I honestly feel you shouldn’t be able to declare money saved from layoffs as a good thing, shouldn’t profit be a sign of growth but if you really could keep growing you’d still need that staff
It’s not a good thing if you know what you’re looking at. Of course, the average investor doesn’t have a clue. Half the problem is that there’s a lot that can’t be conveyed in financial statements. I’ve worked for companies that I would never buy any stock in because it’s like you get there and realize that they completely destroyed any chance at long term viability for some small short term gains. Even if they’re profitable. Corporations that focus on building a high quality, sustainable business that aims to earn a modest profit are an exceptionally rare breed.
Hey this has been happening at my work! It definitely isn’t a complete dumpster fire over here now, that knowledge and experience from those hundreds of people wasn’t critical or anything, the people who are left are totally working well and not just scraping by under constant fear of being fired next, it’s fine
They always underestimate the morale killer. They think HR sending out a few notes will smooth things over. Nope, that job security just hit the floor, people are scared. Productivity drops while everyone processes, people start wondering if they should look elsewhere, it takes years to rebuild from a big layoff like that
My employer had a slightly better reason to do layoffs, because our financial situation then was pretty bad and still is pretty bad. I don’t mean “we got 30% profit instead of 31%!”, but “we aren’t making money and we have no money”. Layoffs were more understandable than usual given the situation and circumstances.
And even in these conditions, I still think it was a terrible decision. Morale was ultra low after the layoffs, and the situation led to quite a few people who did survive to leave of their own volition for better opportunities. We lost talent in the layoffs, and then we lost talent in everyone who felt like they were on a sinking ship. Which, in turn, has led to even more people feeling like it’s a sinking ship with the writing on the wall.
My management chain is completely gone. I directly report to an executive now, where previously there was my supervisor, his supervisor, his supervisor, and then the executive. Where there were perhaps 10-15 system engineers both in and outside my team, there are now like 3-4 of us thanks to layoffs and departures. And if one of these guys leave, I’m going to find a new job and put in my two weeks once I land one.
The silver lining is that my job security has never been better, because they’ve created a situation where they literally can’t afford to lose me or my colleagues. We’re all on critical projects, and at the point where a new person just wouldn’t be helpful, because they don’t have the proper time to learn and get caught up before we need these projects finished.
In short? Layoffs are a terrible decision, even when you’re in terrible financial straits. You risk a death spiral that makes things even worse and worse.
Dude, just start looking. Don’t wait for somebody else to leave, be that person.
If somebody else leaves, your workload will increase even more while you try to find a new job. Just take the initiative. And next time, be quicker about it too. Protect yourself.
It’s a renewable energy company, so I do believe in its mission and I’m hoping it’ll be successful in the long term. I want to jump ship only as a last resort.
That said, I should probably stop being lazy and actually update my resume and start putting out some applications.
I symphatize with that, but it would seem they are definitely not going to last until they are successful. I respect that you work towards renewable energy, but they won’t lose one night of sleep if they have to fire you down the road.
Take care of yourself, good luck.
Edit: I just remembered from another thread. Somebody shared a gem about hoping: Hope in one hand, shit in the other and see which one gets filled first.
Not to say hope is bad, but I also believe in being realistic about things.
No you’ve brought up a lot of good points, and I appreciate it. I also just tend to be resistant to changes as a person. At the very least I do need to brush up my resume.
My (soon to be ex) company gets around the rebuild step by doing annual layoffs.
I always jump ship after a layoff. They invariably ask you to do more work for the same price. Half the time at places I’ve worked the company goes under soon anyways.
