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> “It wasn’t for financial or company performance reasons,” he said. “Traffic has never been higher and we’re in a great place, financially. It was for strategi

by mvdtnz 3y ago

> “It wasn’t for financial or company performance reasons,” he said. “Traffic has never been higher and we’re in a great place, financially. It was for strategic reasons.” Good thing he's operating in the wild west. This admission would land him in court in my country. Absolute scum of the earth.

liquidise 3y ago
> Absolute scum of the earth. Strikes me as harsh given that we know essentially nothing about the company's plans. The laid off employees were given severance and the CEO offered to personally intro people to hiring companies. The CEO stated it was to increase speed and focus (i read as reducing meetings/overhead). I understand people are upset with layoffs taking place, but how do you think a company should behave when they realize they are wasting time and money?
- bastawhiz 3y ago
  > when they realize they are wasting time and money? > Traffic has never been higher and we’re in a great place, financially. It was for strategic reasons.” Call me old fashioned, but no amount of execs introing me to companies that are hiring forgives them for realizing they don't give a shit about me and my job because they'd rather make more money. They should have thought about that before hiring in the first place. Severance isn't a reward, it's the absolute bare minimum.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - missedthecue 3y ago
    How is it possible to justify this? Any layoff should have been thought about before they hired? In your sort of moral framework, a company would not be able to reduce headcount until bankruptcy. No, companies don't give a shit about you, it's egotistical to believe you're that important that you deserve ongoing charity paychecks just because they hired you at some point in the past. Employment is purely, by definition, a transactional relationship. You sell labor. They buy labor. It's why you are free to leave as soon as it makes sense, and it's why they can do the same.
    - bastawhiz 3y ago
      > In your sort of moral framework, a company would not be able to reduce headcount until bankruptcy. That's not the case here, where the company has explicitly, publicly stated that this is not for financial reasons. At least when a company is looking at it's financials and realizes it isn't in good shape, it has some justification. That's not the case here: they're explicitly saying they're just greedy. > Employment is purely, by definition, a transactional relationship. You sell labor. They buy labor. It's why you are free to leave as soon as it makes sense, and it's why they can do the same. This is strictly false. Businesses go into a relationship with an employee with the knowledge that they simply cannot fire someone without cause. Businesses have elastic labor needs: less labor means less output means less revenue, but it also means less expense. The cost of living for an individual is very inelastic: the threshold for shelter, caloric intake, and other human expenses cannot simply shrink, or at least not on a short timeline. When you weigh "we might not make as much money as we could because the people we hired aren't as strategically useful to us anymore" against "here's a bunch of people holding up their end of the bargain who still have bills to pay" I cannot understand how you COULDN'T stand behind my moral framework. Morality is about people, not profits.
CodeSgt 3y ago
Businesses don’t operate for the purpose of giving people jobs.
- mvdtnz 3y ago
  When you hire someone you have taken on an obligation. The depth of that obligation depends on where you operate. I am happy I live and work somewhere where we hold companies to a higher standard.
  - gottorf 3y ago
    > I am happy I live and work somewhere where we hold companies to a higher standard. I don't know where you live, but virtually every place I can think of with strong labor protection policies have them for the benefit of those with jobs at the expense of those without jobs who would like to get one. Harder to fire equals harder to hire with few exceptions.
    - mvdtnz 3y ago
      Unemployment is at a generational low right now. In fact, lower than USA. Seems like the jobs are there, somehow.
      - gottorf 3y ago
        How do the demographics and labor force participation rates compare? Does the youth unemployment rate match the overall unemployment rate? Does your country have an exceptional growth rate that could sustain maximum employment despite those barriers to entry?
  - jimz 3y ago
    Companies are owned by people too. The idea that somehow the decision to engage in a consensual pooling of resources to organize an entity to conduct business somehow degrades a person is a wild take. In fact, the existence of companies as separate entities is in some way an insulation from the sort of state intervention upon the individual and their right to association that you describe. That's not a higher standard. That's higher barbarism, at best. Courts have the power to compel, coerce, and enforce through, however removed, the use of force upon the individual who may or may not have voluntarily assented to such power. Why would anyone hire anyone in the first place if you can't downsize when needed? You'd leave, if the state lets you, and in many places, it simply won't.
culopatin 3y ago
