Companies Wringing Huge Profits From Job Cuts | Hacker News Reader

Companies Wringing Huge Profits From Job Cuts

nytimes.com

11 pointspetethomas12 comments

Profits are high during a recession, nice work companies!

Too bad the article doesn't congratulate them for doing so well during the downturn. Someone remind the nytimes that businesses exist to make a profit, not to hire people.

Companies wringing huge profits from software and improved business practices. Good - I did not spend years cranking out Enterprise Java for the sheer fun of it.

benefits are mostly going to shareholders instead of the broader economy

Interesting choice of words. You could have said "401(k)s".

Standard applied Marxism: hedge funds are evil capitalists, university pension funds on the other hand operate on clean-burning unicorn flatulence.

I don't think Marxists have that view at all--- university pension funds, as large allocators of capital, are pretty universally condemned by Marxists (who see them, along with endowment investment funds, as prime evidence of the absorption of the modern university by neoliberalism). The view you're talking about is more standard social-democratic liberalism, which likes certain kinds of capitalism but not other kinds.

"Harley’s evolution is part of longer-term shift in American manufacturing..."

This is standard operating procedure for more than American companies. Anymore, I think it is a central part of the Acme Corporate Handbook anywhere and everywhere to make redundant the lower tiers of staff and farm it out to cheaper labour. This is why there is such a rise in small businesses, consultancies in particular, in recent years. The US is certainly leading the way, but the strategy is being deployed by companies around the globe. If they can't get profits from their customers, they get profits by reducing their operational costs. Before anyone slings mud at the executives, remember that they are legally bound to do what is best for the company and necessary to turn a profit for the shareholders. In certain jurisdictions, they can, in fact, be convicted criminally if they do not take reasonable steps to ensure the safety and prosperity of the investors' moneys. But they are not legally bound to ensure the workers have a job in the process.

'Productivity' ! = good

Jobless recovery = : (

It can be hard to tell, from earnings reports and gossip, whether cuts are savvy efficiency gains or unsustainable drives to make good quarterly numbers at the exchange of long term profitability, growth, and success.

At some point they will have to stop firing people or they can't produce enough to continue.

Or they can just move production to China.

Time will tell. Sooner or later, time will tell.

Well, the overall unemployment situation isn't good but assuming the productivity boosts are sustainable[1] this would seem to be a piece of positive news.

[1] This is of course assuming that the profit gains are coming from productivity improvements and not for doing things like neglecting capital investments or cutting R&D to the bone.

If they're anything like my workplace (or my brother's), they've managed productivity increases by giving everyone twice as much work and firing everyone who couldn't keep up.

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