@matdevdug Well said. If there is one small upside of these layoffs, hopefully it will help dispel the Silicon Valley mythology that these companies often traffic in.

Free lunch and a foozeball table is a poor substitute for job security and human-focused management.

@matdevdug I got out before this happened. Actually, the whole company was bought out. I should never have been in corporate America.

@matdevdug I wonder if some of these companies aren't counting on AI to stand in for the institutional knowledge lost.

Though it seems like the value of institutional knowledge has been lost after several generations over turnover. To these companies all tech workers are fungible bootcamp graduates.

It's excruciating to see.

@matdevdug My gut has been telling me that companies are fooling themselves into thinking 100% turnover is fine, actually, because workers can just be replaced now that so many are on the market, and institutional knowledge didn’t matter that much in the first place (lol).

Sound right?

@matdevdug@c.im

Yeah... It's the whole, "we're destroying your ability to house and feed yourself because speculators won't be happy enough with 'merely profitable'," thing that's especially corrosive.

@matdevdug huge mood. If I hadn’t painted myself into a corner with old tech that isn’t used anywhere else, I’d probably have bounced from where I’m at right now. We’re down from a team of 23 to a team of 2 and I get mad every time people joke about job-related PTSD because I’m actually living with that. Lately I find myself weighing the pros and cons of spending time learning new tech to catch up to the world vs just shuffling off the mortal coil.

@matdevdug the first time I went through a #tech #layoff I really struggled with “what did _I_ do wrong?” It took me a long time to recover from that.

My first time as a manager having to lay people off was one of the toughest days of my 35 yr career. A year after that there was 100% turnover in that team, including me.

My current place has had a round of layoffs. We learned to manage employee growth in a way that we haven’t had to do it again. We’re now profitable and have an amazing team.

@matdevdug @dave Went through the dot-com blowup of 2001 and the banking fuckup of 2008 and various other layoffs. Every time, the remaining people spent months mostly with polishing their resumes.

I’ve never seen any upside, since frequently promising projects or client relationships died in those layoffs, certainly eating up any conceivable savings from the lower payroll.

@matdevdug
🥥 The only positive development Eye can see from this latest wave of tech industry mass layoffs would be if some companies wise up to the fact that firing one grossly overpaid CEO or C-suite would have an actual positive impact
on a company without all the negative impacts of worker layoffs. 🥥

@matdevdug 30 years in tech but never worked for a tech company. The last five or so years have helped me see it as a form of blessing.

@matdevdug When I worked as a Nurse in care homes, the key indicator of poor management and low staff morale was turnover rate of staff...this was well-known amongst all my colleagues and it was plain to see whilst I worked at some such establishments. I'm sure this is a phenomenon that exists throughout industry.

@matdevdug @femme_mal When I was laid off from a tech co. in 2013 it altered my world view. I had won an award for performance only 2 months earlier! I’ve never trusted an organization to have my back again.

@matdevdug
It's the case with all layoffs. Not just your industry. It's Capitalism. If you believe in capitalism, you should cheer layoffs, if not, recognize that you are a worker and make solidarity with other workers. From white collar compatriots farm laborers.

@matdevdug I have been laid off, survived layoffs, found another job only to go through another round of layoffs. This behavior is endemic to how business is done in the U.S. at least.

@matdevdug I worked at an office that abruptly let go one of its more talented workers. I could hear her sobbing as she packed up her belongings.

Later, as I started to get enough freelance income to leave, I left that job without the customary two weeks notice.

@matdevdug tech managers almost willfully sabotage company morale -- in the long term it builds a tech culture that is horrible

@matdevdug yeah, because these cuts are always executed by people who are not paid to do the right thing - they are paid to make books look good. They might even doing very well knowing they are destroying any future company might have. But this self sabotage is absurdly encouraged and paid off by coffers of the dying company.

@matdevdug As a GenXer, I remember as a child watching friends disappear overnight because of mass layoffs in the 80s. Houses suddenly vacant, abandoned. My dad was never laid off, but the effect you describe is exactly what he came home with. GenX supposedly learned to never trust companies for anything (not sure if we really did in the long run).

Tressie McMillan Cottom reminds that the institution does not love you back. Every bit as true for corporate orgs as for higher ed.

@matdevdug my current company did layoffs back in June with pathetic severance packages.. and people have been quitting enmasse ever since.

The other thing to remember is that many of these former employees will end up at customers or potential customers who will now NEVER look at your product and will actively discourage other people from even taking your calls...

There is a knock on effect to layoffs.

For two weeks severance I'm not signing a non disparagement agreement.

@matdevdug Companies can't empathize. You are better addressing the novices that might think they are alone in the realization that they were minions of an actual evil organization. (Driven mostly by greed an selfish goals, sadly, the most common type by far)
To them: Welcome, remember you yourself need not be evil nor alone.

