[HN Gopher] TikTok-owner ByteDance planning to layoff thousands ...
___________________________________________________________________
TikTok-owner ByteDance planning to layoff thousands in coming
months
Author : mfiguiere
Score : 170 points
Date : 2023-02-23 15:55 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.firstpost.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.firstpost.com)
| mparnisari wrote:
| "the layoffs is taking place"
|
| i'm no English expert, but I can't take seriously an article with
| grammar errors :/
| eCa wrote:
| > i'm
|
| The issue with critizising someones grammer are that it always
| slips in an error or two.
| ChicagoBoy11 wrote:
| I see what you did there. Well played.
| Taywee wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muphry%27s_law
|
| > Muphry's law is an adage that states: "If you write
| anything criticizing editing or proofreading, there will be a
| fault of some kind in what you have written."[1] The name is
| a deliberate misspelling of "Murphy's law".
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| I will never understand why some people are so quick to
| dismiss everything because they spot a grammar mistake.
|
| Nothing is perfect. Get over it.
| _gabe_ wrote:
| I typically don't mind if there's small grammatical errors
| every few pages. But if the sentence structure is
| consistently confusing, and there are several glaring
| mistakes, it usually signals to me that the author didn't
| care enough to proofread/edit their own writing. If the
| author doesn't care why should I?
| infamouscow wrote:
| Stupidity.* It takes far less energy to dismiss something
| for a cosmetic, surface level error, than to engage in the
| merits of the discussion.
|
| *: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ww47bR86wSc
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| The human mind is engineered to be lazy though; we're hard-
| wired to look for short cuts and proof reading === quality
| isn't a terrible one. Why do you think we still have
| resumes, or equate a university degree with ability to
| program computers?
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| > Why do you think we still have resumes
|
| As opposed to what? People just showing up to interviews
| unannounced?
|
| > or equate a university degree with ability to program
| computers?
|
| Most of the really successful tech companies are doing
| this to a small degree. You're at a pretty big advantage
| if you try to get an early internship at FAANG if you
| went to Harvard or Stanford or whatnot - and you probably
| should be (and this is coming from someone who believes
| strongly those universities are mostly a waste).
|
| The unis already did the hard work of sifting through
| students to find ones who are willing to work 100x more
| than necessary just to get into a slightly better school.
| If you're FAANG, that's sort of who you want to hire for
| a tech internship, and eventually take advantage of with
| an underpaying salary for namebrand recognition upon
| graduation.
| kerpotgh wrote:
| [dead]
| vyskocilm wrote:
| All your layoffs are belong to us.
| emodendroket wrote:
| A single editing mistake makes the whole article beneath
| notice?
| CydeWeys wrote:
| It's an Indian newspaper. Indian English is just about as
| different from American English as it's possible to get.
| scottyah wrote:
| How does it compare to Scottish English or Jamaican Patois?
| Those seem like a different language to me
| optimalsolver wrote:
| If you asked a Jamaican to pass you the "beer can", they
| might hand you pork rashes. :-D
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > Indian English is just about as different from American
| English as it's possible to get.
|
| Hardly. Indian English is not even very different from some
| dialects of British English (just not the one British dialect
| that most non-Brits are used to). Even many of the features
| that people commonly associate with Indian English are
| actually taken from British English _and still present_ in
| present-day British dialects (again, just not the one that
| most non-Brits are familiar with).
|
| There are other dialects of English that are _far_ more
| different from Standard American English, to the point where
| an American speaker will have trouble understanding them
| altogether, as opposed to being able to understand the
| meaning correctly albeit with noticeable distinctions.
|
| But you're right that there's a good chance that this is a
| dialect difference.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| Indian English has lots of loanwords from Indian languages
| in it. That's the biggest difference I'm referring to. Try
| reading any Indian finance news without knowing what lakh,
| crore, and lakh crore mean, for example.
| dahfizz wrote:
| That's interesting. Are they taught in Indian primary school
| that "the layoffs is" is correct?
| cscurmudgeon wrote:
| No. Even in Indian English, this is not correct.
