GoDaddy Announces Layoffs of “About 8%”
aboutus.godaddy.net
aboutus.godaddy.net
They're always a major sponsor of Grace Hopper. They were adamant about hiring women. They made my internship so much fun, and I am still friends with many of my co-interns from that summer. Of the places I worked for, GoDaddy was the only one I would say had a "family" like quality.
The only experience I have with GoDaddy is their awful support, and predatory practices. Ditching them has been the biggest single improvement to our IT practice.
The first day of our internship they briefed us on that history. Bob had thought that the market for small-businesses in need of a domain name were men aged 35-55. Once bob was gone, actual market research was done and it turned out that over half of their clients were women, so he had completely mis-identified the market.
But, because of the commercials, the brand recognition was over 90% in the US so they couldn't change the name.
https://abcnews.go.com/Business/daddy-ceo-bob-parsons-africa...
Of course it's totally valid to make whatever decisions you like, but there is something disconcerting to me about how we judge our hands clean as long as we pay someone else to do horrific things to animals. Personally I think I probably do worse moral harm than killing an elephant every time I buy a dozen eggs or a Costco rotisserie chicken.
Internally, a previous employer was colonized by a group of ex-GoDaddy execs. They were half-witted folks who displayed every negative -ism that creates a toxic workplace.
It was the high (low?) point of techbro culture in ads (mid 2010's). They got a lot of bad press and pressure campaigns and started to change their culture after that.
I'm foaming at the mouth from picturing that
My tech lead (later manager) was a black lesbian woman. I'm sorry if that's not ethnically homogeneous enough for you.
> They were adamant about hiring women.
So it seems like the perception is justified then.
At the same time, their domain broker service was excellent and allowed me to acquire a few already registered domains I desperately needed without spending too much.
To those recently let go, I hope you find a new opportunity in a place where the those in charge actually care about their employees; and they have the foresight to ensure their long-term well-being.
A job is a transaction a way for me to trade labor for money and support ny addiction to food and shelter. It’s my responsibility to save accordingly always expecting a lay off.
This has been my mindset since I was 22 years old making 11/hour as a computer operator saving my overtime pay until today at 49 where I stumbled into a role at $BigTech three years ago and save/invested all of my after tax signing bonus and divest my RSUs once vested.
It can actually happen sometimes, but I've never seen it outside of small structures.
Also most small companies are investor backed. I assure you that their investors don’t care about you.
The CEO of the 1.5 million employee company I work for doesn’t know me from Adam.
Employers are people. Some people are cynical and greedy, others are empathetic.
Yes, they will fire people as is some times necessary and as an employee you should plan for that. They won't make great sacrifices for you like family or very close friends might, but I've definitely had employers who wanted the best for me and made an effort to help me achieve it.
Any for profit (or for that matter even non profit company ) is most interested in its own survival and well being.
I'm sorry you're being down-voted, because the frank truth is... you're exactly right. To a first approximation, 0 companies really "care about their employees" in any meaningful sense. Work is simply a transaction arrangement, where you trade some of your time for some of their money. And either party can (generally) terminate that arrangement at any time, for any reason.
That's simply reality. One can choose to accept that reality and live accordingly, or they can choose to live in a pollyanna'ish world where one doesn't have to take personal responsibility.
If we all agree on that basic universal law of human behavior, we can talk about higher level meaning about the role of an employer in society beyond the simple transaction of money for labor.
My wife and kids had no desire to talk prosaically about the role of the employee when I got laid off a decade ago.
They were assured when I told that we had 3 months worth of savings in the bank, that my resume was updated and I had a strong network and could get a job quickly - I had an offer in less than a week at another company. While now admittedly it would take longer, I’ve also reduced my expenses.
I assure you that if any of us got hit by a bus tomorrow, the company would send our next of kin flowers along with “thoughts and prayers” and have an open req for our position before our body got cold.
Three months later, you would only see our name brought up in the occasional “git blame”
Whether the company “cares” about me is irrelevant. I need for them to put money in my account at the agreed upon intervals. I have family that “cares” about me.
Thought experiment: if the company you worked for that you thought “cared about you” told you they couldn’t pay you would that care be reciprocated and would you work for free? A 30% pay cut?
My wife “cares” about me and I her. I know for a fact that she would make sacrifices for me even it put her in a bad spot temporarily.
I’ll leave my job at the drop of a dime and they will get rid of me as soon as they see my contribution to the bottom line isn’t beneficial to them. I would hope that the bar would be much higher for my marriage - ie “the person I want to care about me”
I have never been responsible for firing anyone in my life.
re: walking uphill barefoot in snow both ways, attitude towards a financial plan is not your career; it has little to do with those who work around you.
So do you “care” enough to put your company’s survival and well being beneath the needs of your employees? Do you think your employees “care” enough not to take a much better offer it becomes available? If your investors told you you need to increase your runway to stay in business would you?
I know that the people in my personal life who “care about me” will make all sorts of sacrifices for me and financial trade offs
That's some grade A BS right there. Among the worst corporate euphemism I've seen.
Indeed, speaking of gratitude, it's nice that this announcement even exists. Many companies don't even tell their employees that people are getting laid off, much less tell the public.
And calling it a euphemism is only confusing. A euphemism for what?
Another day no reply to job applications sigh
In the meantime you could try grifting some crypto bros with an AI NFT or something, I hear that’s easy money these days.
Your point is well taken, but again: this is the power of a strong FP&A team, a good CFO and thoughtful FP&A shouldn't be blaming macroeconomics at this point. I advise CEO's and I was flagging in August last year, I talk to bankers and read the news. Seems to me if you're at this point in Q1 or Q2, you were in denial about the reality of what 2023 would look like, doesn't matter when you'll be affected, the writing was on the wall Q2 last year. It's kinda sad for your staff to be in the "last to lay off" bucket.
His company has never turned a profit has it? I believe TWLO is one of the most unprofitable of large public tech companies.
https://www.vox.com/2017/5/15/15610786/amazon-jeff-bezos-pub...
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AMZN/amazon/cash-f...
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/TWLO/twilio/cash-f...
Maybe they don't need as many secretaries and gophers as before?
However don't be fooled - it will be 7% repeatedly until things stabilize. People think it's just 7% once. It might be, but this will be repeated if needed.
For those unaware the number 7 seems to have a special place in the human brain as it's the number of distinct things most humans can hold in their brain at once before needing abstractions or other devices to keep track of the information.
It's also the point at which our brains seem to switch from "a few" to "many" and because it's prime it's the highest a few number that we don't mentally split into groups of other numbers.
It doesn't cause too much attention when you lay off 10-15% of your workforce despite profits if 20 other big name companies are doing it as well.
I mean, this is the perfect time to lay off people from a PR perspective. You'll see that by tomorrow morning, the public will be still talking about something else, prob. how google lost 100 billions in market value, Lebron breaking the all-time scoring record, etc...