[HN Gopher] Twilio is laying off 17% of workforce
___________________________________________________________________
Twilio is laying off 17% of workforce
Author : akmittal
Score : 403 points
Date : 2023-02-13 14:36 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.twilio.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.twilio.com)
| greatpostman wrote:
| I've seen the threads, but asking again, anyone tried finding a
| dev job right now? How hard is it? There must be 50k software
| engineers looking for work. Gotta wonder how long it will take
| for the job market to recover
| dboreham wrote:
| Haven't tried, but I've been doing this for several decades and
| it has always been hard to find good people and 10 years on you
| can't even remember which years were the downturns and which
| were the booms.
| ghaff wrote:
| Dot-bomb is something of an exception to that. I made it
| through myself but a lot of people ended up long-term
| unemployed and changing careers.
| ejb999 wrote:
| Yep. live thru that myself - never got laid of in either
| the 2008 or 2000 busts, but I know a lot of folks in tech
| and finance (especially) that it took them _years_ to find
| anything close to comparable once they were let go.
|
| I am not yet convinced we are not heading there again.
| latchkey wrote:
| I even remember the 1998 'crash'. I am convinced we are
| heading there again, but in much slower motion. It may
| never hit rock bottom, but we are definitely not in a
| bullish market at this point.
| ghaff wrote:
| I got laid off right after 9/11 and I was lucky enough to
| get an offer from the CEO at a very small company who I
| knew from prior work--and didn't get so much as a nibble
| anywhere else. Never earned as much as my relatively
| modest comp of the prior decade. Then 2008 rolled around
| and that didn't seem the best time to be beating the
| bushes for something else. But finally landed something
| new with someone else I knew in 2010 and that set me up
| pretty reasonably.
| tracker1 wrote:
| Agreed... it was more segmented at the time, as employment
| was more regional... so seemed to affect the West coast
| more/earlier... didn't hit Phoenix until nearly a year
| after it was already bad in NorCal. Was out for about a
| year, and it was rough, to say the least. Was denied
| unemployment because I had done side work the year prior,
| and all that had dried up too.
|
| Took almost 8 months to be working again (at half where I
| was prior) and a few years to get back to that level again.
| Given the number of remote workers, can see the effects
| being broader and more impactful much more quickly if it
| keeps going this way.
|
| This time I have a house and other people relying on me...
| so it's a bit scarier. I'm on C2H right now, after getting
| let go in October, and just hoping to convert to FTE in the
| next couple months. Fortunately, in an industry unlikely to
| be affected by the tech downturn.
| ghaff wrote:
| I don't know if it was so much regional--except as a side
| effect of different regions having different types of
| companies. It was probably mostly startups, especially
| web-related startups, that took the brunt of the initial
| impact and the contagion probably spread at a rate more
| or less related to the degree of exposure to the startup
| ecosystem. There were some other areas like optical
| networking too.
|
| The company I was laid off from had a lot of exposure to
| startup spending whereas the one I was hired by mostly
| had big blue chip computer company clients which were (at
| the time) still only modest affected by dot-bomb.
| dehrmann wrote:
| I got laid off in 2009. It took me roughly six months to find
| something new, and this was with three years of experience
| and transition from driver development in C to full-stack web
| development. I got a token raise in the process. In
| hindsight, 2008 wasn't fun, but it wasn't _that_ bad.
|
| That said, I could see this being worse than 2008 for tech.
| Parts of tech really did binge on hiring in 2020 and 2021. In
| 2007, companies were just getting over the scars of 2000.
| grumple wrote:
| Word from coworkers is that friends who were recently laid off
| are getting new jobs in like a week.
|
| Personally, I've noticed a huge drop in recruiter spam on
| linkedin.
| likeabbas wrote:
| Laid off in November. It's been basically impossible to get an
| interview with a good paying large company.
|
| I have one offer from a start up that is okay, but I'm
| interviewing with a fairly big tech company that would pay me
| very close to my old salary. They paused hiring for a bit and I
| luckily have some experience on my resume that aligns with one
| of the few positions they want to fill.
|
| Fingers crossed.
| mkl95 wrote:
| I don't know how bad it is in the US. The EU market has plenty
| of L5+ positions and their recruiters are cold messaging as
| usual. I would argue it's even easier than before the layoffs,
| since it's really easy to justify short gigs and gaps right
| now.
| varjag wrote:
| European market lags behind the US in everything. In the dot
| com bust there was a few months' delay too.
| Eumenes wrote:
| Lots of junior people looking for work, thats for sure.
| ibz wrote:
| Probably slightly harder if you are in the bottom x%.
| ketchupdebugger wrote:
| currently on the market for a job since November, its a bit
| rough. I was interviewing with some companies last Nov/Dec that
| didn't go anywhere as these companies are also having layoffs.
| Most large companies are either still laying people off or has
| frozen hiring. Only startups and financial companies are still
| hiring, but TC for these are a bit lower.
| spike021 wrote:
| Last year I applied to and then interviewed with roughly 15
| companies between about March and August. It wasn't terrible
| but toward the end some of them stopped the process during
| freezes, which was a bit frustrating.
|
| I'm not an amazing engineer or interviewer so I took the one
| offer I got.
|
| If not for that I'm not sure if I'd have a job by now with
| everything going on.
| o_m wrote:
| Based on my experience most people employed at larger companies
| are not software developers. They don't say what roles they
| terminated. It might be support, project managers, HR,
| recruiters etc. that gets removed first.
| simplyluke wrote:
| It's surprising to me to continue seeing this myth that
| engineers are spared in most of these layoffs. That may be
| true in some cases, but most of the large tech layoffs have
| included plenty of software developers.
| sefrost wrote:
| How could anybody know what % of the big tech layoffs were
| software engineers?
| c2h5oh wrote:
| Most people laid off in all those companies are not in
| engineering. It seems they are mostly cutting support, HR,
| administrative, etc.
|
| If anything I've noticed that salary ranges are starting to
| catch up to inflation and salary ranges becoming more common in
| initial communication, at least when people reach out to me.
| Ancalagon wrote:
| This is mirroring what I'm seeing. I'm actually noticing a
| lot of senior dev jobs with base salaries extending to 200k+.
| This is new to me as before Covid this base salaries were
| very hard to come by even for higher level staff and
| principal roles, even in Faang
| madamelic wrote:
| It's not too bad tbh.
|
| It was definitely lighter than it used to be in 2015 - 2019 but
| for an experienced dev, roles definitely existed.
|
| I applied to ~60 companies over three weeks in the first weeks
| of January and had 5 or so interview processes running at once.
| The response rate definitely seemed lower but again, I was
| applying in the first weeks of January.
|
| If you have less than 2 or so years, it's definitely going to
| be harder. For senior+ though, there are still startups that
| need engineers.
|
| My analogy on this is that tech is a very, very large iceberg
| and FAANG is the little bit that sticks out of the water.
| pm90 wrote:
| It's probably a lot less than 50k.
|
| BigTech has basically stopped hiring with a few exceptions. I
| suspect that's for specialized skills/critical projects.
|
| Lesser tier companies are still hiring (Robinhood, Flexport,
| Reddit etc).
|
| Startups are still hiring a lot. There are many that raised a
| bunch of money but didn't overhire so they're in a pretty good
| place.
|
| So the market isn't super hot like 2021 but we're not at the
| breadlines stage either.
| matwood wrote:
| It's funny how spoiled people have been the last few years. For
| a long time the rule of thumb was to plan 1 month job hunting
| for every 10k of salary. Salaries have definitely gone up since
| then so the rule can likely be revised to something like 1
| month/20k-30k of salary. The point is that the higher salary
| required, the longer it typically takes to find a position. The
| last few years were the outlier times, and it seems we're
| settling back to normal.
| VirusNewbie wrote:
| You think the average engineer making 200k will take a year
| to get a new job?
| matwood wrote:
| They could. That rule of thumb has helped me plan for how
| much of an emergency fund I need to have. The more you
| make, the longer it will likely take to fully replace that
| salary.
|
| Another thing people should realize is that salaries do not
| always go up. Making 200k today does not mean someone will
| make 200k+ forever more. Plan accordingly.
| siva7 wrote:
| Juniors have it in those times always a bit harder, but seniors
| get along well.
| pm90 wrote:
| Yes it's really unfortunate that this happens. Especially for
| folks with student loans.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| about 4 months. Granted by a lagging metric
|
| > Overall employment of software developers, quality assurance
| analysts, and testers is projected to grow 25 percent from 2021
| to 2031, much faster than the average for all occupations.
|
| > About 162,900 openings for software developers, quality
| assurance analysts, and testers are projected each year, on
| average, over the decade. Many of those openings are expected
| to result from the need to replace workers who transfer to
| different occupations or exit the labor force, such as to
| retire.
|
| https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/...
| tarokun-io wrote:
| I looked for a job for 3 months and found one last December. It
| was tough.
|
| I shared details here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33882074. Unfortunately I
| didn't realize I had replies until it was too late and could no
| longer reply there :(
|
| More people shared their experience there, and a lot shared
| super nice comments which were nice to read.
|
| Since then, 32 recruiters sent me message request at LinkedIn
| whom I have not yet accepted, 21 more sent me in-mails or I
| accepted them and have a conversation, and maybe 3 cold-
| contacted me via email.
|
| Wellfound (angel.co) seems to be a good place to be, too.
|
| I suspect difficulty in finding a job is related to how much
| quality and money you're looking for. If you're willing to
| accept anything you'll probably still find a job quickly.
|
| Context: I live in Argentina, and we do get contacted a LOT
| because we're generally cheaper than first-world-country
| developers, specially USA. That makes getting offers really
| easy, but getting an equal-work-equal-pay job that pays good
| salaries regardless of where I live is super challenging.
| lesuorac wrote:
| Is 50k really that much?
|
| IIUC, Google's attrition rate is ~1/3 and they have ~250k
| people so each year there are ~80k people just from Google
| looking for a new job. Then take into consideration there are a
| lot more companies with their own attrition rate.
| lbrito wrote:
| Google's attrition can't be 33%, did you mean 3%?
| ghaff wrote:
| 33% seems high but 3% seems absurdly low.
|
| FWIW, this article puts the tech sector at a bit over 20%
| in 2020. One would think Google was on the lower side given
| that at least on the engineering side is probably going to
| find it hard to walk into a higher paying role from Google.
| (Though obviously people leave for other reasons.)
| spacemadness wrote:
| Sure, but that's presumably a stat from a potentially more
| favorable hiring market.
| toyg wrote:
| Those are insane number, do you have a source for them...?
| 30% yearly attrition rate is the stuff of call-centres, I
| find it hard to believe 1 out of 3 googlers quits the free-
| everything "googleserf" lifestyle (@ Douglas Coupland) every
| year.
| blamazon wrote:
| The summarized experience of my social network (in USA!) is
| that for relatively junior labor (1-5yoe), across many job
| types dev and not dev, startups are hiring and big firms
| aren't, and in between there is some mixture .
|
| Essentially, don't expect an offer from a firm that just did
| layoffs, and do expect tougher competition at smaller firms
| during interview loops, but there are jobs available. Just my
| two cents.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| It's not as easy as getting a job in 2021, but then again that
| was an outlier.
|
| When we post job listings we get a lot of great applicants now.
| It's hard to choose between all of the great candidates. Some
| of our best candidates are getting multiple job offers from
| different companies so it's not impossible to get offers right
| now.
|
| We have access to salary statistics data for the market. The
| comp ranges have dropped a little, as is expected in a mass
| layoff situation.
|
| A disproportionate number of laid off candidates were working
| remote when laid off, from what I've seen. Among my friends,
| the only people laid off were remote. I also sense that remote
| positions are slightly harder to get now, though not
| impossible.
| likeabbas wrote:
| > A disproportionate number of laid off candidates were
| working remote when laid off
|
| I did not want to go remote. I had to because my SO's job
| required us to move from New York to basically rural America.
| I hated moving here, and now I feel like my career
| opportunities are fucked because of the move.
| ghaff wrote:
| The situation is honestly probably better today than it
| once was. 20 years ago if someone got a position at a
| rural/small town college, most of the national labs, etc. a
| partner would have basically _no_ options other than
| whatever the local jobs were.
|
| Today in technology, remote may mean you don't get to be as
| picky as if you live in NYC etc., but there are probably
| options.
| whstl wrote:
| I wouldn't lose hope. I'm still seeing plenty of remote
| jobs. Out of the six interviews I did recently, the single
| one that doesn't offer it is tip-toeing around the subject
| and even promised "two days a week at home" off the cuff
| during negotiations.
|
| I can see more bureaucratic companies or some FAANGs not
| allowing for it, but then again it's not really a surprise.
