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Comment by rufus_foreman | Hacker News Reader

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rufus_foreman

It's always 7%.

"T-Mobile is laying off 7% of staff"

"Robinhood Lays Off About 7% of Its Full-Time Employees"

"Sonos lays off 7%"

"Vox Media to lay off 7% of workforce"

"Payments firm PayPal to lay off 7% of its workforce"

"Roomba maker iRobot to lay off about 7% of its workforce"

"GitLab to reduce workforce by 7%"

"Informatica to lay off 7% of its workforce"

It seems like these CEOs are just copying from the same playbook. I wish there was a CEO who was brave enough to ignore the herd mentality, take a look at what the actual needs of the company, and make a bold plan like "fuck it we're doing 8 and a half percent".

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Generally, 7% includes most of the cost center divisions (recruiting, HR, BDRs/Demand Gen, Marketing) plus a smattering of low performers in Eng+PM. Speaking from experience in M&A.

Talk to enough MBAs and you realize most of them are following the same playbook. They all say and do the same things and no one cares as long as things aren’t disastrous. But it is the safer option and probably results in less innovation.

So the 7% cuts will continue until someone boldly breaks the mold and standardizes 8% and brands it “the rule of 8s” and preaches it at overpriced executive retreats.

"Better to fail conventionally than succeed unconventionally" - IMO, this often leads for people making decisions that are defensible by comparison to "industry norms".

Big "No one ever got fired for buying IBM" energy

My guess is that it’s a safe number where you can lay off at that level and guarantee minimal disruptions in operations.

7% equates to laying off one person per group of 14 people. It would be hard to argue that most companies couldn’t get by with 13 people doing the work of 14.

I think you would feel the loss of one person on a team of 10 a lot more.

> My guess is that it’s a safe number where you can lay off at that level and guarantee minimal disruptions in operations.

Only if you fire the people at random. Any bias will change that number.

Bias toward low performers and/or more recent hires would change that number more favorably for the company.

Us peon employees don't like to hear it, but it's true.

“I’ll be there in 7 minutes” is my standard answer when I know it’s going to be more than 5, probably less than 10.

Bungie just did 8%

Goldilocks percentage.

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