Comment by neilv | Hacker News Reader

Comment by neilv | Hacker News Reader

I would've guessed GitLab would be unlikely to join the layoffs party right now, just on culture and internal/hiring image reasons.

Then again, I also thought Google might've been a holdout among the FAANG companies. Before, I figured someone working at Google could assume that, if they focus on the company and do great work (or focus on the perf/promo metrics/criteria that Google seems to want), that Google will take care of them.

Now, for both companies, I wonder whether, rather than lighting a fire under anyone who needs it, layoffs erode the unusual trust and intangible appeal they might've enjoyed.

(Obviously, Google will still have the selling point of paying very well (or pay OK, if RSUs and bonuses don't recover). And I suppose Leetcode interviews make more sense, if you imagine it coming from a musty old complacent Fortune 100 bureaucracy. And GitLab, though not known in the US for pay, will still hire people around the world, with transparency on at least non-layoffs things.)

Google doesn't need good will; they'll always be able to get commodity labor. As long as they take care of a large enough number of senior folks they will be okay. (Unclear they're doing this, ofc.)

Companies like GitLab are different; these layoffs seem extremely risky long-term. But they're unprofitable and capital has gotten a lot more expensive, so they might not have much of a choice.

Do the founders still believe in Google culture? It seemed to be styled as a place that other Stanford new college grads would want to go (money, status, lifestyle, ambition).

Without goodwill, even senior people pulling down $500K-$1M and performing very well are going to be thinking about when it makes sense to leave (for a competitor, startup, or windsurfing/woodworking).

Is there a single company anywhere that doesn't intermittently layoff employees? Like, I think its good, of course, to analyze and criticize, but why particularize it so case by case in all these threads? It just feels like a lot of missing the forest for the trees.

If you were studying an animal that has been shown in all prior research to intermittently eat its offspring, you wouldn't then stop at each animal and ask "why is this animal doing this?" You would start to generalize as a good scientist and understand that this is just how these animals sustain themselves. You wouldn't moralize the animals, you would understand they are apart of a deterministic system which requires this.

If you have a problem with layoffs and workers being chronically undermined for the sake of the bosses, then you have problem with our current economic order, not this or that company.

> this is just how these animals sustain themselves.

Because in economics not everyone is a Keynesian who just ascribes behavior to animal spirits.

Hehe I think you might be reading that too literally :). I was just using an analogy to make my point.

But as amusing as it is to riff off of your analogy, your point is still wrong. When studying the behavior of human beings, and corporations are people, friend, it is important to try to fathom the motivations of their decisions. You can’t simply look at the behavior of companies, even in aggregate, and pretend it’s scientific to say, “ah, that is simply how they sustain themselves.”

And in this case perhaps what people are upset about isn’t simply moralism, but the potential irrationality that drives the behavior we are all witnessing.

If it is irrationality, it seems like a huge case of mass-hysteria is happening!

When would it be time for you to consider adjusting your framework here? Is there really enough variation in the obervables here to justify seeing each company as its own fully-personed snowflake?

It does seem like a case of manic activity not unlike the overhiring that brought us to this point in the first place. As far as the economic validity of anything happening, who knows. I know better than to bet against the irrationality of the market.

Behavioral economists have ascribed economic bubbles to the same root causes as mass hysteria. Humans may become more sophisticated, but the tendency to believe in collective delusions are rooted deep in our psychology.

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