colinmorelli

I think I can summarize this for you:

The conclusion in the article might be true, but for innumerable reasons the study was flawed and its results shouldn't be taken seriously.

This makes sense, but during takeoff in a plane of 100+ people, none of them happened to be looking out a window and notice that they were falling below the cloud cover and getting a lot closer to the ocean? Or were they still in the clouds?

EDIT: Someone in another comment mentioned that ceilings were 800 feet, so passengers likely would not have noticed they were getting closer to the ocean at all.

Not an expert here, but isn't this far beyond the descent rate that autopilot would employ in normal operations?

On an individual basis, sure. But this is not what we're talking about. This is a mass layoff, which absolutely does have special legal treatment. Sure, you can call it a mass firing if you'd prefer, and I suppose you'd be equally "correct," but then it's not clear what the goal of that clarification is besides making these people feel worse about the situation. Everyone knows what a layoff is. Nobody is confused, thinking that it was the employee's choice. We call it a layoff because it absolves the employee from fault in fewer words than "involuntary termination without cause."

If, however, you're suggesting that there is in fact no difference between individual involuntary termination without cause and a mass involuntary termination without cause, then the WARN act in CA is just one such counterexample, and very clearly treats "plant closing or mass layoff" as a specific event, separate from other types of involuntary termination without cause.

Sure, insofar as you're defining the term as "you're no longer employed here." But that definition is not really all that helpful, and is equivalent to saying that you're fired because you quit, also.

There's absolutely a difference in widespread RIFs/layoffs and firing an employee, both in terms of how that individual is treated by future potential employers as well as the eyes of the law.

Unemployment spiked early in the pandemic, aggressively lowered back to pre-pandemic levels, and then stabilized slightly lower, at least until mid-2022.

Putting it in context: the US has about 160 million people in the labor force. It's shocking when we see companies laying off 10,000 people, but in the grand scheme of things this is really quite a small drop in the bucket. In all of 2022, tech saw ~150k layoffs, or about 0.1% of the labor force.

This "X company has a fiduciary duty to turn a profit to shareholders regardless of the consequence" thinking is not true but shockingly pervasive across HN recently.

Fiduciary duty responsibilities are about putting the interests of the company in front of personal interests, and are mostly designed to protect shareholders. In other words, not doing things like signing up for a product you don't need just because you happened to angel invest in the company and it would benefit your portfolio. There are other fiduciary responsibilities as well, but certainly none of them are "return as much money to shareholders, or else."

Regardless, if we want this world where the government has publicly funded tax software that just works and is easy (and I personally do), the right way to solve it is through public policy changes.

I don't know who needs to hear this, but laying people off _does not mean the company is doing terrible_ and this narrative is the reason why you get vastly different opinions about handling this scenario.

All laying people off means is that there are items that the company will not be executing against in the future. It may or may not mean that they're in a bad spot, but very often - and the case with many of the current tech giants laying off that we're seeing - it simply means they grew more than they needed for the road ahead.

Whether or not that's good or bad is a fair question. It was asked on a previous thread whether we as a society should be comfortable with companies gabling with the jobs of their employees, and I think that's a worthwhile question. But it most certainly does not mean that a company is "doing terrible."

Yes, changes happened today which impacted expectations of the future. Of course this should be fairly clear. All of our perception about what will happen in the future is informed on events that have already happened or are happening now. There's no other information to base it on.

It's not like Google/Meta/Microsoft were barely hanging on by a thread just able to get through their core workload before COVID hit. They didn't need another 10,000 employees to get through today. They needed (or, incorrectly, thought they did) them to support where the business would be going in the years ahead.

Nobody was debating whether the pandemic would end. The only debate was whether industries would snap back to operating how they did before, or if they changes would sustain. And the reality is that there was no correct answer for all industries. Some are permanently (or at least well beyond the end of the PHE) changed by this. Others went back.

I think this sums it up perfectly. Companies are wrong all the time. They kill product lines, often times even shed customer revenue, to avoid having to further invest in a space that doesn't make sense.

The real question is "should we tolerate shedding jobs" and it's an interesting question. Without stating a personal opinion on the matter, it's interesting to think about how drastically this would shift the economic structure of the nation if the answer was "no"

This is an interesting take, and on the surface I'd buy this. I think the assessment from many companies was "we're hiring because of where the world is clearly going" (ecom sustains a 20% lift overnight, healthcare sees a 37x increase in telemedicine use, etc), but perhaps a lot of this was just "we want the talent because other people want the talent."

