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How infuriating for anyone recently hired caught in this trap. It seems to me the obvious, from both a business & human perspective, is to stop hiring at first

How infuriating for anyone recently hired caught in this trap. It seems to me the obvious, from both a business & human perspective, is to stop hiring at first signs of trouble, before layoffs. To do so otherwise is cruel. I doubt Matt had zero idea about this possibility two months ago.

toomuchtodo 2y ago
Those lacking empathy don’t know how to not be cruel. They keep filtering to the top unfortunately. Something that remains to be solved for.
- noisy_boy 2y ago
  There is nothing to solve - you are in the game of capitalism (the American Edition) and the job is to maximise shareholder value. They are paid big bucks because they only work for that without empathy/cruelty or such emotions. The only way to solve is to change the game but that's next to impossible because most powerful players like it that way and will turn on anyone trying to change their fattening ways. The best part is that the pawns keep getting sacrificed and do nothing to change it; not only that, they refuse to support anyone trying to change the game to make their lives better. It's amazing.
paradox460 2y ago
This will continue until there are actual consequences for those responsible. I'm of the mindset that any time a company does layoffs, they should start from the top And work down.
- alvah 2y ago
  >I'm of the mindset that any time a company does layoffs, they should start from the top And work down. Oh, to be young and idealistic again! So in your world, the people running the business should fire themselves first?
  - dijksterhuis 2y ago
    not the parent, but accountability is supposed to be assumed up the org chart while responsibility is delegated down. so, yeah. the people ultimately accountable for fucking shit up should probably be held accountable first and foremost. (this is why CEOs often resign in the wake of a scandal)
  - mathgeek 2y ago
    > So in your world, the people running the business should fire themselves first? If they are needed to continue leading, they should consider cutting their own salary until the problems are fixed. Let them take their entire compensation in just their equity for a time. However we all know this won’t be the norm, and that’s OK. Not great, just OK.
    - dboreham 2y ago
      Jim Barksdale enters the room.
    - ted_dunning 2y ago
      Been there and done that. One startup I was at instituted a 50% pay cut for senior execs, 25% for the level below that and no cut below that. The CEO took a 100% pay cut. This let us get through a short rough patch without layoffs.
      - leosarev 2y ago
        I worked at middle-sized company that instituted a pay cuts, cutting all bonuses and stopping raises. After year, company lost almost every person in tech managenent and most of team leaders, their clients actively executing forking rights and no one believes in company future now. I once heard wise words from some CEO. In harsh times, clients do not want cheaper and worse services from us. They want less services. So we are moving out headcount down, while keeping pay and even execute raises for those who stay.
        pdimitar 2y ago
- tasuki 2y ago
  > I'm of the mindset that any time a company does layoffs, they should start from the top And work down. I'm off the mindset that employment should be voluntary: both by the employer and the employee. It makes employers reluctant to hire if they know they can't get rid of people again. (I'm a socialist at heart and think it'd be pretty nice for the government to take care of people who lost their jobs. Just tax the companies a little more!)
nostrademons 2y ago
The business world changes direction faster than companies can adapt. That was my biggest lesson as an entrepreneur: entrepreneurs don't really pivot into product-market fit, the market pivots into them. The reason capitalism works is because there's this huge sea of dream-chasers out there, most of whom will go bankrupt, so that when the market's needs change there is somebody out there to service them, and everybody who's not effectively servicing them goes to hell and gets another job. Corporations and management basically exist to buffer this uncertainty. Employment is actually a really bad deal in good economic times; owners reap almost all the windfall of having a successful product. But in bad times, the company keeps paying you even if they're losing money, at least up until they don't. You get a raw deal, but not as raw a deal as the people paying you. Likewise with strategic direction. The market's needs change faster than senior executives can adapt: if they always produced what the market was actually clamoring for, the company would run around like a chicken with its head cut off (this actually happens when the CEO panics, and a key CEO skill, and part of the reason they're paid so much, is the ability to ignore every piece of market data saying "You're not hot anymore. Nobody wants you, and the market has moved on" and keep doing what you're doing even though your intuition is telling you that you're doomed and going to lose your cushy $20M/year job). Much of the job of middle management is to buffer senior management's freakouts and tell the ICs "Keep calm and carry on; let's see if he still cares about this new hotness next week."
- KennyBlanken 2y ago
  That's a lot of words from someone who doesn't know what's been going on for ~6 months or so that is relevant. Mullenweg lost his mind and attacked a competitor to Wordpress hosting (WP Engine) and kept doubling down and only served to demonstrate how much of an unhinged asshole he was. Along the way he pissed off the Wordpress community - the worry was that if anyone else pissed him off (which could include he'd accuse them of using the Wordpress name or even "WP", even if it was descriptive (which is entirely permitted use of a trademarked name) and run up a bunch of legal expenses for them. Angry-at-the-world blog post after blog post doubling down over and over. Taunting people as he banned them from the Wordpress slack, that sort of stuff. Then he blocked WP Engine from accessing the Wordpress.org plugin and theme registries which meant a huge number of sites couldn't update plugins or themes. Then he announced Automattic was going to cut back engineering hours to (if I remember right) one full time staffer. One person to keep up with security updates and bugfixes of a very complicated piece of software used by a lot of organization. Incredibly childish and thoroughly demonstrated to the world that he was unsuited for leading a company and being the sole person almost completely in charge of a piece of software used by a 20-30% of the websites in the world. This was absolutely foreseeable, especially when he cut back Automattic's engineering to 40hr/week. I advised a client a few weeks into the drama to at least keep in the back of their minds that they might have to migrate at some point as "the CEO of the company is off his rocker, they probably will start to struggle with security updates, and the company may go out of business."
paulcole 2y ago
If you believe you need more people to get out of trouble isn’t it cruel to not follow through?
IG_Semmelweiss 2y ago
Its not even cruel. Its just dumb. Really dumb. You are going to invest significant resources into hiring, onboarding, and injecting new staff into workflows for people that will not be there as soon as they are actually productive. So its not just the cash burn - its the tieup of 3x team members to getting new people trained to become effective and successful contributor. Time is finite. It makes no sense to throw away all that time spent by your team, who could have use that same time to get a few more features out, proposals sent , or projects spec'd instead.
hinkley 2y ago
The exuberance and self-assuredness that your plans are going to work out leads to overreach and I think the lag in accounting practices helps make that more acute. I have had too many experiences where I thought my current employer was about to start circling the drain, and I've ended up some place that was circling faster. At a guess I'm about 50:50, which I suppose I should count as 'lucky' but has never felt that way. Fish-tailing is a common flame-out mode for startups. VCs are partly to blame. They don't like to discourage you in case you come up with a miracle, but neither do they want to put good money and time after bad if it turns out you're going to be a break-even play or a loss.
regularfry 2y ago
The median position is to be hiring, just to backfill attrition. "Trouble" might be temporary; it might be noise. Hiring is always slow, with cycles longer than "trouble" might last. We might argue about the parameters in this situation, but structurally there's a bias towards the low-pass average.

