thinkmassive 3y agoInteresting, apparently it used to mean either, without prescribing a timeframe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Layoff https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Layoff I think the meaning has fully shifted to imply permanence, for at least a couple decades now. The word that comes to mind for a temporary situation is furlough, although I’ve mainly heard that used in a government context. Maybe the difference is that most people now change jobs often enough, that the government is the only entity that would promise to re-employ those they temporarily couldn’t pay.
- thinkharderdev 3y agoI think it just means "let go not because of individual performance" as opposed to "fired" meaning "let go because of bad individual performance." It think of it in the sense that you are talking about though because I grew up with a lot of people in the building trades. They often use "laid off" to mean basically "there's not enough work so I'm not getting hours until there is more" (eg temporary). But I think that is pretty specific to those industries where there is pretty fixed pool of labor and the work is highly seasonal.
- gorbachev 3y agoSo overhiring AND overfiring. What a great testament to the management acumen at these companies.
- vsareto 3y agoIt's good management from certain perspectives. Whether we actually do something about companies constantly introducing volatility to our social livelihoods, abusing workers, and eroding our buying power is really up to us though. You have to make it heinously unprofitable, since that's really the only mechanism in capitalism that would course-correct this behavior.
- oneepic 3y agoI have no management experience, but I wonder if there's a certain level up the ladder where one person just can't do most/all things well? There are so many problems and teams, even being accountable to a fraction of them would be taxing. Not saying this to remove accountability, but I know I would personally collapse in that job.
- MilStdJunkie 3y agoLet go of the wrong people, and now the best of those won't be back. Ever wonder why aerospace/manufacturing has a hard time getting the crème de la crème? This is why. We got layoff/rehire cycles at least once a year. It's like when you sell all of your crap in an RPG but then find out no one will sell you back the Really Cool Thing you whoops-dumped in the sale. It's an eff-up, but when you got cheat codes, it really doesn't matter. Now, if someone takes your cheat codes away . .
- oneepic 3y agoIs "cheat codes" an analogy to something?
- SebJansen 3y agoenough money to throw around
- Dylan16807 3y agoThese companies generally do still have money to throw around.
- harshalizee 3y agoAn analogy for the desperate looking for employment, colluding to suppress wages across the industry, skewed supply-demand ratios in their favor. Take your pick.
- Dylan16807 3y agoI think 1 and 3 are the same thing, but collusion sounds like it would be much more of a cheat code. Still, if it's not clear which one of those things they meant, then whatever they were implying is totally lost, and it's not a good place to use an analogy.
- MilStdJunkie 3y agoFinancialization. The capability to create "today money" from "tomorrow money" at extremely low levels of perceived risk. Sometimes we dip our webbed flippers into the idea of negative risk, with predictable - but extremely today-dollar-rific - results. Offtopic, but this magical money-generation capability is commonly perceived as a standin for any value-generation capability, from aerodynamics to materials science. Go wander the C-Suite of a major aerospace firm and count the engineering degrees, then go back and count the MBAs. It's every bit as absurd as late-stage Soviet Russia injecting "Socialism" into fields like fluid dynamics. If this disagrees with anyone's ideology, I preemptively apologize. Go ahead and throw stuff at the monitor.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y agoDoes anyone know if they are being offered more pay the second time around? Or at least the same salary as before?
- idkyall 3y agoFrom what I've heard, I believe they are paying market rate for the new role, so for people who have been at the company for a while and stagnated in the pay bands it can be a raise
- commandlinefan 3y agoI wouldn't be surprised if they were offering less - people who've been out of work for months are pretty desperate.
- GoToRO 3y agoThis is the only time an employee has true power. You ask what you want and say no otherwise. You will be surprise.
- nine_zeros 3y agoThe industry used to have lifers in the last century. That reduced to 10 years at a company in the dotcoms. That reduced to 4 years at a company in the 00s. That reduced to 18 months pre-pandemic. Right now, I don't even know why software engineers should do anything but keep hopping jobs all the time. There is less value in promotions/raises/loyalty than in constant hopping.
- thfuran 3y agoBecause there's more to life than maximizing pay.
- nine_zeros 3y agoThe "more to life" part cannot even be obtained at massively profitable companies because the companies will yank you at the slightest sign of slowdown. You might not want to hop but the company might want you to hop.
- thfuran 3y agoI don't think my employer has ever laid anyone off. Some people have been fired for cause and some people have quit but no layoffs. Not all companies are giant corporate behemoths that run everything by metrics.
