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What's the consequence for doing your employees a disservice? Maybe a few of the best and most important employees get jaded and quit. Morale company wide tak

What's the consequence for doing your employees a disservice? Maybe a few of the best and most important employees get jaded and quit. Morale company wide takes a hit. These companies don't seem to care and I guess I'm not sure they should. For me, it's not just morale that's gone to shit, but I feel like I've woken up to the nature of the employer/employee relationship with all these layoffs. I was blind but now I see, we ARE human resources, and it's very likely none of us are irreplaceable, none of us matter really all that much to our employers and the cost cutting via offshoring/remote employee replacement / no backfill is probably just getting started.

weebull 3y ago
The flip side is that these people had a good job for a few years, and can hopefully springboard on. The alternative is that they weren't hired by Spotify, or potentially at all. As long as they were hired in good faith, and not to just see which people worked out, I don't have a problem.
- thinkingtoilet 3y ago
  >As long as they were hired in good faith I think that's the OP's point. They were not hired in good faith and I agree. This mass hiring/firing cycle is playing games with people's lives and, as always, the people at the top are unaffected by it, and in fact maybe rewarded for it. This isn't a game, this is people's lives. It's a little less horrible if it's a remote position but people upend their lives and move for jobs all the time.
  - zucked 3y ago
    I don't think there's any particular malice to the ups and downs - it's just the nature of work these days. Employers and employees have pretty much laid bare their view that the other is simply a cog in their machine. That being true, folks need to understand, plan for, and not be particularly surprised when these ups and downs happen. That means having a runway for lean times, and knowing your worth, how to communicate it, and being flexible when things go pear-shaped. People do move for jobs all the time, yes, but I hope that part of the planning for that involves asking the question - "what happens if this job evaporates?"
- hx8 3y ago
  I agree. The employees got a lot out of the trade. Money, experience, connections. In addition, anyone participating in the tech economy should be aware of the boom/bust cycles that have plagued its history. It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that a tech company had a large round of layoffs. The employees should have been aware of the risks when they signed on.
nyokodo 3y ago
> we ARE human resources, and it's very likely none of us are irreplaceable, none of us matter really all that much to our employers Now, remember this the next time you’re tempted to lose sleep, sacrifice family time or leisure for your employer and then act accordingly.
- fullshark 3y ago
  It's not just that, most of us are knowledge workers, think about how many hours off the clock you spent trying to solve some business problem. Why aren't you enjoying your kid's soccer game and instead thinking about that problem at work? To make your upcoming work day easier, or is it because you're spending many many more hours on the clock actually, working for your employer? When employers wanted your body, it was a lot easier to have separation between work and home life, but now that employers want your mind, that separation is incredibly illdefined for most of us I think. I used to give that time freely but now I wonder what's the point.
  - munksbeer 3y ago
    This is very true. I spend a lot of time thinking about work problems. On the one hand it does help me in some ways because those problems are there whether I like it or not and I don't seem to have the control to stop thinking about them. So it does help that sometimes I'll settle on a vague solution in my head before I fall asleep at night, but of course it would be better not to have to do this at all. I have at times had idle daydreams about doing a job that ends at the end of the work-day and you literally do not have to think about it again. I'd say those sort of jobs are not well paid these days.
querez 3y ago
> I feel like I've woken up to the nature of the employer/employee relationship with all these layoffs. I was blind but now I see, we ARE human resources I think that's just a normal process of growing older. Also: yes, of course you are a resource to your employer. An annoying one (stell or laptops don't usually talk back and has demands). I also don't think there's anything wrong with companies behaving this way. By all intents, purposes and employment contracts, it was always meant to be a "work for payment" type deals, nothing more. Of course, ideally your interests and the companies' align beyond that narrow scope; e.g. you're both interested in you becoming an expert in X, or in solving problems in area Y. But it really comes down to you being a resource for the company to produce stuff. Thinking back I realized that my elders and mentors and everyone worth listening to always tries to tell me that (e.g. by telling me "you're not your job", "look out for your WLB, noone else will", "a job is just a means to an end", "HR protects the company, not you", "always keep in mind that you're disposable"...). And yet it seems to be a lesion that everyone needs to rediscover for themselves eventually.
- gtirloni 3y ago
