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Layoffs are a very normal thing for businesses to do. There is nothing "cowardly" about it. Would you rather them never hire them in the first place?
by matchbok3 6mo ago
Layoffs are a very normal thing for businesses to do.
There is nothing "cowardly" about it.
Would you rather them never hire them in the first place?
- bellowsgulch 6mo agoThat does tend to be the more experienced management decision among firms who survived through the dot-com bubble.
- sdevonoes 6mo agoWith that kind of mindset… man, so sorry for you
- matchbok3 6mo agoCare to explain? Rather than these jugemental one-offs?
- sdevonoes 6mo agoYou are normalising layoffs in companies that are not losing money. If you are a regular employee, this kind of behaviour affects you, but hereyou are saying “it’s alright folks, it’s just business “. Sure thing these kind of layoffs are not illegal, but there must be something else in life than raw corporate behaviour when it comes to work, don’t you think? The other scenario is that Meta doesn’t layoff people. The big fishes will make less money, but won’t affect their lives in the minimum. What about that? That’s not illegal either, but ofc, “that’s not how businesses work!”. So brainwashed. We are the frogs, they are boiling us and you don’t care
- zimza 6mo agoSadly a lot of people see profit as the only incentive.
- matchbok3 6mo agoLayoffs mean a company doesn't have productive, profitable work for a set of people. The broader profitability of the entire company is entirely irrelevant. Should employee x subsidize employee y? That's nonsense. Should a company keep someone on payroll and have them do nothing until profit reaches 0?
- caconym_ 6mo ago> Layoffs mean a company doesn't have productive, profitable work for a set of people. That's only one of many things layoffs can mean. In this case, Meta seems to be laying people off so that it can make a bigger bet on its AI programs (which I assume are deeply unprofitable right now) at the expense of other lines of business.
- sjsdaiuasgdia 6mo ago> profitable work for a set of people I think this is essential to the disagreement in this little part of the discussion. Ending a product line and laying off the people who worked on that product line aligns more to your "profitable work for a set of people" phrasing. But a great deal of tech sector layoffs happen as a blanket action, not targeted at specific products, teams, or roles. Business units are directed to find X% to cut. When the business is making money, these blanket actions can feel pretty unfair to the affected employees. The decision to lay off any specific individual could be completely disconnected from the value that individual provides to the business.
- autaut 6mo agoFirst of all if a company is profitable and has a number of employees and has no idea how to use them that’s a failure of leadership. The board should look for an executive team that knows how to use what it has. Secondarily layoffs don’t happen the way you say: they are across the board and when you are talking of 10% of a company there is no real way of targeting the inefficient people. More than anything is fiscal engineering: you need x amount, you fire people and then you rehire 75% offering less equity and at lower levels imposing more work on the remaining employees
- 6mo ago
- paganel 6mo agoI'd say that a 10% culling of their workforce when they should be going all in on is not "very normal". I don't think that those 10% of their workforce were keeping them back, to the contrary, now a big part of the remaining 90% will start wondering (if they hadn't already done so) when they'll be next, that is instead of focusing their minds on this AI-race thing.
- BoredPositron 6mo agoReducing your workforce always means you either made a strategic mistake, your bottom line is hurting, your growth is stagnating or you hired McKinsey (lol) not a good sign for company health and always bad for morale.
- matchbok3 6mo agoLiterally not true. Some bets just don't work. If a company tries to enter some new market and fails, they may use a layoff.
- shimman 6mo ago"Some bets didn't work so let's destroy lives and cause needless suicides. It wasn't my fault, I was only following orders." - Random Meta VP of Customer Misery.
- matchbok 6mo ago[dead]
- singpolyma3 6mo agoBecause hiring people and paying them a salary is somehow hurting those people?
- shimman 6mo agoNo but purposely forcing economic hardship on people when you're one of the most profitable entities on earth will always be a shitty thing. I'm sorry but treating workers like replaceable cogs is disgusting behavior and I'm not shocked that big tech routinely turns to anti-worker devices to enforce control.
