[HN Gopher] The layoffs will continue until (investor) morale im...
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The layoffs will continue until (investor) morale improves
Author : fairytalemtg
Score : 95 points
Date : 2023-03-26 18:16 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (techcrunch.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (techcrunch.com)
| thereare5lights wrote:
| paywall
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| Layoffs will continue until we are fully prepared for the
| artificial recession induced by worker wage gains fear.
| hashtag-til wrote:
| Interesting - I've never thought about it this way.
|
| My only idea so far is to accummulate as much as I can and not
| get into long term debt.
|
| If I lost my job today, I estimate I could live ok without a
| job for about 2 years in my worst forecast inflation (in UK
| terms, something like 15%)
|
| It seems there is plenty of well paid work though (again UK
| reality).
|
| Are there any known ways to counter attack an artificially
| induced recession? Join a union and fight, perhaps?
| jarsin wrote:
| > Are there any known ways to counter attack an artificially
| induced recession?
|
| You can hedge for recessions. If you think the central banks
| are blowing stuff up and the economy is going to go into a
| recession putting capital into government bonds like TLT is a
| flight to safety trade. The reasoning is if a recession comes
| then the central banks will have to lower rates and money
| will come pouring in from risky investments and from savings
| accounts.
|
| I think all recessions are artificially induced since the
| creation of the fed.
| shrimpx wrote:
| Money will come pouring into bonds? Trying to understand
| the reasoning for buying bonds.
| jarsin wrote:
| government bonds trade opposite interest rates. Interest
| rates down TLT up. Interest rates down cash needs more
| yield comes running to tlt. A lot of data out there that
| stocks crash after the pivot meaning they see the pivot
| as a recession and go racing into safety. Doesn't all
| happen in a straight easy line though.
|
| Headline from decemeber and I checked tlt and its near
| top of etf inflows ytd.
|
| TLT saw its second-largest inflow ever, with a gain of
| $1.5 billion, Bloomberg reported.
| jmclnx wrote:
| This I fully agree with, companies want to move back to very
| low wages and are doing all it can to force a recession. So far
| not going well for them.
|
| On goes my Tin Foil Hat: So, SVB failed due to a Bank Run by
| rich people who mainly own their business. Coincidence???
|
| I know people in retail, right now they are job hopping because
| those wages have risen a lot compared to Tech. Granted, those
| wages are not good at all, but some are now able to put a
| little away instead of living on those future payday loans.
|
| Most people let go in Tech, seems there is plenty of work out
| there anyway.
|
| edit: typos
| flyinglizard wrote:
| Facilitating a bank run on your own bank is quite silly.
| Which again reinforces the proverb "never attribute to malice
| that which can be explained by stupidity".
| latency-guy2 wrote:
| Of course, you'll have to answer a few questions for your
| conspiracy theory:
|
| Why wait until 2023? Why do it after hiring at such a rate
| that you effectively increased your company's headcount by
| 50%+ in the last 2 years? What events are currently happening
| that would allow for this to happen?
|
| You can pretend like you have a standing for your theory all
| you want, but it's all nonsense compared to the simple fact
| that Powell and Yellen are here to force a recession.
| sneak wrote:
| The narrative around this round of big tech layoffs seems wrong.
|
| The article opens:
|
| > _Since the start of 2023, more than 150,000 people have been
| laid off at tech companies, large and small. That's a staggering
| number of people who have been put out of work._
|
| Who says those people have been put out of work? There are lots
| of startups that have wanted to hire engineers that couldn't
| because the FAMAG paycheck money firehose made it nigh
| impossible.
|
| These people are mostly not going to be out of work. Most of them
| will still be earning way more than almost anyone in the country.
|
| This is a good thing for startups, as now the (frankly
| anticompetitive) big tech hiring practices are getting rolled
| back to sane levels.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| > Who says those people have been put out of work?
|
| The... the people who fired them? They made them stop working.
| Whether they find somewhere else to work doesn't undo that
| fact. And I don't think you should be so quick to assume that
| all of them will be just fine. Give it five years and then see
| how everyone feels about it.
|
| > This is a good thing for startups
|
| Incredibly so what. I can picture a wonderful world without
| startups I cannot imagine one without workers. Startups have
| "disrupted" a lot of the stability out of the world to the
| benefit of almost no one. They have contributed almost nothing
| positive for at least a decade now and it's not because of a
| shortage of workers.
| erulabs wrote:
| At the risk of being snarky, a world where no new businesses
| are started possibly does not look how you think it might
| look. Such countries exist today in the world and some of
| them will even let you visit!