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > "the layoffs is taking place"
|
| > i'm no English expert, but I can't take seriously an article
| with grammar errors :/
|
| It's arguably a regional/dialect distinction. Here "layoffs" is
| being treated as a collective noun, similar to how people say
| "the data _is_ " instead of "the data _are_ ". Notice how
| people usually say "layoffs" when referring to the entire
| round.
|
| English has less dialectal variation than most languages, so
| English speakers (particularly educated British or American
| speakers) aren't used to seeing it, but collectivization of
| nouns is one of the more common ones to spot. If you pay
| attention, you'll start seeing other examples here and there.
| moosedev wrote:
| Without commenting on the correctness of the English in the
| article, which I didn't finish reading: when I moved to the
| US as a Brit, I was amused by many commercials' use of "a
| savings" to describe the effect of a sale or discount (e.g.
| "a 20% Savings!")
|
| In this case, the collective noun "savings" is used with the
| singular article "a". This one shows up in both spoken and
| written American English.
|
| Obviously, I can point intellectually to how and why it's
| correct, but it still sounds somehow weird and a bit folksy
| to this immigrant :)
| glibby wrote:
| I believe the rule of using "are" when following a noun that
| ends with "s" still applies though. eg. "the vertices are"
| but "the collective is".
|
| I can't think of a collective noun that ends in S that I
| would follow with "is".
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > I believe the rule of using "are" when following a noun
| that ends with "s" still applies though
|
| Rules are dialect-dependent, though (or a better way to
| frame it: "rules" are observations about clusters which are
| used to _define_ a dialect).
|
| > I can't think of a collective noun that ends in S that I
| would follow with "is".
|
| Sure, in the forms of American and British English that
| most HN readers are used to, there may not be any. That
| isn't universal, though.
|
| There's a related phenomenon which may be more familiar to
| you: some English speakers will use a possessive form even
| when no possessive is being conveyed semantically, eg: "I'm
| going to Burger King's", or "Wal-Mart's is a good store".
| This particular one is fairly well-documented.
| twelve40 wrote:
| > "I'm going to Burger King's"
|
| pretty sure this is also incorrect and something to be
| avoided in print, no?
|
| "data" vs "datum" is pretty obscure. While an outfit like
| the New York Times may know the difference, I doubt that
| most people even know that "data" is always plural, since
| its forms are not even coming from English.
| dahfizz wrote:
| > some English speakers will use a possessive form even
| when no possessive is being conveyed semantically, eg:
| "I'm going to Burger King's", or "Wal-Mart's is a good
| store".
|
| I might type "walmart's a good store" in an informal
| setting (not as a possessive, but as a contraction for
| "walmart is"), but no American / British newspaper editor
| would let that through. Its against the rules of english
| grammar.
|
| I'm curious whether kids in Indian primary school are
| taught that "the layoffs is" is correct grammar, or
| whether its just a common mistake (like walmart's).
| metalliqaz wrote:
| "in hospital"
| tdiggity wrote:
| it is very human.
| Mc91 wrote:
| I always see them hiring Android programmers on Linkedin,
| including right now
|
| https://careers.tiktok.com/position?keywords=android&categor...
|
| Wonder if Android people will be laid off.
| unglaublich wrote:
| Big companies always fish for talent, even when laying off
| people. The bar to get accepted is just a LOT higher.
| oldstrangers wrote:
| Makes sense considering Android makes up 71.74% of the mobile
| market. Especially emerging markets, which is right up their
| wheelhouse.
| nso wrote:
| Here in Mexico I just today made note of a phone service
| provider offering unlimited use of TikTok with their basic
| offering.