| moneywoes wrote:
| No luck since December applied to 700
| ghaff wrote:
| Maybe focus a bit more? I never came close to that even
| shotgunning out of school ages ago. And everything since then
| was very tightly focused on people I knew.
| gaoshan wrote:
| We are heavily invested in Twilio. Should probably be paying more
| attention to potential alternatives.
| akmittal wrote:
| Just another stat, After this layoff Twilio still has more
| employees than it had in 2020
| [deleted]
| gaoshan wrote:
| That's fair and good to know. Not like we are going to jump
| ship as it would be very expensive but we should probably
| come up with at least a migration plan in case the worst
| happens some day.
| icedchai wrote:
| SignalWire is way lower cost than Twilio, and they implement
| many of the same APIs.
| muttantt wrote:
| It used to be, they're also increasing prices now
| tonightstoast wrote:
| Another recommendation is bandwidth.com. They have minimum
| pricing but their api is great.
| johndhi wrote:
| This is the impact of moving from the "growth company" to
| "profitable company" investment model.
|
| Twilio and other "high growth" saas companies for the last few
| years have competed solely on how much they could grow the top
| line every quarter. Now they have to rebuild themselves.
| heliophane wrote:
| Leo Laporte mentioned on security now last week that he was happy
| to move away from authy because it was run by twillio(a previous
| sponsor of the podcast). Have things been rough for the company?
| fredgrott wrote:
| I have a mild question:
|
| Ukraine war outlook in 3 months China will face a severe shortage
| of fertilizer(they get that from Russia at over 80%) along with
| India and since those are two big supply chains it might be that
| all these companies see a rise in one of their inputs via the
| supply chain disruption in the future towards April-May as
| decreasing their profits while at the same time increasing other
| costs.
|
| So my question is why is everyone assuming that it is some other
| economic force than this if this is the actual looming economic
| near term disaster?
|
| Think back a full year when we had the last supply chain
| disruption, did not Governments step in a fund grants to prevent
| the rise in input costs?
| adam_arthur wrote:
| The truth is that many of these companies can be run with fewer
| and fewer people as abstractions in technology become higher-
| level. Software takes a lot of effort to write, and much less to
| maintain.
|
| We just went through an era of effectively no software, to one
| with a large saturation of software that fills many niches. In
| the 2010's there was no competition for the majority of these
| businesses as VC capital tended to move towards new ideas, rather
| than directly competing with existing ventures.
|
| All of that is changing. The world will continue to need new and
| improving software, but the value provided by a single engineer
| continues to trend higher, and fewer and fewer developers will be
| needed to create these systems.
|
| Some SaaS has high costs of switching and a defensible moat, but
| many do not and are easily replicated. Existing players may even
| be at a disadvantage to competitors due to existing architectures
| using old patterns that require more manual labor/cost to
| maintain. e.g. Something like DocuSign is a good example of a low
| moat SaaS. Database systems are a good example of large moat
| (high cost of switching, even if better tech comes out)
| americafun wrote:
| > Software takes a lot of effort to write, and much less to
| maintain.
|
| ahahahahahahhahaaha
|
| Have you even written a line of code in your life ???
|
| This is the most brazenly wrong statement I've heard on this
| website. We are in dire need of a correction ...
| moneywoes wrote:
| Given that info, does it even make sense to try and build a
| SaaS these days?
|
| especially as someone bootstrapping, is there even possible to
| build software with a moat? like building a database isn't easy
| adam_arthur wrote:
| It's worth competing in any industry if the numbers work out.
| My main point was that the extremely high margin and lack of
| competition in SaaS is not likely to persist over time
| (without a defensible moat/high cost of switching).
|
| It's a better time than ever to create a SaaS with low cost
| overhead. If you leverage serverless and strong design, you
| can build extremely useful and far-reaching products with a
| handful of people. No longer do you need hundreds or
| thousands of people to do this.
|
| Then operational cost is low, and revenue required for
| breakeven/profit is low too.
| purpleblue wrote:
| I can understand a single layoff to "right size" the company, but
| a second layoff always points to an underlying problem that they
| didn't either believe or recognize only a few months previous.
| Which kind of makes me nervous. This as the Meta layoffs means
| that they didn't have a handle on the problem only a few months
| back.
| usrusr wrote:
| First layoff shakes the tree, those who would run will run,
| then the second layoff retains the intersection between those
| they want to keep and those who did not run. The outcome of
| trying to do it all in one go is far more unpredictable.
| OJFord wrote:
| Or maybe they thought two ~small~ big numbers in layoff
| headlines (or remaining employee morale) would be better than
| one ~big~ massive one.
| alvis wrote:
| or maybe the seniors think headline layoff is an opportunity
| for free advertisements
| [deleted]
| ramesh31 wrote:
| >Or maybe they thought two ~small~ big numbers in layoff
| headlines (or remaining employee morale) would be better than
| one ~big~ massive one.
|
| No one in their right mind would think that. One layoff can
| be understood as necessary. Two says to employees "you will
| never feel safe here again", and is a huge signal for top
| performers to run for the exit.
| purpleblue wrote:
| Two layoffs is worse than one big layoff, in terms of morale.
| x86x87 wrote:
| Lol. I don't think anyone gives a damn about morale
| nowadays. :(
| OJFord wrote:
| Over a quarter of the company (ignoring any hiring they may
| have done since September) though? idk, I'm not sure it's
| that clear-cut.
|
| Not that I'm certain in my own opinion and disagreeing with
| you though - I only said 'maybe _they_ thought '.
| purpleblue wrote:
| This is a well-known thing, people aren't guessing here
| and there's nothing to dispute. Having multiple layoffs
| destroys morale and the best practice is to cut deeply
| once to avoid a second layoff. Anyone who doesn't believe
| this is simply and foolishly repeating the mistakes of
| the past. Which suggests to me that it was a surprise to
| even themselves that they had to do this because of a
| revenue shortfall.
| dehrmann wrote:
| Agreed; the first can be blamed on following the crowd and
| over-hiring. The second shows weakness in leadership,
| especially considering economic conditions are similar to ~6
| months ago. Part of the leadership team need to be "affected,"
| "impacted," or whatever euphemism you want to use, and the
| stock should go down.
| saos wrote:
| How many cuts will these guys be making :/
| [deleted]
| alberth wrote:
| Stock is up 2.5% today.
|
| It's my understanding, in Twilio's 15-years of existence ...
| they've only had 1 profitable quarter (out of 60 quarters).
| wonderwonder wrote:
| From the article "I'm sure you're wondering why we're making
| additional cuts to the team after the September layoffs. At that
| time, we sought to streamline the company as it was then
| structured."
|
| Translates as "We did a terrible job with the first round of
| layoffs and didn't really explore all of our options and because
| we messed up then we have to lay off more of you now."
|
| Wasn't this the company that announced they were laying people
| off based on race in the last round of layoffs? Looks like that
| turned out great for them, shocked they are laying more people
| off now. No mention of race in this announcement though.
|
| Note [before I get torched here]: I am saying hiring and firing
| based on race is insane and should be based on talent and what
| skills you need for the job. I am in no way saying any race is
| better than any other race at anything.
| jwond wrote:
| > Wasn't this the company that announced they were laying
| people off based on race in the last round of layoffs?
|
| Oh yeah, they were. I forgot about that.
|
| > As you all know, we are committed to becoming an Anti-
| Racist/Anti-Oppression company. Layoffs like this can have a
| more pronounced impact on marginalized communities, so we were
| particularly focused on ensuring our layoffs - while a business
| necessity today - were carried out through an Anti-Racist/Anti-
| Oppression lens.
|
| https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1447669/000119312522...
| tobinfekkes wrote:
| They should focus on customer service instead, then maybe the
| profits would follow
| thiago_fm wrote:
| Not surprising, given the -$500m net income result on last
| quarter amid slowing growth, Twilio has been burning money since
| a long time, despite being a public company.
|
| Sometimes I wonder what those CEOs are doing to let a situation
| roll like this for so long. How boards accept this kind of thing?
|
| Twilio has terrible numbers, you don't even need to be a VC or
| professional analyst to see that. They need a big cut not only in
| personel, but in expenses.
|
| Perhaps also a new CEO and leadership...
| adharmad wrote:
| Checking their leadership team, there is a "Chief People
| Officer", "Chief Diversity Officer", "Chief Social Impact
| Officer", "Chief Digital Officer" and a bunch of pompous and
| inflated C-level titles. In fact their C-suite has 12 people!
|
| Maybe the shareholders should be asking if their C-suite is
| going to be downsized appropriately.
| thepasswordis wrote:
| Too many chiefs.
| alldayeveryday wrote:
| From their website:
|
| Chief Diversity Officer - ... responsible for guiding and
| scaling inclusion strategy and diversity initiatives across
| Twilio's global workforce
|
| Chief People Officer - .. responsible for driving the talent
| development and acquisition strategy, and building
| infrastructure to support a thriving culture of belonging,
| diversity and inclusion across the company
|
| I'm seeing some optimization opportunities here.
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| I don't know their compensation packages but I doubt firing a
| few executives will fill a minimum $500M hole. They must have
| additional systemic issues with their business model
| flashgordon wrote:
| There was a period of time after the last lay off and before
| the current one, I had noticed a huge number of exec level
| folks jumping ship, moving companies etc. I wonder if that was
| just in anticipation of all this? The execs do seem to be
| taking care of each other regardless of companies while
| employees argue about which companies are supreme!
| negamax wrote:
| Stock market. A lot of these companies are not only kept afloat
| but celebrated because of some future pie in the sky
| possibility. Everyone makes money in this game from brokers,
| engineers, managers, media. A perfect merry go round.
| pirate787 wrote:
| This is the correct take, but it is funny, because everyone
| is always lamenting the "quarterly focus" of the stock market
| but the reality is bloated companies are given huge runways
| in public markets.
| thiago_fm wrote:
| Nope, nobody can make money consistently out of a company
| that has the same CEO since 2008 and is still burning
| money(!!!).
|
| Maybe their business model isn't even viable, and/or needs a
| big revamp.
|
| Unlike other companies that fired people with 100bi in
| cash(looking at you, Google), Twilio is literally paying for
| people to use their services for over a decade.
|
| Are boards and VCs so rich that they can keep such thing
| going on for so long, without ever the expectation of making
| a profit?
| negamax wrote:
| Pension funds and many other xyz funds have these companies
| in their portfolio. Crypto markets with their scammy tokens
| are a good simulation of US stock market of today.
| Unprofitable companies posting 1 less cent loss as compared
| to forecast and seeing their stock jump 20%.
| atkailash wrote:
| [dead]
| phpisthebest wrote:
| >>Maybe their business model isn't even viable
|
| Twilio needs to figure out that that even is...
|
| They seems to be pulling in 100 directions from Automated
| Communications, to Authentication, Serverless Cloud, To
| Transactional Email, to Video Services to what ever else.
| x0x0 wrote:
| > _what those CEOs are doing to let a situation roll like this
| for so long. How boards accept this kind of thing?_
|
| It's approved by the board. They signed off as part of some
| strategy. No way a ceo outside of Zuck is permitted to lose
| money like this otherwise.
| https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/TWLO/twilio/net-in...
| madamelic wrote:
| My favorite part of these posts are learning all the dumb names
| people call employees.
|
| For anyone who has been at a place with an employee pet name that
| stuck, did you buy into it? Did you have to use it with a
| straight face or was it more of an outwards facing, recruiting
| tool?
|
| EDIT: Twizzlers is a much better name.
| joegahona wrote:
| The only one that has ever made sense to me is Workday's --
| "Workmates." It's just boring enough and natural-sounding
| enough to make sense.
| livinglist wrote:
| Work, mate!
| shagie wrote:
| https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/TWLO/twilio/number...
| (dates for 2021 to 2015 as of Dec 31 on that yer)
| 2022 8,992 ( from https://www.cnbc.com/2023/02/13/twilio-
| layoffs-1500-employees-17percent-of-workforce.html ) 2021
| 7,867 2020 4,629 2019 2,905 2018 1,440
| 2017 996 2016 730 2015 567
|
| In the past 3 years, they've tripled in size.
| https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=TWLO+revenue+and+profit
| shows the comparison of the revenue and net income over that
| time.
|
| https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=TWLO+revenue+and+profit...
| isn't quite as readable for financial data, but shows the context
| with employees (as this is about a layoff).
| Patrol8394 wrote:
| That's insane! I think a good future indicator before joining
| any company is their hypergrowth ... avoid at all cost. Smoke
| and mirrors. When you hear CEOs blathering on doubling,
| tripling etc .. headcount ... run ...