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Yes you sure did completely ignore the substance of my
| comment and make a quip about something almost completely
| unrelated did it feel nice?
| imwithstoopid wrote:
| how can startups absorb all this talent when their fates are
| hanging by an even thinner thread than bigtech?
|
| and how do React devs help a battery startup make better
| batteries?
| anon84873628 wrote:
| Is there any hard data on this? All the other HN threads are
| telling me that, with the collapse of SVB, the good times for
| startups are over.
| whitemary wrote:
| > _...and now it's time to right size to better fit a changing
| market._
|
| Come again? What is this supposed to mean?
| salawat wrote:
| It means:
|
| Some idiot (Musk) decided to axe 90% of workers, and the
| company hasn't completely evaporated (Twitter). Investors;
| therefore, are jumping on the signal that a bunch of capital is
| allocated to non-productive work.
|
| Therefore, Welch it, trim the fat, give me back my money so I
| can stop being a source of welfare for techies, and start
| pouring money into something interesting.
| orra wrote:
| I don't know if this is why you were downvoted, but please
| avoid using the term Welch. It's an ethnic slur against Welsh
| people.
| erik_seaberg wrote:
| Jack Welch was CEO of GE, best known for dramatic
| divestments, layoffs, and stack ranking.
| Jcowell wrote:
| The must hate Welch Grape juice
| rnk wrote:
| Twitter has almost evaporated. What would someone buy it for
| today? A billion dollars? Maybe two? He couldn't have more
| effectively destroyed its value I don't think.
| ed25519FUUU wrote:
| By what metric? I've been using it every day since Musk
| took over and the only time I notice things is when people
| point them out (and people love to point them out).
|
| By contrast I couldn't Netflix to stop buffering last night
| and the last I heard they haven't had really any layoffs.
| WalterBright wrote:
| "We keep you alive to serve this ship. So row well, and live!"
| potatofrenzy wrote:
| The sucky reality is that employees at big tech companies have
| little interest in running a sustainable and resilient business.
| We want constant team growth, never-ending promotions, ever-
| growing salaries. If another company is growing more aggressively
| and paying even less sustainable salaries, we tend to jump ship.
| It's not necessarily wrong, but we really shouldn't act surprised
| when that backfires every now and then.
|
| Tech leadership bears blame for nourishing that "there's no
| tomorrow" / "growth will continue forever" culture, but it's such
| an unhelpful take to portray this as some sort of a class
| struggle with shareholders. Especially since for a good number of
| big tech companies, shareholders don't actually have much say and
| founders hold controlling interests.
| maxlamb wrote:
| "employees at big tech companies have little interest in
| running a sustainable and resilient business"
|
| By "employees" in your first sentence I assume you mean the
| C-suite?
| hashtag-til wrote:
| As a regular "individual contributor" it is very hard to
| fight ill thought plans coming "from above".
|
| Those who complain are usually cast as "negative thinking
| folks" and get subtle punishments.
|
| If you are on a mid career senior salary range, are you going
| to pick a fight and risk being punished or carry on getting
| your good salary, bonus, stocks, insurance, retirement plan
| and perks - in exchange for slighly useless work?
| rektide wrote:
| Not even just fighting ill fought plans but whether we
| decide to execute well or dial it in. The pressure to ship
| ship ship comes from a lot of places, and relatively few of
| them have the technical competence to assess, care about,
| or evaluate code & quality. They don't actually understand
| what they're pressuring forward, so often.
|
| And most of them face no real consequences. They don't have
| to maintain or repair some grossly abomination of a system,
| that's the engineers job. They'll be leading new feature
| dev new business dev forever & ever.
| 8note wrote:
| As a regular IC, the things you do are largely disconnected
| from whatever leadership is thinking. You have a lot of
| leeway to do what you want as long as it implements things
| that leadership cares about.
|
| Eg. You can build a section of a tunnel to be wider where
| you think there should be a subway station, even if the
| president's wife doesn't think there should be a station
| there. Eventually the station will exist
| the_gipsy wrote:
| We don't want constant team growth. It's the managers, the
| psychopaths, the ladder-climbers that do. And they are rewarded
| for any growth, as that's the only measure the higher-ups know,
| and the one they used to get where they are so it can't be so
| bad.
|
| For startups, it's the investors who know only to measure
| growth because there is no expected profit until the bing bang
| happens.
| black_13 wrote:
| [dead]
| fzeroracer wrote:
| Whose fault is it exactly when staying at a company results in
| my salary going down over time?
|
| No one is asking for endless growth on the employee side. But
| growth should match responsibilities, and if I gain more
| responsibility over time then pay should match. And if my
| salary can't match inflation at minimum then you're telling me
| I should be paid less for my current work.
|
| Companies prefer to funnel that money to investors and as a
| result this is where we're at. Note that privately owned
| companies or worker owned companies avoid this issue more
| often.
| bambataa wrote:
| I'm going to go out on a limb and claim that the large majority
| of big tech workers would be perfectly happy with a few
| promotions over a career and annual inflation-matching pay
| rises.
|
| Except you rarely get inflation-matching pay rises, so the only
| way to prevent the annual erosion of your situation is the
| constant team growth and never-ending promotions.
| Spivak wrote:
| I just got told by my company this year that they can't
| afford to keep up with inflation. I really don't see how they
| expect this to go.
| doktorhladnjak wrote:
| They expect that the competition will do the same--raise
| wages below inflation. Then you've got nowhere to go to
| make more. Even if it doesn't work out that way, most
| employees complain a bit but don't leave.