|
| Personally I have never been anything but annoyed by the
| whole concept of the short videos, but my 5 year old daughter
| likes it. But then again I also get irrationally angry at
| programming tutorials in video form as opposed to text, so
| maybe I just don't "get it".
| linuxftw wrote:
| > but my 5 year old daughter likes it.
|
| The tech is made to be addictive. You shouldn't let
| children use such a thing IMO.
| blululu wrote:
| Tutorial videos are demonstrably worse at education, but
| they are just much, much easier to produce than a well
| written step by step blog post.
| arberx wrote:
| Its because they have no net neutrality.
| ollien wrote:
| Those short form programming videos perpetuate the parts of
| this industry I really dislike, particularly the "look you
| install the latest dependency and things go :rocketship:
| :rocketship:". They never convey much nuance and are just
| frankly uninteresting, unless you want to just have passing
| knowledge of things existing.
| me551ah wrote:
| If they are still trying to hire for Android, then it's
| unlikely that they would.
| toyg wrote:
| Sadly that's not how mass-layoffs work. It would make too
| much sense.
|
| Chances are those openings are just bait, permanently there
| regardless of whether they actually need people.
| htrp wrote:
| > Chances are those openings are just bait, permanently
| there regardless of whether they actually need people.
|
| 100%.... most firms will have permanent reqs open just to
| see if there are outstanding candidates available.
| ravenstine wrote:
| Everyone is "hiring" all the time. Even zombie companies like
| Sears post developer jobs on LinkedIn.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| At one point - TikTok was rumored to be worth $400B.
|
| That's about 40% of GOOG - which prints $60B per year. TikTok
| makes nothing.
|
| It's _only_ growing revenues at 53%, and they 're massively
| decelerating.
|
| It's going to be hard to IPO for anything near that without
| ZIRP when they don't have profits and their growth rates are
| declining...
|
| Easiest way to make the numbers look better for IPO is fire
| half the employees and make the other half work 3x as much.
| shuckles wrote:
| ByteDance almost certainly does many tens of billions of
| revenue a year.
| woobar wrote:
| Prints money means profits.
|
| Alphabets revenue in 2022 was $280B, with ~$60B profits.
|
| ByteDance info is harder to find, but in 2021 it was ~$60B
| revenue, with $7B loss. [1]
|
| https://musically.com/2022/10/07/bytedance-2021-financials/
| Aromasin wrote:
| Based on data from other "tech layoffs", very few if any core
| engineers will go. It'll be sales, recruitment, and an
| assortment of engineering-adjacent positions like solutions,
| industrial design, data analytics, and product.
|
| I quite like this article from interviewing.io on the make-up
| of most layoffs by position based in LinkedIn data:
| https://interviewing.io/blog/2022-layoffs-engineers-vs-other...
|
| If you look at pure software engineering, it's about 5%. When
| we say "tech layoffs" we default to thinking "technical
| people", but that's not really the case.
| baumy wrote:
| This is extremely interesting data, and not what I would have
| expected. I'm aware HR and recruiting folks are having much
| much harder times than engineers in finding new positions,
| but assumed engineers had still been hit harder than that
| link shows.
|
| For companies outside the big techs that are still wildly
| profitable and sitting on mountains of cash, laying off
| people is largely about refocusing on actual profitable
| activity. Keeping engineers around makes sense for them.
|
| For companies that are on the cusp of profitability, or still
| actively burning through money, layoffs seem to be more about
| reducing burn, which means you're more likely to lay off
| highly paid engineers.
|
| Still, 5% seems low. How do you square this with the
| observation that every open SDE role at a company that pays
| at least somewhat decently seems to have hundreds of
| applications? If so few SDEs were really laid off, I wouldn't
| expect the SDE hiring market to have turned as drastically as
| it did since last summer / fall.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| 5% is still pretty substantial, and the hiring market has
| not expanded to keep pace in a relatively short time.
|
| Also, tech does have a lot of people on visa compared to
| other industries, who need to find a job within 60 days of
| termination or leave the country.
| wolpoli wrote:
| > I'm aware HR and recruiting folks are having much much
| harder times than engineers in finding new positions
|
| Wouldn't HR and recruiting folks be able to look for work
| with companies the broader economy?
