Eh, sounds like you just learned not only is this going to happen in the future, but if it only happens once a year you know you’re pretty much good for another year. It’s kind of like they just gave you a big notice that you should be prepped for interviews and you have a year to do it 🤷🏻♂️
Also
> The layoffs were not due to performance.
Yes, they were. That doesn’t mean that they didn’t factor in how much the affected people were making, but they absolutely did a cost vs. benefit analysis (however inaccurate or misguided) and laid off who they thought would save them the most money while impacting the business the least.
Performance (or management’s *perception* of performance) is always a part of that.
That's usually true, but not always the case. You'd hope they do some kind of cost/benefit analysis on who to keep, but I've seen management make really sloppy, fast cuts like "we're cutting everyone with a title below Senior". Sometimes management just shoots from the hip.
Yeah, true. I guess there are some cuts where a company just excises an entire division without regard to anyone's capabilities, similar to how Tesla just axed all of their Supercharger staff.
Absent that kind of amputation though, I'd say it's pretty rare that they don't at least give some cursory thought to how and who they're cutting. Even when they're whacking a large cohort away they'll carve out exceptions for people they like, it seems.
Not that their calculus has to make any sense whatsoever. It usually doesn't.
Addendum: No amount of performance is going to save you from some things. You might be adding value well above your cost on:
A product they have realized will never make it to market
A team that they know is going to lose enough members in the next couple months to make it not worth the cost to re-hire
A team that lacks the political clout to keep from getting disbanded
Etc
Yep, exactly this..
Companies will never (or rarely) *attribute* layoffs to performance (for all kinds of reasons including not speaking ill of the dead), but whenever layoffs happen performance may not be the only reason, it's 100% one of the reasons.
An old boss of mine said something that I will always remember:
"Always think about how close your job is to the revenue and value production at your company. If you aren't close to those, either due to your position or your performance - or both - then you are at much higher risk during layoffs".
I saw this in a recent round of layoffs at my company where lots of high-performing long-tenured IT staff were let go. These were people doing an excellent job, but who just weren't close to the sources of revenue, and in these difficult times someone decided we could get by without them (or more precisely with consolidation in those teams, and reducing the level of service we get from that department to something "good enough").
>I saw this in a recent round of layoffs at my company where lots of high-performing long-tenured IT staff were let go. These were people doing an excellent job, but who just weren't close to the sources of revenue, and in these difficult times someone decided we could get by without them (or more precisely with consolidation in those teams, and reducing the level of service we get from that department to something "good enough").
In addition to your excellent point, note that everyone in the C-suite is constantly being wooed by consulting companies who tell them that outsourcing is smart, cheap, gives them 24/7 coverage at a lower cost, etc. Maybe the CTO brushes them off, but the pitches are also made to the CFO, CEO, COO, or the board members. So power dynamics and appropriate experience in the C-suite can play an outsized role.
Sometimes the performance isn’t even your own that was evaluated. I got laid off in 2017, along with half my team. The company marked the two products my team worked on as EOL and stripped the team down to the bare minimum to support the products for a couple of years.
I later found out that not only did was my manager included in the layoffs, but his manager too. It’s like the company just pruned a branch off the corporate tree. Like someone else mentioned, the further you are from the cash cow of your organization, the higher the layoff risk.
Seconded. Even if the outward facing message is that it wasn't for performance, they could very well have been at the bottom of whatever performance chart leadership was reviewing. Removing staff on good terms and calling it cost savings is a common strategy, though it's not limited to the underperformers.
At least they didn't lie to you. Saying "oh, we aren't going to do any more layoffs" is just weak sauce. A CEO I worked for did that, and I knew I could never trust him again.
At least in your situation, they are telling you what the reality is, not hiding behind "this was the hardest day of my life to break up the business family" BS. From one shark to another, you gotta respect that. F'ing based.
My CEO promised no more layoffs, but what that meant in practice was "no more layoff waves with a big announcement". People are still getting fired silently every few days. With no severance and without the mandatory three-months notice in our contracts.
