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A layoff fundamentally changed how I perceive work

(mertbulan.com)
1041 points mertbio | 4 comments | 27 Jan 25 08:22 UTC | HN request time: 0.208s | source
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keiferski ◴[27 Jan 25 10:16 UTC] No.42839412[source]▶
The thing that bothers me most about layoffs due to “financial difficulties” is when you observe management wasting absurd amounts of money on something in one year, then announcing the following year that they have to make cuts to baseline, “low level” employees that don’t cost much at all.

This kind of managerial behavior seriously kills employee motivation, because it both communicates that 1) no one has job security and 2) that management is apparently incapable of managing money responsibly.

“Sorry, we spent $200k on consultants and conferences that accomplished nothing, so now we have to cut an employee making $40k” really erodes morale in ways that merely firing people doesn’t.

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1. vasco ◴[27 Jan 25 10:29 UTC] No.42839479[source]▶
Also mostly it's speculation of an accepted kind. Executives can say, listen we have these initiatives, I think they will print money next year, so based on this prediction I will raise the budget for the FY. Then when the prediction of revenue fails, you do cuts, oh well you were wrong. But next year you can do the same thing. Game theory wise this works because if you're right, you bet big, hire big, are ahead next year vs your competitors that invested less. If it goes wrong you are seen as a serious executive that has the courage to have layoffs when needed, and if your market is ebbing your competitors will also be suffering somewhat.

It's also easy to make the next year prediction be whatever you want since in a small company it's just you saying a number that the board doesn't think is too outrageous and in a large company involves you asking an analyst to increase the word of mouth factor of their model or whatever.

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2. bodegajed ◴[27 Jan 25 13:35 UTC] No.42840986[source]▶
This happened to a friend of mine. Executive made far-fetched PowerPoint slides and tried to raise a budget, the board loved the powerpoint. They restructured, the company laid-off dozens, and hired new foreign contractors. Because past engineers got the blame, and the legacy code. They rewrite from scratch using X this time. Massive failure because of poor morale, brain drain and over-ambitious features. So what now? well let's do another round of layoffs, make new powerpoint slides and repeat the same process.
3. marcosdumay ◴[27 Jan 25 13:37 UTC] No.42841006[source]▶
Oh, those hyperspecialized employees that can only work in one project and could never do the exact same thing if the thing's goal changed...

And yeah, those quick to materialize gains, where the manager can easily discover if a project worked within the same fiscal year...

Also dragons and unicorns, I guess... what a world those people live in!

4. bluGill ◴[27 Jan 25 14:19 UTC] No.42841376[source]▶
That is the problem with presentations of all sides - doesn't matter if it is power point, a blog post, a NYC article, government report, a documentary, or something else. Whoever writes it gets to choose what arguments and facts to bring out. However listens to it is generally primed to think it is correct and not ask hard questions - often they don't even know what the hard questions would be. And so garbage gets approved all the time because it looks good.