4 ms·

Yes most of these layoffs are opportunistic and some are stock market based, but let’s not forget a couple years ago the hiring was too. “Free” money on top of

Yes most of these layoffs are opportunistic and some are stock market based, but let’s not forget a couple years ago the hiring was too. “Free” money on top of already very cheap money for +10 years and a couple of “new normals/this will never be the same” hype trends made a huge hiring frenzy possible. Now with big boy borrow rates this is both unsustainable and a good opportunity for the C suites to “shine” and get paid.

oblio 3y ago
My problem with that is that the social contract is completely dead. It used to be that as long as the company was profitable, nobody would get fired. Now we have craziness like Microsoft or Google where they're basically laying people off because profit was 28% instead of 31% or revenue "only" grew by 12% instead of 20% for companies making hundreds of billions of dollars. These companies could readily afford professional reconversions, on the job, for all the people laid off. I understand underperformers, but this is not what's happening. A bean counter is chopping entire departments where the mistakes are made at director or VP level (who, by the way, frequently just get shuffled around) while the recently promoted top performer is just tossed away together with everyone else.
- PedroBatista 3y ago
  This has been going on for decades and it's now the integral part of what "being a manager is" as it's taught at schools. Inside these big companies, the forever shuffles, hiring and "losing people" like you're in the war it's part of daily life. It's disgusting from a human perspective, trust me I know, but I still hope this way of doing business is not the best and therefor these companies will rot from the inside and give way of better ones. The problem is the time of a big company is on a different scale of the time of an individual.
  - nine_zeros 3y ago
    > Inside these big companies, the forever shuffles, hiring and "losing people" like you're in the war it's part of daily life. Astute and accurate observation. This is one of the reasons I strongly support unions (or a law that enforces a 2 months notice periods on the employer, no probation allowed). Alternatively, interviews longer than 3 hours are no longer allowed so that people may switch jobs asap. If we want flexible capitalism, we need to ensure that labor gets it's fair protections, just like corporations do.
  - FooBarBizBazz 3y ago
    Modern management is to business relationships as pick-up artistry is to romantic relationships. It is manipulative and rapey. Perhaps this is how things have always been at the highest levels of sociopathy -- in the court of Versailles, or in bed with Henry VIII -- but it seems too broadly endemic today. When Gen Z shows up in the workplace with bravado and power-poses, it seems to me like fresh meat acting tough in hopes of surviving jail. The basic stuff of life will be pushed out of societies who continue on this path, and their death-cultures will be able to persist only by using money to lure in (and haze) new generations of cultists, up through the Darien Gap. They will believe that they are rich, special, and superior, and they will convince new aspirants of the same, but their lives will be living sacrifices to Jeff Bezos and their grandchildren will never come into existence -- a subliminal acknowledgement that such lives do not feel worth living. Bai lan.
- tempodox 3y ago
  Sadly, the social contract has been dead long before, this is just one of those occasions where it undeniably shows. The purpose of those companies is to maximize profits, not to employ people or to uphold a social contract.
  - oezi 3y ago
    To be more precise: The purpose is what the shareholders want which turns out to be profits above all else.
- yterdy 3y ago
  The problem is that nothing will change until professionals stop seeing themselves as temporarily embarrassed entrepreneurs and throw in with the burger-flippers, register-jockeys, warehouse minders, and gig runners. Not just on pay and job security; on training, on transit, on housing.
laidoffamazon 3y ago
The cheap money thing doesn’t pass muster, Cisco had yearly layoffs for the past ~15 years even when interest rates were zero. Google was founded when rates were equivalent to what they are now, and as a high revenue company not even as sensitive to borrowing rates as startups and funds. You’re repeating a cliche without thinking about it deeply.
- netbioserror 3y ago
  That was then, this is now. Huge amounts of recent tech hiring were driven by barrel-bottom interest rates and massive stock inflation as people everywhere hedged during covid. The hikes ended the gravy train to a limited degree.

oblio 3y ago

My problem with that is that the social contract is completely dead. It used to be that as long as the company was profitable, nobody would get fired. Now we have craziness like Microsoft or Google where they're basically laying people off because profit was 28% instead of 31% or revenue "only" grew by 12% instead of 20% for companies making hundreds of billions of dollars. These companies could readily afford professional reconversions, on the job, for all the people laid off. I understand underperformers, but this is not what's happening. A bean counter is chopping entire departments where the mistakes are made at director or VP level (who, by the way, frequently just get shuffled around) while the recently promoted top performer is just tossed away together with everyone else.

PedroBatista 3y ago
This has been going on for decades and it's now the integral part of what "being a manager is" as it's taught at schools. Inside these big companies, the forever shuffles, hiring and "losing people" like you're in the war it's part of daily life. It's disgusting from a human perspective, trust me I know, but I still hope this way of doing business is not the best and therefor these companies will rot from the inside and give way of better ones. The problem is the time of a big company is on a different scale of the time of an individual.
- nine_zeros 3y ago
  > Inside these big companies, the forever shuffles, hiring and "losing people" like you're in the war it's part of daily life. Astute and accurate observation. This is one of the reasons I strongly support unions (or a law that enforces a 2 months notice periods on the employer, no probation allowed). Alternatively, interviews longer than 3 hours are no longer allowed so that people may switch jobs asap. If we want flexible capitalism, we need to ensure that labor gets it's fair protections, just like corporations do.
- FooBarBizBazz 3y ago
  Modern management is to business relationships as pick-up artistry is to romantic relationships. It is manipulative and rapey. Perhaps this is how things have always been at the highest levels of sociopathy -- in the court of Versailles, or in bed with Henry VIII -- but it seems too broadly endemic today. When Gen Z shows up in the workplace with bravado and power-poses, it seems to me like fresh meat acting tough in hopes of surviving jail. The basic stuff of life will be pushed out of societies who continue on this path, and their death-cultures will be able to persist only by using money to lure in (and haze) new generations of cultists, up through the Darien Gap. They will believe that they are rich, special, and superior, and they will convince new aspirants of the same, but their lives will be living sacrifices to Jeff Bezos and their grandchildren will never come into existence -- a subliminal acknowledgement that such lives do not feel worth living. Bai lan.
tempodox 3y ago
Sadly, the social contract has been dead long before, this is just one of those occasions where it undeniably shows. The purpose of those companies is to maximize profits, not to employ people or to uphold a social contract.
- oezi 3y ago
  To be more precise: The purpose is what the shareholders want which turns out to be profits above all else.
yterdy 3y ago
The problem is that nothing will change until professionals stop seeing themselves as temporarily embarrassed entrepreneurs and throw in with the burger-flippers, register-jockeys, warehouse minders, and gig runners. Not just on pay and job security; on training, on transit, on housing.

laidoffamazon 3y ago

The cheap money thing doesn’t pass muster, Cisco had yearly layoffs for the past ~15 years even when interest rates were zero. Google was founded when rates were equivalent to what they are now, and as a high revenue company not even as sensitive to borrowing rates as startups and funds. You’re repeating a cliche without thinking about it deeply.

netbioserror 3y ago
That was then, this is now. Huge amounts of recent tech hiring were driven by barrel-bottom interest rates and massive stock inflation as people everywhere hedged during covid. The hikes ended the gravy train to a limited degree.