3 ms·

I think you just have a fundamentally different view of what a layoff means then the executives, board of directors, and general shareholders. > I and several

I think you just have a fundamentally different view of what a layoff means then the executives, board of directors, and general shareholders. > I and several others made this case, and yet again, not headed, layoffs hit 6 months later, because all those customers either went belly up or had to downsize themselves, because they were too credit dependent. But what if the customers survived? What if interest rates didn't hike as fast? You're suggestion would have been horrible. The risks of over-hiring is a layoff which no one else views as really that bad vs failing behind competitors.

no_wizard 3y ago
>I think you just have a fundamentally different view of what a layoff means then the executives, board of directors, and general shareholders. Most likely, and I personally believe that is part of the problem, not the problem. I recognize how damaging layoffs are to people. Its unfair to act like they aren't. Its people's livelihood and we as humans often make decisions around these things, and when its yanked out from underneath them without notice, its very damaging. Its not numbers on a spreadsheet, it is human lives. >But what if the customers survived? What if interest rates didn't hike as fast? You're suggestion would have been horrible. The risks of over-hiring is a layoff which no one else views as really that bad vs failing behind competitors. We would have hired more modestly, and could focus on making the business more generally efficient, cut down on process, and focus on keeping the business nimble and responsive. If I'm wrong, we end up primed to take on more customers while continuing to hire modestly. Ironically, our smaller more nimble competitors ate a bunch of market share from us with much smaller overall staff, because they could move faster, and I can directly trace that to the hiring spree. Now, I will admit, if we had stronger safety nets in the US that made layoffs relatively painless for the unemployed, I'd feel differently about this.
- Jensson 3y ago
  > could focus on making the business more generally efficient, cut down on process, and focus on keeping the business nimble and responsive Every company already tries this as hard as they can, there is no magic button they can press to just make themselves more efficient.
  - no_wizard 3y ago
    >Every company already tries this as hard as they can, there is no magic button they can press to just make themselves more efficient. Then why are so many so inefficient? In the Silicon Valley mythology, one of the core tenants is that startups can act more efficiently than big companies simply due to focus & size. If this were inherently true to any reasonable degree, I actually think we would have a differently shaped workforce. I can point out dozens of inefficiencies I experience even today that slow down development, and that is just if we analyze development. I hear from other wings of the company[0] of other things - simple things like consolidating tools so they don't have to bounce between different apps to do things - that also drive alot of real inefficiency. This isn't the first place I worked where all these issues exist either, and its not nitpicky stuff, its all low hanging fruit. Consolidating tools is a complaint I have heard at almost every job I've had sans 1. I don't imagine I'm alone, my peers at other companies often have similar complaints when we talk. I think some things are inherent to simply organizing humans, and I get that, but the obviousness of some improvements that simply aren't undertaken runs counter to the assumptions one makes when they buy into the "efficient business" hypothesis [0]: we successfully became more cross functional, that's a huge plus, our solutions are much more holistic now, but its only part of the problem.
- tick_tock_tick 3y ago
  > We would have hired more modestly, and could focus on making the business more generally efficient, cut down on process, and focus on keeping the business nimble and responsive. Or more realistically doomed the company to fade from grace as you competitors surge past you eventually ending with a massive layoff.
  - no_wizard 3y ago
    >Or more realistically doomed the company to fade from grace as you competitors surge past you eventually ending with a massive layoff. This is a black and white take that doesn't jive, additionally, we have the hindsight of history, both recent history and the history of other boom / bust cycles, that serve to validate. Our competitors wouldn't have zoomed past us. We have strong market presence and we bleed more users due to our own ineffectiveness than strictly from competitive pressure, and I can trace much of that ineffectiveness back to hiring practices from late 2020 to mid 2022. As I noted previously, we have a clear line of how this happened. Generally speaking, a moderate growth strategy would have left us in a better place, and it was easy to see by the end of 2021 that things were going to change sooner rather than later. I'm not that smart, by my own admission, I'm a pretty dumb guy, but I put the pieces together by then by simply looking at where the money was coming from. There was no way the conditions of 2021 were going to continue at most past 2025 if you wanted to be an optimist, but realistically, it was coming down a lot sooner to anyone paying attention to how the money was flooding in, and I felt we would start to see some downturns in 2022 and 2023. As soon as the COVID relief stuff was announced to be ending, it should have been even more so, yet there wasn't a prevalent skepticism in the status quo until much later.

