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Serious question: How does laying off 325 product and technology employees get presented as speeding up how products are developed? Is there a kernel of truth

Serious question: How does laying off 325 product and technology employees get presented as speeding up how products are developed? Is there a kernel of truth hiding there, or is that just a polite complete lie?

ericcholis 14y ago
While not necessarily true here, one could argue that developer bloat could lead to a slow down in product completion. As a developer using services PayPal regularly, I hope that this does lead to an improvement of there service. Otherwise, we've been fleeced by corporate PR babble yet again. On a side note, the rise of companies like Stripe and Square might have given the higher-ups pause. These should have been spaces where PayPal was the innovative leader, not lemmings.
georgemcbay 14y ago
Cutting back on bloated tech staff could absolutely help speed up new product development for all the usual Mythical Man Month reasons.... in theory. I've never seen it work in practice. In practice, in my experience, layoffs never target exactly the right set of dead weight. Company politics always come into play and you end up with a situation where some of the right people got axed, but not enough and worse sometimes the layoffs hit people who are actually great producers but who weren't visible enough to upper management to be spared. And once this event occurs it tends to have a ripple effect among the survivors -- nobody really feels safe and so everyone starts considering other opportunities and naturally your best talent has the easiest time of landing new jobs so they're among the first out the door, and now you're on a downward spiral of fucked.
- almost_usual 14y ago
  I experienced this exact situation a few weeks ago. Fortunately, I wasn't laid off but it did spark incentive for me to find a new employer. I landed a great position at a new company a couple weeks later and feel much happier now. I've heard through the grapevine that the megacorp I worked for is now in the downward spiral of 'fucked'.
  - josephjrobison 14y ago
    Yea I did a similar thing, but once I got the new job with an awesome raise, it made me think - "should I have applied and interviewed at a lot more places if it was that easy?"
- preferToAnony 14y ago
  // layoffs never target exactly the right set of dead weight// This is exactly what happened today. This layoff is not based on performance (as communicated by the internal email from the director). Several top performers are asked to leave, while under performers are still there.
zupreme 14y ago
Maybe eliminating some of the layers between conception and deployment? I've worked at a megacorp before and I can say with confidence that big bloated teams are all to often where great and innovative ideas go to die.
mtgx 14y ago
There more people there are, the more complex the processes and procedures becomes. This is why big corporations are seen as slow usually.

ericcholis 14y ago

While not necessarily true here, one could argue that developer bloat could lead to a slow down in product completion. As a developer using services PayPal regularly, I hope that this does lead to an improvement of there service. Otherwise, we've been fleeced by corporate PR babble yet again. On a side note, the rise of companies like Stripe and Square might have given the higher-ups pause. These should have been spaces where PayPal was the innovative leader, not lemmings.

georgemcbay 14y ago

Cutting back on bloated tech staff could absolutely help speed up new product development for all the usual Mythical Man Month reasons.... in theory. I've never seen it work in practice. In practice, in my experience, layoffs never target exactly the right set of dead weight. Company politics always come into play and you end up with a situation where some of the right people got axed, but not enough and worse sometimes the layoffs hit people who are actually great producers but who weren't visible enough to upper management to be spared. And once this event occurs it tends to have a ripple effect among the survivors -- nobody really feels safe and so everyone starts considering other opportunities and naturally your best talent has the easiest time of landing new jobs so they're among the first out the door, and now you're on a downward spiral of fucked.

almost_usual 14y ago
I experienced this exact situation a few weeks ago. Fortunately, I wasn't laid off but it did spark incentive for me to find a new employer. I landed a great position at a new company a couple weeks later and feel much happier now. I've heard through the grapevine that the megacorp I worked for is now in the downward spiral of 'fucked'.
- josephjrobison 14y ago
  Yea I did a similar thing, but once I got the new job with an awesome raise, it made me think - "should I have applied and interviewed at a lot more places if it was that easy?"
preferToAnony 14y ago
// layoffs never target exactly the right set of dead weight// This is exactly what happened today. This layoff is not based on performance (as communicated by the internal email from the director). Several top performers are asked to leave, while under performers are still there.

zupreme 14y ago

Maybe eliminating some of the layers between conception and deployment? I've worked at a megacorp before and I can say with confidence that big bloated teams are all to often where great and innovative ideas go to die.

mtgx 14y ago

There more people there are, the more complex the processes and procedures becomes. This is why big corporations are seen as slow usually.