You get a bigger raise with a new job than staying at the old job, and I assume it’s even worse after layoffs. When I tell job interviewers “because layoffs”, they can easily verify it and confirm I didn’t just get fired for being an asshole.
they are so clueless. half of my team got laid off on friday, and we got an email from our manager inviting us to attend a different team’s standup in addition to our own so we could feel more “connected”.
the only thing another standup is going to make me feel is fucking pissed off
maybe you just need a pizza party. There they can explain how laying off half your team was a good thing so they can buy another Audi
What happened at my work was they did like 2 mini layoffs, then a medium one, then a big one that was split into 3 parts, all this over the course of about two years. Morale here is more or less in free fall, we’ve alienated our user base, and I don’t expect it to recover for many years.
wow, it sounds like they did the exact perfectly wrong approach to layoffs. (When I was laid off I researched how companies do them).
The goal should be to do one big layoff - once. This sounds horrible, but it actually helps morale in the longrun because you can tell your people you did it once so it doesn’t have to happen again. (Assuming the company is in fact in dire straits). Morale will go to zero, some employees will leave, but it will rebuild, and trust will (eventually) be restored.
What you don’t want to do is several layoffs, because each succeeding layoff morale drops even lower and more and more people leave voluntarily, and you never rebuild that trust, because there is no reason to. Anxiety that you’ll lose your job keeps growing, fearing that you’ll be next, and you have no idea when. So, you might as well just let everyone go and start over.
Yeah only reason I’m still there is I can’t let my insurance get disrupted right now. Couple more months though then I’m going to start looking around. I don’t trust them at all anymore and I’ve pretty well checked out of that job
I work in an industry where it’s kind of normal to have large fluctuations. Layoffs at least go by seniority, so only new people are terrified.
My company built a big lab with expensive equipment and then laid off the person who was an expert in using all of it.
I’m sure that won’t have any negative consequence. Please do not question the decisions of our enlightened leaders or you won’t have pizza.
Performance reviews what’s that?
Oh, they still do these…
I’ve heard some stories where managers had to lay off most of their team, then put the remaining on performance plans, and then when those people were fired, they had no directs and then had to convert to a IC role they were woefully unable to do, transfer (lol good luck), or leave.
Add in re-hiring those same employees at a lower rate or off-shoring to India to get 3x the head count for the same wage and that’s basically what’s going on.
3x times the headcount 9x times the lead times. Spend more for less!
Good God Almighty. If I worked on a construction job, you’d see a bunch of people trying to pound screws in with the head of a screwdriver. Meanwhile, I’m over here like, “No! What? What the hell are you doing?!Wait, did you just try to solder too boards together with a blow torch? Oh fuck. Now the building is on fire.”
And of course, management is like, “Why is the building on fire?? Isn’t this like the twelfth time the building has been on fire?”
Yes. Yes it is, because you geniuses fired all the guys who knew anything about construction and hired a bunch of people who were able to identify screwdrivers without asking them if they knew how to use one.
Now, if we were actually in construction, this would be completely ludicrous. But if you work in technology, it’s considered a “good business decision” because it has a “positive impact on the bottom line”. …for about 5 minutes anyway.
Also 9x the terrible flaws that scare away customers.
Spent about the same for more people to do less work and lower quality work.
Note that 99% of the time the offshore labor geography does have talent, but they aren’t going to work for an offshoring shop, they will work for real companies in that geography. The offshoring companies thrive on essentially fraud, no matter what country they are in.
Shareholders aren’t the big issue. CEOs paying themselves hundreds of millions of dollars is.
Emphasis added since some seemed to not be reading all the words.
The hell. Shareholders are vampires that suck the profits from a business that should go to employee compensation. All while demanding more.
I wish there were more coops that I could shop at.
The existence of shareholders definitely is the big issue
It’s both
Yup the CEO, shareholders, and middle management goals are diametrically opposed to the workers.
You forgot to add ai to everything.
You certainly won’t have to rehire many of them in a week or two as your operations turn to shit.
Wait till they demand contractor rates!
As long as you don’t go full Elon, company can get away with it. You are just coping hard.
That’s a problem for the poors and whoever is holding the bag after I retire.
All employees are replaceable by a series of sales pitches on what AI is about to do right around the corner. That will keep pumping the stock price right up until the impending massive crash.