I'll definitely dig into this take further!

I'm not sure how "farm this out to the 1099's" is a solution to this problem. You're shedding the expense either way, and the same group of people who are frustrated about the layoffs now are also frustrated at organizations who find loopholes to use "contractors" instead of "employees" to avoid benefits, taxes, etc.

But, the bigger issue is, knowing that you should give this to contractors would have required the same foresight that would lead to you not hiring anyway. In other words, if you knew enough to know that you shouldn't hire full time people because you might lay them off, then you probably knew enough to not do this in the first place...so you wouldn't have to let anyone go.

But as you just said, it's to make the _best_ prediction of the future based on those available, not necessarily the right one. You hope that over time of making enough educated bets, enough pan out correct for overall company success. Companies are often wrong about many (perhaps most) things. They're just right often enough to keep succeeding.

As the markets clearly priced in during the pandemic, this was the best prediction of the future. As measured not just by the CEO, but the response of consumers and the public markets. You would be hard-pressed, without the benefit of today's hindsight, to make a reasonable argument for why this wasn't the right decision to make based on the data in front of you.

If the bar for asking a CEO to quit is "you did not correctly predict the future" then we're going to have to ask most CEOs to quit at some point. And most employees for that matter.

The issue I have is with broad strokes generalizations that layoffs indicate a failure of a CEO. They don't necessarily mean that. Any more than shipping a bug to production indicates a failure of an engineer who should now be fired. Similarly, not laying people off is not an indicator of success. Nor is not shipping a bug to production.

The question is not "can we predict the future," but rather "did we do the right things to capture the right data to make the best decision" and if the answer to that question is yes - then any other reasonable person in the same position would likely have made a similar (if not the same) choice, and it's not clear what firing anyone does besides being punitive. Again, same for any employee that makes a mistake. This is not me giving a free pass to CEOs.

To be clear, in my original post I'm not making a stance on whether I think CEOs should have made the particular calls they did or not.

If you want my opinion, though, it's easy with the benefit of hindsight to say they shouldn't have. But some industries were, in fact, thrown several years into the future and there wasn't a compelling reason at that time to assume they'd just fall back as things returned to normal. Others should probably have reasonably expected growth to slow down (or reverse) as people could get out in the world again. I don't think there's one broad answer to the market overall.

Frankly, it's a little odd to me that we would expect companies to just be able to weather whatever the economy throws at them with no changes needed. Companies fail. They grow, they then shed headcount. Sometimes its right, sometimes its wrong. But I'm not sure how we could ever live in a society where there could be a complete upheaval to entire industries over a single quarter, and then again 2 years later back in the other direction, and everyone trucks on like nothing happened.

Regardless of individual opinions on whether CEOs should be terminated for layoffs or not - there's a surprising amount of comments here that seem to not understand that growing companies don't hire for today, but for where they want to be tomorrow. Where you want to be tomorrow is based on where you and your investors believe the world is going. If the world materially changes enough to shift your expectations about where it's going, then you change your plans (and headcount) accordingly.

In other words, when COVID hit and tech companies saw large surges because investors and CEOs saw industries leaping 5-10 years into the future overnight, they hired to support that growth. As the market has shifted and inflation combined with an end to the public health emergency has tempered growth expectations, investors and CEOs cut head count to match.

It sucks, and I'm not saying this is how it should be to those people who are impacted. But if you wait until the world is already where you thought it might be before you react and start building for that world, you're behind. Whether or not CEOs should be punished for getting the call wrong is what this post is about, but getting the call wrong sometimes is expected/necessary if you want to have a chance of getting it right.

It is "the economy" insofar as it represents investor sentiment. Investor sentiment for the last 10 years was to fund losses in exchange for capturing market share. That sentiment is changing as investors seek to prioritize profitability and more sustainable growth trajectories. This is, generally, happening across the macro market. It's just that "tech companies" were most susceptible to the grow-at-all-costs mindset, so they're shedding the greatest weight now.

When that shift happens, if you're the company that continues the "old" (I.e. likely always unsustainable) way of operating, then you'll be left holding the bag.

