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A layoff fundamentally changed how I perceive work

(mertbulan.com)
1041 points mertbio | 1 comments | 27 Jan 25 08:22 UTC | HN request time: 0.259s | 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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wisty ◴[27 Jan 25 10:29 UTC] No.42839482[source]▶
Managers have a budget. They can't save it, and may spend big on consultants to create a buffer for their team when cuts hit. This is especially true in government, and big companies are similar.

There is only one person who really can stop cycles hitting budgets and that is the CEO. IIRC Warren Buffett lamented the fact that the CEO is more of an investor than a manager and that spending budgets as a senior manager gives them almost no experience in setting those budgets.

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1. aimanbenbaha ◴[27 Jan 25 14:55 UTC] No.42841735[source]▶
This is what Palmer Luckey criticizes in how the DoD do procurement. The way contracts are signed makes it that contractors are only incentivized to provide solutions that maximize the budgets set by higher management in government focusing on filling out those reimbursements rather than delivering effective warfighters that the military needs.

It seems that all this layoff discussions should shed light to the blight of managerialism that permeated modern business culture. It’s this system that encourages managers to obfuscate accountability for their high-stakes decisions, and while the low-level employees shy away from suggesting solutions that solve problems or identify bottlenecks because at the end of the day they're just part of the budget in an excel sheet table. It feels like a betrayal to the promises of capitalism.