| beambot wrote:
| I'm quite the opposite: Twilio's revenue tripled from 2019 to
| today; if their headcount _didn 't_ triple to support that
| growth, I'd run away!
| acchow wrote:
| You should hope that a software business would scale non-
| linearly with employees.
| shagie wrote:
| (from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34777320 )
|
| Tripling the revenue and headcount would be ok if they
| could make this line go up (or even stay level)
|
| https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=TWLO+profit+divided+by
| +...
|
| As it is, the number is negative and the slope is negative.
| Patrol8394 wrote:
| How much of their revenue came in because of acquisitions
| like Segment? That said, sustainable growth is ok, Twilio's
| head count growth was "wild" to put it mild.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| Absolutely! I've avoided hyper growth companies for many
| years and I'm very glad I made that decision. There are
| sometimes attractive salaries and roles at these places, but
| ultimately you are most likely to become irrelevant and
| disposable. Even if you're a particularly talented and
| capable person, very few companies are run well enough to
| ever expose and utilize that. Your career is at risk of
| stagnating, I think.
|
| There are exceptions of course. The risk to reward ratio
| seems pretty bad to me, though.
| Patrol8394 wrote:
| > sometimes attractive salaries and roles at these places
|
| yeah, it is a lottery. Though more often than not is paper
| money that never realized into actual $$$. I did my fair
| share of it, but eventually went for steady long term
| income, slower growth but sustainable.
|
| I see it as investing in single stocks or boring mutual
| funds.
| time_to_smile wrote:
| Thanks for posting that plot.
|
| As I've mentioned frequently before, it amazes me how many
| people looking at tech company financials will _only_ look at
| Revenue and completely ignore profits.
|
| What the revenue/profit plot you showed for TWLO clearly
| demonstrates is that there is no magic point there suddenly you
| increase revenue and profitably starts to increase as well. I
| think an assumption many people have is "if revenue keeps
| rising you _have_ to be profitable soon ", clearly that is not
| always the case.
|
| Another pattern I've noticed is that many companies are not
| like Amazon, which is the model of a growth company. While AMZN
| does often reinvest its profits (historically to the dismay of
| investors) it has repeatedly demonstrated that _it can be
| profitable_. For companies like TWLO and UBER it 's not obvious
| that they even _can_ be profitable.
|
| When I see this TWLO chart the message I get is that the only
| way to increase revenue is to increase net losses. It's not
| even remotely clear that TWLO can generate a profit at any
| level of revenue.
| moneywoes wrote:
| TWLO is a SaaS whereas Ubers more of a physical service
| business can they be compared
| atdrummond wrote:
| The Uber model can be profitable - we know this because of
| Bolt's cash flow generation capabilities.
|
| Unfortunately for Uber and Lyft, they massively over-hire and
| over-compensate (except for drivers) relative to the more
| financially healthy rideshare firms globally.
| stiaje wrote:
| I assume at least some of this growth in number of employees
| comes from Twilio acquiring Segment in late 2020:
| https://www.twilio.com/press/releases/twilio-completes-acqui...
| PedroBatista wrote:
| Also, I would guess major grows are due to a massive influx of
| tech-sales people.
|
| This is just an extrapolation, but I would bet when the
| pandemic hit their email boxes and phones blowup with people
| throwing money at them and begging to "fix" their telephony
| system in a scenario where most of their employees are at home.
|
| Now the market is bigger but also mostly adjusted and the 2021
| tsunami of free money is over.
|
| I'm sure many technical people are affected by this but they
| are a minority because they were never the majority of hires (
| my guess )
| simfree wrote:
| Twilio isn't a turnkey platform, quite a bit of this business
| went to platforms like Telnyx that make Teams Phone System
| and similar setups super easy.
| moneywoes wrote:
| Can't you just register an API key and get going? Or is
| this a different offering
| callalex wrote:
| Yes. When people talk about "turnkey" they are talking
| about higher level aggregate products though. For
| example, ZenDesk is a "turnkey" customer support product
| that is built on top of Twilio APIs. Dropbox is a
| "turnkey" file management product built on top of AWS S3
| APIs.
|
| These days, Twilio does have a lot more integrated
| solutions, but people still think of them as just the
| message transport layer that they started as.
| oars wrote:
| Thank you for the reminder about this capability in Wolfram
| Alpha.
| fcantournet wrote:
| Holy shit ! They make $3.5B/y of Revenu qnd they can't afford
| 9k employees ? How much are they paying them ? and what are
| they doing with the rest of that huge pile of money ?
| pertymcpert wrote:
| I added opex to that chart, which shows clearer why net income
| was falling.
|
| https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=TWLO+revenue+and+profit...
| kalnins wrote:
| Can somebody explain to me where the companies get all these
| people?
|
| A lot of huge companies doubled/tripled in size during
| pandemic. Did people just take on 3 jobs or where we hitting
| super low levels of unemployment?
| colinmorelli wrote:
| Unemployment spiked early in the pandemic, aggressively
| lowered back to pre-pandemic levels, and then stabilized
| slightly lower, at least until mid-2022.
|
| Putting it in context: the US has about 160 million people in
| the labor force. It's shocking when we see companies laying
| off 10,000 people, but in the grand scheme of things this is
| really quite a small drop in the bucket. In all of 2022, tech
| saw ~150k layoffs, or about 0.1% of the labor force.
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| I assume it's mostly people jumping from lower tier companies
| into higher tier ones. A lot of companies don't utilize their
| employees effectively.
|
| Also, on the scale of the whole industry people jumping to
| these tech companies is probably a tiny fraction of overall
| employment.
| unshavedyak wrote:
| Man, i need to use Wolfram more. Not being math focused i guess
| i tended to ignore it, but that's a really cool and easy
| feature.
| rch wrote:
| Solid API as well.
| dopeboy wrote:
| Agreed - very cool use of Wolfram. There's probably a niche
| product here around reproducing this just for finance folks.
| someuser54541 wrote:
| I did basically that. It was a natural language processing
| tool for asking questions about securities. There didn't
| seem to be much interest.
| shagie wrote:
| It's one of the "do I spend/save an hour a year on this?"
| things... to which my answer is "yes."
|
| And thus, its one of the things that I'm quite willing to add
| to my collection of "spending under $100/year on this."
|
| Combined with the "this is useful as a back end for knowledge
| lookup", I suspect some of my toy projects will be using it
| more.
| kristiandupont wrote:
| I just got inspired to look up the relation instead, which
| was also interesting:
|
| https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=TWLO+profit+divided+by+.
| ..
| [deleted]
| ghaff wrote:
| You can understand the 2020/2021 hiring at certain companies
| with a very clear pandemic-related angle like Zoom. But I've
| lost track of the number of non-answer answers, both public and
| private, to why companies apparently overhired. We hired more
| than we meant to. How does that happen?
|
| _Especially_ at a company losing large piles of money.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > But I've lost track of the number of non-answer answers,
| both public and private, to why companies apparently
| overhired. We hired more than we meant to. How does that
| happen?
|
| Overhiring isn't "hiring more than we meant to", its "hiring
| more at time X than is appropriate for the market conditions
| at X+Y".
|
| It's what normal, capital-controlled firms do in times of
| easy money, the hire more when throwing more stuff at the
| wall to see what sticks is cheap, and then when a contraction
| occurs, they cut and milk the stuff that is already working.
| Its normal business-cycle things. When there is talk of
| cooling inflation by tightening monetary policy, one of the
| core mechanisms that that works by is causing firms to cut
| employees in roles that don't contribute to short-term
| returns as much, reducing consumer demand and constraining
| price increases.
|
| ("Overhiring" is something of a misnomer from any perspective
| other than the perspective of the time _after_ the hiring
| when market situations have tightened.)
| VLM wrote:
| One way to think about 10% downsizing at a company that
| doubles in size roughly annually is its being off schedule
| about a month.
|
| IF they go back to doubling in size every year, THEN its a
| short term one month layoff. Looking at the numbers, this
| specific company example is not going back to doubling every
| year.
|
| I think it gets engrained into the DNA of the company that
| they double every X months or X years and its hard to shift
| the culture when the company flatlines or even slightly
| declines. "Why, we always onboard 10% of our workforce per
| month, its just what we do" and when you grow that fast there
| are literally people who's entire day job is onboarding, like
| typing in new W-2 and insurance forms all day long or
| whatever.
| Rastonbury wrote:
| Companies generally only make detailed plans a year ahead
| based on data from the prior year or two. Which works out
| most of the time and the times it doesn't you can't really do
| anything about like financial crisis and covid boost then
| normalization.
|
| If you were buying in the stock market early and didn't sell
| (or held on to vested stock), you probably felt the same and
| wouldn't have predicted such a precipitous crash. It looks
| obvious now but if you said mid-2022 that 2023 growth is
| gonna be lower than even pre-covid you get funny looks. Then
| the unplanned growth strains support, customers are
| complaining, your competitors are doing well too and are
| going to keep R&D expense ratios, so you do the same to stop
| your product falling behind. Investors are high on the
| bubble, you can spend money with much less scrutiny
| qqtt wrote:
| The thing is, the companies didn't overhire given the
| expected growth rates they were forecasting. Companies doing
| layoffs now are doing so with the same reasoning they used
| when they did hiring during the pandemic - they are
| forecasting their growth based on current economic realities.
|
| The pandemic years saw companies accelerate their growth,
| even those who didn't have a clear 'pandemic angle' like
| Twilio. 2020 Q4 saw Twilio revenue growth 65% which
| encouraged them to hire more. Again, this is just the flip
| side of the current growth they are seeing (20-30%) which is
| causing them to re-balance their cost structure for lower
| growth.
|
| There is risk in hiring during high growth periods - the risk
| being potentially these employees either won't deliver the
| value you expect, your strategy is wrong, or your growth
| rates won't continue. If these things happen, you might have
| to do a layoff. There is risk is NOT hiring during high
| growth periods too - if the company doesn't structure itself
| to capitalize on the current growth it is seeing, competitors
| could come in and sweep up market share.
|
| At the end of the day, no one has a crystal ball for when
| high growth rates will stop, or when low(er) growth rates
| will pick back up again. In these cases, companies will hire
| during high growth periods and might have to lay off during
| low growth periods.
|
| Many people seem to want to frame "layoffs" as a de facto
| failure, but it really isn't a failure as much as it is a
| company responding to dynamic market conditions (again, the
| flip side of hiring when growth is high). It's hard to say if
| the pandemic era hiring was really a bad idea - that hiring
| did fuel many of these companies to rapidly expand their
| revenue base and capitalize on many growth opportunities. Now
| that their future growth is expected lower, they are re-
| balancing their cost structure to respond.
| jedberg wrote:
| > even those who didn't have a clear 'pandemic angle' like
| Twilio.
|
| Twilio absolutely had a pandemic angle -- they help provide
| telephony to people outside of the office. As people
| suddenly moved home, they needed a way to get their phone
| calls forwarded to all their employees and other related
| telephony.
| jjeaff wrote:
| Yes, and not to mention all the notifications for all
| these different communication apps that people were using
| more and more and all the new remote work tool startups
| that use telephone, texting, and other notification
| services that Twilio offers.
| christopherwxyz wrote:
| Agreed. It appears then they were averaging up, and now
| they are averaging down.
| philwelch wrote:
| Interest rates. Money was incredibly cheap in 2020/2021, but
| now it's expensive.
| surge wrote:
| My guess from what I've heard, or at least a factor.
|
| A lot of cheap money (low interest govt loans, etc) as part
| of the market propping up in April 2020, and beyond lead to a
| lot of incoming capital for a lot of these companies. I think
| just over half or at least close to half of the money printed
| to assist people went straight to Wall Street. That flooded
| the market with money which while propping up the market,
| probably got used to hire a lot of people who weren't
| necessary for "growth" or not strictly necessary and wasn't
| sustainable.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| Parkinson's law, first written about in the 1950s, explains
| that work expands to fill the available time.
|
| In his essay he noted that what that means is that managers
| work to expand the people they manage as that gives them more
| budget more prestige and more power.
|
| He has an amusing anecdote about the British Navy in the
| early 1900s to illustrate his point.
|
| They essay is very well written and I highly recommend it.
|
| https://www.economist.com/news/1955/11/19/parkinsons-law
| spamizbad wrote:
| Because technology is still in the "land grab" era of
| business. Say you _don 't_ hire during the COVID boom, well,
| ok, now you don't have to do layoffs but now you have to
| battle 2-3 new entrants into the market who snarfed up
| customers you were unable to serve because you were
| understaffed.
|
| There only "downside" to not hiring is the chance you have to
| layoff 5-20% of your workforce in a year or so. The upside is
| tremendous.
| bombcar wrote:
| Companies hired because other companies were hiring.
|
| If you're big, you would have to explain to shareholders and
| the board why Google and Facebook are doubling/tripling in
| size, but you're not - is it because the company is moribund?
| SELL SELL SELL!
|
| If you're small, you would have to explain to investors and
| the board why other startups/unicorn wannabes are
| doubling/tripling in size, but you're not - is it because the
| company is moribund? SELL SELL SELL!
|
| Here is my company leadership heuristic: what option requires
| the least discussion/interaction/explanation with the board?
| That's the one that will be chosen.
| nocsi wrote:
| Interest rates were incredibly low. It was free money to take
| on more people with not much downside
| lucideer wrote:
| > _companies apparently overhired. We hired more than we
| meant to. How does that happen?_
|
| Everyone here is replying with various explanations of why
| these companies made the "mistake" of over-hiring but no-one
| is stopping to ask if it was a mistake. Sure the
| announcements are full of apologies and stories of taking
| responsibility for mistakes made, they need to be: they're
| marketing. But cui bono, or more pertinently, the inverse:
| who is negatively affected by layoffs? It isn't shareholders.
| Meta just did massive buybacks after layoffs.
|
| Over-hiring isn't a mistake because the only real downside is
| the subsequent layoffs, and layoffs don't negatively effect
| anyone that "matters".
|
| Sure there's institutional knowledge loss but that only
| matters for product quality which, let's be honest, isn't any
| indicator of revenue.
| code_biologist wrote:
| POSIWID is perennial:
| https://design4services.com/concepts/systems-
| thinking/posiwi...