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > I'm aware HR and recruiting folks are having much much
| harder times than engineers in finding new positions, but
| assumed engineers had still been hit harder than that link
| shows.
|
| Hardest hit positions are "tech adjacent".
|
| > For companies that are on the cusp of profitability, or
| still actively burning through money, layoffs seem to be
| more about reducing burn, which means you're more likely to
| lay off highly paid engineers.
|
| Twitter was an example of that, but it was massively
| overblown by the media due to the company profile (and the
| identity of the buyer!).
|
| Companies trimming senior talent are also slowing down the
| pace at which they can ship new features and products.
| That's ok short term, but longer terms, those that will be
| able to secure funding to keep their engineering will get
| ahead.
|
| > How do you square this with the observation that every
| open SDE role at a company that pays at least somewhat
| decently seems to have hundreds of applications? If so few
| SDEs were really laid off, I wouldn't expect the SDE hiring
| market to have turned as drastically as it did since last
| summer / fall.
|
| How many serious applications?
| philsnow wrote:
| > For companies that are on the cusp of profitability, or
| still actively burning through money, layoffs seem to be
| more about reducing burn, which means you're more likely to
| lay off highly paid engineers.
|
| Bothering to do a layoff only makes sense if management
| wants to see the company survive. So, assuming that the
| only outcomes being targeted are the ones in which the
| company is still alive, consider the cost of replacing the
| employee later: at least right now, engineers are more
| expensive to hire than most other roles[0], so it could
| cost less overall to lay off HR/recruiting with the
| expectation that you'll backfill those roles in 9-18
| months.
|
| [0] for various reasons; to hire for any given role, you
| have to source, engage/recruit, interview (which takes up
| the time of the people on the team they'll join), somehow
| pick one or more of the candidates, make offers, and then
| onboard them. These costs are largely the same for any
| role, _except_ that interviewing engineers costs
| engineering time (and it 's harder to get enough quality
| candidates in the top of the funnel for engineers than
| other roles, so you have to spend more HR/recruiter time
| there).
| ok_dad wrote:
| > assumed engineers had still been hit harder than that
| link shows
|
| That's what they want you to assume, that way us engineers
| feel pressure to fall in line. Welcome to the
| disinformation era.
| VirusNewbie wrote:
| That data doesn't have meta, google or amazon though???
| nblgbg wrote:
| This blog is old. Not sure when it was written and with more
| layoffs this year, it may not be true !
| jtsnow wrote:
| Interesting data! And very different from the anecdotes
| presented in another top HN discussion today, detailing
| fierce competition with software engineer job postings
| receiving 100x the number of applicants compared to just a
| few months ago.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34913015
| twalla wrote:
| > When we say "tech layoffs" we default to thinking
| "technical people", but that's not really the case.
|
| It sounds a little callous but the way I make the distinction
| is working _in_ tech vs working _on_ tech.
| kccqzy wrote:
| I work in Big Tech. In the recent layoff, no software
| engineer was laid off within my org. But several program
| managers were laid off. I don't necessarily agree with that
| decision; they do the dirty work of pushing things forward,
| like doing cross-functional communication, thinking about
| timelines and milestones, organizing meetings and sometimes
| attending meetings on behalf of actual engineers. Without
| them, work is slower, more chaotic, and it is now impossible
| to ask a program manager to attend a meeting on your behalf.
| Guess what? Actual engineers' productivity drops.
|
| There is bloat, of course, but there is also a reason why
| those tech-adjacent positions exist.