And perhaps rules like those are the reason these companies are built in the west. I say this as a person that grew up in a country that has lots and lots of anti-company pro-worker laws and now it’s in a hole so deep that the presidential candidates are selling “if you vote me I can guarantee we’d be back on the run in 40 years”
- mvdtnz 3y ago
  The figurative "wild west", not "the west". I also live in "the west".
  - jimz 3y ago
    Which btw is a terrible analogy. The west even while there was a "frontier" had laws and in fact was subject to the actual US military attempting to actively subjugate Native Americans. Laws absolutely existed - even every western had a sheriff or two - and to various degrees they were carried out in ways that we would certainly view as unacceptable today broadly speaking. The "wild west" if anything was characterized by enforcement by extremely punitive measures carried out sporadically for perceived deterrent effects. Law enforcement was organized both on a local and federal level - they just had a habit, that in some ways continues today, to be focused more on "a bad guy" instead of "the bad guy", hence the lynchings that went on against minority groups, but just because lynchings are extrajudicial didn't mean that the participants were not frequently part of said law enforcement (a posse comitatus, if you will). That's not really anything close to what the labor landscape looks like today, or the internet, or any of the other oft-seen but rarely critiqued comparisons made today.
    - mvdtnz 3y ago
      [flagged]
matchbok 3y ago
And there's a reason your country probably has very few successful businesses.
southernplaces7 3y ago
You seem to forget why companies hire people in the first place: for the sake of making more money and growing while paying those employees for services rendered as long as those services are needed. A business, particularly one that isn't some state-subsidized, leeching megacorp, doesn't have an obligation (nor should it) to operate as a make-work office. Its most fundamental purpose is to benefit itself. There's nothing morally wrong with this. I'm sure you've hired people in the past for temporary work and then stopped hiring them when you don't need it. To call the guy the scum of the earth is absurd and smugly hypocritical. He did what he felt necessary for his company and was rather fair in helping the laid-off staff transition. Dynamic economies work with these kinds of rights for companies. Countries that forbid it also tend to suffer stagnant employment numbers in which business are very careful about hiring in the first place. I'd prefer the former, it certainly helps younger people find jobs more easily than we see in some of the 50% youth unemployment countries where "workers are always protected". I'd suggest getting off your high horse.
- i67vw3 3y ago
  It has gone so bad in many countries that companies cannot even fire people (due to headache that comes with it) and have to ask employees to rather resign via some way (WFO)
  - iancmceachern 3y ago
    Badly for who?
    - Auracle 3y ago
      Anyone who cares about efficiency. Imagine a world where every business was saddled with useless workers. How hard would it be to get a new job? They’d have to be ridiculously sure about you. Progress would severely slow down across the board.
      - iancmceachern 3y ago
        Is efficiency the most important metric here? Is bothering people who care about efficiency more important than the basic rights of those that dont?
missedthecue 3y ago
Layoffs are a touchy subject but it has always struck me odd the view that companies have some moral obligation to continue employment even if there is no use or purpose or justification for that headcount.
- ttymck 3y ago
  "No use or purpose or justification" is extreme. What was the justification for hiring in the first place? "strategic reasons" in a non-answer. If there was no justification for the hiring, then management is incompetent, wouldn't you agree?
  - missedthecue 3y ago
    Example: When seeing a huge uptick in demand beginning to form, management can either ignore it and let competitors who do hire and build out steal their market share, or they can hire and build out and hope the demand sticks. If the demand sticks, the business grows. Everyone wins, customers, shareholders, employees, society. If the demand disappears, there is going to be a lot of slack in the system, employees that have nothing to do or are doing busywork on deadend projects which will never have customers or use cases. A good practical example of this is that a lot of tech companies saw this after COVID. In some sectors of tech, demand turned out to be sticky, in others, it wasn't. Management in 2020 couldn't see the future and know what would work out and what wouldn't. Many hired out and now need to cut back, especially with rates so high and capital so expensive. More often than not, it's much more complicated than "incompetent management". No one has a crystal globe.
    - ttymck 3y ago
      You've given an example that is not aligned with the incident being discussed. If product hunt is doing so great, what is the strategy change behind these layoffs?
      - missedthecue 3y ago
        It is simultaneously possible to be "doing great" and "have more employees than projects"
mktexprt 3y ago
[flagged]
madarco 3y ago
Actually in this case I don't think he's wrong. Even in Italy (highly regulated job market), Companies can restructure like this. The only obligation is that if they need to hire a similar role in the next 1 year, they'll have to re-hire the former employees if still available.

