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The other question is why C-suite does even need to tell the respective division management to lay off employees if the actual goal is cost reduction. Shouldn't

The other question is why C-suite does even need to tell the respective division management to lay off employees if the actual goal is cost reduction. Shouldn't they impose a budget reduction target instead and trust them to allocate the savings between capex, opex and salary budget according to specific situation at hand?

wffurr 2y ago
>> why C-suite does even need to tell the respective division management to lay off employees if the actual goal is cost reduction You answered your own question. For a lot of layoffs, cost reduction isn't the goal; it's disciplining the workforce who were increasingly assertive at work about direction and conditions.
- dartos 2y ago
  It’s honestly probably not that evil.(generally. There are definitely evil orgs out there) It’s just the easiest way to make the stock price go up. Layoffs caused twitter to bump in price. Same with Microsoft when they laid off all those game devs. C-suite don’t care about profit or losses in tech, just the stock price. In the 2010s, hiring devs increased stock prices. In the 2020s mass firings do. It’s just money. Simple as.
  - slappyham 2y ago
    [flagged]
michaelt 2y ago
The C suite wants to take the blame, so the people you deal with face to face can honestly say the decision was taken out of their hands.
matwood 2y ago
> actual goal is cost reduction For many companies the largest cost is labor. Also in many companies, managers amass power by the number of people they manage. If the C-suite doesn't explicitly push for layoffs they will likely not happen, causing them to not reduce costs as quickly as they wanted.
- jordanb 2y ago
  Nah I've been in meetings before where it was asked "if we can find these ten million in cloud costs and licenses, can we retain staff?" and the answer was "no, because those are different buckets." Regarding "managers try to amass staff," I've seen some of that for sure, but it's not universal and acting like it's some kind of iron rule of organizations is an op. Most managers are evaluated based on the impact their organization is having, not the size of it, unless the firm is incredibly poorly run. What does happen, and where these layoff edicts come from, is that the executives fear the management is more loyal to their directs than they are to leadership. They feel that if they want to inflict something on the workforce they have to "force" management's hand, because otherwise management will resist.
tetromino_ 2y ago
But then you will still get short-sighted layoff decisions getting made, only by directors instead of C-suite.

wffurr 2y ago

>> why C-suite does even need to tell the respective division management to lay off employees if the actual goal is cost reduction You answered your own question. For a lot of layoffs, cost reduction isn't the goal; it's disciplining the workforce who were increasingly assertive at work about direction and conditions.

dartos 2y ago
It’s honestly probably not that evil.(generally. There are definitely evil orgs out there) It’s just the easiest way to make the stock price go up. Layoffs caused twitter to bump in price. Same with Microsoft when they laid off all those game devs. C-suite don’t care about profit or losses in tech, just the stock price. In the 2010s, hiring devs increased stock prices. In the 2020s mass firings do. It’s just money. Simple as.
- slappyham 2y ago
  [flagged]

michaelt 2y ago

The C suite wants to take the blame, so the people you deal with face to face can honestly say the decision was taken out of their hands.

matwood 2y ago

> actual goal is cost reduction For many companies the largest cost is labor. Also in many companies, managers amass power by the number of people they manage. If the C-suite doesn't explicitly push for layoffs they will likely not happen, causing them to not reduce costs as quickly as they wanted.

jordanb 2y ago
Nah I've been in meetings before where it was asked "if we can find these ten million in cloud costs and licenses, can we retain staff?" and the answer was "no, because those are different buckets." Regarding "managers try to amass staff," I've seen some of that for sure, but it's not universal and acting like it's some kind of iron rule of organizations is an op. Most managers are evaluated based on the impact their organization is having, not the size of it, unless the firm is incredibly poorly run. What does happen, and where these layoff edicts come from, is that the executives fear the management is more loyal to their directs than they are to leadership. They feel that if they want to inflict something on the workforce they have to "force" management's hand, because otherwise management will resist.

tetromino_ 2y ago

But then you will still get short-sighted layoff decisions getting made, only by directors instead of C-suite.