Indeed cuts 15% of workforce, 2200 jobs
indeed.com
indeed.com
That’s how you tell people you’re accountable.
"People loosing jobs" instead of "Puffys getting the opportunity to move on.".
Also their yes/no mail has a clear title and they lay down policy that fired people get to use slack for a few days to "say goodbye to friends" etc.
Not great obviously (it's still kicking them out) but at least they are not adding insult to injury.
IF comp is tied to revenue, it doesn't matter if the stock goes to the moon.
The stock goes up because investors think that revenue will go up if they pay fewer salaries.
It’s crazy we don’t hold CEO’s to the same rigorous standards as employees, despite their importance (as measured by salary) being x 100 that of the average employee. Low risk, high reward.
They can (and many probably do) put a small amount of their income into conservative boring low yield investments and still be set for Life if everything else collapses. Maybe not with the yacht, prestige or power they hoped for but still more comfortable than most of the population.
The best a CEO can do is take responsibility by making a significant financial sacrifice and not bullshit their former employees on the way out. I think this letter does it as best as possible given the circumstances but it can't bridge the gap between them and most people.
CEOs chose to be in that position and I'm sure they can handle a little criticism from the internet
Prompt: Write a press release for a company who is laying off 15% of its workforce. It’s in the voice of the ceo. Mention that they are accountable for this decision.
—-
Dear valued members of our community,
It is with a heavy heart that I announce today that our company will be undergoing a significant workforce reduction. As a result of ongoing challenges in our industry and the global economy, we have made the difficult decision to lay off 15% of our workforce.
This decision was not taken lightly, and we understand the impact it will have on the individuals and families affected. We are committed to supporting our colleagues during this transition and will be providing them with resources to help them find new opportunities.
As the CEO of this company, I take full responsibility for this decision. It was a tough call, but it was necessary to ensure the long-term success and sustainability of our business. We remain committed to delivering exceptional products and services to our customers and believe that these changes will allow us to do so more effectively.
We want to assure our customers, partners, and stakeholders that we remain committed to our values and to providing exceptional service. We will work hard to ensure that this transition is as smooth as possible and that we emerge from this period even stronger.
We understand that there may be questions and concerns, and we are committed to providing answers and support to everyone affected by this decision. We will continue to communicate openly and transparently as we move forward.
Thank you for your understanding and support during this challenging time.
Sincerely,
[Your Name] CEO of [Company Name]
1. Crystal clear: like you can see through a crystal and can identify any defect or impurity present
2. Invisible: like air is transparent. You can't see air. Can't see the nitrogen, oxygen, PPM, bacteria, germs, CO2, methane etc. It is there, it is transparent, even though you don't want it to be.
Instead I prefer terms crystal clear for first and opaque for second
Was a bit chaotic this morning, it doesn't seem like there was any clear pattern to who got layed off. Managers were given no advance notice for this either, know our manager was trying this morning to figure out over Slack who was affected by asking everyone.
Criteria commonly is some combination of performance review history, cost, location, role, seniority, tenure.
The goal is to do it without managers interfering to save their favorites and to ensure it’s done in a non discriminatory way.
Betting DEI, HR, Product & Project Mgmt, and internal tooling -- which would be in line w/ most of the other layoff.fyi research
There is a spreadsheet, with performance scores, salaries, bonuses, benefits, etc.
Sort the spreadsheet by cost and start chopping from the top, or maybe work up from the bottom. Maybe skip every every other employee. C-level and VPs will give additional guidance, maybe 80% of DEI and HR Staff, 40% of Product, etc.
Once there is a list, it may travel to HR or other managers to check or confirm -- make sure you're not accidently laying off some superstars or key initiative personnel -- and then the list is finalized and notices go out. There may not even be any veto; here's the list, adios amigos.
Source: did IT hiring and firing, was involved w/ this at a a couple F500s -- tho not any recently.