  > By all intents, purposes and employment contracts, it was always meant to be a "work for payment" type deals, nothing more That's exactly the opposite of what 99% of the companies sell to candidates. You must have seen stuff like this is a great place work, join the family, etc. So maybe you mean the hidden intent was that but that's not the message being broadcasted.
  - geodel 3y ago
    Well this is same for 99% products advertised on media. No one really take it at their face value. So why is employment advertising/selling is expected to be factual.
    - fullshark 3y ago
      People want to be seduced, it's why you said 99%, some percent of advertising works on all of us, and a major decision like "this is my job and how I spend most of my waking hours on this earth" is ripe for the employee to accept the seduction.
iamflimflam1 3y ago
“The graveyards are full of indispensable men(/women)” It doesn’t matter how important or irreplaceable you think you might be - life/businesses/people will carry on without you.
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  Even if you THINK you are indispensable, even if you are 100% CORRECT that you ARE indispensable, plenty of gamblers exist in management, and will happily try and route around you. Maybe it doesn't work out every time, but it works out often enough to encourage companies to keep doing it. It's so much easier to fire one person than the entire department. It's really hard for your manager to replace you when your coworkers say "naw we aren't doing their work without being paid their salary". And guess what? If you're a cunt, unions can, you know, not strike! They can 100% stand by as someone gets fucked over. Ask any member of a teachers union. Companies don't jettison entire profitable divisions of the company to kill Unions in the crib (walmart) because they DON'T get the workers a larger slice of the pie lol. Companies don't play you anti-union propaganda on your training day because unions mean they pay less for talented workers lol. If unions truly reduced the price of real talent, companies would start unions themselves!
commandlinefan 3y ago
> none of us are irreplaceable But the smart ones know now to be as irreplaceable as possible, however they have to.
- I_Am_Nous 3y ago
  Be careful though, my father in law has told stories about people who made themselves irreplaceable by being the only person who can fix a machine because they allegedly fixed it in a way that breaks often enough that they can be the hero. A stain like that on your resume means your burned trust for potentially short term gains and may find trust is not given as easily as a result.
  - commandlinefan 3y ago
    Actually doesn't matter if you do or if you don't, since it can't be proven. What matters is whether or not somebody accuses you of "fixing it in a way that it breaks".
    - I_Am_Nous 3y ago
      In this case it was apparently proven enough that the place wanted to fire the person, the union said "you can't fire him but you can escort him out and tell him never to come back" so being accused is just the tripwire that brings the rocks down. Don't pile rocks up there in the first place and there aren't rocks to fall!
hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
> I was blind but now I see, we ARE human resources, and it's very likely none of us are irreplaceable, none of us matter really all that much to our employers... Interestingly, there was a really good article in the NY times yesterday that made that exact point: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/03/business/economy/doctors-pharmacists-labor-unions.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/03/business/economy/doctors-... Basically, the article was talking about how being a doctor or pharmacist used to be a very respected profession, and most doctors/pharmacists didn't previously see the need to unionize. With all the consolidation that's gone on in medicine over the past couple decades, though (the article talks about how many of them used to be partners in small doctor groups, that is increasingly rare these days), they now realize they're wage slaves just like the rest of us, and their management has been treating them like interchangeable widgets to squeeze the most productivity out of. If doctors are unionizing, maybe software developers should rethink their historical aversion to the idea.
- CamperBob2 3y ago
  Quite a stretch from "This company hired too many people and ended up having to lay off some" and "Hmm, maybe we're not as irreplaceable as we like to think" to "Let's all make ourselves less attractive to our employers by threatening to gang up on them." But I guess unionization is the universal solvent for every HR problem around here.
  - 4iuvosvjf23 3y ago
    How is that a stretch? If we're not irreplaceable then ganging up on our employers is a way for us to reclaim some of the leverage in this transaction that we lose by being replaceable.
    - dingnuts 3y ago
      it's not even ganging up, it's just hiring a middleman to do your negotiation for you, and they take a cut. I'm good
      - 3y ago
sheepybloke 3y ago
One of the big things I saw when a company I worked at did layoffs was that more people left voluntarily than were fired, especially a lot of the people I saw as the best and brightest. Heck, it's why I left. To me, that's the biggest side affect of the layoffs. There's going to be a brain drain, not because you fired people, but because the morale and mental of the company has shifted.