| iguessthislldo wrote:
| I agree. When I starting working we had a manager that was
| formerly a SWE on our team. They retired and were replaced
| by a series of people over the years that, for the most
| part, didn't have a programming background. At first I was
| a little dismayed over this, but I eventually realized it
| doesn't usually matter. It helps for them to have tech
| knowledge, but like you said they do things I wouldn't care
| for, but need to be done.
| ganlaw wrote:
| As someone who has been doing primarily Android engineering for
| the last 7 years. I am not surprised they are still hiring
| Android people. It is really hard to hire Android people. Every
| company I've worked (FANNG included) at struggled to fill
| Android roles. TikTok has reached out to me every month for the
| last year or so as well.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| I did a minuscule amount of app development for android back
| in the like 4.0 days, and recently tried again, using kotlin
| and jetpack or whatever their UI kit is. It was awful.
| Everything is so hard to use. Your UI framework requires you
| to define completely separate """magic""" functions to
| preview how it is rendered, as if that makes any sense. All
| documentation seems to make the classic blunder of assuming
| you already know the answer, already are an expert in the
| platform, and already know what you are doing. Every example
| either hides some magic that they had to add, or requires you
| already know everything that the example should be teaching
| you.
|
| I literally feel like I understand the Windows Win32 dev
| ecosystem, and I've never written a Windows app in my life.
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| > It is really hard to hire Android people. Every company
| I've worked (FANNG included) at struggled to fill Android
| roles.
|
| Why is that? Does iOS present similar hiring challenges?
| matwood wrote:
| It's been awhile, but I did both Android and iOS
| development for a product. iOS felt like a well thought out
| toolkit to build out very nice apps. Android was closer to
| here's a box of square legos, good luck. Getting to a
| polished app on Android was much harder [1].
|
| Then there's the develop loop where the Android emulator is
| terrible, and the iOS simulator is great. So Android
| development meant constantly futzing with a device, which
| you really only want to have to do when you're ready really
| test.
|
| [1] Games may be different since the game UI is often the
| same across platforms.
| 0x457 wrote:
| iOS's developers community had a head start - transitioning
| from Cocoa to Cocoa Touch is straightforward. Android
| didn't have this. Android SDK was a giant mess initially,
| there was no decent IDE for it initially, plenty of things
| that are `[something doThingWell]` in iOS are much harder
| in Android to implement.
|
| Then there is fragmentation, availability of $50 devices
| that guaranteed to have issues with your app.
|
| IMO iOS development is very pleasant (if you have someone
| other than you to deal with code signing) and Android isn't
| pleasant at all. Combine that with companies not caring
| about android apps... All of that contributes to a smaller
| number of good developers available.
| joshstrange wrote:
| > if you have someone other than you to deal with code
| signing
|
| I hear that, though fastlane [0] makes like 1000x easier.
| Now my first step for any app is setting up a fastlane
| job to run Github Actions. My goal is to be able to push
| code and have an app show up in TestFlight without me
| ever needing to manually manage that. I can even make
| "blind" changes to the code and push it which is nice for
| old codebases or when I'm not on my main laptop but have
| access to my code.
|
| [0] https://fastlane.tools/
| symlinkk wrote:
| Probably because anyone smart enough to work in tech is
| smart enough to have an iPhone instead of an Android
| triyambakam wrote:
| Lol at thinking that Apple is somehow more secure. You've
| bought the lie. I use Graphene.
| kyawzazaw wrote:
| is it really about security in the original comment
| though?
| triyambakam wrote:
| Then what is it about? The poster claims it's about
| intelligence so i don't see how else it could be.
