Well, this a little too on the nose for me. Having learned a little more since mass layoffs in the company I work for, it turns out the team I'm on was one of the only parts of the company that...
Having learned a little more since mass layoffs in the company I work for, it turns out the team I'm on was one of the only parts of the company that beat revenue targets. Half of us were laid off anyway, to make up for shortfalls elsewhere. Not precisely "we're doing great, goodbye", but there's been no decline in our sales and services bookings, we're just expected to do multiple people's jobs.
Needless to say, morale is in the dumpster, and we're all taking the attitude that /u/TurtleCracker and /u/DefinitelyNotAFae described. We've also been told that if we don't make (higher) revenue targets this year, more cuts will follow until the whole company is growing according to projections again. It's going to be tough to make that math work.
From what I've seen, there are fads that sweep through the minds of MBAs on a cyclical basis. They're always fighting the last war. The post-pandemic fad is to lay off staff in expectation of an economic downturn, whether it materializes or not. That this is a self-fulfilling prophecy seems to escape that groupthinking herd. I'd love to share the latest business thinking with them. Archive
I swear to god this society is so fundamentally hosed until we collectively make 'MBA' a synonym for 'charlatan'
From what I've seen, there are fads that sweep through the minds of MBAs on a cyclical basis. They're always fighting the last war. The post-pandemic fad is to lay off staff in expectation of an economic downturn, whether it materializes or not.
I swear to god this society is so fundamentally hosed until we collectively make 'MBA' a synonym for 'charlatan'
I've met a few engineers, doctors, and scientists who added MBAs on after they were already established in their fields, and they did put the training to good use. The problem is that there's been...
I've met a few engineers, doctors, and scientists who added MBAs on after they were already established in their fields, and they did put the training to good use. The problem is that there's been a long-running management fad for letting MBAs run things without any knowledge of the industries they led. The Boeing disasters are at least partly attributable to this strategy.
Are companies laying off employees while seeing record profits a short-sighted way to make their stock look better or are employees being laid off for other reasons? My hypothesis is that layoffs...
Are companies laying off employees while seeing record profits a short-sighted way to make their stock look better or are employees being laid off for other reasons?
My hypothesis is that layoffs are not due to poor company performance, but due to higher interest rates slowing the growth rate of businesses. Say a company hires at a rate to make sure they are adequately staffed if their business grows at the rate they predict. If a company adjusts their predicted growth rate to be lower due to borrowing becoming more expensive, it makes sense that they would need to lay off employees in the short term and then adjust their hiring rates lower to match their forecasted growth.
This is just my intuition, so please correct me if I am wrong.
I think youre giving companies a lot more credit than they deserve. No joke, I think a lot of it is fomo. With a heaping load of greed. If they have this profit, they can cut cost by making more...
I think youre giving companies a lot more credit than they deserve.
No joke, I think a lot of it is fomo. With a heaping load of greed. If they have this profit, they can cut cost by making more profit, and labor is a huge part of cost.
Labor can be used for development and improvement, if already good, cut labor and maintain in low touch mode. Maximize gain
I mean layoffs are broadly down and unemployment rates are still extremely low. While there have been some high profile layoffs (tech and media companies that ballooned during COVID), there just...
I mean layoffs are broadly down and unemployment rates are still extremely low. While there have been some high profile layoffs (tech and media companies that ballooned during COVID), there just isn't any evidence of companies doing broad layoffs. If anything the opposite is true, companies are retaining employees at record rates: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/JTS1000LDR
It doesn't have to be a hypothesis, that's absolutely one reason why you may have layoffs. I never understand posts like OPs. It reminds me of the seeming utter confusion over demand-pull...
It doesn't have to be a hypothesis, that's absolutely one reason why you may have layoffs. I never understand posts like OPs. It reminds me of the seeming utter confusion over demand-pull inflation. There's more than one reason something can happen lol.
A company doing poorly is one reason you may have layoffs. It's FAR from the only reason. Maybe dynamics like interest rates change the cost of investment. Maybe someone did the math and realized a department has way more people than they need. Anything that could lead to an employee's cost being higher than their productivity may cause a layoff.
While this comment may not contribute a lot of the discussion, I think the opposite of this is true. Employees aren't family members or volunteers. Expecting them to "go the extra mile" or "be...
Exemplary
Company's aren't job programs.
While this comment may not contribute a lot of the discussion, I think the opposite of this is true. Employees aren't family members or volunteers. Expecting them to "go the extra mile" or "be committed" to the company on one hand while treated them like commodities on the other is extremely problematic.
I'm not sure I understand how that's the opposite of "company's aren't job programs". The point of the latter is that the goal of a company is not to hire the most people they can, so you...