toomuchtodo 2y ago

Those lacking empathy don’t know how to not be cruel. They keep filtering to the top unfortunately. Something that remains to be solved for.

noisy_boy 2y ago
There is nothing to solve - you are in the game of capitalism (the American Edition) and the job is to maximise shareholder value. They are paid big bucks because they only work for that without empathy/cruelty or such emotions. The only way to solve is to change the game but that's next to impossible because most powerful players like it that way and will turn on anyone trying to change their fattening ways. The best part is that the pawns keep getting sacrificed and do nothing to change it; not only that, they refuse to support anyone trying to change the game to make their lives better. It's amazing.

paradox460 2y ago

This will continue until there are actual consequences for those responsible. I'm of the mindset that any time a company does layoffs, they should start from the top And work down.

alvah 2y ago
>I'm of the mindset that any time a company does layoffs, they should start from the top And work down. Oh, to be young and idealistic again! So in your world, the people running the business should fire themselves first?
- dijksterhuis 2y ago
  not the parent, but accountability is supposed to be assumed up the org chart while responsibility is delegated down. so, yeah. the people ultimately accountable for fucking shit up should probably be held accountable first and foremost. (this is why CEOs often resign in the wake of a scandal)
- mathgeek 2y ago
  > So in your world, the people running the business should fire themselves first? If they are needed to continue leading, they should consider cutting their own salary until the problems are fixed. Let them take their entire compensation in just their equity for a time. However we all know this won’t be the norm, and that’s OK. Not great, just OK.
  - dboreham 2y ago
    Jim Barksdale enters the room.
  - ted_dunning 2y ago
    Been there and done that. One startup I was at instituted a 50% pay cut for senior execs, 25% for the level below that and no cut below that. The CEO took a 100% pay cut. This let us get through a short rough patch without layoffs.
    - leosarev 2y ago
      I worked at middle-sized company that instituted a pay cuts, cutting all bonuses and stopping raises. After year, company lost almost every person in tech managenent and most of team leaders, their clients actively executing forking rights and no one believes in company future now. I once heard wise words from some CEO. In harsh times, clients do not want cheaper and worse services from us. They want less services. So we are moving out headcount down, while keeping pay and even execute raises for those who stay.
      - pdimitar 2y ago
tasuki 2y ago
> I'm of the mindset that any time a company does layoffs, they should start from the top And work down. I'm off the mindset that employment should be voluntary: both by the employer and the employee. It makes employers reluctant to hire if they know they can't get rid of people again. (I'm a socialist at heart and think it'd be pretty nice for the government to take care of people who lost their jobs. Just tax the companies a little more!)