@matdevdug Former exec recruiter turned entrepreneur here… Laying off, then rehiring a few months later just to meet your investor numbers is an all-to-common practice for US businesses, especially in tech and manufacturing. It’s a very expensive way to do business too. Short term gains. Long term costs beyond money. As others have said, you lose institutional knowledge, loyalty, develop a bad reputation as an employer, and you have to keep paying to hire and train people ($$$$$$).

@lisamelton

@matdevdug it's not just those left behind. I was laid off back in 2001 and it's coloured my relationship with every employer since.

We broke our backs for that company, and they dismissed us without a second thought. Now I expect every employer to do the same and plan accordingly.

@matdevdug
Did your experience with layoffs change your relationship with just that company, or did it make you reluctant to trust any similar company? I confess that after my treatment by one tech company I left the industry and can't really trust any similar company again.

@matdevdug Bingo ………. Have seen it first hand; bond of trust GONE forever.

@matdevdug this seems like one example of the callousness that’s generally quite pervasive. For sure, there are better companies but it seems like there are strong countervailing forces that make it difficult to establish or maintain environments that support people thriving

@matdevdug Tru dat.

@matdevdug Living in a country that has pretty strong unions and lots of laws concerning worker rights, this sounds heartbreaking. I sincerely hope this will change.

Bang on, there's nothing worst than having to reapply for the job you've been doing for years, especially when you're of the age when you could have taken the voluntary early retirement route.

@matdevdug I have been through it multiple times. It would appear that it is not a suicide pact, further away from Silicon Valley. There is a bit more activation energy involved in switching employers.

But it's still not good.

I have been through enough that my default is to assume that the company wants to bleed me dry and throw me away. Never stop updating your resume.

It would also be great if we had a professional cartel that could successfully embargo these profit-goosing dipshits.

@matdevdug my last k public sector) employer handled a big budget cut with a round of layoffs.

A humane place would offer a severance package, wait to see the effect on payroll count, and then do layoffs after if necessary. They did the reverse. I'm 100% comfortable it was because the deputy minister in charge was a vindictive petty little asshole, and he didn't want to risk the people he resented leaving with dignity. He wanted them humiliatingly escorted out by security.

@matdevdug This has been my experience, too. And they always end with something like, "Don't worry. We don't plan on any more layoffs." ...until next time.

@matdevdug been there, done that. It used to be a bad sign when there was a lot of turnover in an organization. Now it’s just business as usual.

@matdevdug

There are pluses to these mass layoffs in tech and journalism:

1. Other industries now have access to skilled labor for long delayed IT infrastructure projects.

These industries have not been able to compete in recruiting in years.

These workers were in short supply for too long because the big five hogged the labor market.

The public sector in particular is benefitting from these counterproductive layoffs.

2. It releases skilled journalists from mainstream ...

1/3

@matdevdug The permanent morale hits from management duplicity is a lesson no company seems capable of learning.

"We'll randomly decimate your department while taking home a $60m bonus, but any morale questions on the employee survey are going to focus on middle management forever." - This has *never* worked.

We're not fooled by "Your direct supervisor might care and please let that reflect on the company as a whole".

@matdevdug One of my earliest life lessons is that there are two vital resources a savvy leader always takes very good care of: infrastructure and people. Any company, any human enterprise, is only as good as the people doing the work and the tools/support you give them. A business that disregards this truth may not die, but it will never excel. And it is for certain underestimating the damages that disgruntled employees will inflict by sabotage, whether overt or covert.

@matdevdug agreed. An "Employee of the Year" got sacked within months of her (well-deserved) award. She was shocked & devastated. I won an award the following year & it was meaningless to me b/c I knew it meant nothing to the company either.
Asked for a package the following year ahead of the annual year-end purge. The joy was gone. Money was great but I needed more.
Now I own & operate a kickboxing fitness gym. Financially tougher (thanks Covid) but it keeps me fit, happy and fulfilled.

@matdevdug I've seen non tech contracts crumble a couple of times over here in the NHS. Brutal layoffs, bosses who took the difference in bonuses, morale destroyed. Then the Trust told the bosses to improve morale, so they spent £60k on a "motivational speaker" who was a fraud (lied about previous experience/psychology degree)...

@matdevdug disposables much?

@matdevdug You're not alone. Tech isn't the only place this happens.

When people in education were let go after measure 5 passed in Oregon decades ago, a whole crowd of us left forever.

Joined a union with a no strike clause in their contract with the school district, and when it came to a vote, I was told to never discuss measure 5 with students.

We couldn't have been valuable to the schools, or our contracts would have reflected it in the first place. Muting our voices was part of the game.

@matdevdug

100% turnover is great for obliterating any retirement benefits plan.

My grandfather was laid off after 19 years and 50 weeks. You can guess what he was entitled to if he had worked there for 20 years.

Permanent part-time for service employees is a micro-management of the same goal.

