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Okta lays off 400 employees – almost a year after last staff cuts
- nickpeterson 3y agoArticle says it’s a 7% cut, so around 5400 employees before the cut. I’d love to know which roles are getting cut the most. I’m not sure if this is tech companies ahead of the curve using ai to eliminate work, or because tech over hired during the pandemic.
- glonq 3y agoIf you'd have told me that Okta has 540 employees, I would believe you. Even double that seems plausible. But damn, 5400 is a lot.
- Raed667 3y agocan we not do this comment in every. single. layoff. thread ?
- bluefirebrand 3y agoI think its an interesting discussion to have personally. I don't tend to think about the scale of companies in terms of number of employees. I'm often very surprised at how big or small a company is, especially based on their perceived size. I also think this is a good forum to have those discussions on. Many people here either work in tech, have worked in tech before, and maybe have solved similar problems at similar scales to other companies before. It's only natural to look at a company that seems to employ 10x more people than you expect and wonder "what the heck are all those people doing"
- goles 3y agoThere are interesting discussions that could happen on the topic. I think P's frustration is that saying "Wow, $Companys head count is high" on every thread is not an interesting, insightful, or discussion driving comment. Why is the headcount high (outside the obvious)? How could it be prevented in the future? What are the ramifications of this in the future? Even as you suggest, why not respond to "What the heck are all these people doing?" Not "Wow, headcount high!"
- galactus 3y agoBut I does sound like a lot of people for something like Okta. I think any comment explaining why it isn't would be interesting.
- John23832 3y agoI hear this in every layoff thread. The reality is that while there obviously was overhiring, (the generic) you do not have a true understanding of the totality of Okta's (or any of the other companies') businesses. You know what is public/user facing. That is it. Companies scale/sprawl because running a large publicly traded company is actually very complex. Hell, run a startup and you'll understand the complexity. It's not just ship code, get paid. Shipping is often the simplest/most straight forward part.
- glonq 3y agoI've worked at nothing but small start-ups/re-starts for most of my career. I do get how/why headcount needs to balloon; thankfully I've mostly worked at places where we kept things lean and mean. For me, things stop being fun once head count gets into the hundreds!
- technion 3y agoThe last place I worked with Okta, Okta routinely sent sales people onsite to meet and hang out with executives. Make this a common occurrence across a client base and your head count balloons pretty quickly.
- JofArnold 3y agoFrom what I've seen it's over-hiring plus interest rates changing the criteria by which companies are measured. The market now favors profitability over exponential growth and for many companies that means slimming down.
- Moldoteck 3y agoI have yet to find cases where ppl outside of translation/content/marketing area were fired because were replaced by ai, especially software devs... Imo it's just interest rates. With low rate you can just invest in the market, get guaranteed return and afford experiments&overhiring to be competitive, on high interest, free money are gone/too risky, ao must cut everywhere
- fwungy 3y agoTech must adjust to no more ZIRP. Fat will be cut. Notice that Twitter is just fine technically with an 80% staff cut.
- notfromhere 3y agoYou mean the place that lost half its revenue, is down 70% on valuation, and its team unable to release any meaningful updates or maintain platform stability?
- x86x87 3y agoThis is fine /s
- richbell 3y agoAnd was so severely rate-limited that it was unusable for even logged in members for a while?
- duskwuff 3y agoTBH, that was a self-inflicted wound, not a result of short staffing.
- fwungy 3y agoOoh. I touched a nerve here. I don't have a study, but Twitter works for me. No tech issues. As for the valuation, it's ancillary. Large tech companies are filled with various paper pushers. They add nothing to the products, and often interfere with them, just so they can justify themselves. Guess how I know.
- notfromhere 3y agoIt’s not a nerve. Using a poorly run company as an example of success is very bizarre.
- 3y ago
- figassis 3y agoSo I wonder. If we ever go back to zero interest rates, will companies start hiring like crazy again, or will they have learned?
- paxys 3y agoAs long as there are middle managers and executives with kingdom-building ambition there will be overhiring.
- nine_zeros 3y agoThis is the right answer. As long as corporations continue to promote management based on headcount instead of promoting based on outcomes/leadership in tough situations, there will only be more and more empire building. Even if interest rates do not decline, the empire builders will only migrate from current set of tech companies to other companies that are seeing a boom. Remember, the goal of management is not innovation or working in specific industry. It is to build larger empires and to climb up an arbitrary ladder.
- badpun 3y agoThe companies themselves were empire-builders. In the absence of profits, wall street had to use other metrics to assess future profitability, and headcount, as dumb as it sounds, was one of them.
- cutemonster 3y agoWhat types of companies do you have in mind? I've gotten the impression that some startups hire a bit many people (to impress investors, and friends/peers?), otherwise I haven't heard about that. I'd thought shareholders of public companies, though, care more about revenue and mostly don't know how many employees each company has? (And that primarily middle managers are doing the over-hiring?) If you have a link where I can read more :-)
- alismayilov 3y ago
- rufus_foreman 3y ago7% is the default selection in the dropdown in the layoff planning app.