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Comment by falcor84 | Hacker News Reader

> Yet today, Microsoft/XBOX decided half the team was deemed USELESS and needed to be let go

I feel that this is an incredibly unfair and demeaning take both towards Microsoft and towards the people being fired. As I see it, getting fired is just like being dumped by a romantic partner. It typically says very little about your value as an individual, and almost everything about their current situation and how the relationship with you fits into their future plans and the other opportunities available to them.

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The problem with the romantic partner analogy is that when things ended with my ex, I didn't lose my career continuity, health insurance and income stream that goes to pay my rent.

Corporate culture spent the last fifty years convincing the working public that it was important to identify with your job, career, and most importantly, your employer. That's how you get the most out of a worker. If they identify themselves as - just as examples - "parent" or "spouse" first, those priorities can get in the way of their value creation for you.

The employer can, of course, drop you as an employee pretty much at-will. You'll be left with shame, disillusionment, and potential financial setbacks, but they'll have accumulated the value from your best efforts.

> didn't lose my career continuity, health insurance and income stream that goes to pay my rent.

But that is basically the minimum set of consequences for any homemaker or non-breadwinner when a marriage fails.

Think about women through the centuries, who’ve been faced with basically homelessness and poverty, and the full responsibility to all their children, if they divorced or separated.

And then it becomes crystal clear why many people cling to suboptimal and abusive relationships, because really, we need one another.

At least in today's world, there are things like alimony that are supposed to go to the prevention of that issue. It's not perfect, but it's at least something.

There's also an increase in the number of women who are able to independently support themselves.

People are also less likely to get married now for that exact reason.

If there were some sort of alimony for employment, even if just for a year, and a public health insurance option to fall back on, you probably don't see that much outrage from the people who have lost their jobs. But then, you'd also, at least in the minds of certain employers, see less willingness on the behalf of employees to throw their whole lives into the production of value for the business, and I think that's part of why you don't see guaranteed severance and public health insurance in the US.

It’s nothing like a romantic relationship, and it does say something about msft: they failed at planning and managing company resources, and as a result fired a bunch of people

It sounds like you're fully agreeing with me that it has pretty much nothing to do with the value of the employees and essentially everything with how the employees no longer fit the company's plans.

I think if you read the words I wrote you’ll find I did not agree with your framing

I promise that I did, and I did not find that; you said that it's "nothing like" but then the rest of it seems to match what I was saying in my analogy. Would you mind please saying more about the difference you see between our opinions?

Nice downplay. This is getting dumped by a romantic partner who supported you by paying for your rent, food and other needs/wants.

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