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| Everyone, including people who should have known better,
| bought into the narrative that this was the "new normal".
| 300bps wrote:
| _We hired more than we meant to. How does that happen?_
|
| Every explanation here thus far misses one simple fact:
| interest rates.
|
| Imagine the more people you hire, the more money you make
| and/or the more dominant of a market position you assume.
|
| Now imagine the Federal Reserve has lowered the Federal Funds
| Target rate to 0 and is performing FOMC operations to buy $9
| trillion of bonds to lower interest rates across the board.
| This is what they did:
|
| https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/bst_recenttren.
| ..
|
| So imagine firms can go on a hiring spree with almost-free
| money. Consider that WACC (weight average cost of capital) is
| one of the key factors in calculating the NPV of a project.
| Now consider that a positive NPV means you should do the
| project. This means a lot of projects (and hence hiring) get
| greenlit.
|
| Now imagine the Federal Reserve says, "Party's Over, guys!"
| and raises the FFT rate and stops buying bonds. Almost free
| money goes away, the WACC increases and now the NPV of all
| those juicy projects goes negative.
|
| Add in an expected recession, the ability to cull the bottom
| x% performers and you get a recipe for widespread layoffs.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Here's my explanation:
|
| 1. In the Internet era, we live with much bigger markets and
| hence much more of a "winner-take-all" (or at least winner-
| take-most) economy for companies that exist primarily on the
| Internet. You see this over and over in different areas -
| there is usually one giant leader that takes the lion's share
| of the money, then maybe 1 or 2 frequently discussed
| competitors, then everyone else.
|
| 2. With this "way fewer points for second best" dynamic, most
| investors and business leaders are biased much more towards
| FOMO than fear-of-losing-money.
|
| 3. Thus, when the pandemic came along, many folks did see it
| as the start of a new dynamic with how people used online
| services. And they weren't entirely wrong, e.g. remote work
| is obviously much more prevalent now than pre-pandemic. But
| again, from a business leader's perspective, I'm sure most of
| them thought it would be much worse to miss out on a paradigm
| shift in online services than to over-invest.
|
| Of course, any discussion about this topic should lead with
| the huge sloshing of money due to low interest rates that
| abruptly reversed. Whenever that happens you see investors
| pour money into risky assets as they chase yield.
| moneywoes wrote:
| > In the Internet era, we live with much bigger markets and
| hence much more of a "winner-take-all" (or at least winner-
| take-most) economy
|
| Are there markets that aren't like this? I guess local cad
| dealerships, medicine?
| shagie wrote:
| Almost anything that _isn 't_ internet based.
|
| There are lots of companies that sell stuff that is
| profitable - where the barrier for entry isn't putting up
| a web page and having a developer work on it but rather
| have _something_ that you hold in your hands that you can
| sell to someone (and that is profitable to make).
|
| Look for product based companies rather than service
| based ones.
|
| And yes, that means that as a software developer you're
| not likely in the "engineering" part of the company or a
| profit center... and that will have a corresponding
| impact if you are looking for a salary based on being in
| a profit center.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| >>remote work is obviously much more prevalent now than
| pre-pandemic.
|
| I am willing to bet on a 5 year picture we will see not
| more than 10% growth in WFH, as companies do back to the
| "old" ways
| carlhjerpe wrote:
| I'm willing to bet every other company that can will be
| hybrid work, come in at least x days over y time.
|
| You won't retain talent if your competitors are more
| flexible. Unless you pay an "absurd" amount to have me
| come in every day, and at that point you're just wasting
| money on me and your oversized office.
| varjag wrote:
| RN tech talent is getting desperate to keep any job out
| there, perks or not.
| carlhjerpe wrote:
| Right now as in this very moment? Maybe people are more
| careful what they wish for, but how many of these fired
| people will go unemployed? I bet most land a position
| pretty much anywhere they point, I'm still getting
| LinkedIn recruiter spam daily.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| >> I'm still getting LinkedIn recruiter spam daily.
|
| yea and they have not filled those positions for a
| reason....
|
| >>Right now as in this very moment?
|
| Ironically it is very regional. Some areas in the US are
| seeing very high unemployment numbers. Largely because
| most remote work has dried up, and the few companies
| still doing remote limit to states where they have an
| office so you can not just "live anywhere" like the
| promise of FT WFH was
| nradov wrote:
| Which specific areas are seeing high unemployment
| numbers?
|
| https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm
| moneywoes wrote:
| Are you a senior, i seem to be missing these
| varjag wrote:
| No not really. I know people who were at multiples of
| FAANG who struggle to find jobs for months now (SWEs &
| SREs). Certainly noone's going to snub an offer for lack
| of remote.
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| What was their previous comp and what companies are they
| applying for? If you're looking for half a mil comp at
| top tech companies, yeah it's going to slim pickings.
| ptero wrote:
| Also, there is (a non-unsurmountable) hurdle of coming
| from FAANG in that hiring managers suspect that someone
| coming from a FAANG to a much less cushy position simply
| wants to sit out a downturn or a burndown before jumping
| back.
| rebeccaskinner wrote:
| > Certainly noone's going to snub an offer for lack of
| remote.
|
| I wouldn't take a non-remote job until it's that or
| homelessnes. I need to optimize for the long term
| viability of my career, and that means avoiding long-
| covid, which in turn means avoiding working in an office.
| varjag wrote:
| Sure. When you're out of job for months a foreclosure
| becomes increasingly less hypothetical.
| rebeccaskinner wrote:
| Certainly for most people there's a point where there's
| no choice left and if your only option is to work on-site
| then that's what you'll have to do. My point was simply
| that there are a lot of people, myself included, who
| would snub an on-sight offer as long as there are other
| options.
|
| I see a lot of people assuming that remote work is merely
| a preference, but for a lot of people it's a lot more
| than that. Avoiding contracting Covid in the office is a
| difference between life and death for some people- and
| the difference between a productive long term career or a
| struggle to eek out a living in the face of long term
| disabilities due to long covid for others.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| Well I am probably not your normal worker, but for me WFH
| is soooooooo far down on the list of "must haves" for an
| employer that it may as well not be on the list
|
| my Top 10 for a new employer
|
| 1. Pay
|
| 2. Hours / On Call
|
| 3. Vacation / PTO
|
| 4. Health Insurance quality / cost
|
| 5. Team Fit / Corporate Culture
|
| 6. Total Work Load / Back Log
|
| 7. Tech Debt of the Organization
|
| 8. Financial Debt of the Organization
|
| 9. How many Layoffs have you had in the last 12 months t0
| 2 years
|
| 10. How many open positions do you currently have
| organization wide
|
| WFH does not even make the top 10 factors
| turdprincess wrote:
| The "work from home" part of WFH isn't the most important
| thing. Its actually a downside - I would love to have a
| nice office to go into a few times a week where I could
| chat to coworkers.
|
| The real benefit is that your market for possible jobs
| expands nationally or even globally. For my current job,
| there simply isn't a job like it in my home town, and if
| it wasn't for WFH, I would have to move to California. I
| think there is something to be said for including folks
| from other locations into the cutting edge of tech.
| emmp wrote:
| I could not even get paid half of what I am paid if I
| were limited to my local small-town market. I don't want
| to move. So WFH is a requirement for me to hit your #1.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| I think it very much depends on where you live. I live in
| a suburb of a medium sized city that is not a tech hub so
| WFH is a top priority for me. I don't want to have to
| uproot my family and move for a job. If I already lived
| in a NYC or SF I could completely understand. With WFH
| though I am able to pay mid city suburb housing prices
| while working for a company in Manhattan and getting NYC
| pay.
|
| Most of the tech jobs are in an area of town that is an
| hour commute each way so no way I am going to do that.
| End up leaving for work at 8 and not getting home until 6
| or 6:30. With WFH I can actually dedicate exactly 40
| hours a week to work and no more. Plus get away with it.
|
| So for my WFH is the number 1 item. Pay is top as well
| but if I cant WFH or have to move then the pay doesn't
| really matter.
|
| Although I would absolutely love to have a local office I
| could go into once or twice a week.
| Quarrelsome wrote:
| I think WFH is important as it shows deference to
| families bringing up children where WFH may be a vital
| part of being able to dedicate enough time to their
| children.
|
| As someone without children myself, I judge an
| organisation by how they treat employees with divergent
| goals (such as wanting to spend time with their children)
| because it shows me how the organisation will treat me
| if/when I fall outside complete alignment with corporate
| goals (perhaps due to politics, age or health).
| phpisthebest wrote:
| hmm I wonder if that is why I have a somewhat negative
| view of WFH, I dont have kids, and often times I seem
| people with children for go their work responsibilities
| or worse say something like "well phpisthebest does not
| have kids so they can be on call or work holidays"
|
| to me your personal situation should have ZERO bearing on
| your job, I should not even know if you have kids or not.
|
| >>I judge an organisation by how they treat employees
| with divergent goals
|
| I judge organizations on their equality, and by that I
| mean they treat all employees the same regardless of
| their marital or child status.
| PKop wrote:
| You could say the same about being in the office, or not.
| If the work can get done remotely who cares about coming
| into the office.
|
| Companies that are capable of succeeding with remote
| workers are going to have an advantage as they will have
| less real estate costs, and they can get value out of
| paying for both a wider geographic worker pool, and they
| won't necessarily have to pay them big-city rates if
| those workers will accept slightly less nominal (which
| translates to more real if they have lower cost of
| living). Not possible in all circumstances but those that
| do it will benefit.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| >>Companies that are capable of succeeding with remote
| workers are going to have an advantage as they will have
| less real estate costs,
|
| COVID did not change the economic metrics on that, so I
| am not sure why this is a continual talking about for
| justification of WFH in these "new times"
|
| There have always been full time WFH organizations, and
| there have always been non-WFH organizations.
|
| I dont see this having a huge impact on if an
| organization stays WFH post covid or not.
|
| >>and they can get value out of paying for both a wider
| geographic worker pool
|
| Yea... no. Companies tried that and found out real fast
| the problems with legal liability, and tax jurisdictions
| this is why you are seeing even companies that stayed
| Full time WFH post-covid have started to limit where they
| can hire from to only states / nations where they have
| business in already, already have Tax ID's already know
| and comply with the local employment laws.
| PKop wrote:
| >COVID did not change the economic metrics on that
|
| I disagree with this assertion completely.
|
| You are commenting on an article that illustrates the
| fallout from COVID having economic consequences that
| companies are working through. Inflation, higher rates,
| over-hiring, and I would add over-investment in expensive
| prime real estate. There have been plenty of reports
| about companies having to deal with new problems with
| higher rates necessitating cost cutting. One of which is
| re-assessing the need for huge amounts of expensive real
| estate. Facebook and Amazon come to mind in this regard.
| Others may follow.
|
| The change here is we may be enterning a new economic
| cycle unlike the last 10 or so years of extremely low
| interest rates and huge VC money as well as companies
| running stock buyback and stock compensation schemes to
| paper over low or no profitability. You can claim the
| next few years will be like the last few years, I simply
| disagree with this. So in this light, WFH may be a
| variable in equation of lowering costs.
