4 ms·

A seemingly common theme through all these layoffs is that engineers are less impacted than other orgs.

smt88 3y ago
This is true with all layoffs. If you can't explain your direct role in creating your product/service, you're going to be higher on the chopping block. Sales, marketing, HR, admins, PMs, etc. are usually the first to go because they don't "keep the lights on" and it's hard to measure their impact. While it's true that it's also hard to measure a single engineer's impact, it's scarier to fire someone who may be expensive to replace and who may take institutional knowledge of the inner workings of the product with them.
- resolutebat 3y ago
  Sales does not belong on that list, since their impact is the easiest of all to measure ($$$). Also, top-down layoffs tend to target expensive staff with large paychecks, without accounting for institutional knowledge or intangible value delivered.
  - conductr 3y ago
    Easy to measure isn’t always good. If the org tends to sell $5m per sale person and they try to scale it by hiring it might just fall to $4m per sales person. When things go under the microscope, they’ll want to put that back in balance by reducing heads.
  - beau_g 3y ago
    Is it though? Without products there are no sales at all. A compelling enough product will sell with no marketing/sales effort, so sales is really only whatever that baseline is + (extra units sold from sales and marketing efforts - cost of sales of marketing). I would think this is actually quite hard to measure, you also have to normalize against many external market factors and behavior of competitors.
    - tryauuum 3y ago
      > A compelling enough product will sell with no marketing/sales effort would it? maybe you are talking about video games and a good enough game would sell itself. But for other businesses sales / marketing / ads do matter. Imagine you provide a 50% better service than your competitors, but you target audience never reaches your page because they are bombarded with google ads of your competitors
  - smt88 3y ago
    Sales isn't easy to measure. If you generate the same number of leads, do you need 300 salespeople to convert them? Or could your top 100 performers do it? Do you need separate salespeople for each product or can one person sell it all? At the trough of interest rates, big companies had insane numbers of salespeople touching each deal (easily 10+ at some orgs) because they'd over-hired and the forced people to hyper-specialize to justify it.
- MaxHoppersGhost 3y ago
  For enterprise SaaS companies sales is one of the most important roles, tied with engineering. Especially if your engineering org/product is weak.
  - tech-code-build 3y ago
    [dead]
  - disgruntledphd2 3y ago
    To quote Larry Ellison, you're either building the product or selling the product.
stg22 3y ago
In general, the more direct the impact of your role on short-term revenue, the safer you are when your company starts sacrificing people to the gods of quarterly accounts. Ancillary service workers always get hit badly, but good salespersons are often safer than good engineers.
- resolutebat 3y ago
  Only if their salesperson manages to hit their number very quarter without fail. I've seen people blow their quota out of the water in Q1, and get shitcanned when Q2 is quiet.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
    That is exactly what sales is like, and it has been like that, for as long as I can remember. However, good salespeople can make a lot of money.
    - jncfhnb 3y ago
      So can mediocre lucky ones. A lot of systems are very poorly designed.
      - ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
        Famous sales pep talk: https://youtube.com/watch?v=wVQPY4LlbJ4 https://youtube.com/watch?v=wVQPY4LlbJ4
        DaiPlusPlus 3y ago
        This is HN, so it’s Always Be Coding
whatyesaid 3y ago
How do you know who they're firing? Nobody knows what "core tech" is. They are clearly getting rid of people in LoR. And game companies aren't bloated with sales people.
- cannonpalms 3y ago
  There are typically crowdsourced spreadsheets available from https://layoffs.fyi https://layoffs.fyi that cover title, etc.

This is true with all layoffs. If you can't explain your direct role in creating your product/service, you're going to be higher on the chopping block. Sales, marketing, HR, admins, PMs, etc. are usually the first to go because they don't "keep the lights on" and it's hard to measure their impact. While it's true that it's also hard to measure a single engineer's impact, it's scarier to fire someone who may be expensive to replace and who may take institutional knowledge of the inner workings of the product with them.

resolutebat 3y ago
Sales does not belong on that list, since their impact is the easiest of all to measure ($$$). Also, top-down layoffs tend to target expensive staff with large paychecks, without accounting for institutional knowledge or intangible value delivered.
- conductr 3y ago
  Easy to measure isn’t always good. If the org tends to sell $5m per sale person and they try to scale it by hiring it might just fall to $4m per sales person. When things go under the microscope, they’ll want to put that back in balance by reducing heads.
- beau_g 3y ago
  Is it though? Without products there are no sales at all. A compelling enough product will sell with no marketing/sales effort, so sales is really only whatever that baseline is + (extra units sold from sales and marketing efforts - cost of sales of marketing). I would think this is actually quite hard to measure, you also have to normalize against many external market factors and behavior of competitors.
  - tryauuum 3y ago
    > A compelling enough product will sell with no marketing/sales effort would it? maybe you are talking about video games and a good enough game would sell itself. But for other businesses sales / marketing / ads do matter. Imagine you provide a 50% better service than your competitors, but you target audience never reaches your page because they are bombarded with google ads of your competitors
- smt88 3y ago
  Sales isn't easy to measure. If you generate the same number of leads, do you need 300 salespeople to convert them? Or could your top 100 performers do it? Do you need separate salespeople for each product or can one person sell it all? At the trough of interest rates, big companies had insane numbers of salespeople touching each deal (easily 10+ at some orgs) because they'd over-hired and the forced people to hyper-specialize to justify it.
MaxHoppersGhost 3y ago
For enterprise SaaS companies sales is one of the most important roles, tied with engineering. Especially if your engineering org/product is weak.
- tech-code-build 3y ago
  [dead]
- disgruntledphd2 3y ago
  To quote Larry Ellison, you're either building the product or selling the product.

stg22 3y ago

In general, the more direct the impact of your role on short-term revenue, the safer you are when your company starts sacrificing people to the gods of quarterly accounts. Ancillary service workers always get hit badly, but good salespersons are often safer than good engineers.

resolutebat 3y ago
Only if their salesperson manages to hit their number very quarter without fail. I've seen people blow their quota out of the water in Q1, and get shitcanned when Q2 is quiet.
- ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
  That is exactly what sales is like, and it has been like that, for as long as I can remember. However, good salespeople can make a lot of money.
  - jncfhnb 3y ago
    So can mediocre lucky ones. A lot of systems are very poorly designed.
    - ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
      Famous sales pep talk: https://youtube.com/watch?v=wVQPY4LlbJ4 https://youtube.com/watch?v=wVQPY4LlbJ4
      - DaiPlusPlus 3y ago
        This is HN, so it’s Always Be Coding

whatyesaid 3y ago

How do you know who they're firing? Nobody knows what "core tech" is. They are clearly getting rid of people in LoR. And game companies aren't bloated with sales people.

cannonpalms 3y ago
There are typically crowdsourced spreadsheets available from https://layoffs.fyi https://layoffs.fyi that cover title, etc.