7 ms·

The same thing that always drives layoffs. You are a company. The system we have demands growth. Even very stable and reliable profits are seen as failure. The

The same thing that always drives layoffs. You are a company. The system we have demands growth. Even very stable and reliable profits are seen as failure. There must be growth. The people who run a company can not press a magic button to increase revenues. They can't just pull a successful new project out of nowhere. Anything like that is going to be a risk, and will probably fail. It will also take time. The one thing they can always do is cut costs. Projects can be cancelled. Divisions can be sold off. The biggest cost at most companies is labor, and labor can be let go. When someone controls a company, they own a lot of shares in that company. Their bosses are all shareholders who only care that the stock price goes up. Nothing the company is doing is generating huge new revenue streams. Time for layoffs. And when some people do layoffs, everyone does them. They're all subject to the same market pressures in the same industry. One company doing them gives all the other companies in the sector permission to do likewise. If a company doesn't follow suit the market might even start to question why. You may have seen some news that Microsoft passed Apple briefly in terms of most valuable company on Earth. You may have also noticed that Apple is much more restrained in its layoffs than the others. Not doing as many layoffs, not doing as well in the market. These things are not unrelated.

monero-xmr 3y ago
There isn’t anything in life that’s “stable”. Not one single thing. Even rocks on the ground erode. Because of inflation, stable is actually shrinking. If you raise prices perfectly in lock step with inflation, trends and tastes of your customers still change, necessitating innovation if only to maintain the exact same level. In reality, you have to grow to ensure when the ground shifts from under you, there is still some buffer. Growth is insurance against an ever changing, unpredictable world. The people who think things never change are people without imagination. They want safety and security, but that is an illusion.
Solvency 3y ago
"You are a company. The system we have demands growth. Even very stable and reliable profits are seen as failure. There must be growth." But take a software company like McNeel. They make a popular but extremely niche market product called https://www.rhino3d.com https://www.rhino3d.com. They've been around for decades. They have extremely low turnover. Many developers have worked there since the beginning. They are used around the globe by architects, product designers, industrial designers, etc. What are they doing right? Why/how do so many others get it wrong? Are humble software companies like this unicorns? Why?
- methodical 3y ago
  McNeel is not a public company. Public companies are driven towards prioritizing revenue and growth much more than private companies because growth is a shared goal of all shareholders. I suppose it could be said that companies with outside PE or VC funding would also prioritize growth, but that would be in the same vein of getting to an exit or IPO rather than just making the stock go up.
- tverbeure 3y ago
  "The system" is either the stock market or VCs. McNeel is privately owned without VC funding (AFAIK.)
- LarsDu88 3y ago
  How are people still paying for this when blender exists?
  - happyweasel 3y ago
    Do you know the difference between CAD and polygonal 3d modellers ? btw, blender always existed. Like since 1998?
    - LarsDu88 3y ago
      This is a CAD program? Strangely enough this is mentioned absolutely no where on the official website. Hmm now I am considering buying a license...
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- breadbreadbread 3y ago
  idk what their profit structure or founding story is, but the poison pill for every company is investment capital. The second you take VC money you are beholden to someone other than your coworkers and clients. If you can get off the ground and become sustainable on sales alone, you are golden. Stability is possible but the problem is that most VCs demand 10x return, not 1.25x return.
lapcat 3y ago
> You may have also noticed that Apple is much more restrained in its layoffs than the others. Not doing as many layoffs, not doing as well in the market. These things are not unrelated. Apple stock is down because Apple's hardware revenue is down. Simple as that. https://sixcolors.com/post/2023/11/apples-fiscal-2023-in-charts/ https://sixcolors.com/post/2023/11/apples-fiscal-2023-in-cha...
allturtles 3y ago
This doesn't seem to me to explain why the layoffs are happening now. AFAIK Google has never done a true layoff until last January in the entire history of the company. Now it seems to be already routine. As someone who grew up in the 80s-90s, my historical sense of layoffs is that they were a response to economic hard times, whether industry-wide or company-specific. Companies laid off when profits fell or disappeared, which then drove a need to search for ways to cut costs. But the major tech companies are all seeing continuously growing revenues and profits within the context of very healthy general economic numbers, yet they are all laying people off.
- theturtletalks 3y ago
  The simple answer would be AI. That’s been the major change in the past year. I find it odd that everyone thinks Uber’s end game is automated cars, but no one seems to be talking about how tech companies end game is automated coders. LLMs are not even close, but what’s to say internally, they don’t have something that works. Or they have enough data to show they need fewer workers since they can leverage AI now.
  - janalsncm 3y ago
    It’s a fair hypothesis but is it true? Are companies actually replacing engineers with ChatGPT? I haven’t heard anything about this.
    - jppittma 3y ago
      No, they're replacing compiler engineers with data scientists.
    - bjorglo 3y ago
      [dead]
  - bennyelv 3y ago
    A counterpoint would be: if you kept the same number of engineers and increased their productivity with AI, rather than keeping output the same and reducing the number of engineers, wouldn't you be producing more value overall?
dsotirovski 3y ago
Fair point! > And when some people do layoffs, everyone does them. They're all subject to the same market pressures in the same industry. One company doing them gives all the other companies in the sector permission to do likewise. If a company doesn't follow suit the market might even start to question why. I'd like to try and simplify this - it's simply the new "normal" and companies can get away with it(meaning the labor side does not punish it, yet - no unionising etc). In the EU layoffs like this are not as easy to pull off by companies.