|
| >started to limit where they can hire from to only states
| / nations where they have business in already
|
| Ok, but the dynamic I describe can still be achieved by
| limiting workforce to US. You can still have a wider pool
| of workers who want to stay located in lower costs states
| near their hometowns and families and not need large
| footprints of expensive real estate.
| Quarrelsome wrote:
| I worry that you've sliding towards a divide and conquer
| trope here, being at odds with fellow employees makes no
| sense. Rather the onus should be on the employer to
| ensure they create an environment that is accommodating
| for all sorts of lifestyles. Why shouldn't you be able to
| take time off in a similar fashion to pursue your own
| child-free but time consuming activities?
|
| That parents are able to WFH and flexibly also confers
| YOU the rights to do the same. That is why I am
| personally extremely supportive of those rights despite
| not having children because it gives me the rationale to
| demand the same flexibility when I need/want it.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| I have kids and I agree with this. Giving someone work on
| a holiday or weekend because of their parental status is
| pretty bad. I think I would quickly leave a place like
| that.
| ElevenLathe wrote:
| I would put WFH at the top of my list but only because it
| is the only reasonable way to have 1,2 and 3 above. If I
| have to live in SFO or ATX, the pay would have to be so
| absurdly better than remoting in from small-town
| Michigan, that likely no one will pay it. Same for hours
| -- I'm not commuting 1.5 hours each way to the affordable
| housing in these areas. Same for PTO: I effectively have
| tons more living near family since I don't have to hoard
| it to use for family reunions, Thanksgiving, etc. I can
| do all these things without using PTO, and therefore am
| able to go on real vacations instead.
|
| Sure, I'll come into your office every day if you
|
| 1) let me work 5 hours a day instead of 8 (to account for
| the commute)
|
| 2) give me double the vacation so I can spend
| Thanksgiving/Christmas/4th of July/Super Bowl
| Sunday/Labor Day/etc with family, never miss a wedding,
| and also have enough left for a week on Lake Huron in the
| summer and a winter-time jaunt somewhere warm
|
| 3) increase my pay to account for the housing cost
| difference in whatever post-industrial NIMBY hellscape
| your office is in and my current home.
|
| There's also corporate culture. I find that I don't want
| to work with a team that has difficulty connecting via
| email/chat/videocon and feel they require constant
| meatspace contact. Usually this means a lot of "alpha"
| type personalities that need to press the flesh to get
| their half-baked agendas pushed through on others' backs.
| On the other hand, if you are disciplined enough to be
| able to collaborate via email and the occasional quick
| call, then you probably aren't a ripoff artist.
| [deleted]
| phpisthebest wrote:
| >>I'm not commuting 1.5 hours each
|
| this brings in the regional differences, I am life long
| Midwestern and even in some for the larger cities a 1.5hr
| commute is just not a thing
|
| I can transverse my city (3rd largest in the state) in
| about 30 mins even at rush hour.
|
| My entire adult life the longest commute I ever had was
| 40mins, and that we because I lived 40miles outside of
| the city in surrounded by Farms.
|
| From my current home, I could reach every employer in the
| city in about 20mins max.
| ElevenLathe wrote:
| You'd be surprised how far people push commutes in the
| Midwest. I know at least one person that lives near
| Saginaw and works in Detroit. I have a relative that
| commutes nearly two hours each way in northern Wisconsin
| -- and they bought this house /because/ of the location
| of the job, so this wasn't an accident of history.
| jehb wrote:
| I envy a good grid. Here on the east coast, in many
| cities only the very center core is gridded, with the
| rest being most of a hub-and-sprawly-spoke model. The
| only corridor through my 40-mile wide, 2M+ person metro
| area is a single Interstate that's basically a parking
| lot at rush hour, and also carries our bus-only transit
| system.
| rebeccaskinner wrote:
| I'm the opposite. For me, WFH is table-stakes. There
| isn't a realistic amount of pay, PTO, benefits, or
| anything else that would make me work on-site right now.
| We're still in a pandemic, and the risk of contracting
| long-covid and no longer being able to do knowledge work
| due to impaired cognition are far too high for me to
| consider working in an office these days.
| [deleted]
| foolinaround wrote:
| > at that point you're just wasting money on me and your
| oversized office.
|
| Some industries and companies have so much margins that
| they are willing to spend that much more...
|
| It may be only those industries which have really tight
| margins and/or large numbers of employees that benefit
| from having them remote or in different geos.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Or businesses where their potential employees have few
| better options so they can afford to not offer work from
| home.
| ghaff wrote:
| That seems far and away the most common outcome for a lot
| of knowledge workers. More flexibility than the "bad old
| days" but not fully remote in the mountains somewhere
| either.
|
| There will be fully remote jobs but it's not going to be
| the norm at most companies. And I suspect that people who
| are fully remote at companies that mostly aren't may feel
| at a disadvantage.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| I think the opposite, so many of these layoffs have been
| accompanied by announcements that they are closing their
| offices.
| ghaff wrote:
| Fair enough. I would say that looking around in general,
| the "new normal" looks a lot more like the "old normal"
| than a lot of people expected in 2020 or 2021. Business
| travel is essentially back to pre-pandemic levels. There's
| more workplace flexibility but--especially outside tech--
| there's relatively little _full_ remote. A lot of food and
| meal delivery seems to have really tapered off.
|
| And arguably it didn't cost companies that much to hedge
| for an upside. It's not even clear if employees now being
| laid off were in general worse off for having a job.
| (Modulo some things like being in the US on a visa.)
| krashidov wrote:
| Excellent reply and I think you can add a number 4 - Remote
| work makes the barrier to hiring so much lower.
|
| You no longer need to source people from specific Geos. You
| no longer need to provide office space, desks, parking, etc
| for new employees. Even the interviewing process itself is
| so much faster. No arranging flights, hotels, ubers,
| interviewing is 100% remote now for most tech companies.
| twblalock wrote:
| Because companies are accountable to the incentives expressed
| by their shareholders.
|
| Companies that didn't get in on the gold rush would have been
| punished. Now, companies that don't cut costs or shrink will
| be punished.
| ss48 wrote:
| Having a shortage of people is as debilitating as having too
| many people. Not only is a company not able to fulfill their
| goals for business development, but they also can't sustain
| their existing responsibilities and existing customer base.
| People were switching jobs left and right, and inspired a
| desire to retain people instead of adding people on demand,
| in the same way as the supply chain caused people to stock up
| on chips resulting in today's oversupply of chips.
|
| In 2020, companies were envisioning that the way we worked
| was so drastically different from how it really turned out,
| surprisingly similar to before. That meant a lot more
| investment in new markets that would need a lot more services
| and goods (ex. remote work meant a lot of work for people to
| develop homes more, allow more to be done fully virtually,
| move many services originally in cities to suburbs). When
| things didn't turn out that way, and people started to get
| back to normal, projects that would have had a huge return if
| realized and need more people working suddenly different.
| Then it was a game of chicken of how to admit that they
| invested in the wrong efforts because things didn't turn out
| how they had expected.
| hintymad wrote:
| I wonder if a company should hire as many people _even though_
| the Covid drove unexpected traffic. I mean, shouldn 't we build
| systems that scale by adding machines instead of adding people?
| Even if a company wants to hire for growth, shouldn't they hire
| a team of 2 or 3 to test water first, namely hiring for results
| instead of for investment?
| RobertDeNiro wrote:
| I think a lot of the time the bulk added is in sales and
| marketing, to capture the most of a 'wave' when it shows up.
| The penalty for over hiring remains less than for under
| hiring in these cases.
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| You cannot just say that these businesses hire too many people,
| there is a reason why they're laying people off right now.
|
| These businesses know what's coming. Get ready for a higher than
| expected inflation rate tomorrow.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34774930
| pavlov wrote:
| Twilio doesn't seem very inflation-sensitive to me? They're
| mostly software, there's no complicated supply chain.
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| Every company that relied on low interest rate loans because
| the Fed held the rate at near 0% is sensitive to inflation
| when the Fed is about to raise that same rate.
| throwaway2847 wrote:
| Twilio doesn't have a high debt burden. They're affected
| like all other growth tech because future cash flows are
| discounted against the risk free rate.
| cheriot wrote:
| They have ~3 billion more cash than debt
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| Last year "Twilio had an earnings before interest and tax
| (EBIT) loss, truth be told. Indeed, in that time it burnt
| through $254m of cash and made a loss of US$1.1b."
|
| They will burn through that cash much faster with higher
| interest rates on their 1.012B in debt.
| cheriot wrote:
| Interest expense is 64m in the trailing twelve months so
| it's not a meaningful difference in their cash burn. Most
| corporate debt is fixed rate and with a net cash position
| they don't need to roll it over. Interest rates affect
| Twilio by affecting the economy.
|
| The fact that revenues are not rising as fast as
| management expected means the only way left to reduce
| losses is to cut expenses.
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| Their debt to equity has been rising:
|
| https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/TWLO/twilio/deb
| t-e...
|
| And why are revenues falling? You see, it always comes
| back to interest rates and inflation.
| cheriot wrote:
| Twilio's debt to equity ratio is small enough to be
| irrelevant.
|
| Revenue is falling while the economy is still growing
| because pandemic trends are reverting to normal. Same as
| e-commerce, which caught Shopify and Amazon with too many
| employees. Same as media, which caught Netflix
| flatfooted.
|
| People are shifting their spend from goods to services
| and from online to offline. Coincidentally, that's what
| people use to explain inflation. There's always micro
| trends underlying a macro trend.
| fasteo wrote:
| I make a living sending SMS in Europe (transactional, mostly for
| banks and insurance companies) and Twilio SMS pricing is
| _extremely_ expensive for this geo. Even so, they keep losing
| money.
|
| Just made a quick comparison with two competitors in terms in
| gross margin: Twilio: 52% Sinch: 21%
| Link Mobility: 24%
| moneywoes wrote:
| May I ask for more context, are you building a service on top?
| muttantt wrote:
| Twilio also quietly increased their prices recently, ie. US
| numbers went from $1 to $1.15
| sn0w_crash wrote:
| [dead]
| dkyc wrote:
| My free PR advice to companies announcing layoffs is to cut short
| on the cute company employee nicknames, keep the 'Twilions',
| 'stripes' and 'Zoomies' to the good times.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| It is cringe in both good times and bad....
|
| lets just cut it completely.
| Redsquare wrote:
| Just bin them altogether, they are vommit inducing anytime
| joegahona wrote:
| I love PR observations like this -- another one is to
| reconsider using the company blog template for such postings.
| This one isn't bad (though it does have prominent share buttons
| included), but I think it was Zoom that had a giant, cheerful
| "Don't forget to share!" at the bottom of theirs last week.
| rmccue wrote:
| Still there, "Don't forget to share this post":
| https://blog.zoom.us/a-message-from-eric-yuan-ceo-of-zoom/
| mshake2 wrote:
| In my humble opinion, having used Twilio extensively for over a
| year, it is an awful service.
|
| They will happily take your money and report that SMS are being
| delivered when they're not. They implement the most bureaucratic
| nightmarish processes for vetting brands which are impossible to
| do via the UI, and must only be done through broken/bizarre API
| calls that were clearly cobbled together without any design
| considerations. Maybe you get it all to work, but then after
| deliverability customer complaints a month later, you hear from
| Twilio that something broke on their end and you need to re-
| submit the vetting.
|
| Having a major production issue? Well, you too can get a response
| in 3 hours by forking over 4% of your spend or $250 minimum,
| whichever is greater (how does that even make sense? Why should I
| pay more than a minimum?). And the response right at the end of
| the 3 hour window will consist of "We have received your issue
| and are passing it to the relevant team" which resets the 3 hour
| window. Whoops it looks like you're outside of business hours
| now, we'll get to it tomorrow. Unless you want to upgrade to the
| 8% monthly spend or $5000 minimum plan?
|
| All that said, Twilio can burn. Burn or get their act together. I
| hope they get eaten by a better service though, truly.
| kazz wrote:
| I'm with you on the support being sub-par, but the whole
| vetting brands (A2P) thing has nothing to do with Twilio at
| all. It's entirely forced by an industry group called The
| Campaign Registry. I don't know the last time you tried to
| create a brand in Twilio but they support the entire process in
| their UI these days, but the nightmarish API you're talking
| about is entirely an invention of TCR, not Twilio.
| toast0 wrote:
| > In my humble opinion, having used Twilio extensively for over
| a year, it is an awful service.
|
| > They will happily take your money and report that SMS are
| being delivered when they're not.