weebull 3y ago

The flip side is that these people had a good job for a few years, and can hopefully springboard on. The alternative is that they weren't hired by Spotify, or potentially at all. As long as they were hired in good faith, and not to just see which people worked out, I don't have a problem.

thinkingtoilet 3y ago
>As long as they were hired in good faith I think that's the OP's point. They were not hired in good faith and I agree. This mass hiring/firing cycle is playing games with people's lives and, as always, the people at the top are unaffected by it, and in fact maybe rewarded for it. This isn't a game, this is people's lives. It's a little less horrible if it's a remote position but people upend their lives and move for jobs all the time.
- zucked 3y ago
  I don't think there's any particular malice to the ups and downs - it's just the nature of work these days. Employers and employees have pretty much laid bare their view that the other is simply a cog in their machine. That being true, folks need to understand, plan for, and not be particularly surprised when these ups and downs happen. That means having a runway for lean times, and knowing your worth, how to communicate it, and being flexible when things go pear-shaped. People do move for jobs all the time, yes, but I hope that part of the planning for that involves asking the question - "what happens if this job evaporates?"
hx8 3y ago
I agree. The employees got a lot out of the trade. Money, experience, connections. In addition, anyone participating in the tech economy should be aware of the boom/bust cycles that have plagued its history. It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that a tech company had a large round of layoffs. The employees should have been aware of the risks when they signed on.

nyokodo 3y ago

> we ARE human resources, and it's very likely none of us are irreplaceable, none of us matter really all that much to our employers Now, remember this the next time you’re tempted to lose sleep, sacrifice family time or leisure for your employer and then act accordingly.

fullshark 3y ago
It's not just that, most of us are knowledge workers, think about how many hours off the clock you spent trying to solve some business problem. Why aren't you enjoying your kid's soccer game and instead thinking about that problem at work? To make your upcoming work day easier, or is it because you're spending many many more hours on the clock actually, working for your employer? When employers wanted your body, it was a lot easier to have separation between work and home life, but now that employers want your mind, that separation is incredibly illdefined for most of us I think. I used to give that time freely but now I wonder what's the point.
- munksbeer 3y ago
  This is very true. I spend a lot of time thinking about work problems. On the one hand it does help me in some ways because those problems are there whether I like it or not and I don't seem to have the control to stop thinking about them. So it does help that sometimes I'll settle on a vague solution in my head before I fall asleep at night, but of course it would be better not to have to do this at all. I have at times had idle daydreams about doing a job that ends at the end of the work-day and you literally do not have to think about it again. I'd say those sort of jobs are not well paid these days.

querez 3y ago

> I feel like I've woken up to the nature of the employer/employee relationship with all these layoffs. I was blind but now I see, we ARE human resources I think that's just a normal process of growing older. Also: yes, of course you are a resource to your employer. An annoying one (stell or laptops don't usually talk back and has demands). I also don't think there's anything wrong with companies behaving this way. By all intents, purposes and employment contracts, it was always meant to be a "work for payment" type deals, nothing more. Of course, ideally your interests and the companies' align beyond that narrow scope; e.g. you're both interested in you becoming an expert in X, or in solving problems in area Y. But it really comes down to you being a resource for the company to produce stuff. Thinking back I realized that my elders and mentors and everyone worth listening to always tries to tell me that (e.g. by telling me "you're not your job", "look out for your WLB, noone else will", "a job is just a means to an end", "HR protects the company, not you", "always keep in mind that you're disposable"...). And yet it seems to be a lesion that everyone needs to rediscover for themselves eventually.