I'm not sure I understand how that's the opposite of "company's aren't job programs". The point of the latter is that the goal of a company is not to hire the most people they can, so you shouldn't expect them to do things that would expand employment first and foremost.
What does that have anything to do with employees or employers being family?
"Companies aren't job programs" is as you said, people shouldn't expect companies to expand employment as their goals. There's no obligation of loyalty. The flip side is that companies should not...
"Companies aren't job programs" is as you said, people shouldn't expect companies to expand employment as their goals. There's no obligation of loyalty.
The flip side is that companies should not be expecting their employees to be doing extra work, unpaid overtime, "chipping in" and other demonstrations of loyalty that are often asked, expected or demanded by employers under the guise of "we're a family"
Personally, I've been much happier working at places with a mutual sense of loyalty and care, rather than an the attitude that "we're out for ours, fuck off" but if I'm forced to pick a side I'll land with labor every day.
I guess we have a different sense of the word "opposite", but yes, you should factor in compensation for any work you do as part of your employment's transaction.
I guess we have a different sense of the word "opposite", but yes, you should factor in compensation for any work you do as part of your employment's transaction.
If loyalty isn't expected from employers, then the opposite is also true, that employers shouldn't expect loyalty from their employees. It's not antonym but it's ...reflexive might be the right...
If loyalty isn't expected from employers, then the opposite is also true, that employers shouldn't expect loyalty from their employees.
It's not antonym but it's ...reflexive might be the right word. Opposite seems apropos.
I don't understand how your comment about compensation is comment is relevant since it seems like you're agreeing with me but that wasn't what I was trying to say?
I don't think there's any disagreement about that? Employers shouldn't expect blanket loyalty from employees. As an employee, you should only produce more for what you think that production is...
I don't think there's any disagreement about that? Employers shouldn't expect blanket loyalty from employees. As an employee, you should only produce more for what you think that production is worth in compensation, monetary or not.
You should not expect employers to try to protect your job, because that has almost nothing to do with their goal (as opposed to a job program like the CCC or WPA).
To be honest, I'm not sure what we're talking about anymore.
My current employer does care about their employees and actively protected our jobs during COVID despite financial losses, so I don't fundamentally agree with your premise but I was just pointing...
My current employer does care about their employees and actively protected our jobs during COVID despite financial losses, so I don't fundamentally agree with your premise but I was just pointing out that they did in fact seem to be opposites
That’s just non-monetary compensation. They protected your jobs for future financial gain. It’s one of many possible paths an employer can go on. In terms of opposites, I wouldn’t call them...
That’s just non-monetary compensation. They protected your jobs for future financial gain. It’s one of many possible paths an employer can go on.
In terms of opposites, I wouldn’t call them opposites - in fact, they seem more like the opposite of an opposite? It’s two sides of the same coin, or a corollary. If I hate someone, and they hate me, we don’t have opposite attitudes. If anything they’re alike attitudes.
That's not why they protected our jobs. And I disagree that it's compensation. Work culture is one of many things that are part of a job but that are distinct from compensation. (And being...
That’s just non-monetary compensation. They protected your jobs for future financial gain. It’s one of many possible paths an employer can go on.
That's not why they protected our jobs.
And I disagree that it's compensation. Work culture is one of many things that are part of a job but that are distinct from compensation. (And being "family" can be just as toxic as owing no one anything, it's far from one dimensional). It is however possible to have a workplace where everyone is actually caring about each other as people, not just as numbers.
I was only explaining the comment by @/u/turtlecracker. But i will maintain my point in the other comments I made, that employers can care about their employees as people (as can management),...
I was only explaining the comment by @/u/turtlecracker. But i will maintain my point in the other comments I made, that employers can care about their employees as people (as can management), whether loyalty is the right word or not, and this can be mutual.
I've liked the jobs where I've had this relationship much better than the corporation/industry where people were literal commodities because that's for-profit corrections in a nutshell.
I will note I don't mean "loyalty" to mean that the expectation is you work here til you die, nor that you sacrifice your entire life for each other. But also I don't mean that never fire people either.
Yeah that's not bad. I think the term "opposite" was clear enough but 乁( •_• )ㄏ I was just trying to assist in clarity. Sometimes that backfires.
Yeah that's not bad. I think the term "opposite" was clear enough but 乁( •_• )ㄏ
I was just trying to assist in clarity. Sometimes that backfires.
Funny, I was just recently laid off literally within an hour of the CEO announcing how spectacularly the company had done during the quarterly earnings call. According to Yahoo Finance roughly 2/3...
Funny, I was just recently laid off literally within an hour of the CEO announcing how spectacularly the company had done during the quarterly earnings call. According to Yahoo Finance roughly 2/3 of analysts have it as either a Buy or Strong Buy. "Adjusted EBITDA...reflecting operational efficiency." "Revenue... reflecting significant growth." The post-earnings financial articles are glowing.