|
| This is an industry issue. You can request SMS delivery
| indications, and the carrier can send you delivery indications
| while dropping the messages. Or an intermediary might do the
| same thing. There's no way to ensure you only get delivery
| confirmations from the phone, so the delivery confirmation
| doesn't mean much. (Often, requesting confirmation results in
| better deliverability though)
|
| If you can track delivery yourself, because a user is expected
| to use the message right away (verification), you should really
| be running multiple providers and picking the provider to use
| based on success and costs.
|
| All the sms providers will tell you that they have global
| coverage, only use direct routes, and that they're the best.
| But they're all lieing. I ran a global SMS (and voice)
| verification service with 5 SMS providers, and when a major
| provider had a big outage, their success graph went to zero,
| but every other provider's graph dropped significantly too ---
| they all had some routes through that provider.
| csharpminor wrote:
| Yeah the underlying issue is that telecoms networks naturally
| trend towards monopoly. So often times there will be only one
| route that is cost effective / reliable to deliver traffic.
| trts wrote:
| notably absent language about anti-racism in this RIF
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32897195
| Analemma_ wrote:
| I should probably start thinking about how to move all my 2FA
| codes out of Authy, at this rate I wouldn't be surprised if they
| suddenly stick me with a monthly fee to keep logging in to my
| stuff.
|
| Does anyone know how to do this? Authy seems to make it
| intentionally as difficult as possible to export TOTP keys and
| I'd rather not repeat the 2FA setup process for dozens of
| accounts.
| hypeatei wrote:
| It's really cumbersome, but I've used this guide in the past:
|
| https://gist.github.com/gboudreau/94bb0c11a6209c82418d01a59d...
|
| You basically use the Authy desktop app and open up the console
| (it's Electron) and run some JS lol.
| ghiculescu wrote:
| Over the last few years Twilio's CEO wrote a navel gazing book
| and hosted some conferences about social justice, but didn't
| improve the core product. I bet this made him popular with
| employees, though I suspect it would have made him less popular
| if they saw these layoffs coming.
| corrius wrote:
| IMHO all these companies are flooded with account managers,
| sales, customer success, BDR, when they could just let customers
| choose their own plans, upgrade freely, etc, instead of "schedule
| a call with our team"
| [deleted]
| TuringNYC wrote:
| I love the Twilio product line, but always saw it as classic
| Product Lead Growth, self-service, self-scale. Surprised to hear
| of their troubles. Are they selling below cost? Are they creating
| product lines or features that dont drive revenue? Is it high-
| touch corporate sales?
| diebeforei485 wrote:
| This guy Jeff Lawson was virtue signalling big time about how
| much he loves paying San Francisco's taxes. I wonder if he's
| taking a pay cut while he leaves 17% of his workforce without
| jobs.
| baby-yoda wrote:
| Twilio hit its all time high around Jan 2021, $435/share. In
| the 12 months following that he sold roughly $160M in stock,
| riding the price down to about $250/share. And he even got a
| 75,000 share grant last March after that performance.
|
| From afar it seems like the company is being plundered by the C
| suite, would love to hear first hand accounts from employees
| after the last 24 months.
| Overtonwindow wrote:
| Has there been any data on where the layoffs are coming from? Is
| it sales, engineering, recruitment, across the board..?
| fleddr wrote:
| CEO angry at market for expecting a profit after 15 years.
| bogomipz wrote:
| The post states:
|
| >"We're winding down some of the perks we've historically
| offered, including our book and wellness allowances. We've also
| decided to sunset Twilio Recharge, which I believe in, but which
| (in retrospect) was ill-timed given our profitability goals."
|
| Can someone say what "Twilio Recharge" is/was?
| elijaht wrote:
| Looks like a "a four-week paid sabbatical that employees would
| get every three years" (source:
| https://techcrunch.com/2023/02/13/twilio-cuts-17-of-its-
| work...)
| ajaimk wrote:
| Mods please change the title. Layoffs and Firing aren't the same.
| nemo44x wrote:
| Yeah they are. Sugarcoat it all you want but when a company
| exits you then you have been fired/terminated/etc. It doesn't
| really matter. Sure they might treat you differently if you
| terminated for cause or not but when you lose your job you are
| fired. Laid off is a form of being fired, I guess.
| colinmorelli wrote:
| Sure, insofar as you're defining the term as "you're no
| longer employed here." But that definition is not really all
| that helpful, and is equivalent to saying that you're fired
| because you quit, also.
|
| There's absolutely a difference in widespread RIFs/layoffs
| and firing an employee, both in terms of how that individual
| is treated by future potential employers as well as the eyes
| of the law.
| nvr219 wrote:
| What makes this a firing and not a layoff (English is not my
| first language sorry)
| cragfar wrote:
| Firing usually implies you're being terminated for cause.
| Laid off doesn't.
| consp wrote:
| Firing is with targeted and with reason. A layoff is general,
| broad and non targeted. At least that is how I learned it.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I always understood that "layoff" has the implication that
| it's potentially temporary, and that the employees let go
| would be preferentially hired back if the company's
| fortunes improve.
| kasey_junk wrote:
| That's what lay-offs used to mean, even to the point it
| was common to layoff employees with an expected return
| date.
|
| In the last 40 or so years the term has shifted to mean
| permanent termination.
| ghaff wrote:
| Furlough would be more commonly used today to imply
| something temporary.
| buggy6257 wrote:
| Super simplified: Firing is when the reason for the employee
| leaving is their fault. Layoff is when it's "the employers
| fault" (e.g. overstaffing etc).
|
| That said, this article gives zero indication this is a
| firing, so I expect that your parent's comment is someone who
| is salty at Twilio and wants to make this sound "more
| vicious" -- 'firing' someone is a harsher sound than 'laying
| them off'. Plus, there's VERY few examples ever of
| significant staff cuts happened with _firings_. That would
| imply that 17% of Twilio did something so egregious at work
| that they got fired all simultaneously, which, like...how?
| blackshaw wrote:
| > Firing is when the reason for the employee leaving is
| their fault. Layoff is when it's "the employers fault".
|
| That's not how I'd use those words. "Fired" just means your
| employment was involuntarily terminated. Layoffs are a type
| of firing, at least to my ears.
| zinclozenge wrote:
| I suspect in some states, it might have implications for
| collecting unemployment. But given how almost all long
| term employment is "at will", there isn't really any
| meaningful distinction, except colloquially, I suspect.
| darrenf wrote:
| Individuals get fired. Roles get laid off. Generally a firing
| will be followed by a backfill, whereas laying off means the
| workforce is being shrunk.
|
| I don't see anything in the Twilio post that looks anything
| like a firing.
| chewbacha wrote:
| In some states this is legally enforced and if the company
| opens the position back up within 6 months of the layoff,
| the former employee needs to be offered the position back.
| pansa2 wrote:
| It's a layoff. The title initially said "firing 17%".
| shagie wrote:
| A layoff tends to mean that the job position that the person
| had is gone.
|
| Firing a person tends to mean that the position will be hired
| for again once the person is gone.
|
| Another way of looking at it:
|
| Firing a person is terminating an individual working with a
| company - but the company still has that role to be filled.
|
| Laying a person off is the elimination of the role, which
| also has the person leaving the company, but its the _role_
| that is being removed, not the person (they are free to apply
| for other positions in the company or get rehired later).
| dspillett wrote:
| Laying off usually means the person's role is declared
| redundant, or in a department maybe a number of jobs are
| declared redundant rather than individual ones (i.e. a call
| centre finds it needs 20% fewer people manning the phones).
| There is no fault seen in the individual1, it is seen as a
| matter of the state of the company, the market, or the
| economy as a whole.
|
| When you are fired there is a direct implication of fault or
| failing to perform.
|
| These things can vary a lot depending on local/state/country
| laws, but if you are laid off you may be entitled to a
| redundancy payment, you may be entitled to apply for other
| roles in the company2, you will have a notice period which
| you will either work or go on gardening leave for, and so
| forth. If you are fired, none of this applies3. If you are in
| an work-at-will state things are a bit different. Gig economy
| jobs are a grey area in many places4.
|
| --
|
| [1] other than the implication that the people who kept the
| same/similar role are better or otherwise more useful to the
| company
|
| [2] if the lay-offs are due to restructuring rather than
| downsizing
|
| [3] except you have access to some sort of appeals process
| (for unfair dismissal for instance) which goes your way
|
| [4] there are court cases and other investigations ongoing to
| determine/clarify what rights such workers do[n't] and
| should[n't] have
| jimbok wrote:
| Probably needs to sell to a legacy company.. similarly to how Duo
| sold to Cisco
| ejb999 wrote:
| always thought twilio would be acquired by AWS eventually -
| twilio is more of a product than a company, or even just a set
| of product features. Never made sense to me as a stand-alone
| company.
| dheerajrav wrote:
| I was part of the RIF and I am actively looking for Data
| Scientist roles. Any leads are much appreciated. You can find me
|
| - [here](https://linkedin.com/in/dheeraj-ravindranath) -
| https://github.com/dheerajrav
| dcchambers wrote:
| I've been bull-ish on Twilio as a technology for a long time, but
| the business seems like it needs some serious help.
| grumple wrote:
| On paper, they solve a lot of problems. They've got apis for
| everything. The problem in my interactions with them is that
| they have a ton of people working in different directions on
| those problems. One team tells us to do X, support asks us why
| we're doing it, another team tells us we can't do that. Then
| they do madness like make the process for registering a phone
| number you already own take 15 api calls... and that's if you
| don't count checking on registration progress.
| csharpminor wrote:
| I share the frustration but to be fair a lot of this madness
| is just bubbling up through them from The Campaign Registry
| and carriers.
| tracker1 wrote:
| Have to agree... I'm still shocked at how much vendor lock in
| there is in telephone services still.
| berkle4455 wrote:
| Twilio is nothing more than a Robocall enabler that's going to be
| shutdown by the FCC anyway.
| ejb999 wrote:
| https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-issues-robocall-cease-and-d...
| [deleted]
| orangepanda wrote:
| I chose not to use sendgrid (twilio) because they force their own
| 2nd factor auth app, instead of allowing to use literally any of
| the ones already out there.
|
| Anecdotal, but still
| kl4m wrote:
| 1 - Create a Twilio account.
|
| 2 - You need to add a phone number and receive a SMS challenge,
| before setting up any other 2FA method
|
| 3 - With the Authy app installed on your phone, the token is
| instead instantly added to your account upon reception of the
| SMS. This cannot be disabled. Use a very particular combination
| of steps in the account settings to convince it to let you use
| a simple offline TOTP app instead.
|
| 4 - Use your recovery code every month and repeat the whole
| thing because somehow all other 2FA methods break
| simultaneously for all Twilio accounts set up with that phone
| number.
|
| The experience was so awful I had to delete the App and the
| account.
| rsync wrote:
| Agreed.
|
| Their process is ridiculous and is matched only by the insane
| password requirements that they recently implemented (I think
| they required a 18 character password ? Or 24 ?)
|
| However, I am entwined in their ecosystem for all of my
| texting and calling and message management, etc., so I am
| forced to deal with it.
|
| In fact, their clownish requirements were the impetus behind
| the 2FA Mule[1] experiment which I now use across almost all
| services.
|
| [1] https://kozubik.com/items/2famule/
| thebigspacefuck wrote:
| What do you use instead?
| tracker1 wrote:
| There are standards for 2FA (OTP) codes... "Google Auth"
| being one, but the same generators are available inside both
| LastPass and BitWarden, for contrast. The Microsoft
| authenticator is another annoying variation imo.
|
| While other techniques and applications might be (somewhat)
| more secure, the loss of ability to use the same application
| you already have/use for 2FA is a pretty big annoyance for a
| lot of people.
|
| I have my 2FA in bitwarden myself... with a pretty long
| passphrase that I don't use for anything else. It's the
| master key to the kingdom. There are many sites that I keep
| with the sms/email codes simply because they either don't
| offer typical OTP as an option.
| thebigspacefuck wrote:
| Sorry, I meant what do you use instead of Sendgrid?
| tracker1 wrote:
| Sorry, my bad... Mailgun is pretty popular as an
| alternative... there's also AWS SES, which some seem to
| like.
| jmyeet wrote:
| Remember the rule of thumb: if a company is laying off 5-10% of
| staff it's business as usual. If it's 20% the company is in real
| trouble.
| yellow_lead wrote:
| 11% 5 months ago -> 89%
|
| 89% * .83 = 73.87
|
| So a ~27% reduction since then. Wow
|
| (Math may be wrong*)
| galkk wrote:
| Math should be right, came here to write same.
|
| https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=%28100-11%25%29-17%25
| yellow_lead wrote:
| Nice, Wolfram handles that well
| [deleted]
| jyu wrote:
| what if it's 20%+ cumulative layoffs within 1 year? what if
| they doubled in size the previous year when fed rates were much
| lower (Meta, Amazon)?