- matchbok 6mo ago[dead]
- operatingthetan 6mo agoExiting low performers is one thing, but using layoffs as tool to put pressure on your workforce to extract more labor and keep them busy is a toxic culture.
- smallmancontrov 6mo agoToxic = green brokerage accounts for those in charge
- lotsofpulp 6mo agoIt would also be green for everyone else's brokerage account.
- whattheheckheck 6mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ones_Who_Walk_Away_from_Omelas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ones_Who_Walk_Away_from_Om...
- dmitrygr 6mo agohttps://shsdavisapes.pbworks.com/f/Omelas.pdf https://shsdavisapes.pbworks.com/f/Omelas.pdf
- smallmancontrov 6mo agoA few% pump is only a salary replacement for the poly-millionaires. Not for "everyone else."
- 33MHz-i486 6mo agoits not “normal” when companies have 10s of Billion in net profit per quarter Axing low/negative ROI product lines, sure. But recently these cuts have been across-the-board and in product lines that are net profitable and have strong technical product roadmaps. Moreover they are firing longer tenured (expensive) engineers I understand they’re managing a transition to a capital intensive strategy but the whole era reeks of stock price focused financial engineering and these large companies flexing oligopoly power in the face of their customers and the labor that builds their technology.
- matchbok 6mo ago[dead]
- lamasery 6mo ago> Layoffs are a very normal thing for businesses to do. Didn't used to be, except in extreme circumstances. Was seen as a really bad sign. To the extent there's "science" on this, it's a lot less clear than you might think that a policy of reaching eagerly for the layoff-button is long-term beneficial to companies, i.e. there's a good chance it's a cultural fad, you do it because "that's what's expected" and perhaps investors get skittish if you don't, for the circular reason that... that's what's expected.
- Sol- 6mo agoPeople generally complain about the interview process being bloated while also not giving a good signal - is it then not better to hire people for a while, see if they perform and then letting them go again? Though perhaps in Meta's case they hire a lot while also having cumbersome interviews, I don't know. I just feel like there are perhaps some benefit in being quick to hire and fire.
- achierius 6mo agoWhat people dislike is the boom-bust cycle inherent to all levels of a market economy. During some years, these companies suck people up like a vacuum -- that can be bad if you're on the inside and all of a sudden the culture goes out the window, or if you're expected to onboard 3-4 people at the same time, or you end up with a reorg every quarter. Then, on the other end of the spectrum, companies shut down (non-backfill) hiring entirely and layoff huge percentages of the company, with no guarantee that you'll be safe just because you're doing a good job. Human lives do not work like this. If you're getting married, if you have an unexpected hospital expense, if you want to buy a house -- these are not things that "market cycles" will plan around, but you have to. Being quick to hire or fire is not the problem. Massive overhiring and massive layoffs are.
- abosley 6mo agoAgreed. What happens when every company lays off 10, 20, 40% of their staff? AI Agents don't pay taxes and dont participate in a meaningful amount of the consumer economy.
- singpolyma3 6mo agoAI isn't contributing to the layoffs though
- VoidWarranty 6mo agoIt absolutely is. The funding for it, not the product itself.
- jmull 6mo agoI don’t think the previous poster is saying all layoffs are “cowardly”, but pointing out that these ones are. I think they have a point. Facebook is making money. Tech is in a very dynamic phase, right now. This is a moment of huge opportunity for them, and one that won’t necessarily be as large in the future. To be contracting right now, rather than making a play, seems like a lack of leadership.
- mr_00ff00 6mo agoNot saying you are wrong, but you could argue they made their big move with the Metaverse. Then again with those crazy AI contracts to ML people. Maybe Meta missed on those big plays and now there’s too much pressure to make another. I don’t know if I believe that, but worth considering
- reverius42 6mo agoPressure from whom? Mark Zuckerberg personally controls the majority of voting shares. He can do whatever he wants.
