I genuinely thought this was going to be satire, based on just the headline... then I clicked and read the first paragraph, and STILL thought it was satire.
Then I saw the link to the earnings release and figured out it's real. Where else but tech is "things are great and we're firing 10% of our workforce" a normal announcement?
>Where else but tech is "things are great and we're firing 10% of our workforce" a normal announcement?
I mean putting it in the guise of "AI" (does anyone actually trust AI to replace anyone except the most low level customer service at this point?) lets them have an excuse that doesn't look bad economically, and doing mass layoffs lets them dump a lot of dead weight that they would have trouble doing one by one without performance plans, worrying about lawsuits, etc.
Generally I agree with the HN rule that the submission must match the headline, but this is definitely a case where the submission title needs to be changed.
The alternative universe where companies never restructure, never abandon bad plans, and never fire anyone seems worse.
You have to make a decision - is work the end goal or a means to an end? If work is the goal - this is horrible and bad - never fire people if you can afford not to! Why doesn’t someone just pay those folks to sit at their desk? It must be “greed for capital” at work!
It’s hard to discus economics like this without sounding cold hearted - so I’ll say I feel for anyone laid off unexpectedly. However, of all the humanitarian crisis in the world today - it does not rank terribly high. I certainly hope those folks can find new jobs - but I think holding ill will towards business-runners who do not retain unneeded employees is first order stupidity.
An alternative would be not calling it growth. Or call it pivoting. Say that our new approach will require vastly different skills, such that using existing employees for the transformation is not a viable option.
You're mixing things that don't belong together. Bringing in the humanitarian crisis to say "though luck, other people are having it way worse" is disingenuous.
Here is the problem as I see it: these corpos no longer want to accept responsibility for their decisions and they will literally sell their grandmas if that means a great next quarter. Long term thinking and planning? Fuck that.
The irony is that pulling this bullcrap (while raking in profits) does not work long term. The productivity and morale of people working there goes down even more each time they play this kind of stunts. Same corpos will now complain that people are quiet quitting.
I only meant to say playing the moral card is pretty weak here. If the moral thing to do is pay people forever to do something you don't need them to do, well, I reject that.
If this decision is a bad decision, it will hurt the company. That's not my prerogative, it's the companies.
How are you so sure this is not "long term planning"? How are you so sure of everything you've said?
If you hire people to only fire them a few months later that's poor long term planning. Starting projects without resourcea is poor planning.
If you don't understand basic things about how knowledge workers actually behave and think and you are literally killing their morale that's poor long term planning.
I think the culture in the United States of, cut costs aggressively by firing people, is really shitty when everything in our lives from healthcare to food to housing is utterly dependent on our jobs. If this were not the case, I would be on board with the completely callous way of running a business, but the reality is that we rely on our jobs to give us basic services that are funded publicly in other countries. For that reason, I think it should way way harder to fire people. When you hire someone, you're taking responsibility to take care of that person. Saying things like I'm running a business or this isn't a charity is cute, but it's not the reality. Business people often say their employees are like their families. That ought to go both ways.
We need new laws too guarantee a basic standard of living. Until we have that, there ought to be laws that make firing people, especially without cause, far more difficult. If you anticipate needing to cut costs, either don't hire so many people in thy first place or cut pay.
I think that's the reasonable moral response, yes. But even in business terms, having been a 'survivor' in a couple of offices that went through large rounds of layoffs, it's universally grim as processes that weren't documented stagger to a halt, people with the muscle memory to fix problems are no longer around, etc. All the while the the top brass congratulate themselves on the cost savings.
"I think the culture in the United States of, cut costs aggressively by firing people, is really shitty when everything in our lives from healthcare to food to housing is utterly dependent on our jobs. If this were not the case, I would be on board with the completely callous way of running a business, but the reality is that we rely on our jobs to give us basic services that are funded publicly in other countries."
In all European countries people are responsible for paying for food, and they pay a lot more for food than Americans do thanks to EU protectionism. Apart from a few parts of Europe like Vienna, public housing is the preserve of the low-income, not too different from America's Section 8 housing program. A computer programmer would not qualify for subsidized housing. Most housing is purchased in the big bad free market. Europe does have a universal healthcare system, but other than that the vision of Europe held by left-wing Americans is a utopian fantasy.
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 51.9 ms ] threadThen I saw the link to the earnings release and figured out it's real. Where else but tech is "things are great and we're firing 10% of our workforce" a normal announcement?
I mean putting it in the guise of "AI" (does anyone actually trust AI to replace anyone except the most low level customer service at this point?) lets them have an excuse that doesn't look bad economically, and doing mass layoffs lets them dump a lot of dead weight that they would have trouble doing one by one without performance plans, worrying about lawsuits, etc.
It’s a thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitality_curve
You have to make a decision - is work the end goal or a means to an end? If work is the goal - this is horrible and bad - never fire people if you can afford not to! Why doesn’t someone just pay those folks to sit at their desk? It must be “greed for capital” at work!
It’s hard to discus economics like this without sounding cold hearted - so I’ll say I feel for anyone laid off unexpectedly. However, of all the humanitarian crisis in the world today - it does not rank terribly high. I certainly hope those folks can find new jobs - but I think holding ill will towards business-runners who do not retain unneeded employees is first order stupidity.
Here is the problem as I see it: these corpos no longer want to accept responsibility for their decisions and they will literally sell their grandmas if that means a great next quarter. Long term thinking and planning? Fuck that.
The irony is that pulling this bullcrap (while raking in profits) does not work long term. The productivity and morale of people working there goes down even more each time they play this kind of stunts. Same corpos will now complain that people are quiet quitting.
If this decision is a bad decision, it will hurt the company. That's not my prerogative, it's the companies.
How are you so sure this is not "long term planning"? How are you so sure of everything you've said?
If you don't understand basic things about how knowledge workers actually behave and think and you are literally killing their morale that's poor long term planning.
We need new laws too guarantee a basic standard of living. Until we have that, there ought to be laws that make firing people, especially without cause, far more difficult. If you anticipate needing to cut costs, either don't hire so many people in thy first place or cut pay.
In all European countries people are responsible for paying for food, and they pay a lot more for food than Americans do thanks to EU protectionism. Apart from a few parts of Europe like Vienna, public housing is the preserve of the low-income, not too different from America's Section 8 housing program. A computer programmer would not qualify for subsidized housing. Most housing is purchased in the big bad free market. Europe does have a universal healthcare system, but other than that the vision of Europe held by left-wing Americans is a utopian fantasy.