It seems like you are thinking about "tech" from a value proposition standpoint (i.e. that car manufacturers are building value through technology, and thus that makes them a tech company).

This article is referring to the term used in more of a financial context - referring to how the company will grow and scale. In this context, "tech company" refers to a company with very low marginal CoGS that exponentially decays with scale.

The distinction is highly relevant if you're deciding how to value a stock. For whatever reason the public markets had been valuing Tesla (and every other EV startup) as though it was going to benefit from tech-like high margins and free distribution.

Tech has been one of the most affected by the grow at all costs mentality that is untenable when capital is not essentially free.

In other words, tech saw the largest and fastest inflationary valuation period in decades under loose fed policy. It’s now seeing a similarly fast contraction.

The reason we’re not seeing similar cuts across the board (or at least as significant) is that they also didn’t grow as significantly in the years prior.

Notwithstanding the other debate in this thread about consent to sex versus consent to pregnancy, does your answer to the scenario above change even if you willingly plugged the needle into the arm yourself?

From my perspective, even if we assume the person plugged the needle into the arm, it's absolutely not my place to mandate that you must now keep the needle attached until the violinist can live independently again.

You may feel horrible about disconnecting that needle. We may even agree that it's a pretty awful thing to do to the violinist. In fact, we may even agree that you should be responsible for at least attempting to find alternative options for the violinist. But I certainly would never imagine creating a society in which we would prevent you from doing it. It is your body, and you should absolutely retain the right to revoke consent for the violinist to live off of it.

Interesting angle. My experience (in NYC) has been that while taxis most certainly have better knowledge of the city, Uber is by far more reliable in just getting me there. This is because of the key difference of Uber knowing exactly where I'm going in advance, and relaying turn-by-turn directions to the driver. Most of the time, the taxi driver knows the address or cross streets I'm going to. But when they don't, it's painful. I've never even been asked in a Lyft/Uber, though.

Uber shifts the relationship from rider <-> taxi company, to rider <-> Uber. This places a significant responsibility on Uber to create a high quality rider experience. If you book a car and the driver doesn't show up repeatedly, Uber will remove that driver.

Uber also fields customer service, meaning you're not trying to call into a one man shop to argue for a refund with whoever happened to pick up your ride that day. You're talking with Uber.

Some cities, such as NYC, have created their own structure around taxis, but in many cities it's a complete guess as to the quality of service you'll get when you call a local cab company.

This is the exact same playbook as Doordash, Seamless, Taskrabbit, Airbnb, or any of the other gig economy platforms. They're vastly more than just software. They're certainly different from software provided to independent operators, though individual people can come to their own determination of whether or not that is "better."

This flow chart is not quite accurate, or at least is misleading. There is more to a distinction between EUA and full FDA approval than where manufacturing happens. The FDA's own website[0] says:

> The EUA process is different than an FDA approval or clearance. Under an EUA, in an emergency, the FDA makes a product available to the public based on the best available evidence, without waiting for all the evidence that would be needed for FDA approval or clearance.

I don't post this to spread doubt about the EUA and am fully confident in the safety and efficacy of these vaccines. But as written, this website would seem to suggest that the only difference is when production happens - which is not accurate.

[0] https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/understanding...

Genuine question that I hope isn't interpreted as criticism.

I'm curious how this ultimately scales. I'd bite on believing that these videos can convert better than a boring templated email, but I'd also assume most of that lift is because they're different and enough users haven't caught on to the fact that these are generated.

When people talk about personalized email working better than automated outreach, they usually mean actually personalized emails, which contain at least one sentence that is not just placeholder substitution. Templated emails with substituted variables are usually easy to spot, as evidenced by the number of "I'm really interested in what you're doing at Stealth Startup" messages in my email/LinkedIn.

So, to my question: do you think the lift in conversion you've seen in early tests is sustainable? As people start to understand that this is the new marketing tactic, do you think the average person becomes more aware of it and starts to believe that most videos in their inbox are probably just auto-generated also? Ditto for other use cases. If people like their video-generated product walkthrough because it feels personal, what happens when they start to realize it's almost certainly not?

The elderly and immunocompromised people you are related to, spend time with, and care about. Or, hell, even those that you don't, but just happen to come in close contact with.

Also, nobody said your body is not about you. GP suggested the vaccine is not about you. Indeed, it's not. We vaccinate not to protect ourselves, but to protect society by reducing the spread of disease. The fact that it will also protect you is of course great as well. This is nothing new, and has been the same for every other vaccine.

