Where are we heading if every company drop 10-20% of their staff?
I hope my colleagues aren't reading this and looking at me.
Not entirely true, but I think most people can (if they're being honest) get 70% or more correct when guessing who will be laid off.
The only wildcard usually is when entire teams are let go, and sometimes those are predictable, sometimes surprising.
What happens when it's the managers themselves who are useless, overpaid, and can't evaluate the team for actual efficacy?
Honestly its funny reading threads like this with people beating their chest about useless coworkers. Instead of thinking of useless coworkers and colleagues, think about what percent of the entire industry that's working on things with no hard output, no interest in profitability, banking on free money that's drying up...
If you're working somewhere with so many incompetent colleagues you think 13% layoffs is not trimming anyone useful, odds are your entire unit is in trouble.
I feel there's a lot of this in crypto, where you have absolutely amazing developers doing amazing code for no point.
Unfortunately the useless and overpaid managers are often the best at brown nosing.
My problem is that I have an almost crippling sense of impostor syndrome and I undervalue my contributions constantly. I don't feel entirely useless, but I do feel like an under-performer - despite probably being an average developer in my cohort.
I bet the people who hired them get to keep their jobs despite failing to a) hire useful people or b) competent people that can work on useful projects and c) burning cash while d) not turning a profit because e) they are just a gambling mechanism for investors.
I suppose you could make the argument companies are both over-working their employees and over-hiring if you're willing to concede these companies are poorly managed... which I think has a kernel of truth to it.
If 10-20% of the employees in an org pretty much stop working completely, then it's pretty natural that the remaining 80-90% are going to feel overworked making up the slack. Also explains why companies are laying off the dead weight resuming hiring almost immediately (like Tesla).
Anyway, I would say if the Quiet Quitting hypothesis is true it definitely points to a business management failure. If an employee joined your organization highly motivated and a year later feels like going above and beyond is not worth it you did something wrong.
So you've also worked at Google?
Office Space came out in 1999 so this isn't anything new.
That's my only real motivation is not to be hassled, that and the fear of losing my job. But you know, Bob, that will only make someone work just hard enough not to get fired.
My current team has 6 people. 3 are delivering at normal levels, but the other 3 complete one task per week at most. And those are tasks that take a couple of hours at most. This is happening everywhere, and is a clear consequence of overhiring.
To me, it seems quite evident, they need to reduce the spending for any reason, so they reduce the workforce. Nothing to do with useless employees. You can be shit at your job or very good, they will have a metric threshold telling them you need to go. Same at Twitter, Meta, Google, whatever.
Stop putting that on the employee who spent 3 months to get a job just to be told they wasn't useful. That's 'bad' managing all the way down, nothing to do with the employee, at all.
Maybe they fired some after and evaluation process, and than number came out to be 13%. Or maybe they laid of department X and that department just happened to be 13% of the company.
Why are you so sure the 13% was the starting place of all their thought process?
But saying it has nothing to do with employee is also not correct. If someone is signing up for a company that does not manage its finance sustainably, they should expect this. And company would only overpay if they aren't focusing on cost at that moment. So for all the folks who managed to double their CTC in COVID period should be prepared for this case.
He took a VHS camcorder in one day, and recorded the guy flipping a piece of metal over on a table a couple times, then moving the piece of metal to a new table. Repeating this over and over throughout a 10/12 hour day.
It is just that, he never produced anything. I worked with him twice. They moved him between teams and both times he got absurd amount of benefit of doubt (one of the companies was firing people quickly, but not him). Anyway based on what I heard, he did nothing whole his career.
But like, he was definitely not a norm.
If the Department of Defense & Amazon & Walmart start laying off 10-20% of staff - that would mean something. All of these tech layoffs don't even represent 1% of tech jobs so far. Let alone anything meaningful for the overall US economy.
If your business model wasn’t profitable enough to handle all your engineers having over 250k tc it’s been a bit of a difficult market to hire and retain people in the past few years
No, he didn’t [1].
He justified a rate rise in a faltering economy by pointing to the labor market’s strength. Were the labor market weaker we’d be in stagflation and monetary policy would have no room to manoeuvre.
[1] https://www.federalreserve.gov/mediacenter/files/FOMCprescon...
