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Comment by henrikschroder | Hacker News Reader

That's not how it works. That's a terrible suggestion.

If you cut perks, your best and brightest will leave much quicker, the elves leave middle earth. And then your company is essentially screwed, because you'll lose all of your key personnel. And you won't save very much money. This is the way of the bean-counters who know nothing of human motivation and morale. $1000 per employee is less than a percentage of their yearly salary.

If you instead decimate the company, many who survive the culling will be thankful to the company that they are keeping their job, and you'll actually save ~10% in salary costs and future obligations.

(The clever employees who see this coming will leave way before either scenario anyway)

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I don't think decimate is the correct term for cutting the lower 10‰ :). A true decimation would be 10% at random to inspire fear in all.

This is correct. When belts start noticeably tightening, I'm out the door (or soon to be). Companies know this, so it's typically business as usual before dropping the bomb.

If I were a "survivor", I would still rush to find a job elsewhere ASAP, while I'm still competing with the early round of layoffs (mostly below average) rather than with everybody else (the "best and brightest"). What's the point of waiting until the situation gets worse?

I don't believe that the "best and brightest" consider lavish parties as a deciding factor in where they work.

Notice how I phrased it. It's not cost cutting. It's about investing in employees. That is something the "best and the brightest" love.

No, the "best and brightest" at a company are interested in the company investing in them at the expense of the dead weight.

They are also not very interested in training, because they don't need it. They want to work on cutting-edge projects.

"Training" is something that the poor performers are going to flock to, because it benefits them. Which is the polar opposite of what the top performers want.

I don't think it's fair to say that it's the polar opposite of what they want, or to imply that all top performers feel the same way. Even the most talented junior developers could use some training, and if done properly it saves me time doing ad-hoc training/mentoring. A company's willingness to invest in its employees via training in particular is a positive indicator for me. Obviously this doesn't apply to early-stage startups and such.

One could argue that talented junior developers aren't the "best and brightest." They may be very good and bright, but the fact that they're junior means that they're less expensive to replace, and losing them has a smaller impact on your ability to innovate.

> "Training" is something that the poor performers are going to flock to, because it benefits them. Which is the polar opposite of what the top performers want.

I wouldn't be so sure. I love a good conference. I don't care much for the content, but the networking opportunities are great. I mostly do trainings to build my "Rolodex;" I feel that this will only help me when I decide on starting my own business (I want to sell something that other businesses will use, and knowing someone inside of a business >>>> cold calling)

I believe your distorting my original point, pouring your own prejudices into what I said, or I didn't explain myself very well. (Probably the last one)

Instead, I'll just point you to Deming's work on management. He transformed Japan's post war economy into the powerhouse it is today. He's also responsible for the much of the transformation here in the USA during the 1980'ss & 90's.

Long story short: it's the goal of management to make workers successful. Re-training is the absolute best way of advancing the company.

https://www.deming.org/theman/theories/fourteenpoints

I think you explained yourself very well, you said that the company should cut perks and put the money into re-training employees to avoid layoffs.

Cutting perks will gut the company morale.

Re-training on the job is already available at most SV companies of this size. You want it, you get it.

The original article that called out the lavish party was explicitly doing so to paint Marissa as a CEO that spends frivolously, and the author wanted her to move that money from employees to the investors instead.

I consider myself good and bright, but I won't claim superlatives. My take? I don't care about lavish parties. But if I noticed my company going out of it's way to be cheap, there's a problem. I don't nitpick on my business expenses or my billable hours. I get my job done and I do it well, and I expect to be treated like a grown up and compensated fairly. If the company throws a party but has a complex rule about who can and cannot bring a +1 or they obviously didn't want to spend money on a party but felt obligated to go through the formalities, then the relationship has become asymmetrical and I'd rather go elsewhere than start getting picky myself.

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