[HN Gopher] The layoffs will continue until (investor) morale im... ___________________________________________________________________ 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. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-03-26 23:00 UTC)