I wasn't entirely surprised when it happened. HR had been going around laying people off in every department. When they pulled me aside to give me the news, they told me I was simply the most recent hire and it was last-in-first-out. Won't fight unemployment; eligible for rehire. Blah blah.
I had been there nearly a year, so not enough time to get too attached, but I can't help being a bit bitter about it. From where I sat I could see all kinds of ridiculous expenditures being planned out. They can afford to buy new 4k monitors and laptops for all the executives but can't afford the IT staff. Smh.
Hubs was laid off in January just before the CEO posted in slack with a "we're doing so well, but we had to lay off 15% of our workforce, but we're raking in money and things are looking good this...
Hubs was laid off in January just before the CEO posted in slack with a "we're doing so well, but we had to lay off 15% of our workforce, but we're raking in money and things are looking good this year!"
He was the first analyst on the team and was first to be looked at to be laid off on his team.
I hate this trend of "we're doing great so we're going to fire everyone that got us to this good financial position, even through covid" - where company leaders at his company said they would rather not take a salary than lay anyone off. Interesting how things have changed.
My company, on the other hand, is giving raises and working as hard as they can to retain employees, and didn't anyone off during Covid, either - we expanded a ton during that time.
Satire, but to start a discussion on companies laying off employees while reporting record profits otherwise. I think it fits in this tag, but maybe a question to kick off the discussion would...
Satire, but to start a discussion on companies laying off employees while reporting record profits otherwise. I think it fits in this tag, but maybe a question to kick off the discussion would have helped.
Well, this a little too on the nose for me.
Having learned a little more since mass layoffs in the company I work for, it turns out the team I'm on was one of the only parts of the company that beat revenue targets. Half of us were laid off anyway, to make up for shortfalls elsewhere. Not precisely "we're doing great, goodbye", but there's been no decline in our sales and services bookings, we're just expected to do multiple people's jobs.
Needless to say, morale is in the dumpster, and we're all taking the attitude that /u/TurtleCracker and /u/DefinitelyNotAFae described. We've also been told that if we don't make (higher) revenue targets this year, more cuts will follow until the whole company is growing according to projections again. It's going to be tough to make that math work.
From what I've seen, there are fads that sweep through the minds of MBAs on a cyclical basis. They're always fighting the last war. The post-pandemic fad is to lay off staff in expectation of an economic downturn, whether it materializes or not. That this is a self-fulfilling prophecy seems to escape that groupthinking herd. I'd love to share the latest business thinking with them. Archive
I swear to god this society is so fundamentally hosed until we collectively make 'MBA' a synonym for 'charlatan'
I've met a few engineers, doctors, and scientists who added MBAs on after they were already established in their fields, and they did put the training to good use. The problem is that there's been a long-running management fad for letting MBAs run things without any knowledge of the industries they led. The Boeing disasters are at least partly attributable to this strategy.
Are companies laying off employees while seeing record profits a short-sighted way to make their stock look better or are employees being laid off for other reasons?
My hypothesis is that layoffs are not due to poor company performance, but due to higher interest rates slowing the growth rate of businesses. Say a company hires at a rate to make sure they are adequately staffed if their business grows at the rate they predict. If a company adjusts their predicted growth rate to be lower due to borrowing becoming more expensive, it makes sense that they would need to lay off employees in the short term and then adjust their hiring rates lower to match their forecasted growth.
This is just my intuition, so please correct me if I am wrong.
I think youre giving companies a lot more credit than they deserve.
No joke, I think a lot of it is fomo. With a heaping load of greed. If they have this profit, they can cut cost by making more profit, and labor is a huge part of cost.
Labor can be used for development and improvement, if already good, cut labor and maintain in low touch mode. Maximize gain
I mean layoffs are broadly down and unemployment rates are still extremely low. While there have been some high profile layoffs (tech and media companies that ballooned during COVID), there just isn't any evidence of companies doing broad layoffs. If anything the opposite is true, companies are retaining employees at record rates: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/JTS1000LDR
It doesn't have to be a hypothesis, that's absolutely one reason why you may have layoffs. I never understand posts like OPs. It reminds me of the seeming utter confusion over demand-pull inflation. There's more than one reason something can happen lol.
A company doing poorly is one reason you may have layoffs. It's FAR from the only reason. Maybe dynamics like interest rates change the cost of investment. Maybe someone did the math and realized a department has way more people than they need. Anything that could lead to an employee's cost being higher than their productivity may cause a layoff.
Company's aren't job programs.
While this comment may not contribute a lot of the discussion, I think the opposite of this is true. Employees aren't family members or volunteers. Expecting them to "go the extra mile" or "be committed" to the company on one hand while treated them like commodities on the other is extremely problematic.
Pick a lane.
