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Comment by monero-xmr | Hacker News Reader

We have an expected attrition rate at my company across all departments. We normally lose about 10 people per quarter. This quarter the number of people leaving - zero.

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This is my unpopular take on the layoffs at extremely profitable companies

Hiring rates skyrocketed during covid, but so did attrition rates (well, the same people joining Google left some other company)

After big tech started freezing hiring in summer 2022, attrition rates most likely tanked, people wanted to stay put. 6-8 months later, companies ended up with way more employees than they planned, even though they were the ones hiring, cue layoffs. People will crap on Google or Salesforce "why did you hire so much?" - but during the great resignation - what were they supposed to do?

This isn’t very unpopular. Most tech companies demonstrably hired at the same rate but as the base number grew, each new quarter brought in more people. And yes, attrition crashed when they announced hiring freezes. At companies like Google, the layoff count was similar to expected attrition.

> People will crap on Google or Salesforce "why did you hire so much?" - but during the great resignation - what were they supposed to do?

Gee, I dunno, maybe NOT double in size like Salesforce did?

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/CRM/salesforce/num...

I've seeing a higher than normal attrition rate. Unemployment rate among tech workers stays absurdly low, went down to 1.5% last month: https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/economy/2023/02/07/tech...

How do they calculate this rate? I simply left the country after layoff, and most likely not counted in the numbers.

The US BLS has 6 different unemployment measures. The one that's usually quoted is U-3 which means unemployed but seeking work. But if you left the country, I assume you're not counted in any unemployment measurement. (Though I also assume that's a sufficiently unusual edge case that it doesn't really move the needle on any of the statistics.)

In the US, you're not "unemployed" if you don't have a job and you don't want one.

I believe if you're a US citizen vacationing long-term in France because your work prospects aren't great at the moment - you'll still show up as not in the labor force in the labor force participation rate: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART

But you won't show up in u-1 through u-6.

> Discouraged workers (U-4, U-5, and U-6 measures) are persons who are not in the labor force, want and are available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months

Source: https://www.bls.gov/lau/stalt.htm

In general, it doesn't really make sense to count someone who isn't trying to be employed as unemployed in general. I am not sure how you would distinguish between a 60 year old who decided they had plenty of money and would rather not work for someone any longer and a 60 year old who got laid off and can't find anyone to hire them for the work they are trained to do.

And, as you say, there are labor force participation numbers if that's what you're interested in.

Maybe I haven't been reading too closely and have missed the answer, but how many of the laid off employees were on work visas that are now also looking at having to leave the country? Since it's tech companies, I'd assume there's a decent percentage. How do those types of numbers affect the unemployment stats?

It's really not that unusual. At major tech companies a sizeable amount of the workforce is on an H1B

I expect that if you combine the percentage of H1Bs at tech companies, the percentage of layoffs in tech overall, and the percentage of that number who can't find something else and have to or choose to leave the country you end up with a fairly modest number in the scheme of things.

Well, yes, if you aren't in the country, you won’t show up in the country’s employment or unemployment statistics.

What I've been seeing with the caveat that I may just be more aware of the senior people is a significant number of people with 10+ years tenure at the company leaving.

Thats what suprized me as well. I have one friend who was level 7 at google on the youtube team. His whole team was cut in the 1st round of layoffs. He had been at google for 12 years.

Any change in salary?

We have already announced there will be no bonuses for 12 months. However we are quite obviously not going to go out of business, and people have higher-end salaries, so I think people just want to stay where it's safe.

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