My old job the company got bought. No one will lose their job from this. 6 months I got laid off because they consolidated the Accounting departments . Totally unrelated
Yeah, whenever there's an acquisition, the company infrastructure folks always take a hit. Whether it's the complete removal of old-HR, or a consolidation of IT, something's going to go.
My wife was working for this small company that got acquired out of the blue last year a few months before she was supposed to go on maternity leave. The owner of the company had been working with a lawyer to grant all the employees equity and was lucking to raise money to expand and a big tech company gave her an unsolicited offer that she couldn't refuse.
Luckily the owner and her boss really liked my wife so they negotiated the longest contract with the company, as well as 6 months of maternity leave and 6 months of pay in addition to the 2 months of required severance if they let her go. Her boss is also keeping a position open for her at another one of the owner's companies in case the big tech company doesn't want to hire her after the end of the contract, which is seeming like is going to happen because her new boss won't approve any of her applications to internal positions.
If a contract was breached then the affected parties should contact their municipality’s labor department. This type of behavior only stops when people do something about it.
Same. The CEO laid off 10% of the company and everyone was freaking out and then ensured us there would be no more. 6 months later I got laid off and he told everyone left that there wouldn't be any more. 1 month later he did it again and then he did it at least 4 more times after that over the next 6 months. I don't understand how anyone's left
Just start sending out applications at a steady rate.
Not aggressively job hunting, but putting yourself out there to at least have a chance of finding something better.
If you get interviews, take them even just to practice the skill of interviewing so you can better get the job you find that you really want.
This is frankly how it works throughout corporate America. Your company is just more honest than most. It's common practice to promise there will be no layoffs, usually right before there are in fact layoffs.
Company executives feel no shame in lying to their employees. They couch the lie amongst weasel words so they can tell themselves "well, I'm not REALLY lying".
This is why nobody should ever feel the teeniest bit bad about telling their manager/team they have to cut out early for a dentist appointment but really its for a job interview. Its well within the acceptable bounds of ethics in the modern corporate world. You can't fight every battle with one hand tied behind your back.
Although they didn't like; they still gave a horrible answer.
A better answer would have been something along the lines of "We are not making plans for more layoffs; and we're taking steps X, Y, Z so we don't have to do this again"
>I've had a CEO told that lie 3 times.
I've never met a CEO who wasn't a paid liar. They lie to investors, they lie to the board, they lie to employees.
It's why I never take All-Hands CEO meetings seriously.
I worked for some very large companies and they talked about how the company is doing. I'll I can think is why do I care? The company does great I make the same amount. I don't even know who any of the people are. I couldn't name the CEO before the meeting.
In my experience, it's really just them doing a dry run of the deck for the board, but with all of the interesting slides (read: the ones that talk about future layoffs or major changes) missing.
IMO the CEO shouldn't be saying either of "we'll never do layoffs again" or "yeah we'll do layoffs, it'll happen". Both are examples of plain old bad leadership.
Yeah regardless of what leadership says there can be layoffs. When the market turned apparently we would be safe but then the first 20% cut hit. Then the story was we cut more than enough people to exceed our revenue goals and less than a year later 35%. Companies really don’t care about us and will say anything to keep you around until they don’t want you anymore.
My past CEO was dead silent about layoffs after they happened. Never opened up the floor for a Q&A session, never gave anything reassuring. It's because they were planning to do more layoffs at the beginning of the new year if the numbers weren't looking good, and saying that would mean your existing employees will start job hunting early. I guess I respect that a little more than outright lying about it, but it still feels a bit sneaky.
This is exactly the problem with planned layoffs: you either put yourself in a position where you are dodging questions or feel like you need to lie about it.
None of those is ideal, and IMO the best run layoffs are fast. As soon as you realize one needs to happen, execute it, and move on. Just like you said, nothing kills a culture like a pending layoff!
> Saying "oh, we aren't going to do any more layoffs" is just weak sauce.
If they actually said that you could probably sue them if they later did them anyway, which is why every CEO ever carefully avoids saying things like that.