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| If you double the size of the team one year then lay off 20+%
| the following year it means you have a management problem,
| IMHO, which is also a red flag.
| smileysteve wrote:
| But you're twilio, you acquired 2 other companies
| (sendgrid, segment) with the Fed 0%< and 20% of employees
| are the hr, finance, and canned feature growth.
| aeyes wrote:
| They are burning over $1B per quarter (before stock based comp)
| and it's accelerating. If they want to turn that around by
| reducing staff this won't be the last round.
| baby-yoda wrote:
| Where are you seeing this number? Latest 10-Q I see a burn of
| about a billion through 3 quarters in 2022 from Operating
| Activities.
|
| There were also a ton of insider sales by the C suite last
| year. Not getting a warm and fuzzy feeling about this company
| all things considered.
| aeyes wrote:
| True, my mistake! I was looking at 9 months ended but
| somehow thought it was just the last quarter.
| baby-yoda wrote:
| No worries - I was just thinking since they have about 4
| billion in cash that would have given them a very short
| runway to turn things around.
|
| Now I'm very curious to see how the numbers look come
| Wednesday.
| thiago_fm wrote:
| Based on the company earnings, they are definitely going
| bankrupt if they don't change something... they are burning
| money for over a decade.
| cardosof wrote:
| I wonder why people just can't be completely honest and say
| something along the lines of: "look, rising interest rates makes
| leaving money in the bank way more attractive than spending it by
| having x% more employees doing things that we were not sure if
| contributed directly to our financial KPIs. It was cool while it
| lasted but right now we're just keeping the cash cows and what
| they need. Thanks"
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| Yes, interest rates, all these businesses see what's coming.
| Get ready for a report signifying a slight rise in inflation
| tomorrow.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34774930
|
| If you are wondering why the stock market is up today it's
| because it's going to be down tomorrow. It's the pump before
| the dump.
| cheriot wrote:
| Revenue growth rate was > 50% per year when most of these
| people were hired. Now they project 20% growth. That has more
| impact that wanting to earn interest on a savings account.
| throwaway98797 wrote:
| what's financial benefit of being that direct?
| [deleted]
| azemetre wrote:
| It also seems worse than that based on other replies in this
| post.
|
| Twilio has only had one profitable quarter in its entire
| existence. Both the business model and strategy are clearly
| broken.
|
| I do wonder (read: hope) if this means the next wave of tech
| companies will be more private/lifestyle focused. 37Signals
| had a great article about this:
|
| https://37signals.com/why-we-choose-profit/
|
| Not every company needs to be a market leader, what's wrong
| with having a drastically smaller size (say <200 people, a
| number plucked from thin air) and decent revenue?
| throwaway98797 wrote:
| there's nothing morally wrong with that
|
| that being said i don't know any investor that wants to
| invest in companies that are middle of the road
|
| most employees want to work for _winners_
|
| we may not want that to be true but it _tends_ to be
|
| if you're not first you're last
| azemetre wrote:
| I mean shouldn't there something a little wrong about not
| running a profitable business for nearly a decade and
| that the only people who seems to be "winning" are those
| that took advantage of a relaxed monetary environment and
| cashed out during the IPO?
|
| Why does money trump this?
|
| I absolutely disagree that most workers want to work for
| "winners." Most workers want to have a stable job and a
| life of meaning outside the company. These companies are
| not stable at all.
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| [dead]
| hu3 wrote:
| This is on top of 11% they laid off in September 2022, 5 months
| ago.
|
| https://techcrunch.com/2022/09/14/twilio-lays-off-11-of-its-...
| xbar wrote:
| Thank you for that reminder.
|
| This cut now sounds very deep indeed. It seems not at all the
| same as trimming against "overhiring" nor about mispredictions
| of growth, but instead perhaps a more fundamental concern about
| the health of the company.
| password11 wrote:
| > _fundamental concern about the health of the company_
|
| Although Twilio has never turned a profit, they've cornered
| the "SMS via API" market and could theoretically start to
| turn one at any point.
| runako wrote:
| > they've cornered the "SMS via API" market
|
| This is not true, except for first-time builders and those
| who do not send a lot of SMS. Twilio is a great on-ramp to
| the world of SMS via API, but at scale considerations
| beyond developer UX can become more important.
| malfist wrote:
| SNS/Pinpoint is probably a much bigger player than they
| are
| decentrality wrote:
| Telnyx has SMS via API cornered at scale for about half
| the cost:
|
| https://telnyx.com
| NoTelnyxBad wrote:
| Speaking as someone whose company uses Telnyx... Telnyx
| has too many incidents/problems to be worth replacing
| Twilio with. Would go with Bandwidth if you're looking
| for cheaper-than-Twilio-but-worse-tech.
| bob1029 wrote:
| This is a flashing neon sign to me as an investor.
|
| 11% => 17% => ???
|
| What did they miss in the first round such that the 2nd round
| needed to cut even deeper?
|
| If they had done all these cuts up front, the effective rate
| would have been ~27%.
| bjt2n3904 wrote:
| Wonder if they're still using an anti racist lens for this
| layoff. Didn't see it this time.
| sergiotapia wrote:
| Two severe layoffs so close together... morale must be in the
| toilet. Top performers are probably polishing their resume.
| bogomipz wrote:
| Two severe layoffs so close together followed by "significant
| structural changes" resulting in "forming two business
| units." I'm imaging morale and worker productivity are both
| in the toilet.
| [deleted]
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Turns out all the people asking: "Why does company X have so many
| employees?" weren't _completely_ wrong.
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| The explanation I keep seeing is
|
| "the United States Federal Reserve raised the Federal Funds
| Rate from 0.25% to 4.75% in the past 6-18 months, therefore,
| these companies are reacting to that and having to cut back on
| costs"
|
| where it falls apart in my mind is (and I might be missing
| something)
|
| why is that having such a massive impact so quickly on these
| companies to the point where, the cost to service _NEW_ debt
| (not existing) rises?
|
| i thought a lot of these companies had so much cash due to high
| tech margins that, they didn't really finance growth through
| cheap debt?
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| It's not a debt problem for tech companies.
|
| It's a valuation problem with how much FUTURE profits are
| valued vs CURRENT profits.
|
| Losing money now to make money in the future isn't sexy
| anymore. So you have to fire people until you make money now.
|
| For companies like FAANG - which are ridiculously profitable
| - it's still the same.
|
| Future profits aren't worth as much. Current profits are
| worth more. Now it's sexy to fire people to make more money
| now, because that's valued higher than before.
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| > Losing money now to make money in the future isn't sexy
| anymore. So you have to fire people until you make money
| now.
|
| I am familiar with this concept but I'm curious if you
| could teach me more on the specifics. I think what you are
| referring to is basically "cost of capital analysis".
|
| If the companies weren't hiring/paying payroll with debt at
| 0.5%, why does the fact matter that debt would now
| hypothetically cost them 5% come into play? Are they up
| against the fact that their projects (after payroll and all
| expenses) need to return more than the risk free rate
| (4-5%)? Why would that matter? Are tech projects really
| that unprofitable? I figured most projects at tech
| companies are easily 20%+ in terms of margin.
|
| > For companies like FAANG - which are ridiculously
| profitable - it's still the same.
|
| Would you go as far as to say Microsoft laying off 10,000
| and Amazing laying off 18,000 people had next to nothing to
| do with the federal funds rate then?
| dcliu wrote:
| I am just learning about too, but I think the explanation
| goes something like this: Because the risk-free rate of
| return is now much higher, the net present value of the
| estimated future cash returns from that investment has
| gone down. Another way to look at it, earning a dollar
| today is now worth much more than earning a dollar in
| five years.
|
| Just how much has it increased? If we use the 3-month
| Treasury bill rate as the risk-free return, it has gone
| from 0.05% to 4.64%. A dollar in five years used to be
| worth (1 / 1.0005^5) and now it is only worth (1 /
| 1.0464^5). That's a drop of 25%, definitely significant
| enough to make some speculative and longer-term
| investments no longer pencil out.
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| > Because the risk-free rate of return is now much
| higher, the net present value of the estimated future
| cash returns from that investment has gone down.
|
| When the risk free rate was 0.25%, the net present value
| of estimated future cash returns was X
|
| Now, the risk free rate (2 year) is 4.50%. A different of
| 4.25%, therefore the net present value of estimate future
| cash returns is whatever X was, but 4.25% worse
|
| For a company like Microsoft, how does that translate to
| layoffs? If their project was profitable to the tune of
| 10% margins and the risk free rate makes it only 5%, why
| are they getting rid of the entire project?
|
| Or, did they have projects that had 5% net margin, and
| now the projects are breakeven, so they get rid of them?
| That would mean the people who got laid off at Microsoft
| were almost unanimously working on projects that were
| only netting Microsoft 5% net margin? I thought tech had
| better margins than that?
| overrun11 wrote:
| > If their project was profitable to the tune of 10%
| margins and the risk free rate makes it only 5%
|
| The 5% needs to be weighed against the cost of capital,
| not just the absolute return from the company's
| perspective. A 5% return sounds fine but if the market is
| now pricing equities for a 7% return then a company is
| lighting money on fire by making that 5% investment
| (because they can return the cash to shareholders who can
| invest in other businesses at 7%).
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| I don't understand.
|
| Let's say it was hypothetically like this.
|
| Microsoft
|
| 2019
|
| Cost of capital: 0.25% (should be irrelevant because they
| had billions in cash on hand but let's assume they refuse
| to use it for whatever reason and instead went to banks
| to get loans to pay for employees working on projects)
|
| They work on a project, it returns 20% gross. 20% - cost
| of capital = ROI of 19.75%
|
| 2022
|
| Cost of capital: 4.50%
|
| Project returns 20% gross still, but now the net ROI is
| 15.5%
|
| Why would you lay off employees who could bring you 15.5%
| (average project profitability assumption?) in favor of
| instead parking your cash for the risk free rate of 4.5%?
| short_sells_poo wrote:
| Another way you can think about this: imagine you have a
| portfolio that makes 10% every year and risk free rate is
| zero. If you reinvest your returns (ie compound returns),
| in 10 years time you'll have made 160% of your original
| investment vs. 0% if you kept your money in a risk free
| portfolio.
|
| But now let's say that risk free rates are 5%, which
| means that your portfolio has to compete with a net
| positive value asset that is essentially free of risk and
| in the same 10 year horizon will make you 60%, so your
| excess profits are now "only" 100%, which is a
| significant reduction from the original value
| proposition.
|
| Thus, for the same risk profile, investment firms have to
| become much more restrictive in what they put in their
| portfolio. An entire class of investments (e.g. companies
| who are not expected to ever make money but have hype)
| has become basically a negative value proposition.
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| The Fed's dot plot shows they plan on lowering interest
| rates within the next 24 months.
|
| How can Microsoft (big tech company) not have faith that
| their highly paid engineers + managers can't build
| amazing products efficiently (aka not costing too much)
| to the point where they can outcompete the risk free rate
| which is temporarily ~5% and headed back down to 2-3%
| within the next 2-3 years most likely?
| emodendroket wrote:
| Because unprofitable investments that theoretically MIGHT be
| profitable in the future, something tech was full of, are
| much less attractive in this environment and investors are no
| longer throwing money at them.
| sumtechguy wrote:
| Existing debt coming due as well as a change in market. These
| are more than likely not 30+ year loans. Probably anything
| from overnight to 2-10 year. It is also possible to be 'cash
| poor' but have lots of invested value. That trap puts you in
| a spot where you borrow money to make payroll, even though
| you have enough. That gotcha put a lot of companies out of
| businesses in 2008. When it became very difficult to even
| borrow money. Higher rates also make it harder to borrow
| especially if you are carrying an existing debt load.
|
| This is just speculation on my part but also perhaps instead
| of investing the money in the company it is better to just
| buy bonds for a better rate of return? Basically instead of
| buying workers time to get a rate of return. That worker has
| to 'beat' the interest rate which factors into MR=MC to make
| it worth the while of the company to keep them around. Wonder
| if there are any economic studies on that.
