4 ms·

Sometimes large companies do a layoff program to 'trim the fat'. This is about 5% of the total workforce, which is a bit aggressive for that. Reduced headcount

by shubb 13y ago

Sometimes large companies do a layoff program to 'trim the fat'. This is about 5% of the total workforce, which is a bit aggressive for that. Reduced headcount forces automation which might have been politically resisted for years, reduces complexity (giving customers a more consistent service), and makes managers bite the bullet and get rid of 'employees that are not bad.. but definitely not good either'. Having ridden them out... twice now, at 2 big companies, the people that go are usually the people you'd predict, but the atmosphere it creates is horrible and really effects the creativity of the company for a couple years.

_delirium 13y ago
Re: atmosphere, I recall reading studies that a certain proportion of people who are both exceptionally good and widely recognized by management as such, and therefore in no real risk of being chosen in a layoff round, nonetheless get very jittery during layoffs, fearing that they'll be next. Iirc two contributors are that some skilled employees massively underrate their own performance, and others just don't trust the layoff-selection process, treating it as an unpredictable and possibly random adversary. There's also not much room for error, because if people who are considered good by peers get laid off, trust in management's judgment takes a nose-dive. I remember my dad and his coworkers kind of holding one layoff against management for years, when a highly regarded member of the group was laid off. They were so incredulous people would use it as a running joke, "yeah, but remember these are the geniuses who fired [guy]".
- throwaway1979 13y ago
  The old "lets get rid of 5% by next n months" creates a piss poor environment for everyone. I encountered this at one of the first companies I worked for ... I was (tech-wise) young hot stuff. Older people I liked were freaked out. This got me so negative that I left myself after the layoffs. This was around the Y2K tech implosion. When I told my wife about the Cisco layoffs she remarked .. 'oh ... it is like 2000 again'. This got me thinking. Things are surely different today and I'd say a lot better for capable people. For one, entrepreneurship is much more accessible today due to the lower start up capital needed. Another similarity is that around the Y2K meltdown, anyone who knew HTML was calling themselves a web programmer. I see a bit of that these days. But not to the same extent. And I don't see large corporations hiring such people to the same extent that web startups hired. As another commenter mentioned ... these people may not have had the right skills. My guess is that the older workers will bear the brunt of the axe. This reinforces my belief that knowledge capital is very ephemeral in tech. A final note: I feel very bad for the people losing their jobs. I think rationalizing it based on economics or that the company has fiduciary responsibilities to its shareholders is foobar. I truly believe the HN community contains the next set of leaders in the tech industry. It makes me sad how insensitive comments are to Cisco employees. Sure, many will find jobs soon. Many will also have sleepless nights. The tech industry is renowned for meritocracy and our professionals are perhaps the least organized of all. We need to be compassionate.
  - eru 13y ago
    > This reinforces my belief that knowledge capital is very ephemeral in tech. It depends on what you invest in. Some areas are incredible long lived, like compilers (esp. parsing!), Unix scripting, C, Fortran. Even Cobol.
vehementi 13y ago
> Reduced headcount forces automation which might have been politically resisted for years More like, "we can't afford to spend time on automation now that we lost a team member!"

by shubb 13y ago

_delirium 13y ago

Re: atmosphere, I recall reading studies that a certain proportion of people who are both exceptionally good and widely recognized by management as such, and therefore in no real risk of being chosen in a layoff round, nonetheless get very jittery during layoffs, fearing that they'll be next. Iirc two contributors are that some skilled employees massively underrate their own performance, and others just don't trust the layoff-selection process, treating it as an unpredictable and possibly random adversary. There's also not much room for error, because if people who are considered good by peers get laid off, trust in management's judgment takes a nose-dive. I remember my dad and his coworkers kind of holding one layoff against management for years, when a highly regarded member of the group was laid off. They were so incredulous people would use it as a running joke, "yeah, but remember these are the geniuses who fired [guy]".

throwaway1979 13y ago
The old "lets get rid of 5% by next n months" creates a piss poor environment for everyone. I encountered this at one of the first companies I worked for ... I was (tech-wise) young hot stuff. Older people I liked were freaked out. This got me so negative that I left myself after the layoffs. This was around the Y2K tech implosion. When I told my wife about the Cisco layoffs she remarked .. 'oh ... it is like 2000 again'. This got me thinking. Things are surely different today and I'd say a lot better for capable people. For one, entrepreneurship is much more accessible today due to the lower start up capital needed. Another similarity is that around the Y2K meltdown, anyone who knew HTML was calling themselves a web programmer. I see a bit of that these days. But not to the same extent. And I don't see large corporations hiring such people to the same extent that web startups hired. As another commenter mentioned ... these people may not have had the right skills. My guess is that the older workers will bear the brunt of the axe. This reinforces my belief that knowledge capital is very ephemeral in tech. A final note: I feel very bad for the people losing their jobs. I think rationalizing it based on economics or that the company has fiduciary responsibilities to its shareholders is foobar. I truly believe the HN community contains the next set of leaders in the tech industry. It makes me sad how insensitive comments are to Cisco employees. Sure, many will find jobs soon. Many will also have sleepless nights. The tech industry is renowned for meritocracy and our professionals are perhaps the least organized of all. We need to be compassionate.
- eru 13y ago
  > This reinforces my belief that knowledge capital is very ephemeral in tech. It depends on what you invest in. Some areas are incredible long lived, like compilers (esp. parsing!), Unix scripting, C, Fortran. Even Cobol.

vehementi 13y ago

> Reduced headcount forces automation which might have been politically resisted for years More like, "we can't afford to spend time on automation now that we lost a team member!"