no_wizard 3y ago

>I think you just have a fundamentally different view of what a layoff means then the executives, board of directors, and general shareholders. Most likely, and I personally believe that is part of the problem, not the problem. I recognize how damaging layoffs are to people. Its unfair to act like they aren't. Its people's livelihood and we as humans often make decisions around these things, and when its yanked out from underneath them without notice, its very damaging. Its not numbers on a spreadsheet, it is human lives. >But what if the customers survived? What if interest rates didn't hike as fast? You're suggestion would have been horrible. The risks of over-hiring is a layoff which no one else views as really that bad vs failing behind competitors. We would have hired more modestly, and could focus on making the business more generally efficient, cut down on process, and focus on keeping the business nimble and responsive. If I'm wrong, we end up primed to take on more customers while continuing to hire modestly. Ironically, our smaller more nimble competitors ate a bunch of market share from us with much smaller overall staff, because they could move faster, and I can directly trace that to the hiring spree. Now, I will admit, if we had stronger safety nets in the US that made layoffs relatively painless for the unemployed, I'd feel differently about this.

Jensson 3y ago
> could focus on making the business more generally efficient, cut down on process, and focus on keeping the business nimble and responsive Every company already tries this as hard as they can, there is no magic button they can press to just make themselves more efficient.
- no_wizard 3y ago
  >Every company already tries this as hard as they can, there is no magic button they can press to just make themselves more efficient. Then why are so many so inefficient? In the Silicon Valley mythology, one of the core tenants is that startups can act more efficiently than big companies simply due to focus & size. If this were inherently true to any reasonable degree, I actually think we would have a differently shaped workforce. I can point out dozens of inefficiencies I experience even today that slow down development, and that is just if we analyze development. I hear from other wings of the company[0] of other things - simple things like consolidating tools so they don't have to bounce between different apps to do things - that also drive alot of real inefficiency. This isn't the first place I worked where all these issues exist either, and its not nitpicky stuff, its all low hanging fruit. Consolidating tools is a complaint I have heard at almost every job I've had sans 1. I don't imagine I'm alone, my peers at other companies often have similar complaints when we talk. I think some things are inherent to simply organizing humans, and I get that, but the obviousness of some improvements that simply aren't undertaken runs counter to the assumptions one makes when they buy into the "efficient business" hypothesis [0]: we successfully became more cross functional, that's a huge plus, our solutions are much more holistic now, but its only part of the problem.
tick_tock_tick 3y ago
> We would have hired more modestly, and could focus on making the business more generally efficient, cut down on process, and focus on keeping the business nimble and responsive. Or more realistically doomed the company to fade from grace as you competitors surge past you eventually ending with a massive layoff.
- no_wizard 3y ago
  >Or more realistically doomed the company to fade from grace as you competitors surge past you eventually ending with a massive layoff. This is a black and white take that doesn't jive, additionally, we have the hindsight of history, both recent history and the history of other boom / bust cycles, that serve to validate. Our competitors wouldn't have zoomed past us. We have strong market presence and we bleed more users due to our own ineffectiveness than strictly from competitive pressure, and I can trace much of that ineffectiveness back to hiring practices from late 2020 to mid 2022. As I noted previously, we have a clear line of how this happened. Generally speaking, a moderate growth strategy would have left us in a better place, and it was easy to see by the end of 2021 that things were going to change sooner rather than later. I'm not that smart, by my own admission, I'm a pretty dumb guy, but I put the pieces together by then by simply looking at where the money was coming from. There was no way the conditions of 2021 were going to continue at most past 2025 if you wanted to be an optimist, but realistically, it was coming down a lot sooner to anyone paying attention to how the money was flooding in, and I felt we would start to see some downturns in 2022 and 2023. As soon as the COVID relief stuff was announced to be ending, it should have been even more so, yet there wasn't a prevalent skepticism in the status quo until much later.