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| Maybe we're smart enough to want to be able to develop an
| app without having to use a mac, or easily push any app
| to our phone, etc.
|
| I would actually argue the opposite. Any techie that
| loves to tinker on things will probably prefer an andriod
| phone over an apple one.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| Ah yes, you're part of the "exclusive club" of people who
| own an iPhone; they only added 200M members to their
| ranks last year. Only the smartest, tech Rockstars... or
| anyone with a piece of government issue id and enough
| credit to get a 2-year cell plan.
| gregdoesit wrote:
| In what is interesting, TikTok / ByteDance was on an absolute
| hiring spree for devs October to January for sure, while most
| other tech companies took the back seat or did cuts. Here's data
| I got my hands on, comparing the number of "software engineer"
| positions at companies and ByteDance stands out unmissably:
|
| https://twitter.com/gergelyorosz/status/1628831860611506178
|
| Makes me wonder how they missed the memo that Meta got by
| October/November, Google and Amazon also by end of year: that the
| market is slowing.
|
| I assumed Bytedance had just as good - if not better - data on
| the market than eg Meta, but Meta seems to have responded far far
| earlier to what looks like a stagnating market for as spend, than
| TikTok.
| poof131 wrote:
| I wonder if it's TikTok vs ByteDance. From my friend at the
| former, they are growing rapidly and understaffed vs the teams
| in China which are bloated and looking for projects. Also seems
| like they may need to sever the corporate structure and tech
| architecture which may also reduce the need for headcount in
| China.
| fakedang wrote:
| Hubris maybe? Perhaps they expected to each Meta's lunch,
| perhaps they expected that their core market in China would not
| be affected.
| rland wrote:
| Tinfoil hat: the cuts have nothing to do with market
| fundamentals, but are rather collusion by the big players to
| drop tech salaries. Bytedance is outside the clique.
| spiderice wrote:
| I've heard this theory a number of times. I'm not against it.
| I just don't understand how it would work. Wouldn't salaries
| just increase again once everybody starts hiring? If this
| theory is true, all these layoffs are leaving these companies
| understaffed. Meaning they need to hire everyone back
| eventually.
| kerpotgh wrote:
| [dead]
| vineyardmike wrote:
| The success is two fold:
|
| 1. layoffs make people desperate and reset the
| expectations. Eg I made 300k at Google but when unemployed
| I'll take a job for 100k at a random company. Then Google
| can hire back at 200k and be the top salary again.
|
| 2. Layoffs make the employees scared of being laid off.
| They don't expect raises, just employment. They work harder
| for less just to keep a job. Look at Amazon announcing most
| people won't get a raise or even a stock refresh with the
| stock crash.
|
| This works at scale even as some individuals and companies
| don't comply.
|
| Bonus: layoffs (somewhat) reset the cost basis of the
| company and save a ton in a long term downturns. It gives
| cover to kill that blockchain department that everyone
| realizes they don't need.
| rland wrote:
| Yes, but not immediately. This is how it works:
|
| 1. There are a finite number of software engineers capable
| of competing with FAANG.
|
| 2. You outbid outsiders. At times, talk to your friends and
| tell them not to gum up intra-clique recruiting.
|
| 3. This continues for a long time, but at some point,
| salaries get a little too high.
|
| 4. Flush everyone all at once... resetting the baseline of
| what a tech salary "should be." This resets expectations
| for all the new talent coming in that might compete with
| you.
|
| 5. After the tech salary "should be" a few tens of
| thousands less... quietly start (2) again.
|
| If you time it right, (2) happens when money is cheap and
| it's easy to found a competitor, while (4) happens when
| there is a "tech downturn" and VC are scared. What a tech
| salary "should be" is quite sticky, it takes a few years of
| (2) to actually change baseline expectations.
|
| The existing cultural understanding of what tech workers
| "should be making" influences: what do the most promising
| new hires demand? how aggressive are your existing workers
| in asking for a raises, promos, etc? what do people take as
| a "given" and what do they think is a reach for them? These
| things operate as a sort of piggy bank. Every time you
| outbid a startup for promising talent, you are drawing from
| the piggy bank; that person tells their friends, makes a
| post on linkedin about it, which causes subsequent
| outbiddings to cost, pound for pound, ever so slightly
| more. When the piggy bank is empty, you refill it again by
| traumatizing everyone with a big, industry-wide layoff.
| But: you can only do this if you have a big hammer to
| wield.
|
| As a bonus, if you can be a little bit discerning in your
| firings, you actually can shed dead weight in the process.