Everyone should at minimum read Wage Labor and Capital.
Short, sweet, and to the point of it all.
Pick the victims randomly
Even better, pick the highest-paid rank-and-file workers (which usually have the highest pay for a reason), so your entire workforce is made up of inexperienced juniors unfamiliar with the things they’re working on, who have little to no reason to stay at the company for long. That always works out in the company’s favor long-term.
They know that, at least for a little while, the customers are buying the brand name and not evaluating the nuanced ccompetency. When that falls, their stocks have vested and they are long gone.
Experiencing this now. They fired my manager/boss, who was the only engineer that had the license to sign off on a bunch of shit related to a bunch of our projects. Now i’m left picking up the pieces and working remotely with some guy hundreds of miles away that doesnt have direct access to our file systems. So fun!
If shareholders and executives are demanding so much money, shouldn’t they be the optimal target for cuts to maximize profitability of the business? 🤔
IMHO that’s why co-ops tend to last longer.
My company 😢
This shit sucks. Some Silicon Valley shit company bought ours and they’re closing us down after only half a year. Feels so unfair. Our company was doing well while theirs is going down the shitter with huge loans and promising the moon but delivering fuck all. Silicon Valley culture is toxic shit
Well, this is because it’s access to Money that determines power, not actual merit.
That’s the purest Capitalism you can think of and you see it at such an extreme level in present day Tech Startup Culture because nowadays it’s basically the Even Wilder Wild West Of Finance so it operates by the same principles of Finance - (I actually went from Investment Banking to Startups back in the UK a few years ago and for me it looked a lot like the Founder and Investor level culture of the latter was very similar to that in the wildest bits of the former). Back in the 90s Startups weren’t quite like that, but nowadays it’s different.
That kind of thing also operates at the people level: I’ve seen Startups with so-so ideas get jump-started with a couple of millions because mommy and daddy of a main founder are rich whilst ideas with a lot better legs to go places keep limping along unable to generate sufficient cash flow to takeoff or to get enough investment to do what’s needed to generate more cash flow, until running out of founds.
What survives is either those with access to lots of no questions asked money upfront (which actually works because a well funded half-arsed idea can still triumph in the market over barelly funded good ideas) or those who manage to portray their stuff as paradygm-changing (“The next Google!!!”) which why one sees incredible levels of bullshit in the Startup space and endless jumping on hype-trains (like, for example, anybody looking for funding now will be pitching “something-something-AI !!!”)
Typical Private Equity deal… The buyers take a massive loan in the name of the company they are buying then they use the sudden massive interest payments to explain the declining profits and the need to downsize. Then they find a way to squirrel out of the loans claiming the company sucked and let banks take remaining assets (or losses) and maybe resell the intellectual property to someone else right before that.
True, but we never expected that to happen with our company which was built on entirely different values. I am now committed never to let those vultures anywhere near a company I care about if I can help it, no matter their offer
So you mean that banks are dumb and give away money for free and then just take the losses and repeat thr process?
Actually banks take collateral that is normally not what the private equity firms target and that actually seems to work, but the consequence is that hard assets of the firm (offices, buildings, hardware, cash, etc) are essentially given up
so think of your company as a horse
you sell it to someone for a nice price thinking the other one wants to ride the horse just like you did. but they are actually a butcher and make horse sausage out of it.
Yes and it hurts.
They’re not dumb; this is the “moral hazard” we were warned of during the 2008 GFC.
Imagine how many brilliant innovations have been lost to the world because of this…
Well “brilliant” may be a stretch for a lot of those…
I don’t even know if that list would be a fair one because those are things we know were killed. We don’t know how many unannounced or secret projects were killed that were basically completed.
My understanding is that these projects are a side-effect of how Google judges promotions. If you’ve “created a new product”, that puts you higher on the list to get promoted.
There are no incentives nor resources for maintaining those products. So you see a long list of “ideas” from Google that are abandoned immediately after someone got their promotion.
