A layoff fundamentally changed how I perceive work

I am wondering whether a company "optimizing for shareholder brownie points" is a good signal to either look for employment elsewhere or as an investor start investing elsewhere. It seems like a company who prioritizes this either has reached their potential (which might be fine) or is just not able to innovate anymore.

A simple question to ask an employer during an interview is whether the company is profitable or not. If so, for how long?

Most VC backed private companies aren’t profitable. If it is a public company the information is readily available

There's still a question of what you consider profitable.

A company may make more in revenue than strictly expenses but stock-based compensation is often not considered an expense so if you add those into the expense side it could change profitability.

But honestly, profitability doesn’t matter. All of the major tech companies were profitable and still had tens of thousands of layoffs between them.

Sure, and then there's all the private companies backed by non-venture capital, and the profitable ones running on revenue.

You don’t find too many profitable “lifestyle companies” in tech.

You stated that there aren't many profitable lifestyle companies. And the insinuation put forth is that they are very rare to the point of almost nonexistent.

This comes off as rather reductionist and absolute to me; tech is a massive industry, do you know every sector within and adjacent to tech to have reached this conclusion?

Stock-based compensation is absolutely considered an expense under US GAAP.

Layoffs in big tech are mostly to place workers in their place and shake the market, they've definitely been able to drive down salaries these past two years.

Yes - I think layoffs are also backlash against WFH.

Employees were getting a bit too uppity.

No. But I do know statistics. The largest employees in tech are the public companies that we have all heard of. The next largest segment are VC funded companies with the smallest segment by far being the “lifestyle companies”.

Do an exercise, go to any job board and put in filters to match the types of jobs you are qualified for. How many of those do you think are going to be profitable, private, lifestyle companies?

That would be a red flag to me.

Companies that make a shit ton of money generally don't like changes.

They're just looking for the next fool to squeeze.

Large US companies that I’ve worked with or for do this as a SOP. It’s not a calculation being done at the hiring manager level as much as a path of least resistance because that’s the way it’s been done for so long.

There are plenty of mid-size tech companies that are both not-public and not-lifestyle.

My employer is one of them. Several thousand employees, global reach, and owned by PE (Blackstone and Vista).

I would put money on all of big tech and all public companies combined not employing more than 30% of professional programmers. At least in the US only 15% work at a large company (500+).

Which is why companies report non-GAAP numbers.

https://abc.xyz/assets/71/a5/78197a7540c987f13d247728a371/20...

> We provide non-GAAP free cash flow because it is a liquidity measure that provides useful information to management and investors about the amount of cash generated by the business that can be used for strategic opportunities, including investing in our business and acquisitions, and to strengthen our balance sheet.

Those are the companies he meant by "public companies", ie publicly traded not government owned.

> A simple question to ask an employer during an interview is whether the company is profitable or not. If so, for how long?

This is great advice.

For instance, I was once in an interview where they were grilling me. I was reluctant to do the interview in the first place, because they'd gone bankrupt TWICE in the past five years.

At the end of the interview, it seemed fairly clear that my odds of getting the job were about 50/50. The interviewers were smart and they were asking hard questions.

But when I asked them to comment on their two recent bankruptcies, it changed the mood entirely. At that point, the entire "vibe" of the interview shifted. It became CLEAR that they'd been losing employees at a furious pace, because of their financial struggles.

Once we talked about "the elephant in the room," the entire interview tone changed, and they made me an offer in less than twelve hours.

My "hunch" is that they'd been grilling interviewees (because they were smart folks) but had been scaring interviewees off because they were in such terrible financial shape.

Basically, potential hires were ghosting them because of their financial problems, while they were simultaneously discussing technical issues when the real issue was financial.

I accepted the offer, and the company is still around. I had a similar interview experience at FTD in San Diego (the florist), and they are kaput:

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/03/flower-delivery-company-ftd-...

I'm in a VC-owned business with a 50% profit ebitda. But a common trick is to just load it with debt. The VC firm pays out all profits as dividends, all investments into restructuring, M&A and new technology is paid for by high-interest loans from the shareholder. What's left is a company that barely cashflows as all profit goes towards paying interest to the VC firm.

The appointed management team has to operate within that scope (i.e. no real budget to work with, despite the 50% interest), and they squeeze a bit more each year, meaning it's an uphill battle each year to get a raise or promotion. On top of that it's a cashcow in an otherwise dying and slowly shrinking business sector.

In other words a terrible place for general salary growth.

So I'd add two points to your list which is to: look for (1) profitable companies, (2) in expanding markets, (3) that aren't owned by VC.

Startups have their own set of rules where (3) doesn't really apply as much.

I don't think by 'public companies' they meant 'private companies', no.

I didn't say anything about '"lifestyle companies" [sic]'. I don't even think we were talking just about 'tech'?