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| > just increase again once everybody starts hiring
|
| How long until that? 12 months, 18 months?
|
| If you got fired from your $180k/yr job in 2023 and
| inflation is another 6% this year (after being 8% last
| year), you need a $190k/yr job in 2024 to have broken even,
| right?
| satvikpendem wrote:
| I doubt it's conscious collusion, it seems more like network
| effects: if everyone around you is dropping employees, it
| makes sense to do so at the same time so you don't get
| negative media coverage were you to do it independently. If
| you do it now, it just seems like you're following the crowd.
|
| So while it might seem like active collusion, it's more than
| likely just emergent game theoretic behavior.
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| > if everyone around you is dropping employees
|
| Who was the first person to kick it off? Microsoft? Google?
| Meta? Meta had a reason because their stock tanked due to
| Apple's privacy changes or whatever.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| I think it started with the YCombinator letter in may
| last year: https://techcrunch.com/2022/05/19/yc-advises-
| founders-to-pla...
|
| I think the economy didn't go as bad as they thought
| though.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| Not a tinfoil hat, collusion at this moment is so obvious.
| outside1234 wrote:
| Let me guess, 7%
| x86x87 wrote:
| 12% is the new 5%
| karolist wrote:
| Full responsibility will be taken by the CEO.
| medler wrote:
| The article says ByteDance has "1,00,000 employees," a number I
| initially read (understandably, I think) as one million.
|
| Other sources say they have around 150k employees. With 10k
| laid off, that would indeed be about 7%
| telotortium wrote:
| The weird commas are because it's from an Indian site. Indian
| languages usually count by one, ten, hundred, thousand, and
| then lakh (one hundred thousand), crore (ten million), etc.
| That's why there's an additional comma just after the hundred
| thousands place.
| arberx wrote:
| "Today is a sad day for all tiktokies..."
| outside1234 wrote:
| "I take full responsibility for my 30% equity share"
| floucky wrote:
| "We recruited too many people during Covid"
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| "We know you scrolled just every so slightly slower past
| the video of the young girls dancing provocatively in
| skimpy clothing"
| oars wrote:
| "The economic reality which we face today differs from the
| one we had predicted."
| georgyo wrote:
| "Things are not all bad, last quarter profits were up
| 100%"
| FlyingSnake wrote:
| "I am reminded in moments like this, of something Martin
| Luther King said..."
| genericone wrote:
| "You either die a hero or live long enough to see
| yourself become the villain"
| penguin_booze wrote:
| "Thank you for all the data you have harvested and
| elections interfered with. The Emperor thanks you for
| your services".
| karolist wrote:
| "I wish you weren't laid off but I wish that less than
| laying you off."
| guywithabike wrote:
| Some or all of the content in this message was generated
| with the help of ChatGPT. Please contact us if you have
| any questions: discard@company.com
| wpietri wrote:
| "Macroeconomic changes have made it impossible for me to
| want to pay you":
| https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/macroeconomic-
| changes-ha...
| trashtestcrash wrote:
| "The world we operate in has changed"
| seydor wrote:
| Are they copying american companies again?
| ffhhj wrote:
| $12 blue badge in 3, 2, 1...
| x86x87 wrote:
| But what about taking full responsibility?
| morelinks wrote:
| I don't work in tech (and my question here will prove that) but
| how does a company lay off 10,000 people without seriously
| harming their product or ceasing products all together? Is tech
| that bloated? What are people doing all day where it's realistic
| to lay of 10,000 people?