- parpfish 6mo agoyeah, these big layoffs don't add up to me right now. if you're making money and you feel that these are good employees, why not take them off the core products and ship them to some other ambituous R&D proejct? making core products leaner is probably a good, but surely there's some other big moonshot you'd like to take?
- dackdel 6mo agofound the ceo
- BobbyJo 6mo ago> Would you rather them never hire them in the first place? Isn't the obvious answer yes for everyone that sells their labor? If I gave you the choice between being an employee in an economy where it is more difficult to land a job, but you could be sure that job would last, or an economy where it is easier to find a job, but it was completely insecure, I think most would choose the former. No? Worring about finding work while looking, or worrying about it all the time? Seems obvious.
- nradov 6mo agoNo, of course not. How silly. As an employee who's been laid off a couple times I greatly prefer an economy where it's easy to find a job.
- NewsaHackO 6mo agoI guess the issue with the first one would be actually getting the job. If jobs were that valuable, I'd expect other factors not necessarily related to job performance to be reasons in getting a job, especially knowing (or being related to) the right person.
- singpolyma3 6mo agoIf it's easy to find a job why would I care if I'm laid off? Just get another job.
- matchbok3 6mo agoThis is a very depressing and mediocre outlook on innovation and growth. Based on your logic we should make it impossible to fire anybody. That surely will solve our problems, right? I want a dynamic, innovative economy where anyone can find a job if they work hard. Not because the law says they can't be fired. How depressing.
- singpolyma3 6mo ago> Would you rather them never hire them in the first place? It does seem like a lot of people would prefer this, they way they react to every layoff announcement.
- autaut 6mo agoIt would be better because it would create a more diverse work space where multiple employers complete for employees, instead of one company playing musical chairs with people
- singpolyma3 6mo agoHaving fewer jobs available would result in more employers? I'm not sure how.
- autaut 6mo agoA few companies get almost all investments. They start a lot of projects fast and close the ones that don’t work If companies stuck to fewer projects, money would be invested in other companies focusing on specific products, you get a lot of companies and not the market concentration you got today (which is responsible according to few economists to a lot of the us labor market dysfunctions it is currently experiencing)
- wolvoleo 6mo ago> Would you rather them never hire them in the first place? If it's not sustainable? Yes. They shouldn't have hired them in the first place then. Such a major round of firing (the second one in only a few months) shows a completely failing leadership. I'm glad in Europe companies are much more conservative with hiring and firing. Because it's much harder to let employees go and there's strings attached. Don't forget when you fire an employee you're giving them a lot of stress about their livelihood, you're externalising a lot to society. Internalise the profits, externalise the problems. Typical. I'm so glad I don't live in the US and that things don't work like that here.
- matchbok3 6mo agoThere's also a reason why there are no innovative companies in Europe. If you make it hard to fire someone you make it hard to hire someone. Companies won't spin up risky projects if they can't spin them down. This is why Europe continues to fall behind the US and China. Accepting the mediocrity is abdicating the leadership of the world to China. If you like that, good for you. But I doubt the low-growth, low-innovation world of Europe will make the next iPhone, AI, or chip. Oh, and Europe can only do this stuff because of the USA military, by the way.
- FeteCommuniste 6mo agoYou heard it here first, Zuck and his peers are brave generals in the battle against the Y...Chinese Peril and we are all...cannon fodder, I guess.
- autaut 6mo agoYou have brain poisoning from reading too much slop online. >But I doubt the low-growth, low-innovation world of Europe will make the next iPhone, AI, or chip. >chip Do you realize that the cutting edge in chip technology is a Dutch company
- dcrazy 6mo agoThat obtained the cutting edge technology by buying an American company that had been founded to productize technology developed at an American defense laboratory based on a Japanese researcher’s work