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Comment by kojeovo | Hacker News Reader

Interesting way to look at it, a bet. A bet involving people's livelivehoods.

This is literally how all commerce works, though. If someone opens a restaurant, for example, it's a bet that there's a market for the food they're preparing, and that their staff will be capable of being able to meet the demand. Sometimes you're right, and sometimes you're wrong.

A bet involving paying people a salary for as long as is feasible? Cool!

and destroying their future plans they might have set in motion that will be derailed because of management's incompetance, they don't have money that much money to float on specially in this economy where everything is overpriced, almost like they are humans with their own histories and possibly other people depending on them, did you really try and consider their perspective or was dehumanizing them your first instinct?

but i doubt management will be fired will it? they'll end up with nice fat stacks of bonuses for making terrible business decisions

keep defending the real incompetants though

Believe me, I have very very close experience with what it’s like to go through layoffs, and I feel for those who have just now realized that nothing in this world is guaranteed.

But griping that management should have kept paying salaries when the money wasn’t there won’t get anyone anywhere. Take your severance, hone your skills, apply for jobs. If you can, maybe take some time to go on a trip. Life will go on.

> when the money wasn’t there

What about when the money is there? Spotify is profitable.

Barely, and only after their previous layoffs this year.

... so the money is there.

And it will be when they rehire later :)

Companies don't stay profitable by investing in unprofitable markets, though. If they don't think this approach is going to work out long-term, they should stop spending money on it, even if that means reducing headcount.

> or was dehumanizing them your first instinct?

This is a really poor approach to discourse. I imagine you don't really think that every job must last forever. Jobs come and go, and working them means we can live and make choices. It's not fun being laid off (I have been), but it's just life.

People should know that know job is permanent and plan accordingly. Do you really expect to work at one company the rest of your career and get a gold watch and a pension ?

It's worth noting that. Sweden, where Spotify is based, still does that whole pension thing, so culturally, relatively, actually yes.

That is entirely correct. But it also implies that employees need to price that uncertainty into their salary demands.

Exactly

Do they not? American salaries sire much higher than european ones with more job security for example.

You're stating obvious things.

But why shouldn't we expect to be able to work for one company and earn a gold watch (at some anniversary date, I guess?) and a pension?

It used to work that way. Why not now? It worked that way for my grandpa. It looked like it was going to work that way for my dad, until the corporate world did its huge pension rug-pulls. But it could still work that way.

I have a pension now (Sweden). My wife has one (Germany). You could, too.

I wonder how pensions will work when there is 1 worker for every 2-3 retirees (maybe 1 personal on Social welfare too)

A true “pension” should invest enough money in the present where the future value is enough to suppport today’s workers when they retire.

Modern government pensions are Ponzi schemes.

> A bet involving people's livelivehoods.

Giving the employment market another livelihood option was the bet.

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