- lotsofpulp 3y agoI graduated in the mid 2000s and even then everyone knew to job hop to maintain competitive compensation.
- dehrmann 3y agoMaybe it's the era when I started working, but for ICs, I think 2-5 years is the sweet spot. Any shorter and you weren't fully productive at the company and never built connections. Any longer and your skills get too tied to the company and your perspective become stale.
- commandlinefan 3y ago
- charcircuit 3y agoThis is a lazy article that just says that these companies are still hiring people. Big companies will always be hiring people as there is constantly positions that need to be backfilled or new priorities that need extra headcount. Having a layoff doesn't mean a company will never hire anyone ever again. It's common for people who were laid off from something the company is no longer prioritizing to be able to find a position in an area that the company is now prioritizing.
- zamalek 3y ago> the company itself as "Ohana," a Hawaiian term referring to family. I don't care if you truly feel like family where you work - please stop believing this bullshit. The socialization and fraternization of work is big fat lie that routinely gets employees to act as volunteers. Your CEO is probably a socio- or psychopath and will say and do whatever benefits them the most. Even if they are not, they ultimately answer to investors/shareholders, not their "family." If you were truly family to them, they would take a pay-cut before sacking you. Again, the concept "Ohana" at work, as a matter of fact, is NEVER true.
- mym1990 3y agoI will say I have made some great friends from work, some life long lasting relationships I hope...but I don't think any of those people are the ones that preach the whole 'family' thing. You don't need to be reminded who your family or close friends are...it kind of just comes from the experiences you've been through. All that to say...I agree!
- marcosdumay 3y agoI'd say that even in a family meeting, is somebody keeps saying "we are your family", that's a pretty strong red flag.
- mym1990 3y agoYeah, usually a guilt trip type of moment.
- elromulous 3y agoBtw, sociopathy and psychopathy are different terms for the same thing. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy#Sociopathy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy#Sociopathy
- l3mure 3y agoThe haole plantation owners who seized Hawaii were probably saying the same thing back in 1893.
- micromacrofoot 3y agoIf this is you, don't overlook the opportunity to negotiate. Being asked back is already recognizing that you're more valuable than a new employee would be.
- dehrmann 3y agoYou can also ask for things like a generous signing bonus with the the condition that if you leave through no fault of your own, you keep the whole bonus. It's a way to make sure both sides are serious.
- darth_avocado 3y agoCompanies are no longer negotiating and also low balling you. You should absolutely ask for market rates + raise + bonus to cover the lost wages. If they don't negotiate, then it's not worth going back.
- truegoric 3y agoIt looks like Naur’s paper is as topical as ever (https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2022/theory-building/ https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2022/theory-building/).
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Simulacra 3y agoI remember in the 90s my mom would go through phases with Corning, getting laid off, then rehired, laid off again, all by the stock price, contracts, etc. I really hope the tech industry doesn't get into this model.
- edmundsauto 3y agoI generally share a skeptical take when it comes to employment, but there is also a less devious narrative that fits the available evidence. These companies wanted to cut projects and orgs because they didn’t see a future in them. They needed the ability to make clean cuts, which meant taking out some of the meat with the fat. Otherwise the layoffs get drawn out and messy with internal fighting over headcount. I bet the employees who got laid off then rehired are pretty happy. Some of them even got a 4 month garden leave of sorts, then return to their old company.
- cmiles74 3y agoIMHO being laid off is stressful, even if you can logically tell yourself it's not yet time to worry (i.e. you have a good amount of savings). I sincerely doubt these employees felt anything like being on vacation. As to a "less devious narrative," I think all we need to do is remove this idea of planned outcome (lower wages for people working in software) in order to strike the "devious" from this theory. It's clear Wall Street wanted tech companies across the board to shed employees, as others have pointed out that's probably enough to get CEOs to lay people off.
- mrinterweb 3y agoI feel that institutional knowledge is incredibly important, especially in tech, and probably undervalued with the decision to layoff. On boarding costs for new engineers is very high. Layoff and rehire cycles don't make sense in tech for those reasons.
- tmaly 3y agoIf I were in this situation, and I was considering a return, I would negotiate hard for both financial and non-financial benefits.
- Shorel 3y ago"Some might demand better pay to go back..." Understatement of the year. Who in their right mind would go back without at least better pay? We change employer to get better pay. Getting re-hired also counts as a new employer for this purpose.
- jedberg 3y ago> Who in their right mind would go back without at least better pay? Someone who is looking at their upcoming mortgage payments and their empty savings account.
- Nellyz 3y ago[dead]
- Anya200 3y ago[flagged]