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Comment by syntaxing | Hacker News Reader

It's not unsual to layoff 10% of your workforce in hardware companies but it is unusual for a "growing" company. To put in perspective Pratt and Whitney laid off about 10-15% a couple years ago when they were in between the phasing out of the old engine and ramping up the new engine. Sometimes companies are unlucky because there is a drought where the demand for the new stuff is lower than the demand of old stuff but you have to phase it out to maintain product lifecycles for sustainable growth.

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It is normal to layoff about 5% per year, you trim the one in the 20 that is the weakest and it has positive, not negative effects. Going to 10% is a bit stretch, but still workable. In the last companies I worked, if up to 20% of the people left one day it would have an immediate positive impact on the performance, less complexity to deal with and more focus to work on real stuff.

Probably would depend on who was in the 20% who left. Having the people in the management structure select the correct people to fire is probably not that common. Especially in big, old companies where management has evolved over a long time to select for people who don't get fired instead of people who work well together and do a good job.

5% is insane, I would never work for a company that regularly laid off that many people. Firing under performers is one thing, but to systematically clear house is toxic. How are you supposed to build a career if one of your coworkers/friends is canned every year, so everyone is wondering what year is theirs? So people overwork themselves to make sure it doesn't happen to them. You need to show your employees safety, so one bad project doesn't ruin their lives.

I think it's less about building a career and more about accomplishing the goals of the CEO and the company.

Having a workforce that is unhappy and worried about their career and life is not a recipe to achieve goals sustainably, maybe.

I doubt the ceo will accomplish any goals without employees. if you want them to align with the company’s goals you have to help them achieve their goals, otherwise you might as well outsource the work.

Personally I would be leaving any company that was laying off 5% of people immediately. That sends a signal that they are underperforming and it would destroy morale. Doing it every year is obscene.

I doubt you'd notice, since it would tend to happen throughout the year.

Anecdotally, sales times have MUCH higher attrition rates than this - if they don't they're probably retaining too many underperforming staff.

5% is normal attrition in a company, depending on the specifics it can be even higher. The difference is between people that leave on their own (good or bad) and shaving the lowest 5% out. In this world most companies don't have very high standards, even mid-performers can be quite bad. If you are in any way competent, you'd never have any such problems.

Wasn't that a big reason for Microsoft under-performing in the Ballmer era ?

That's, of course, totally dependant on your line of business.

To expand on this point, when you hear layoffs you probably immediately think about the engineers given the demographic of this site and how you wouldn't working for a company like this. However, layoffs have a tendency to hit sales and production harder than the technical team. Production and sales usually outnumber engineers to begin with and has a higher turnover rate due to the nature of the work.

> if up to 20% of the people left one day it would have an immediate positive impact on the performance, less complexity to deal with and more focus to work on real stuff.

Maybe in a fairy tale. In the real world, the 20% that were laid off are unlikely to be the 20% that should have been laid off.

This seems to be confusing attrition with layoffs.

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