| hashtag-til wrote:
| True. Those who never complain about salary and are perceived
| as "happy" are in the bottom of salary increase priorities.
|
| I learned that the hard way a few years back, then got my act
| together and made sure I'm always perceived unhappy with
| salary - to pull that off, you need to be backed by
| delivering stuff and being seen. Do your homework, and ask
| for the recognition, that's my tip.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Inflation has a made it that FAANG salaries aren't really
| excessive, just slightly better than middle class. Salaries are
| really just messed up related to costs ATM.
|
| We need to get a handle on inflation and the housing bubble
| first before we can figure out what reasonable salaries are
| again, and that's going to hurt all around.
| rnk wrote:
| I disagree with that. First, Faang salaries are way over
| middle class. If inflation reduced your salary by a bit,
| think about how much more ia reduction impacted the salary of
| an average middle class person. As you make more money you
| have more disposable income so the impact of little bit less
| money when you make more is smaller.
| fzeroracer wrote:
| FAANG salaries are not over middle class and this kind of
| rhetoric is used to fuel class warfare by businesses and
| companies among the poor and middle classes.
|
| The fact is that in the modern day even on a FAANG salary a
| lot of people cannot afford to buy a home of their own. And
| the salary band at those companies is incredibly wide,
| owing in fact due to the wide disconnect in salary between
| engineers, middle management and the c-suite.
| voidfunc wrote:
| You're not wrong - The real problem is I don't give a shit
| about the product. I'm here to make money and retire. It's the
| companies job to either figure out to how to eliminate needing
| me or make the job compelling enough that I give a shit (which
| is extremely difficult).
| flyinglizard wrote:
| I always tell our candidates that the only thread connecting
| all our employees -- some as young as 20, other 50+, some are
| mechanical engineers, some technicians, others are algorithm
| researchers etc - is that all of them personally care about
| doing a good job, just like a craftsman of old who is proud
| of their work. It makes for an awesome work environment, even
| if slightly emotionally elevated.
| fzeroracer wrote:
| I think the mistake you make is assuming that being proud
| of your work also means being proud of where you work.
|
| I personally do care about doing good work and ensuring
| what I do is well thought out and performant. However that
| does not mean I always care about the company. And what
| little care I do have can rapidly be eroded.
|
| Workers nowadays are more aware than ever that you pay a
| passion tax. If you want to work where you _really_ want to
| work, then companies know this and will take advantage of
| it.
| rektide wrote:
| It's wild host so many companies make doing the right thing
| extremely hard. I've never been at a big org, and sometimes
| we are super profitable & trying to make big long term
| investments in the future, and folks seem to want to rush &
| smash code & go go go.
|
| My pace has almost always felt a bit off, but I've always
| hated shipping subpar systems. Whether it's other engineers
| or some local managers or the business, there's always been
| extreme pressure in competition with my desire to just do a
| good damned job.
|
| It's been isolating & draining. Sometimes it's just a
| matter of spending 3x as long as it would have taken to
| line up the 300 reasons why at each spot the shit slapdash
| plan is shit and the good plan is good. Trying to be OK
| with the process, walking through people who really barely
| can understand any of... You have to just keep saying to
| yourself, fine, this is my job, I'm the expert, it's OK
| that you don't know, & I'm not sure that you do need to
| know, but here we are & this talking it through is how
| we're going to decide where we go I guess.
| 8note wrote:
| I assume they all see through that, and that the common
| thread is that they all are paid to be there?
|
| If you stopped paying them, would they stay?
| flashgordon wrote:
| Out of curiosity - and I mean this in earnest:
|
| * What response do you get from the candidate?
|
| * How do you account for candidates who might be faking
| enthusiasm due to need for a job?
|
| * How are you measuring this enthusiasm within the company
| (ie are you having high employee survey scores compared to
| what you are paying them)?
|
| Like seriously the "we are making the world a better place"
| only goes so far - especially in a climate where employers
| have shown who they truly care about. And may be you are
| suggesting that you might not be messaging that you are
| making the world a better place and instead everybody gets
| to be a davinci?
| imwithstoopid wrote:
| let's just simplify this so the next few years aren't too hard to
| figure out
|
| why are tech companies laying people off?
|
| because they can
| rnk wrote:
| And because many of them see less sales, and they want to stay
| profitable. That's the obvious reason. Yeah some of them are
| just following the herd but some companies see less spending.
| mym1990 wrote:
| Stay profitable? Most of them can't even _get_ profitable.
| gruez wrote:
| This is a technically correct explanation but doesn't tell us
| anything. Obviously they did it because they can, otherwise
| they wouldn't have done it by definition. But why did they do
| it? Why did they go from "can't" in the years leading up to it
| to "can" a year or so ago?
| imwithstoopid wrote:
| my point was that the layoff rationalization posts on HN are
| irrelevant
|
| a company can grow profits by moving the top line up or the
| bottom line down
|
| if they can't move the top line up, they will move the bottom
| line down
| orsenthil wrote:
| Or until a competitor wins out on this opportunity.
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