@matdevdug

Study after study demonstrates the decreasing morale of the investor class after a round of contagious mass layoff hysteria.
https://techcrunch.com/2023/03/26/tech-company-layoffs-2023-morale/

https://www.law.com/corpcounsel/2023/09/21/tech-companies-hamstrung-by-low-morale-in-aftermath-of-layoffs/?slreturn=20240027161926

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/googles-sundar-pichai-wants-focus-192112714.html

@matdevdug and how they handle them matters a lot too

@matdevdug and the people they hired to backfill the talent that left cost ~20 to 30% more than the people they already had. And the costs are now effectively the same, but with less talent available to do the job.

@matdevdug Maybe I am particular cold. But having witnessed some up close that is not my experience at all. I dealt with them just fine and my loyalty was not significantly affected.

I certainly think this is true for some individuals though.

@matdevdug i am pretty sure back then (I was there) and now (I am here) #tech corporations know exactly what they are doing and understand that whoever stays after a mass layoff will mostly likely resign within 6 months. That’s what happens in mergers (me: 2000) and that’s what’s happening now (X, Google, Salesforce…). The correct calculation they make is that new blood will fight to go through the door, undercut the market & espouse the new culture in hope of a quick promotion.

@matdevdug @Bowsette My last company got taken over after I’d been there over 12 years, my only industry job at the time. They claimed they wanted to do one and one only round of layoffs and I jumped at the chance to volunteer because I knew what was coming next.

I’d tell you, but you absolutely already know what happened next.

@matdevdug One of my formative experiences as a just-a-few-years-out-of-college employee was having to witness two rounds of layoffs. I made it through, but I got a front-row seat to the elderly and beloved department secretary tearfully asking if she could just say goodbye before security escorted her out (and of course being told no). Sixty or so years working for a company earned her absolutely zero compassion.

@matdevdug It's a relationship constant: better to maintain trust than try to regain trust. AND COMPANIES ALREADY KNOW THIS. Ask them about keeping customers as opposed to trying to win them back, and they get it immediately. But apparently employees aren't people, just "human resources."

@matdevdug@c.im My lived experience is much the same. It permanently damages your reputation with the employees. The times I've been through it the company was profitable at the time too so I really turned up the spite. Absolutely soulless to upend the lives of people to make a few more dollars

@matdevdug
I concur. A company I worked for had a reputation in the industry for not ever laying people off. When it happened, it was a complete surprise.

Company has been bleeding talent ever since
@chrisisgr8

#tech #layoffs

@matdevdug Also true in other industries. I watched it happen in the newspaper biz as well as with online news orgs, before it finally happened to me.

@matdevdug I'm generally in the first round of layoffs when they go down. I have a difficult time putting up with bullshit and so I piss off management. Every time, within a year the team I was on has either disbanded (or shut down by the company) or was sold off to some investment firm that sends all the jobs overseas. Twice in fact the whole entire company has been sold off and upper management walked away with a crap ton of $$. Layoff "survivors" are just being used longer.

@matdevdug Don't have a "relationship" with your company in the first place. your relationship is just a contract. It can be cut at any moment. The less you have feelings about where you work, the better. This is not a big family.

@matdevdug 500% this, the cost of layoffs themselves are high and then taking into consideration how it absolutely breaks any tether remaining employees have to the company has real lasting and chilling effects

@matdevdug That goes for almost all industries. The moment I saw the morale going sour I started to look for another job. I was not about to stick around to watch the slaughter. If I am reading the news right there will be a lot of tech layoffs again. Of course, that follows with the news claiming nobody wants to work anymore. Corporations are out of hand and nobody is doing anything about it.

@matdevdug Something that layoffs taught me: don’t build your social life around coworkers. However the job ends, you’ll never really see them again.

@matdevdug they still make tonnes of money, why would they do differently honestly?

@matdevdug
So much this ^^^^^

In addition we who have been laid-off walk away feeling broken. Such a hesitation to even mention that it happened that we put ourselves through more stress trying to avoid having to explain our departure in interviews.
@collinsworth

@matdevdug @rauschma I still remember as an intern at Microsoft in 2006 how much the HR usuals parroted “We’ve never had a layoff in the history of the company” as a proud cultural badge. (It wasn’t entirely true, at that time the company was deeply the king of stack rank imposed soft layoffs giving people a few weeks to internally reinterview for their own jobs and blaming any failures on individuals’ performance rather than layoffs.)

@matdevdug I had my first layoff in the late 80s and the second in 92. My slightly more senior skill equal was laid off and sought a new job. Morale ruined I took one of the jobs he discarded and quit. Later I came back there to work with an older mentor, but suffered two layoffs, with a year and a half of sort of a limbo in the later position. Tired of being a connoisseur of layoffs, I resolved to never return to #Tektronix again. They had given me great experience and I had outgrown them.

@matdevdug You know it's bad when even the senior managers who are instructed to let go of entire teams leave within 6 months of the layoff round.

@matdevdug yep, so true it hurts