monero-xmr 3y ago

There isn’t anything in life that’s “stable”. Not one single thing. Even rocks on the ground erode. Because of inflation, stable is actually shrinking. If you raise prices perfectly in lock step with inflation, trends and tastes of your customers still change, necessitating innovation if only to maintain the exact same level. In reality, you have to grow to ensure when the ground shifts from under you, there is still some buffer. Growth is insurance against an ever changing, unpredictable world. The people who think things never change are people without imagination. They want safety and security, but that is an illusion.

Solvency 3y ago

"You are a company. The system we have demands growth. Even very stable and reliable profits are seen as failure. There must be growth." But take a software company like McNeel. They make a popular but extremely niche market product called https://www.rhino3d.com https://www.rhino3d.com. They've been around for decades. They have extremely low turnover. Many developers have worked there since the beginning. They are used around the globe by architects, product designers, industrial designers, etc. What are they doing right? Why/how do so many others get it wrong? Are humble software companies like this unicorns? Why?

methodical 3y ago
McNeel is not a public company. Public companies are driven towards prioritizing revenue and growth much more than private companies because growth is a shared goal of all shareholders. I suppose it could be said that companies with outside PE or VC funding would also prioritize growth, but that would be in the same vein of getting to an exit or IPO rather than just making the stock go up.
tverbeure 3y ago
"The system" is either the stock market or VCs. McNeel is privately owned without VC funding (AFAIK.)
LarsDu88 3y ago
How are people still paying for this when blender exists?
- happyweasel 3y ago
  Do you know the difference between CAD and polygonal 3d modellers ? btw, blender always existed. Like since 1998?
  - LarsDu88 3y ago
    This is a CAD program? Strangely enough this is mentioned absolutely no where on the official website. Hmm now I am considering buying a license...
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
breadbreadbread 3y ago
idk what their profit structure or founding story is, but the poison pill for every company is investment capital. The second you take VC money you are beholden to someone other than your coworkers and clients. If you can get off the ground and become sustainable on sales alone, you are golden. Stability is possible but the problem is that most VCs demand 10x return, not 1.25x return.

lapcat 3y ago

> You may have also noticed that Apple is much more restrained in its layoffs than the others. Not doing as many layoffs, not doing as well in the market. These things are not unrelated. Apple stock is down because Apple's hardware revenue is down. Simple as that. https://sixcolors.com/post/2023/11/apples-fiscal-2023-in-charts/ https://sixcolors.com/post/2023/11/apples-fiscal-2023-in-cha...

allturtles 3y ago

This doesn't seem to me to explain why the layoffs are happening now. AFAIK Google has never done a true layoff until last January in the entire history of the company. Now it seems to be already routine. As someone who grew up in the 80s-90s, my historical sense of layoffs is that they were a response to economic hard times, whether industry-wide or company-specific. Companies laid off when profits fell or disappeared, which then drove a need to search for ways to cut costs. But the major tech companies are all seeing continuously growing revenues and profits within the context of very healthy general economic numbers, yet they are all laying people off.

theturtletalks 3y ago
The simple answer would be AI. That’s been the major change in the past year. I find it odd that everyone thinks Uber’s end game is automated cars, but no one seems to be talking about how tech companies end game is automated coders. LLMs are not even close, but what’s to say internally, they don’t have something that works. Or they have enough data to show they need fewer workers since they can leverage AI now.
- janalsncm 3y ago
  It’s a fair hypothesis but is it true? Are companies actually replacing engineers with ChatGPT? I haven’t heard anything about this.
  - jppittma 3y ago
    No, they're replacing compiler engineers with data scientists.
  - bjorglo 3y ago
    [dead]
- bennyelv 3y ago
  A counterpoint would be: if you kept the same number of engineers and increased their productivity with AI, rather than keeping output the same and reducing the number of engineers, wouldn't you be producing more value overall?

dsotirovski 3y ago

Fair point! > And when some people do layoffs, everyone does them. They're all subject to the same market pressures in the same industry. One company doing them gives all the other companies in the sector permission to do likewise. If a company doesn't follow suit the market might even start to question why. I'd like to try and simplify this - it's simply the new "normal" and companies can get away with it(meaning the labor side does not punish it, yet - no unionising etc). In the EU layoffs like this are not as easy to pull off by companies.