> The labor market continues to be out of balance, with demand for workers substantially exceeding the supply of available workers. The labor force participation rate showed a welcome uptick in August but is little changed since the beginning of the year. FOMC participants expect supply and demand conditions in the labor market to come into better balance over time, easing the upward pressure on wages and prices. The median projection in the SEP for the unemployment rate rises to 4.4 percent at the end of next year, ½ percentage point higher than in the June projections
> We’re never going to say that there are too many people working, but the real point is this: Inflation—what we hear from people when we meet with them is that they really are suffering from inflation. And if we want to set ourselves up, really light the way to another period of a very strong labor market, we have got to get inflation behind us. I wish there were a painless way to do that. There isn’t.
That is why the market goes down when low unemployment numbers are released. Powell will continue to raise rates until the labor market cools. He's not using the labor market to determine whether or not the economy can handle more rate increases. He's absolutely determined to increase unemployment via rate hikes.
He has not. I am open to being corrected with a credible source. But every time I see this conspiracy theory, it’s based on summaries of Fed statements unsupported by the statements themselves.
> is why the market goes down when low unemployment numbers are released
Because the market is anticipating rate hikes. When inflation is low strong employment boosts the market. We just went through a decade of that.
https://www.federalreserve.gov/mediacenter/files/FOMCprescon...
He goes on to say that supply and demand for workers needs to be brought into balance. The goal of raising interest rates is to reduce demand for labor. He says that directly. This isn't a conspiracy theory.
None of your quotes say that.
> The labor market continues to be out of balance, with demand for workers substantially exceeding the supply of available workers. The labor force participation rate showed a welcome uptick in August but is little changed since the beginning of the year. FOMC participants expect supply and demand conditions in the labor market to come into better balance over time, easing the upward pressure on wages and prices. The median projection in the SEP for the unemployment rate rises to 4.4 percent at the end of next year, ½ percentage point higher than in the June projections
He's expecting the act of raising interest rates to increase unemployment to 4.4%. He's doing this to bring balance to supply and demand for labor, to ease upward pressure on prices.
He is also asked directly when he will know when to stop:
> So I will answer—I will answer your question directly, but I want to start here today by saying that my main message has not changed at all since Jackson Hole. The FOMC is strongly resolved to bring inflation down to 2 percent, and we will keep at it until the job is done. So the way we’re thinking about this is, the overarching focus of the Committee is getting inflation back down to 2 percent. To accomplish that, we think we’ll need to do two things, in particular: to achieve a period of growth below trend; and also some softening in labor market conditions to foster a better balance between demand and supply in the labor market.
He directly says he's waiting to see softening of the labor market before stopping the rate hikes.
> He directly says he's waiting to see softening of the labor market before stopping the rate hikes
Yes, because we don’t want to ruin the labor market. Right now, rates can be raised without spiking unemployment. The Fed is trying to estimate when that stops happening.
A clear signal that the limit has been reached is the labor market actually softening. That doesn’t mean the Fed is trying to raise unemployment. It’s trying to lower inflation, and thinks unemployment may rise as a result of that, though to date it has not.
> So I will answer—I will answer your question directly, but I want to start here today by saying that my main message has not changed at all since Jackson Hole. The FOMC is strongly resolved to bring inflation down to 2 percent, and we will keep at it until the job is done. So the way we’re thinking about this is, the overarching focus of the Committee is getting inflation back down to 2 percent. To accomplish that, we think we’ll need to do two things, in particular: to achieve a period of growth below trend; and also some softening in labor market conditions to foster a better balance between demand and supply in the labor market.
Powell says (paraphrasing slightly): "In order to get inflation under 2%, we need to do two things. 1. achieve a period of low growth, and 2. soften the labor market." Low growth and higher unemployment aren't simply side-effects of Powell's policy. These two things are explicitly stated goals.
Let's say I have a goal of running a marathon, so I decide to start jogging every day. Is my daily jogging a side-effect of my goal to run a marathon? I wouldn't say so. Rather, jogging every day is an explicit course I've set out on with the hopes of achieving my main goal. Daily jogging is a sub-goal of the main goal, if you will. This logic can be applied to the Fed. The main goal is to lower inflation, and the chosen course of action (i.e. the sub goals) are to lower economic growth and to increase unemployment.