I'm not sure I understand how that's the opposite of "company's aren't job programs". The point of the latter is that the goal of a company is not to hire the most people they can, so you shouldn't expect them to do things that would expand employment first and foremost.
What does that have anything to do with employees or employers being family?
"Companies aren't job programs" is as you said, people shouldn't expect companies to expand employment as their goals. There's no obligation of loyalty.
The flip side is that companies should not be expecting their employees to be doing extra work, unpaid overtime, "chipping in" and other demonstrations of loyalty that are often asked, expected or demanded by employers under the guise of "we're a family"
Personally, I've been much happier working at places with a mutual sense of loyalty and care, rather than an the attitude that "we're out for ours, fuck off" but if I'm forced to pick a side I'll land with labor every day.
I guess we have a different sense of the word "opposite", but yes, you should factor in compensation for any work you do as part of your employment's transaction.
If loyalty isn't expected from employers, then the opposite is also true, that employers shouldn't expect loyalty from their employees.
It's not antonym but it's ...reflexive might be the right word. Opposite seems apropos.
I don't understand how your comment about compensation is comment is relevant since it seems like you're agreeing with me but that wasn't what I was trying to say?
I don't think there's any disagreement about that? Employers shouldn't expect blanket loyalty from employees. As an employee, you should only produce more for what you think that production is worth in compensation, monetary or not.
You should not expect employers to try to protect your job, because that has almost nothing to do with their goal (as opposed to a job program like the CCC or WPA).
To be honest, I'm not sure what we're talking about anymore.
My current employer does care about their employees and actively protected our jobs during COVID despite financial losses, so I don't fundamentally agree with your premise but I was just pointing out that they did in fact seem to be opposites
That’s just non-monetary compensation. They protected your jobs for future financial gain. It’s one of many possible paths an employer can go on.
In terms of opposites, I wouldn’t call them opposites - in fact, they seem more like the opposite of an opposite? It’s two sides of the same coin, or a corollary. If I hate someone, and they hate me, we don’t have opposite attitudes. If anything they’re alike attitudes.
That's not why they protected our jobs.
And I disagree that it's compensation. Work culture is one of many things that are part of a job but that are distinct from compensation. (And being "family" can be just as toxic as owing no one anything, it's far from one dimensional). It is however possible to have a workplace where everyone is actually caring about each other as people, not just as numbers.
Employers really don't expect loyalty anymore. That's why everyone has only been moving up by finding new jobs.
I was only explaining the comment by @/u/turtlecracker. But i will maintain my point in the other comments I made, that employers can care about their employees as people (as can management), whether loyalty is the right word or not, and this can be mutual.
I've liked the jobs where I've had this relationship much better than the corporation/industry where people were literal commodities because that's for-profit corrections in a nutshell.
I will note I don't mean "loyalty" to mean that the expectation is you work here til you die, nor that you sacrifice your entire life for each other. But also I don't mean that never fire people either.
I would go with "inverse"
Yeah that's not bad. I think the term "opposite" was clear enough but 乁( •_• )ㄏ
I was just trying to assist in clarity. Sometimes that backfires.
You described the inverse, not the opposite. The opposite is that companies are job programs. And inverses of truisms are usually true themselves.
Funny, I was just recently laid off literally within an hour of the CEO announcing how spectacularly the company had done during the quarterly earnings call. According to Yahoo Finance roughly 2/3 of analysts have it as either a Buy or Strong Buy. "Adjusted EBITDA...reflecting operational efficiency." "Revenue... reflecting significant growth." The post-earnings financial articles are glowing.
I wasn't entirely surprised when it happened. HR had been going around laying people off in every department. When they pulled me aside to give me the news, they told me I was simply the most recent hire and it was last-in-first-out. Won't fight unemployment; eligible for rehire. Blah blah.
I had been there nearly a year, so not enough time to get too attached, but I can't help being a bit bitter about it. From where I sat I could see all kinds of ridiculous expenditures being planned out. They can afford to buy new 4k monitors and laptops for all the executives but can't afford the IT staff. Smh.
Hubs was laid off in January just before the CEO posted in slack with a "we're doing so well, but we had to lay off 15% of our workforce, but we're raking in money and things are looking good this year!"
He was the first analyst on the team and was first to be looked at to be laid off on his team.
I hate this trend of "we're doing great so we're going to fire everyone that got us to this good financial position, even through covid" - where company leaders at his company said they would rather not take a salary than lay anyone off. Interesting how things have changed.
My company, on the other hand, is giving raises and working as hard as they can to retain employees, and didn't anyone off during Covid, either - we expanded a ton during that time.
I don’t follow - is this satire?
Satire, but to start a discussion on companies laying off employees while reporting record profits otherwise. I think it fits in this tag, but maybe a question to kick off the discussion would have helped.