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Comment by jobs_throwaway | Hacker News Reader

wild how so many companies are laying off 7-15% of their workforce in such quick succession

I assumed that once a critical mass of other companies in this industry make these moves, investors expect this kind of cut from all of them. They'll presumably invest elsewhere if your company doesn't make this cut.

But what’s odd is Microsoft owns GitHub and already did a massive(ish) layoff. Why the separate ones?

Doesn't seem too odd. I believe LinkedIn wasn't affected by Microsoft's layoffs either.

Here's an article describing how LinkedIn and GitHub are both managed separately from Microsoft: https://techcrunch.com/2022/10/26/four-years-after-being-acq...

Wild to see cargo culting so obviously in action

It doesn't appear that any of the big ones are completely reversing their hiring sprees from the past 3 years; rather they are re-adjusting in realizing that can't hit their profit targets at this rate, and that many of their ambitious projects aren't panning out.

Many of these companies ballooned their hiring during covid, increasing at 20%-40% a year (or more!)

yeah, headcount numbers are still net increased. Just jarring to see so many layoff headlines

This argument is so tired. It’s not okay for every tech company to lay off 10% of their workforce. It does not matter that their headcount is still higher than it was a couple of years ago.

This argument also completely ignores the fact that many of these companies, GitHub included, could afford to keep these employees around. When the industry goes on another hiring spree they’ll hire them all back and more anyway.

> Many of these companies ballooned their hiring during covid, increasing at 20%-40% a year (or more!)

Many of these companies grew their hiring at that same rate before Covid too. Only a few (zoom, peloton, etc) really changed behavior due to Covid, and for them it makes more sense.

4 out of the last 5 market bottoms occurred about 1 month after "tech layoff" search frequency peaked.

And there is no way the Fed can reduce rates to bail out this next crash. Hang on people...

That’s good data, curious if this will be different with inflation

Corporations all over the country have figured out that there's some fat to skim off the top, and give to the execs and investment banks, and they're all doing it at the same time so that they can't get singled out for criticism in the WSJ. It's bandwagoning for the absolute worst of all reasons, to the detriment of everyone else in the 99%.

Will go back to hiring in a year or so, it's a cycle

most of them haven't even stopped hiring. pay close attention to the layoff announcements to see which ones also announce a hiring freeze - most of them haven't. and i've heard of a few people getting offers from companies that have done mass layoffs in recent months.

I wouldn't be surprised if they layed off "bottom 10%" in hopes of replacing them with better when the market for IT workforce is cheaper..

Nope, it's mostly random.

i'm sure there's some of this, but it doesn't seem like the broader trend.

if they were really laying off the bottom 10% there wouldn't be so many stories of managers complaining about their direct reports being laid off without any advance warning. it's hard to pick out low performers in any sort of sane way if you're not even asking managers who their low performers are.

Seen 17-year Google vet get hit on Twitter, doubt they were a low performer

Also since everyone is “laying off their bottom 10%” and then rehiring from that pool thinking they’re hiring the top 10%. Sounds like musical chairs. There’s a old Joel Spolsky article on how everyone thinks they’re always hiring the global maximum

easier to blend in and avoid scrutiny

Anyone made redundant by LLM who is not in a protected class will be fired, otherwise top management violates legal duty to maximize shareholder value.

this is pretty dumb, LLM isn't replacing any actual coders

LLM isn't replacing any actual coders... yet!

That legal duty is at best questionable:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co.#Signif...

From Lynn Stout's "The Shareholder Value Myth"[1]; Stout is a former business law professor at Cornell:

> “United States corporate law does not, and never has, required directors of public corporations to maximize either share price or shareholder wealth… State statutes similarly refuse to mandate shareholder primacy… As long as boards do not use their power to enrich themselves, the [business judgment rule] gives them a wide range of discretion to run public corporations with other goals in mind, including growing the firm, creating quality products, protecting employees, and serving the public interest. Chasing shareholder value is a managerial choice, not a legal requirement.”

Such firings will be because management chose to make them, not because they were forced to by the threat of lawsuits by a non-existent legal doctrine.

1: https://www.amazon.com/Shareholder-Value-Myth-Shareholders-C...

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