by mvdtnz 3y ago

liquidise 3y ago

> Absolute scum of the earth. Strikes me as harsh given that we know essentially nothing about the company's plans. The laid off employees were given severance and the CEO offered to personally intro people to hiring companies. The CEO stated it was to increase speed and focus (i read as reducing meetings/overhead). I understand people are upset with layoffs taking place, but how do you think a company should behave when they realize they are wasting time and money?

bastawhiz 3y ago
> when they realize they are wasting time and money? > Traffic has never been higher and we’re in a great place, financially. It was for strategic reasons.” Call me old fashioned, but no amount of execs introing me to companies that are hiring forgives them for realizing they don't give a shit about me and my job because they'd rather make more money. They should have thought about that before hiring in the first place. Severance isn't a reward, it's the absolute bare minimum.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- missedthecue 3y ago
  How is it possible to justify this? Any layoff should have been thought about before they hired? In your sort of moral framework, a company would not be able to reduce headcount until bankruptcy. No, companies don't give a shit about you, it's egotistical to believe you're that important that you deserve ongoing charity paychecks just because they hired you at some point in the past. Employment is purely, by definition, a transactional relationship. You sell labor. They buy labor. It's why you are free to leave as soon as it makes sense, and it's why they can do the same.
  - bastawhiz 3y ago
    > In your sort of moral framework, a company would not be able to reduce headcount until bankruptcy. That's not the case here, where the company has explicitly, publicly stated that this is not for financial reasons. At least when a company is looking at it's financials and realizes it isn't in good shape, it has some justification. That's not the case here: they're explicitly saying they're just greedy. > Employment is purely, by definition, a transactional relationship. You sell labor. They buy labor. It's why you are free to leave as soon as it makes sense, and it's why they can do the same. This is strictly false. Businesses go into a relationship with an employee with the knowledge that they simply cannot fire someone without cause. Businesses have elastic labor needs: less labor means less output means less revenue, but it also means less expense. The cost of living for an individual is very inelastic: the threshold for shelter, caloric intake, and other human expenses cannot simply shrink, or at least not on a short timeline. When you weigh "we might not make as much money as we could because the people we hired aren't as strategically useful to us anymore" against "here's a bunch of people holding up their end of the bargain who still have bills to pay" I cannot understand how you COULDN'T stand behind my moral framework. Morality is about people, not profits.

CodeSgt 3y ago

Businesses don’t operate for the purpose of giving people jobs.

mvdtnz 3y ago
When you hire someone you have taken on an obligation. The depth of that obligation depends on where you operate. I am happy I live and work somewhere where we hold companies to a higher standard.
- gottorf 3y ago
  > I am happy I live and work somewhere where we hold companies to a higher standard. I don't know where you live, but virtually every place I can think of with strong labor protection policies have them for the benefit of those with jobs at the expense of those without jobs who would like to get one. Harder to fire equals harder to hire with few exceptions.
  - mvdtnz 3y ago
    Unemployment is at a generational low right now. In fact, lower than USA. Seems like the jobs are there, somehow.
    - gottorf 3y ago
      How do the demographics and labor force participation rates compare? Does the youth unemployment rate match the overall unemployment rate? Does your country have an exceptional growth rate that could sustain maximum employment despite those barriers to entry?
- jimz 3y ago
  Companies are owned by people too. The idea that somehow the decision to engage in a consensual pooling of resources to organize an entity to conduct business somehow degrades a person is a wild take. In fact, the existence of companies as separate entities is in some way an insulation from the sort of state intervention upon the individual and their right to association that you describe. That's not a higher standard. That's higher barbarism, at best. Courts have the power to compel, coerce, and enforce through, however removed, the use of force upon the individual who may or may not have voluntarily assented to such power. Why would anyone hire anyone in the first place if you can't downsize when needed? You'd leave, if the state lets you, and in many places, it simply won't.