Indeed is a global company spanning multiple languages and governments. This requires creating, designing and specializing for multiple languages and sensibilities. JP Indeed has additional integration with LINE. It's hyper specific to Japan but that integration is required for success. Multiply that by a few factors for operating in each region, having dev groups for each region, understanding and operating within the law within each region...
I always see these kind of comments to be remarkably ignorant because operating on a global scale requires a global workforce.
Still seems way to high, especially given the uneven size of some of the job markets in those listed countries.
And this ignores that the job market size isn't related to the complexity of integration. If you're doing business in China your data retention and storage is going to be massively different than Europe which is different than the US which is different than Japan which is different than Indonesia. These will require some form of backend customization and integration with the common UI framework they use for their site design. You need QA teams, you need lawyers, you need managers and live ops engineers and specialists and researchers to drive user retention and businessmen to reach out to companies.
Have you ever worked in a global team environment? Or perhaps talked to your coworkers working on similar products in other countries?
As OP was rightly pointing out, there is a discrepancy here between output and size.
LinkedIn for example has many of the same issues and a lot more complex functionality. They manage to do this, compete with Indeed (and have a higher market share), with a relatively small number more people.
Or are you saying LinkedIn has 14,000 employees just for their job board functionality, and only 6k for the other larger, more complex parts of their system?
No? So what explains the relatively small percentage difference in employees but a large difference in functionality and market share?
Job board popularity varies greatly by country, but from the look of it LinkedIn has more of the global market share of Indeed.
My point is that unlike indeed they do this without jobs being the core, 100% thing they are dedicated to. Even if they are slightly behind in market share the point still stands that LinkedIn is clearly doing more with less.
2,200 people go. This is roughly 15% of our team.
Why does such a company need 15k employees to begin with? That seems like too many for a site that does not produce anything tangible. Coding, support, marketing, sales, etc. does it really add up to 15K?
Different rules and roles for data retention, security, privacy, etc. Different languages and interfaces, completely different cultures with regards to sales, marketing, hiring, etc. Regulations -- both official and "official" -- could be very complex. Laws, taxes and accounting may be wildly different. Hiring in France or Germany, for example, is totally different beast than in the US. Very different roles for Unions, employee retention, trial periods, etc. These need to be baked into the website, otherwise you're just Craigslist in a different language -- and CL is already there.
Then there may be deep regional differences in those countries, just as how different states in the US can have all sorts of different, often subtly nuanced, laws. It's not just US law, it's California Law vs. New York Law vs. Delaware -- which means you need an accountant who can do each of those.
And then there is the offshore work, stuff that's contributing to the main efforts. QA teams in Croatia, Support in Mexico or India, etc.
The base code may be the same for those websites, and plenty of shred repos, but it isn't just hiring 2-3 locals, getting something translated, and then slapping some VMs & containers on AWS Europe and calling it a day.
Because not everything is tech?
For starters, Indeed is in a field with legal compliance issues. If somehow "No minorities." ever made it through their screening system all holy hell would come down on their heads.
That means that probably everything an employer could post needs to be vetted by a human eventually. That's a lot of people given the number of job postings.
They make money purely out of laziness of their customer base.
"Where should we post this listing? I don't know...Indeed?"
2200 HR and DEI drones, legal and financial specialists in parts of LATAM that don't make money, etc.
This is objectively a very good severance package, the CEO is taking a pay cut, and the tone is about as generic and non-confrontation as it can be, but I'm still dissatisfied. It still reads to me like a different variation of IDGAF.
There's just something about firing 2200 people, no matter the size of your company, that screams that you don't care. Like you didn't care in the first place. How do you accidentally hire 2200 people only to figure you need to get rid of them later? Don't hire them in the first place! It's just antithetical to how I imagine I would run any potential company.
I've had good luck w/ indeed but it's not like they can't be easily replicated.
Indeed used LinkedIn to hire me :3
was confounded by the high headcount, also confounded by the amount of commercial RE they held in Austin
even after these layoffs, their headcount seems curiously high for a listings site