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| [dead]
| darth_avocado wrote:
| 1. You stop pretty much building anything new. That's what most
| people are working on.
|
| 2. If you go deeper with cuts, most things will continue to
| work. But behind the scenes it's a dumpster fire with people
| just trying to keep things running as much as possible. Things
| still work, but there will be bigger consequences down the
| road.
|
| 3. You go even deeper. Things work until they don't. People who
| can fix it are no longer there. You decide to diversify away
| from that part of business and lose revenue.
|
| The thing is there is a bloat in every single organization you
| have and tech companies are no different. But depending on how
| big 10000 is as a percentage of your total headcount, the
| impact can be anywhere from small to catastrophic
| nathanvanfleet wrote:
| Maybe they had internal teams that were working on a new social
| network app and are now divesting from that (not working on it,
| not releasing it). Maybe they had a lot of smaller teams who
| were iterating on the experience to increase engagement, lower
| friction etc which they will now not pursue etc. "Bloat" is a
| bit naive that somehow they are just paid to look at the left
| corner of their office or something. The company built out
| teams to look into new experiences or to make the experience
| better and they are going to be doing less of that at least for
| a while
| loeg wrote:
| It's essentially the same as R&D layoffs in other industries,
| it's just that tech companies have comparatively huge R&D
| departments funded by outsized proceeds from other business
| units.
| paxys wrote:
| The vast majority of employees at any tech company are working
| on the next version of the product. So huge layoffs will not
| impact their ability to keep the lights on, but will likely
| have an impact on the product roadmap a few months or even
| years down the line.
| hellomyguys wrote:
| >Is tech that bloated?
|
| Yes
|
| >What are people doing all day where it's realistic to lay of
| 10,000 people?
|
| They're probably in meetings, while a fraction of their time is
| actually spent doing work.
| gabereiser wrote:
| Teens by the millions are addicted to the scroll... They could
| just put it on autopilot at this point and their revenue
| streams wouldn't budge.
| gretch wrote:
| This mentality wouldn't have worked out for MySpace or
| Snapchat or Facebook and it's probably not going to be good
| for whoever is momentarily king of the hill.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| I wonder if there will ever come a point where the
| algorithms are really just that good to keep people and
| newer generations hooked permanently, and that currently we
| are still in a supoptimal local maxima. For example, people
| play at the same casinos for decades.
| tootie wrote:
| Not everyone at a tech company works on the product. It takes a
| ton of staff to do things like marketing, ad sales, content
| moderation. They may be backing away from some markets or maybe
| they automated a lot of the work.
| stu2b50 wrote:
| Working on R&D for anticipated features. The number of
| employees that work purely on KTLO is going to be under half at
| least. The rest are justifying the large revenue multipliers
| tech stocks get - from their rather high growth rates, which
| are from expansion and moonshots that pan out.
|
| Now that interest rates are high, the calculus for expansion
| projects is very different. You may very well be spending more
| money than you anticipated returning from your moonshots.
| jwagenet wrote:
| KLTO: keep the lights on, in case anyone else was wondering.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| This was such an unnecessary term to initialize by the
| parent, when it had a pivotal meaning in the sentence. I
| was wondering what the hell. KLTO meant and thought it was
| the internal codename for TikTok or something.
| x86x87 wrote:
| the twitter approach! let go of all people that are not
| needed for KTLO
| wpietri wrote:
| And then another 25%. And then fire anybody who is honest
| with the CEO.
| seizethecheese wrote:
| This is not borne out by the data. The data shows most
| layoffs are in recruiting, HR, product, design, data science.
| Yes, it's cutting new projects but it's also just trimming
| fat.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I don't understand your comment. If you're cutting back on
| future features, not existing operations, you'd absolutely
| expect product and design to take a big hit, and then of
| course recruiting and HR because your employee counts are
| down and you're not hiring.
|
| Data science tends to span both (future product dev and
| analysis of existing functionality), and data science can
| be particularly tricky to assign a value to, so not
| surprised there are also significant cuts there.
| seizethecheese wrote:
| What I left out is that engineering is mostly not being
| cut.
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