culopatin 3y ago

And perhaps rules like those are the reason these companies are built in the west. I say this as a person that grew up in a country that has lots and lots of anti-company pro-worker laws and now it’s in a hole so deep that the presidential candidates are selling “if you vote me I can guarantee we’d be back on the run in 40 years”

mvdtnz 3y ago
The figurative "wild west", not "the west". I also live in "the west".
- jimz 3y ago
  Which btw is a terrible analogy. The west even while there was a "frontier" had laws and in fact was subject to the actual US military attempting to actively subjugate Native Americans. Laws absolutely existed - even every western had a sheriff or two - and to various degrees they were carried out in ways that we would certainly view as unacceptable today broadly speaking. The "wild west" if anything was characterized by enforcement by extremely punitive measures carried out sporadically for perceived deterrent effects. Law enforcement was organized both on a local and federal level - they just had a habit, that in some ways continues today, to be focused more on "a bad guy" instead of "the bad guy", hence the lynchings that went on against minority groups, but just because lynchings are extrajudicial didn't mean that the participants were not frequently part of said law enforcement (a posse comitatus, if you will). That's not really anything close to what the labor landscape looks like today, or the internet, or any of the other oft-seen but rarely critiqued comparisons made today.
  - mvdtnz 3y ago
    [flagged]

matchbok 3y ago

And there's a reason your country probably has very few successful businesses.

southernplaces7 3y ago

You seem to forget why companies hire people in the first place: for the sake of making more money and growing while paying those employees for services rendered as long as those services are needed. A business, particularly one that isn't some state-subsidized, leeching megacorp, doesn't have an obligation (nor should it) to operate as a make-work office. Its most fundamental purpose is to benefit itself. There's nothing morally wrong with this. I'm sure you've hired people in the past for temporary work and then stopped hiring them when you don't need it. To call the guy the scum of the earth is absurd and smugly hypocritical. He did what he felt necessary for his company and was rather fair in helping the laid-off staff transition. Dynamic economies work with these kinds of rights for companies. Countries that forbid it also tend to suffer stagnant employment numbers in which business are very careful about hiring in the first place. I'd prefer the former, it certainly helps younger people find jobs more easily than we see in some of the 50% youth unemployment countries where "workers are always protected". I'd suggest getting off your high horse.

i67vw3 3y ago
It has gone so bad in many countries that companies cannot even fire people (due to headache that comes with it) and have to ask employees to rather resign via some way (WFO)
- iancmceachern 3y ago
  Badly for who?
  - Auracle 3y ago
    Anyone who cares about efficiency. Imagine a world where every business was saddled with useless workers. How hard would it be to get a new job? They’d have to be ridiculously sure about you. Progress would severely slow down across the board.
    - iancmceachern 3y ago
      Is efficiency the most important metric here? Is bothering people who care about efficiency more important than the basic rights of those that dont?

missedthecue 3y ago

Layoffs are a touchy subject but it has always struck me odd the view that companies have some moral obligation to continue employment even if there is no use or purpose or justification for that headcount.

ttymck 3y ago
"No use or purpose or justification" is extreme. What was the justification for hiring in the first place? "strategic reasons" in a non-answer. If there was no justification for the hiring, then management is incompetent, wouldn't you agree?
- missedthecue 3y ago
  Example: When seeing a huge uptick in demand beginning to form, management can either ignore it and let competitors who do hire and build out steal their market share, or they can hire and build out and hope the demand sticks. If the demand sticks, the business grows. Everyone wins, customers, shareholders, employees, society. If the demand disappears, there is going to be a lot of slack in the system, employees that have nothing to do or are doing busywork on deadend projects which will never have customers or use cases. A good practical example of this is that a lot of tech companies saw this after COVID. In some sectors of tech, demand turned out to be sticky, in others, it wasn't. Management in 2020 couldn't see the future and know what would work out and what wouldn't. Many hired out and now need to cut back, especially with rates so high and capital so expensive. More often than not, it's much more complicated than "incompetent management". No one has a crystal globe.
  - ttymck 3y ago
    You've given an example that is not aligned with the incident being discussed. If product hunt is doing so great, what is the strategy change behind these layoffs?
    - missedthecue 3y ago
      It is simultaneously possible to be "doing great" and "have more employees than projects"

mktexprt 3y ago

[flagged]

madarco 3y ago

Actually in this case I don't think he's wrong. Even in Italy (highly regulated job market), Companies can restructure like this. The only obligation is that if they need to hire a similar role in the next 1 year, they'll have to re-hire the former employees if still available.