gtirloni 3y ago
> By all intents, purposes and employment contracts, it was always meant to be a "work for payment" type deals, nothing more That's exactly the opposite of what 99% of the companies sell to candidates. You must have seen stuff like this is a great place work, join the family, etc. So maybe you mean the hidden intent was that but that's not the message being broadcasted.
- geodel 3y ago
  Well this is same for 99% products advertised on media. No one really take it at their face value. So why is employment advertising/selling is expected to be factual.
  - fullshark 3y ago
    People want to be seduced, it's why you said 99%, some percent of advertising works on all of us, and a major decision like "this is my job and how I spend most of my waking hours on this earth" is ripe for the employee to accept the seduction.

iamflimflam1 3y ago

“The graveyards are full of indispensable men(/women)” It doesn’t matter how important or irreplaceable you think you might be - life/businesses/people will carry on without you.

mrguyorama 3y ago
Even if you THINK you are indispensable, even if you are 100% CORRECT that you ARE indispensable, plenty of gamblers exist in management, and will happily try and route around you. Maybe it doesn't work out every time, but it works out often enough to encourage companies to keep doing it. It's so much easier to fire one person than the entire department. It's really hard for your manager to replace you when your coworkers say "naw we aren't doing their work without being paid their salary". And guess what? If you're a cunt, unions can, you know, not strike! They can 100% stand by as someone gets fucked over. Ask any member of a teachers union. Companies don't jettison entire profitable divisions of the company to kill Unions in the crib (walmart) because they DON'T get the workers a larger slice of the pie lol. Companies don't play you anti-union propaganda on your training day because unions mean they pay less for talented workers lol. If unions truly reduced the price of real talent, companies would start unions themselves!

commandlinefan 3y ago

> none of us are irreplaceable But the smart ones know now to be as irreplaceable as possible, however they have to.

I_Am_Nous 3y ago
Be careful though, my father in law has told stories about people who made themselves irreplaceable by being the only person who can fix a machine because they allegedly fixed it in a way that breaks often enough that they can be the hero. A stain like that on your resume means your burned trust for potentially short term gains and may find trust is not given as easily as a result.
- commandlinefan 3y ago
  Actually doesn't matter if you do or if you don't, since it can't be proven. What matters is whether or not somebody accuses you of "fixing it in a way that it breaks".
  - I_Am_Nous 3y ago
    In this case it was apparently proven enough that the place wanted to fire the person, the union said "you can't fire him but you can escort him out and tell him never to come back" so being accused is just the tripwire that brings the rocks down. Don't pile rocks up there in the first place and there aren't rocks to fall!

hn_throwaway_99 3y ago

> I was blind but now I see, we ARE human resources, and it's very likely none of us are irreplaceable, none of us matter really all that much to our employers... Interestingly, there was a really good article in the NY times yesterday that made that exact point: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/03/business/economy/doctors-pharmacists-labor-unions.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/03/business/economy/doctors-... Basically, the article was talking about how being a doctor or pharmacist used to be a very respected profession, and most doctors/pharmacists didn't previously see the need to unionize. With all the consolidation that's gone on in medicine over the past couple decades, though (the article talks about how many of them used to be partners in small doctor groups, that is increasingly rare these days), they now realize they're wage slaves just like the rest of us, and their management has been treating them like interchangeable widgets to squeeze the most productivity out of. If doctors are unionizing, maybe software developers should rethink their historical aversion to the idea.

CamperBob2 3y ago
Quite a stretch from "This company hired too many people and ended up having to lay off some" and "Hmm, maybe we're not as irreplaceable as we like to think" to "Let's all make ourselves less attractive to our employers by threatening to gang up on them." But I guess unionization is the universal solvent for every HR problem around here.
- 4iuvosvjf23 3y ago
  How is that a stretch? If we're not irreplaceable then ganging up on our employers is a way for us to reclaim some of the leverage in this transaction that we lose by being replaceable.
  - dingnuts 3y ago
    it's not even ganging up, it's just hiring a middleman to do your negotiation for you, and they take a cut. I'm good
    - 3y ago

sheepybloke 3y ago

One of the big things I saw when a company I worked at did layoffs was that more people left voluntarily than were fired, especially a lot of the people I saw as the best and brightest. Heck, it's why I left. To me, that's the biggest side affect of the layoffs. There's going to be a brain drain, not because you fired people, but because the morale and mental of the company has shifted.