It's only a small correction due to Covid expansions driving demand. There is still a VAST shortage of good developers and, assuming the recession doesn't turn into a depression, should be short lived.
For a company like Amazon or Google it makes more sense to shed people. It shores up the stock prices as investors like to see companies doing something to address the recession (cut costs) and gives them a chance to shed some weight also without looking bad to investors (eg. dump Alexa).
Facebook and Twitter are the above combined with pushback against social media platforms. They won't recover as quick or as well, but they are their own niche and not a good generalize-able representative.
My ability to do work is explicitly constrained by management mismanagement and randomness, but that’s the one sacred cow we can’t discuss in this dynamic. And yet, my org has been drifting towards this “hard line” too.
Right, one can only "step it up" so many times just to see priorities shift and projects change a few weeks later and watch all your extra work go down the toilet.
Middle management is the lowest hanging fruit when looking for redundancies; the article also mentioned this:
"Sometimes there are areas to make progress [where] you have three people making decisions, understanding that and bringing it down to two or one improves efficiency by 20%."
Too many people needed plus unanimous approval required generally keeps things moving at the speed of molasses. But sometimes that's good for business continuity. Many times it isn't necessary.
Agreed; for a successful company, sometimes you want controls to provide stability that will keep the engine running, even if it's frustrating to work in that sort of environment
And I'm only being somewhat facetious when I claim we need more molasses-like leadership: normally slow us down and make us think about things but if there's momentum, pull out the stops and let's go!
We try to manage to slow things down regardless of the scale or the purpose, and that's where (pun intended) molasses has us licked.
Step up and lower food prices, medical bills, gas bills, electric costs, housing costs, tuition, childcare? Because that’s where your excess returns went. Not because dumb-ss metaverse failed. Alexa being better at reminders isn’t going to fix the economy.
If you have too many people, who made the choices to hire them? Is the problem, if there is one, that people aren’t grinding hard enough? Or could it be lousy strategy (or none), bad management, and just a hard limit on returns in a down economy?
If profits were up, these CEOs would be taking all the credit. Funny how it doesn’t work in the other direction.
This seems like it's mostly a very apologist take on Zuckerberg and Musk blaming everyone but themselves for piss poor leadership and decision making. Interesting how this piece is devoid of that very relevant context.
Mostly irrelevant. Unlike labor demand, labor supply is not elastic. You actually need just a bit of glut of IT labor to be able to move the leverage employers have over employees massively. Doesn't matter what caused the glut
Isn't the big tech employment trade-off for most people that you have relative stability and little is demanded of you, but in exchange, you have to deal with red tape and won't work on anything important, creatively fulfilling or otherwise rewarding?
I really don't think that many people are going to step it up significantly; fundamentally, the rewards aren't there and the work isn't that interesting. The incentives also attract the wrong sort of crowd
Edit: By 'wrong sort of crowd', I just mean people who won't slave away to make CEOs happy, which is a very good thing.
All of the people I know in big tech have a fair bit of stress, lots of responsibilities, high performance expectations and a ridiculously good stock comp package, so very much the opposite of the trade offs you imagine.
My experience was (and my friends' seems to be) that big tech means making less difference in the company but much more difference in the world. Very small cogs in very, very large wheels.
> In October, Meta told managers to mark 15% of its employees as "needs support" in what workers dubbed "quiet layoffs,"
> The search engine giant also changed its employee performance rating system this year, telling managers they were now expected to mark 6% of its employees — more than 10,000 people — in the lowest performance tiers,
Obviously that sort of mindlessly uniform cuts are bad. But, are they bad bad, or "worst option except everything else that's been tried" bad?
If my tech CEO had this conversation with me, I would quit that moment, without notice. The moment this becomes the conversation, the end result is me being fired for made up reasons. I won't hang around for that. Goodbye and thanks for all the fish.
LOL, not where I've worked. It's always been "You need to work two months training up someone new if you want this small check on your way out. Leave before then and get nothing."
Are journalists just shoving the word "quietly" into random headlines now? I don't think Mark Zuckerberg calling a company-wide meeting and telling everyone they need to work much harder or they shouldn't be there counts as "quiet".
I don't think they really mean it since they said they had trouble hiring, and even if they do mean it, I know how to live with little money and I have enough savings.
So the negotiation is ongoing.
I'd rather learn how to drive a bus or do something else than negotiate with an employer.
This is the bluff. You can fire me so I get a severance and can claim unemployment. That’s fine with me as I can take an extended break. Employers forget that employees have other opportunities so will just shrug when threatened. Just ask Elon who wet the bed.
We have a hiring freeze so no layoffs unless company mandated. You can demand higher productivity but management doesn’t like being laughed at due to credibility issues. They need to be careful.
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[ 0.22 ms ] story [ 94.1 ms ] thread- people get pushed - people quit - start consulting - get hired at a proper wage
Facebook and Twitter are the above combined with pushback against social media platforms. They won't recover as quick or as well, but they are their own niche and not a good generalize-able representative.
"Sometimes there are areas to make progress [where] you have three people making decisions, understanding that and bringing it down to two or one improves efficiency by 20%."
The difference being that more people means slower motion but with enough mass, molasses is pretty speedy (estimated 35 mph in linked article).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Molasses_Flood
And I'm only being somewhat facetious when I claim we need more molasses-like leadership: normally slow us down and make us think about things but if there's momentum, pull out the stops and let's go!
We try to manage to slow things down regardless of the scale or the purpose, and that's where (pun intended) molasses has us licked.
If profits were up, these CEOs would be taking all the credit. Funny how it doesn’t work in the other direction.
http://www.paulgraham.com/badeconomy.html
I really don't think that many people are going to step it up significantly; fundamentally, the rewards aren't there and the work isn't that interesting. The incentives also attract the wrong sort of crowd
Edit: By 'wrong sort of crowd', I just mean people who won't slave away to make CEOs happy, which is a very good thing.
Plus it pays better.
On top of that they all have different degrees of stack ranking. You can never truly relax
> The search engine giant also changed its employee performance rating system this year, telling managers they were now expected to mark 6% of its employees — more than 10,000 people — in the lowest performance tiers,
Obviously that sort of mindlessly uniform cuts are bad. But, are they bad bad, or "worst option except everything else that's been tried" bad?
I wouldn't. That's always a pitiful 'train your replacement' carrot. I've watched that happen. The amount paid is not worth my dignity.
>and to claim unemployment
Maybe unemployment has some value where you are. I looked into it once and it was capped at something like $200 a week. Not worth it.
They really need a better proofreader. This is a big giant font quote.
I don't think they really mean it since they said they had trouble hiring, and even if they do mean it, I know how to live with little money and I have enough savings.
So the negotiation is ongoing.
I'd rather learn how to drive a bus or do something else than negotiate with an employer.