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Comment by philliphaydon | Hacker News Reader

In 2020 the company I worked for did ~25% temp salary reduction so they could feel safe that they could keep everyone employed and such. 3 months after everyone did it they said "thank you thank you we are so happy we don't need to let anyone go". 2 months later they laid off ~50% of the development team and people throughout the company...

At the end of the year they said no bonuses, followed by an email saying despite covid they made a profit.

Companies lie to employees all the time.

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Zebra did a 5% salary cut during the start of the pandemic while saving costs on the offices, forced a pto burn, hiring freeze, and then had to spend $500 million to buy another company it wanted to buy.

These large companies are struggling.

In what I guess is confusing to many, when a company buys another company, or even purchases capital equipment of some kind, it can finance that by a loan, and the result is that the asset side of the ledger doesn't take a hit. But when a company pays salary, it can't finance that with a loan, as expenditures on salary do cause the asset side to take a hit. This is the difference.

I understand that to many people they seem like they are in the same category of "spending money" but spending money on an income earning investment is not the same as spending money on operating expenses.

If labor isn't an income earning investment for a company when compared to acquiring another company then it sounds like the most mismanaged company ever.

It’s about capex vs opex and they have legal definitions.

A lot of times this is to make dividend payments and to boost financial numbers by sucking up the operating profits of the acquired company.

I had a run in with Zebra a few months back. I was impressed by that small interaction. I had no idea they operated this way!

I spoke to people from the UK (seems they were from an AI related acquisition .. not sure what acquisition). They seem to have good infra and intelligent technical people.

> Companies lie to employees all the time.

My friends and I have no loyalty to our employers at this point. Big or small, we've all been burned. Some places are just less unpleasant than others. My bar is so low that as long as no one is screaming at me or threatening my coworkers I usually call that a good day. Getting out of retail helped.

My wife used to work in retail. Compared to front-line retail staff, we knowledge workers are all a bunch of coddled teddybears.

Kind of sad "retail workers have it much worse" is what prevents people from taking action, though.

For now. Things like "learn to code" initiatives teaching everyone including coal miners how to code, the bootcamps and other programs like that are trying to take away this freedom we have. Its an ongoing war between the capital class and everyone else.

Employees need to get everything in writing as part of a contract/agreement. If a company won't put it in writing, then you should assume they are lying.

They usually lie in writing as well.

Since suing your employer is a career-ending move, contracts don't make much of a difference either.

Touche, no doubt they'll probably try to settle for less than the contract but it still puts you in a much better position and sets an industry standard that is much needed. Otherwise, simply standing up for yourself or asking for a written agreement will get you fired.

> they made a profit

That's literally the raison d'etre of commercial companies. So, yeah, most will do what it takes to remain profitable.

> That's literally the raison d'etre of commercial companies

Maybe for some financial companies, perhaps crypto or high-frequency trading firms, I might imagine.

But for most companies, the reason they exist is that they provide some product or service to customers. For example, FedEx delivers packages. Apple makes smartphones and runs its App Store. Netflix provides video streaming services and makes its own programs. Etc.. Without such a product or service, there is little reason for any of these companies to exist.

I've yet to find a company mission statement which is "make as much of a profit as possible." There probably is one somewhere, but they certainly aren't the norm.

If we look at Netflix, for example, we see

"We promise our customers stellar service, our suppliers a valuable partner, our investors the prospects of sustained profitable growth, and our employees the allure of huge impact."

In this statement they acknowledge multiple stakeholders: customers, suppliers, investors, and employees. A company without customers is either a startup or a pyramid scheme.

You'd be surprised. Coca Cola has the mission statement of "Creating profit for stakeholders". Not to sell beverages, or anything else.

Even Coca-Cola seems to acknowledge multiple stakeholders:

"FOR A BETTER SHARED FUTURE • Invest in employees’ personal growth and talent • Empower people’s access to equal opportunities, build inclusion • Create value for customers—big and the many small • Support our local communities, both to achieve more and in times of need • Deliver returns to our investors"

source: https://www.coca-colacompany.com/content/dam/journey/us/en/o...

All generalizations are false.

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