Why the hell are you comparing having back to back meetings around an interview with "organizing your interview in some dinky place in the basement with unkempt junior dev who got late to the meeting"

If you asked for an hour of my time, you'll get an hour of my time. If you want an extra 15 minutes to chit chat after, that's fine, just ask for it ahead of time so I can plan for it.

Whatever expectations you hold a candidate to should be reciprocal. So if you're going to hold candidates responsible for blocking off extra time before and after their interview to sit and chat, then you should be doing the same. Which means you should decline any meetings that are scheduled to start within 15 minutes of your interview ending. If you do that, then great, that's wonderful for the candidates who have more time to spend. You should also then tell the candidate up front to allow for 15 minutes on either end of the interview.

This whole idea that a candidate must have a buffer around their interview with you or they don't want to work for you is nonsense. It makes no more sense than saying if I have a 10am, 10:30am, and 11am meeting then that means I don't want to meet with the person at 10:30am. People have other things going on in their life. Employers who realize this, and respect candidates during the interview process, are going to have an easier time hiring good candidates that will also treat them well in return.

To be clear, I'm not saying that employers should force employees to work in an office so they can spend time with their friends.

I'm simply saying that those people who have developed friendships with the people they work with likely don't view "going to work" as a painful, soul-sucking task they have to perform simply to achieve a paycheck.

It is, in fact, possible to simultaneously realize that you're in a transactional business relationship with an employer who is compensating you for services, and that those around you are also in that same relationship, and to use that as a common ground upon which a friendship can be built that makes the transactional relationship less painful.

I also believe there are some people who do, genuinely, enjoy the work they do. The general point I'm trying to make throughout this thread is that it'd be great if folks realized that there is a diversity to opinions about work much in the same way as there is diversity to every other thing in life and it's simply not a binary choice between "work is wonderful and I want to spend my life at the office" and "work is awful and I can't stand commuting, sharing space with coworkers, paying egregious rent, etc." As with most things in life, the reality is most people live somewhere in the middle of that gradient. Acknowledging that is helpful if we want to make progress towards optimal, inclusive solutions.

Fair enough. I believe there's some truth to this. I do think it's hard to separate between genuine friendships and transactional relationships that happen to be symbiotic while you're working together (but will rapidly deteriorate when you don't).

Sometimes I do wonder how much of this is the fault of skewed incentives of the workplace, versus just a paradox of human interaction. We think we're developing friendships by spending a lot of time with people, without realizing that time spent is of a transactional nature rather than furthering some connection. I spend a lot of time with coworkers, therefore a feel close to them. However, when asked, I realize I know almost nothing about them below the surface.

In any case, I can appreciate that forming friendships at work can be more challenging. But I do believe many people (including myself) have done this, and when it works it can be incredibly powerful and make work much more enjoyable.

Totally, and I think that's ok! I'm not intending to suggest that there is one true way. In fact, I think the very point I'm getting at is that there is not one true way. Different situations work better for different people in different roles, and even for the same person in the same role, the ideal situation may change from one quarter to the next.

Where I take issue is with people suggesting that it would be insane to ever ask anyone to come to an office again, for the same reason I think it would be insane to tell people that working from home is a waste of time/not productive/etc. To this end, a hybrid work environment may not be any better, since it forces an individual person to balance both (I.e. your extroverts are still expected to be home 2x/week, and your introverts are still expected to be at the office 3x/week)

The challenge for leaders of companies that are trying to navigate this (and one of the reasons that people will probably always be dissatisfied with the outcome) is that there is no perfect solution. You go full remote, you'll have people who miss the office (and almost certainly some intangibles will be lost). You go full in-office, and you'll have some less productive people who spend way too much time commuting and pay too much in rent. You go hybrid, and you still have people paying too much in rent, and now they also have to commute sometimes, and the people who want to be in the office aren't for 2 days/week, etc. Adding insult to injury, if you allow individual people to make their own decisions (some remote, some in-office) you'll have imbalances in career progressions, where people who have more facetime will be more likely to receive promotions and raises than their less visible, fully-remote counterparts.

It's a challenging topic, and it's not clear to me there is a solution that is "fair," insofar as fairness is even a thing we can measure here.