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Comment by wnolens | Hacker News Reader

I really hate how I read about this on the news, not first but only there. The last layoff came and went without a peep from any management above me, even week+ later. Looks like the same again.

I was around for a big Microsoft layoff many years ago and it was well communicated internally and empathically. We were given audience (10:1) with directors upon request to ask questions and plead for our fallen. The individuals let go were eulogized with authentic tears by the humans who were given headcount by corporate and then had it taken away. It wasn't the bottom or some biased subset that was culled, but a seemingly random selection across bands to hit a target. (I'm inclined to believe this, given what I saw). We lobbied for our people, and actually got one hired back in a different division that wasn't subject to the layoff.

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We learned about the Microsoft layoffs in the news yesterday and right now nobody knows who will be impacted. I'm sure they will handle it as well as they can, but learning about it from the news first instead of the CEO is also odd. We did get an email from Satya this morning but it appears that notifying impacted folks will be done in a distributed manner by their management chain. Most of the company isn't hiring now so there won't be many internal jobs that those being terminated could try to apply for.

Also at Microsoft - zero communication until the Satya email today too. Heard about it in the news and mostly in the news. Not great in terms of communication.

> but learning about it from the news first instead of the CEO is also odd.

Isn't that always the case? It is hard to keep something like a huge layoff secret, it will invariably leak as soon as the cogs are set into motion and before the CEO can message the ranks.

It is to be expected. I didn't mean that a leak is unusual, but rather that learning about it this way _feels_ strange.

Huh, hearing about a layoff inside the company I'm working at before I hear rumors from the media would feel strange to me, just given my experience.

Well at Microsoft the CEO does a great job usually announcing major news via email to employees and releasing it for investors publicly at the same time. Not so this time.

I worked at MS for 9 years and rumors always seemed to be a little bit ahead of executive messaging. But I left in 2016, so maybe it was a different time.

Under Satya rumors have always been under control it seems. Not sure whether this was your impression.

Possibly is a result of the SEC rules regarding insider information - not sure a company as big as MSFT or AMZN can give a heads up to 'insiders' before investors for something that may materially affect the company - and big layoffs definitely qualify as impactful - for better or worse.

...and because the huge companies are so closely followed on wall street and financial news, once news is released to the media - they are going to run with it as soon as they get it - not wait until employees get notified first.

The ‘Insider information’ framework needs to be updated for the modern world.

Hedge funds tracking parking lots with low orbit satellites have more insider information than any official channel.

Even tweeting information to the whole world simultaneously can breach II rules when it doesn’t really apply since it automatically puts everyone on more equal footing.

> Hedge funds tracking parking lots with low orbit satellites have more insider information than any official channel.

That's not an example of an insider abusing their inside position for their benefit, it's an example of a hedge fund deciding that investing in low-orbit satellite photography gives them an edge in estimating market movement.

Exactly right, thank you for saying this. I will never forget back in the 00s, when electronic market makers were squeezing out floor traders and the pits were closing down, an outraged floor trader exclaimed to me: “They’re using .. COMPUTERS! To trade!”, in a tone that suggested how grossly unfair and (in the spirit of many a hacker news comment) how insider-trader-y it was.

Every employee is an investor too. It could be orchestrated within reason, or at least attempted.

But what I'm talking about is there were layoffs in the news and not a single peep about it in my email inbox or slack channel, nor even during 1:1 with my direct manager later that week.

Ok so it breaks to the news first, it seems common courtesy for the person managing your career path to check your pulse.

It is, but in Microsoft we are in the same boat (zero communication)

TIL teams at Microsoft use slack and not MS teams.

Grandparent said that not only was the layoff unmentioned before it happened (pretty common) but also not discussed afterward (not normal).

> Possibly is a result of the SEC rules regarding insider information

SEC insider information laws were the same during the DotCom boom/bust of 2000. Yet firing practices were quite different despite the fact that employees also had stock options/shares like they have now.

Turns out big tech, even at the high end has become just another churn and burn industry these days.

It's quite exhausting even for just a 4 year stint previously, I can't imagine what it must be like now with the constant headlines about layoffs.

The realization that you're just a cog?

Indeed! I am just a cog in their work machine. But the reverse is also true. They're simply a funding source in my "life machine". I do get some joy out of engineering and building stuff but, the paycheck ensures the rest of my life goes well. They could terminate the relationship, but so could I. I don't expect any of them to show up to my funeral.

I wish. That would imply a design

This round of layoffs was announced one or two weeks ago internally by Andrew Jassy, what are you talking about?

> It wasn't the bottom or some biased subset that was culled, but a seemingly random selection across bands to hit a target.

Are you implying it is better to fire a random selection than "the bottom"?

It's better and worse. Performance isn't quantitatively tracked at all times, so firing whoever some low level manager elects is subject to incredible bias, and I think a major lawsuit risk.

The "we lobbied for our people" is also weird. If at the end of the day $x million in salary has to be cut, and it's meritorious for a company to do it randomly rather than pruning the bottom whatever percent, it's extremely weird to add to that "a subset of people didn't lose their jobs because people in my department liked them". I'd say the best case scenario here is that the "lobbying" had no effect, and the emotional availability of management was just to make everyone feel better.

Correct, lobbying had no effect on the immediate employment status of an individual.

But we were given an outlet, and through that an explanation of why we lost an essential engineer and friend. I'd like to believe that it had an effect on the management team. If not for them to bear some of the emotional load, then to inform them XYZ project is going to take a major hit and this week or so is a write off for the rest of us.

Hypothetically, that might be a way to find out who the true top performers are, the ones that may not show up in quantitative rankings. It would be an awful way to go about it though, so I hope that wasn't the idea.

It seems they're implying the opposite but I can see how it would be read as "good" in this context.

I got a company-wide email approximately two hours after it was already all over the news. Ideally the insiders should know first and at worst, the press release and internal should go at the same time. This is just absurd.

It's a lot easier to lay people off remotely.

Wasn't it posted on Inside Amazon? They posted Dave Limp's update publicly.[1]

[1]: https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/a-team-update-...

pretty cynical take but maybe possibly it's a way to monetize these events, get a lil cash in exchange for the news however much it's worth.

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