A side-effect would be something akin to knee pain. I can't jog without hurting my knees, but having pain in my knees isn't something I explicitly set out to do.
A side-effect of Fed policy would be something like the gilt crises in the UK. Higher US rates increase yields on UK bonds indirectly. But that isn't something the Fed is actively setting out to do.
You can't run a marathon without your daily jogs. Inflation can be lowered without spiking unemployment. It's unlikely. Hence the Fed's messaging. But until recently the Fed forecasted a soft landing, i.e. growth and low unemployment amidst rising rates and falling inflation.
Better analogy: engine temperature. You're driving and keeping an eye on the thermometer. You see the temperature is low and so feel comfortable accelerating. The goal is getting to your destination faster. The low temperature lets you accelerate, which in turn raises the temperature. But raising the engine temperature wasn't the point. It reverses cause and effect to say your goal was to raise engine temperature. It wasn't. Engine temperature was simply a limiting factor you were paying attention to.
The relationship is sufficiently complex to permit e.g. falling unemployment, falling (not negative) wage growth, falling (including negative) growth and falling inflation. It's not a deterministic system.
> in a sense increase combustion is a goal
No, it's not, because the goal--reaching the destination quickly--would be accomplished equally well in an electric car with no combustion. That's the difference between a goal and an effect.
I think you’re falling for the no true Scotsman fallacy. We started this conversation talking about whether or not the Fed’s goal is higher unemployment. I presented an argument, in the Fed’s own words, that they plan on lowering inflation by weakening the labor pool. And your response is “that’s not really a goal.” I disagree and, and I don’t see a productive way forward for this conversation. At the very least, you should accept that this is a valid interpretation of the Fed’s own words, and not just some conspiracy theory being peddled.
I’ll admit that was a poorly-worded statement. But it still doesn’t convey the Fed targeting a higher unemployment rate. It isn’t. It’s targeting lower price growth, and keeping an eye on the labor market to avoid overtightening.
> He's absolutely determined to increase unemployment via rate hikes.
Something something the measure becomes the means or something.
well you can also commit fiscal suicide like the recent has-been-a-PM of UK showed, but in that case the economy runs you quite explicitly.
This is entirely different from "complaining that the labor market is too tight." The Fed has nothing against a tight labor market so long as we don't have high inflation. Imagine you're a doctor and you're telling your patient that you're going to administer chemotherapy to a child until either the cancer goes away or they get too sick. Then you see protestors trying to convince laymen that you're complaining that a child is experiencing too much cell growth. That's exactly what GP is doing.
No, he has said nominal wage growth is driving inflation. Wages and unemployment are related but not the same thing.
"Excuse me, sir. The council is worried about the economy heating up. They wondered if it'd be possible to fire 500000. Maybe from one of the smaller companies where no one would notice..."
"Fire one million".
The labor market isn’t being targeted. We have had tight labor markets with low inflation before. The Fed doesn’t spike them for the sake of it.
What’s targeted for reduction is inflation. Labor market tightness permits the Fed to respond to it, which is why it’s constantly talked about. If you are on a road trip and decide you can take a detour because you have ample gas, it wouldn’t be correct to say you took the detour to burn gas.
Lower wages in tech, higher unemployment.
I suspect a lot of underqualified people were able to get jobs at high salary in the past 1 year.
I know this has caused grief and concerns for more tenured employees doing the same job (and better)
The costs to explore a startup are pretty low these days. You can live anywhere (move somewhere with relative low COL), you can develop just about anything cheaply (open source, plus easy frameworks). You can work with like-minded people all over the world easily (remote work for '20-'21 made big inroads in that department).
And we may suddenly have a few tens of thousands of talented developers looking for work- maybe they'll make a startup, or maybe they'll join one where they get paid mostly in equity.
Interest rates are high, which means that investors into startups will want a bigger cut, but still have their money that they want to invest.
Overall, it sounds to me like a great time to be investing in startups.
Yup, most people who lost their jobs and are wondering how to feed their families will definitely pick to to not be paid for even longer...
People who actually get work done will be fine