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| > This is just speculation on my part but also perhaps
| instead of investing the money in the company it is better
| to just buy bonds for a better rate of return?
|
| That is what I was trying to get an answer on. That is
| rooted on the premise that it needs to be a
| truthood/assumption that Microsoft's projects net them less
| than the risk free rate (which is 4.5%).
|
| That seems low.
| lkrubner wrote:
| The stimulus in 2020 and 2021 was historic and caused rapid
| economic growth, therefore companies hired in response to
| that growth.
|
| The rise in interest rates from 0.25% to 4.75% is meant to
| slow economic growth, therefore companies need to adjust to a
| period of slower growth. The higher interest rates work
| primarily through the real estate market, slowing
| construction, but this means less consumers, and therefore
| less income for companies.
|
| Keep in mind, the banks raised rates rapidly as soon as they
| knew the Fed was going to raise rates. The Fed took many
| months to get to 4.75% but the banks jumped ahead and raised
| rates almost instantly.
|
| In 2020 many CEOs needed to plan for hypergrowth, in 2023
| many CEOs need to plan for a possible recession.
|
| The money I spend becomes income for a company, and when that
| company pays you a salary, and you buy something from my
| company, then they money you spend becomes my salary.
| Everything goes around in a circle. Therefore, it doesn't
| matter how much debt a company has, but it does matter how
| much debt other people have. If other people suddenly need to
| pay more interest on their debts, then they have less money
| to spend whatever it is that your company is selling (unless
| you work at a bank).
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| > Keep in mind, the banks raised rates rapidly as soon as
| they knew the Fed was going to raise rates. The Fed took
| many months to get to 4.75% but the banks jumped ahead and
| raised rates almost instantly.
|
| "Banks are intermediaries between the central bank (such as
| the Federal Reserve) and consumers and businesses. Banks
| borrow funds from the central bank at a certain rate and
| then lend those funds to their customers at a higher rate,
| earning a profit on the spread between the two rates."
|
| > therefore companies need to adjust to a period of slower
| growth.
|
| I think this is the missing piece for me. I didn't realize
| that since consumers will purchase less houses, the real
| estate sector will lag, and those who earn their living in
| it will have less discretionary spending to pump into the
| economy. From there (at scale), companies like Microsoft
| will grow less due to weakened consumer demand.
|
| That and people who need to finance car purchases right now
| (new or used) would also be affected. If it costs them more
| to finance a car than it did 12 months ago,
| Microsoft/Amazon/Google/Facebook can expect to have
| weakened consumer demand.
|
| So it isn't that Microsoft itself is directly impacted at a
| "we finance debt to pay our employees with the Federal
| Funds rate", but more that the Federal Reserve is trying to
| weaken consumer demand. Once that weakened demand reaches
| Microsoft, they need to adjust (lay off unprofitable
| teams/projects) to stay on their previously baked in growth
| projections that Wall Street expects to see/demands.
| Without this, Microsoft stock will go backwards because
| Wall Street wants to see perpetual continuous growth.
| lkrubner wrote:
| "Banks borrow funds from the central bank at a certain
| rate"
|
| Right, but banks don't have to borrow money from the Fed.
| Banks also have the deposits from their customers, and so
| banks can make new loans based on those deposits. Last
| time I checked, this was roughly a 5 to 1 ratio (a bank
| with $1 million in deposits could make loans of $5
| million) but that changes all the time, based on limits
| set by the Fed.
|
| But in general, right, when the Fed raises rates,
| consumer demand will weaken, and then that spreads to the
| retail sector, and then that works backwards to the
| manufacturing sector and all the service sector
| activities that support businesses in general
| (accounting, legal, janitors, etc), eventually slowing
| all economic activity.
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| So because Microsoft's board assumes that consumer demand
| is due to weaken (as a result to the raised Fed rates),
| they laid off 10,000 people. So we can most likely assume
| those people were not bringing a lot of value to the
| company.
|
| So it's not that the Fed rate affects Microsoft directly,
| because they don't really have any loans/processes where
| they need to get loans/debt at the Fed rate.
|
| It's that they will be affected by lower consumer demand.
| dboreham wrote:
| > hired in response to that growth
|
| I think it's more direct than that. Rich people weren't
| getting any return on their money from fixed income
| instruments so instead they gave it to funds that invested
| in tech startups that then used it to hire people. Now
| interest rates are higher, rich people don't need to do
| that any more.
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| > that invested in tech startups
|
| But the companies doing layoffs aren't tech startups
| (Microsoft, Amazon, etc.)
| emodendroket wrote:
| Yes, that's ultimately the theory behind rate hikes in
| the first place. On a big enough scale, wages get driven
| downward and then that has a knock-on effect on prices.
| It just turns out tech was especially vulnerable.
| short_sells_poo wrote:
| > It just turns out tech was especially vulnerable.
|
| This should not be surprising at all! The entire tech
| rally was fueled by a huge amount of leverage. That
| leverage was very cheap in the last 10 years, because
| there was a lot of money sloshing around and the interest
| rates were zero (sometimes even negative), which meant
| that the bar on portfolio returns was very low.
|
| I'm going to simplify a lot: let's say you have a
| portfolio that returns 10% p.a., if the risk free rate
| (ie bond returns) are 0, then you can say that your
| portfolio gives people 10% in excess of what they could
| get by holding safe assets. But now rates are 5% (for the
| sake of simplicity), that same portfolio only gives you
| 5% excess returns. On any single given year that's not a
| huge difference, but if you compound this over 10 years,
| that's the difference of having earned 60% vs. 160%. Huge
| difference!
|
| So as you can see this relatively small (in absolute
| terms) change really compounds itself into a massive re-
| evaluation of investments. When rates are negative, you'd
| be happy to hold assets that merely do nothing - ie
| neither gain nor lose value - but once rates start to
| rise appreciably, the future value of those investments
| needs to be discounted and because we are dealing with
| compounding, the discounting itself can be pretty brutal.
| This is then further compounded by the expectation that
| money supply itself is shrinking, which makes the pool of
| available money smaller as well.
|
| It's really a double whammy which will mostly affect
| highly leveraged and risky bets, as they become much much
| less palatable.
|
| It was really perverse how many tech companies had no
| discernible avenue of ever becoming profitable, and yet
| had billion dollar valuations. People were looking
| desperate for parking capital anywhere they could.
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| > The entire tech rally was fueled by a huge amount of
| leverage
|
| I'd like to see a source/citation/proof for for that
| claim.
|
| I find it hard to believe Apple, Microsoft, Google, or
| Meta have "huge leverage".
| emodendroket wrote:
| Aren't we talking about businesses like Uber that haven't
| really ever made much money?
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| https://www.outlookindia.com/business/no-uber-layoffs-on-
| the...
|
| Except they aren't doing layoffs and everybody else who
| is profitable is
| Conan_Kudo wrote:
| > _why is that having such a massive impact so quickly on
| these companies to the point where, the cost to service NEW
| debt (not existing) rises?_
|
| It's because a lot of tech companies have built their
| financial management on regularly refinancing and getting new
| cash through the debt market to keep things going, rather
| than minimizing the usage of debt markets for cash
| generation.
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| I don't think we have any proof that a company as
| profitable and large as Microsoft, based on their financial
| reports, is using cheap short term debt to finance projects
| (payroll expenses included)/accelerate growth? Or are they?
| nemo44x wrote:
| It's more about that there's a cascading effect going on
| right now where your customers are scaling back because their
| customers are scaling back because their customers are
| scaling back, etc. So because of that, everyone is expecting
| a decline in growth that was planned for and hired for.
|
| Companies still do have lots of cash but they need to manage
| that cash with the expectation that they won't be able to
| raise cash as easily in the near/mid future. Valuations are
| cut because there's better places to put money now to get
| yield so when you do raise, you'll need to sell an even
| bigger piece of the company to get the funds you need.
| x86x87 wrote:
| Even a broken clock is right twice per day.
|
| The question that I have is: why are all these big corporations
| doing synchronized layoffs? Is it about having more people than
| needed or is it pure greed and expectations that they can
| easily get away with it because "everyone is doing it"?
| qqtt wrote:
| I don't think it's really a mystery as to why most tech
| companies are doing layoffs (also import to note that other
| industries still have tight labor markets, like oil and gas
| which happens to be rapidly growing during this downturn).
|
| Tech company growth rates were high during the pandemic so
| they hired to fuel that growth. Now that growth rates are
| lower, they have to re-balance their cost structure to match
| their new forecasted growth. This is happening at every
| company currently doing layoffs. In Twilio's case, they went
| from almost 70% year over year growth during the pandemic to
| currently about 20-30% year over year growth. The same
| evaporating growth rates is true across the tech industry -
| Meta is actually seeing revenue decline year over year,
| Google has seen growth shrink to just 1%. Even more telling
| are operating margins which are evaporating very quickly as
| growth stalls - Google's operating margins are down 17% year
| over year.
|
| No one has a crystal ball, so companies hire during high
| growth periods to capitalize on growth, and lay off during
| low growth periods to re-balance their cost structure towards
| profit. This is true of many industries - you see the same
| effects play out in the boom and bust cycle of industries
| like O&G - which are currently hiring and not too long ago
| were laying off as well. People want to frame lay offs as de
| facto failure, but really it is just companies responding to
| market conditions - no different then companies hiring when
| growth is high.
| [deleted]
| time_to_smile wrote:
| It's because the fundamental economics of nearly the entire
| sector don't make sense.
|
| I predicted there would be mass layoffs in tech right like
| this last year, and more specifically predicted 6 months ago
| that we'd be seeing basically what we're seeing as far as
| layoffs.
|
| With rising rates investors are asking companies to show a
| clear path towards profitability. Most of these companies are
| losing more money each quarter and industry wide this has to
| stop.
|
| For the larger profitable companies it's likely because they
| realize a huge amount of their revenue is coming from these
| companies that don't make money.
|
| While I'll be the first to criticize companies for working to
| remove power from workers, what we're seeing is simply
| investors waking up to the economic reality that growth
| without profits is not sustainable.
| tqi wrote:
| The most frustrating part of all of these layoffs is that
| it seems more or less understood that if the fed lowers
| rates, we'll be back to irresponsible hiring. This belief
| that there is a sing "right strategy" for the given
| economic conditions completely ignores switching costs,
| both for individuals (whose lives are upended) but also for
| companies (imo the coordination overheard of hypergrowth
| likely means that companies are less productive in the
| short term).
| moneywoes wrote:
| Right, most SaaS are bought by other SaaS many of which are
| unprofitable
|
| What do you predict is the resolution to this dillema?
| strangattractor wrote:
| Cover - layoffs make the company look bad. Laying off when
| you are the only company doing so makes you look even worse
| both to the public and investors.
| tnzk wrote:
| More layoffs -> more supplies in job market -> able to reduce
| labor cost per person on average
| cfeduke wrote:
| It's a good time to do it; copycat layoffs (The Board:
| "everyone is doing layoffs, why aren't we?") and it's a way
| to give a short term boost to the stock price - at least for
| publicly traded companies - when technology earnings are
| mixed or poor.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I don't think anyone really ever thought they were. I've posted
| a similar sentiment a bunch of times, but both of the following
| can easily be true:
|
| 1. There are companies that are run inefficiently, _especially_
| ones that grew spectacularly quickly during the pandemic due
| largely to FOMO concerns from execs.
|
| 2. Large companies have a huge number of responsibilities and
| needs for staff that are rarely grasped by the "It's just a
| website! I could build this in a weekend!" crowd.
| burkaman wrote:
| Avoiding the inevitable "does this really count as taking
| responsibility" comment chain by just not taking responsibility
| at all, nice.
| Nifty3929 wrote:
| Take responsibility for what? Certainly possible that hiring
| all these people was the correct choice, and that laying them
| off now is also the correct choice.
|
| Layoff are not necessarily a mistake or a consequence of a
| mistake. Of course they might be, but not always.
| burkaman wrote:
| That's not what taking responsibility means. You should
| acknowledge when your actions hurt people, even if you think
| it was the right thing to do. In this case, if the CEO thinks
| they made no mistakes, taking responsibility might involve:
|
| 1. Explicitly stating this was your decision, not just the
| inevitable consequences of the invisible hand of the market.
| Explaining that "we" in this post refers to the CEO and board
| of directors.
|
| 2. Explaining that you hired thousands in the last couple
| years with the knowledge that the company was not in a strong
| long-term position, and knew at the time that you might have
| to lay them off soon, but didn't tell them because you
| thought it would hurt your ability to hire and retain them.
|
| 3. Acknowledging out loud that layoffs hurt people, not being
| honest with your employees about their future hurts them, but
| you do not regret it and believe the size of Twilio's market
| cap is more important.
| cuteboy19 wrote:
| Would these be race conscious layoffs too?
| muttantt wrote:
| Looking at Twilio employees posting their Linkedin Open-for-
| hire ad post-layoff, I see lots of POC, women and H1B's. Seems
| this layoff was not done through the same anti-racist/anti-
| oppression lens as last time.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-02-13 23:01 UTC)