nostrademons 2y ago

The business world changes direction faster than companies can adapt. That was my biggest lesson as an entrepreneur: entrepreneurs don't really pivot into product-market fit, the market pivots into them. The reason capitalism works is because there's this huge sea of dream-chasers out there, most of whom will go bankrupt, so that when the market's needs change there is somebody out there to service them, and everybody who's not effectively servicing them goes to hell and gets another job. Corporations and management basically exist to buffer this uncertainty. Employment is actually a really bad deal in good economic times; owners reap almost all the windfall of having a successful product. But in bad times, the company keeps paying you even if they're losing money, at least up until they don't. You get a raw deal, but not as raw a deal as the people paying you. Likewise with strategic direction. The market's needs change faster than senior executives can adapt: if they always produced what the market was actually clamoring for, the company would run around like a chicken with its head cut off (this actually happens when the CEO panics, and a key CEO skill, and part of the reason they're paid so much, is the ability to ignore every piece of market data saying "You're not hot anymore. Nobody wants you, and the market has moved on" and keep doing what you're doing even though your intuition is telling you that you're doomed and going to lose your cushy $20M/year job). Much of the job of middle management is to buffer senior management's freakouts and tell the ICs "Keep calm and carry on; let's see if he still cares about this new hotness next week."

KennyBlanken 2y ago
That's a lot of words from someone who doesn't know what's been going on for ~6 months or so that is relevant. Mullenweg lost his mind and attacked a competitor to Wordpress hosting (WP Engine) and kept doubling down and only served to demonstrate how much of an unhinged asshole he was. Along the way he pissed off the Wordpress community - the worry was that if anyone else pissed him off (which could include he'd accuse them of using the Wordpress name or even "WP", even if it was descriptive (which is entirely permitted use of a trademarked name) and run up a bunch of legal expenses for them. Angry-at-the-world blog post after blog post doubling down over and over. Taunting people as he banned them from the Wordpress slack, that sort of stuff. Then he blocked WP Engine from accessing the Wordpress.org plugin and theme registries which meant a huge number of sites couldn't update plugins or themes. Then he announced Automattic was going to cut back engineering hours to (if I remember right) one full time staffer. One person to keep up with security updates and bugfixes of a very complicated piece of software used by a lot of organization. Incredibly childish and thoroughly demonstrated to the world that he was unsuited for leading a company and being the sole person almost completely in charge of a piece of software used by a 20-30% of the websites in the world. This was absolutely foreseeable, especially when he cut back Automattic's engineering to 40hr/week. I advised a client a few weeks into the drama to at least keep in the back of their minds that they might have to migrate at some point as "the CEO of the company is off his rocker, they probably will start to struggle with security updates, and the company may go out of business."

paulcole 2y ago

If you believe you need more people to get out of trouble isn’t it cruel to not follow through?

IG_Semmelweiss 2y ago

Its not even cruel. Its just dumb. Really dumb. You are going to invest significant resources into hiring, onboarding, and injecting new staff into workflows for people that will not be there as soon as they are actually productive. So its not just the cash burn - its the tieup of 3x team members to getting new people trained to become effective and successful contributor. Time is finite. It makes no sense to throw away all that time spent by your team, who could have use that same time to get a few more features out, proposals sent , or projects spec'd instead.

hinkley 2y ago

The exuberance and self-assuredness that your plans are going to work out leads to overreach and I think the lag in accounting practices helps make that more acute. I have had too many experiences where I thought my current employer was about to start circling the drain, and I've ended up some place that was circling faster. At a guess I'm about 50:50, which I suppose I should count as 'lucky' but has never felt that way. Fish-tailing is a common flame-out mode for startups. VCs are partly to blame. They don't like to discourage you in case you come up with a miracle, but neither do they want to put good money and time after bad if it turns out you're going to be a break-even play or a loss.

regularfry 2y ago

The median position is to be hiring, just to backfill attrition. "Trouble" might be temporary; it might be noise. Hiring is always slow, with cycles longer than "trouble" might last. We might argue about the parameters in this situation, but structurally there's a bias towards the low-pass average.