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Comment by shapefrog | Hacker News Reader

> Firstly, attrition, simply don't replace those that leave

Nobody is retiring - why would you, you get a fat pay cheque and once you get out of the meat grinder Jr levels life is pretty good. Oh and if they fire you rather than you retiring, they have to pay you another stack of cash and keep those options that vest in a few years.

"Seeing people posting about being laid off after 30 years of employment at Microsoft is a great example of corporate loyalty." - is this just a clean out of the expensive old folks after the hiring spree of late? Is it last in first out or first in first out? These are much more interesting discussions.

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> Is it last in first out or first in first out?

I have seen almost no one actually talk about who was impacted on these threads.

I was in Nest, and <1yr tenure, and I was let go. i don't know about any co-workers, but most of mine had >7yrs tenure, except me, and many were staff.

Sorry to hear, I hope you find your feet (if you are even a little off balance) again quickly!

Thank you for the kind words, it was certainly an unexpected day!

> Nobody is retiring - why would you

Turnover rates in these companies are pretty high! Surprisingly many employees leave after 1-2 years.

Yeah but are those the good employees?

Probably not, which is why an attrition strategy might work for both downsizing and trimming the fat, as the less motivated/willing to drink the "kool-aid" are filtered out and not replaced.

If you can get offers anywhere you want repeatedly, your most likely pretty good at least at leetcoding or at cheating on leetcode interviews.

> Is it last in first out or first in last out?

Aren't they the same?

Corrected!

> once you get out of the meat grinder Jr levels life is pretty good

Life is good, but I don't look back at the Jr levels as a meat grinder. In many aspects, obviously excluding money, life was way better back then.

I would be surprised if they let go Senior Staff/Principal engineers.

Meta did, I think MSFT and GOOG will do as well. It has to be balanced among all sorts of groups otherwise the company is liable to be sued.

Under what law would you sue for some job roles being affected and others not?

There are protected classes. For example if you want to layoff anyone over age 40 for example you've got to be above board.

Whole departments or groups though, fair game.

Higher-level engineers are evaluated like anybody else, and they need to meet their very high expectations. If they don't, they don't get a free pass.

IBM did this and got in trouble. I imagine Xoogler lawyers will review this. There is always a paper trail.

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