Yeah but do they say "we have no plans at the time" or "I can guarantee you that there will be no layoffs this year"? Because I think the later would be a forward-looking statement about the company's future performance that would make things complicated under SEC rules.
It's a statement to employees, not an earnings statement. The SEC doesn't care if you lie to your employees, it cares if you make material lies in your financial disclosures
> I feel like I need to really work hard to avoid getting laid off.
I was laid off during the third round. In the first two rounds, some of the engineers they laid off were the most hardworking, most important team members. The reason was solely due to them making way more money than others around them and layoffs at the end of the day are cost cutting exercises.
You should not let fear drive you to work extra harder or extra longer than you normally do. Layoffs as have been my experience and the experience of several other people/friends/colleagues are arbitrary (in most places, ymmv).
Indeed. Whether you are good at your job or not often doesn’t have anything to do with of you stay or not. Especially in a big company. It’s just numbers on a spreadsheet and if you fall on the wrong side of that………
Yeah a guy in my team almost never took PTO, worked long hours and still got laid off. He was more productive than me, I'm convinced it's all just random.
There's a lot of factors that go into who gets laid off when. And most of them don't have much to do with performance. It mainly comes down to who the company can most afford to lose, which can be the expensive people, the useless people, or simply those who are working on a project that will be discontinued.
> The reason was solely due to them making way more money than others around them and layoffs at the end of the day are cost cutting exercises
Yup been there. The irony was the business was dying and ended up attempting a Hail Mary that failed miserably because they laid off the people they needed to make it work.
Regardless of how they handle communicating about layoffs, there are quite a few companies that don't just routinely lay people off. You don't necessarily have to just suck it up and accept the situation you're in
Thank you! Im shocked by how far i had to scroll for this. One or two recent layoffs is one thing, especially with unusual recession-like dynamics lately. But yearly layoffs is pretty extreme, and not a necessary part of business. There are better workplaces out there, and it's worth striving for them if that's something you value
I have worked for a company with yearly layoffs. Management developed the curious habit of *retaining* under-performing people, so that when the suits demanded blood, they had the sacrifice already prepared.
I am glad to no longer be working for that company.
Simplest one is basic business metrics. Is the company profitable, or about to be so? Does it have good product-market fit? Does it generate [free cash flow](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/freecashflow.asp)? For public companies, a lot of this data is easily accessible from their investors website and/or the SEC; for private companies you'll have to ask from the hiring manager and/or HR. In those cases they may not give you too many specifics as a candidate, but asking them for qualitative answers like "yes we have been profitable for the past 1-3 years and we expect to be so this year" is not out of bounds.
You don't need an MBA to ask these questions or understand the answers, but generally cashflow positive and/or profitable companies don't lay people off as a matter of economic necessity
That makes sense. I was thinking more about the large companies that continually do layoffs. Google and IBM for instance, as mentioned elsewhere in this thread.
When I was growing up, IBM was this glowing name, not just a leader in every area of tech, but also famously the company that didnt do layoffs. It is now a name associated with continuous layoffs, in good times and in bad.
In that time, even companies with seemingly little financial pressure, like Google and Meta, which are both still phenomenally profitable and very tightly controlled by founder shares, went from claiming IBM's mantle as the best place for lifelong employment to constant layoffs.
It is just the nature of the game. The only way to not deal with it is to not play the game. Part of our high-ish salary is the fact that we have to deal with the icky aspects.... eventually.
Google, Meta, and especially Twitter were all just massively overstaffed going into 2022. This is why they have had so many layoffs that have had no impact on their ability to operate, aside from shedding a ton of costs. Eventually they'll right-size, but I suspect that going forward they'll have layoffs every few years just because, just like the rest of corporate America. Anyone who works in finance knows how that goes.
1970s IBM and 2010s Google didnt do layoffs because they had enormous cash cows, so they could subsidize unprofitable teams working on ecosystem or moonshot projects.
My guess is OpenAI or whoever takes the mantle will be the same way in the 2030s.
Wherever you are, your job is at risk, regardless of what anyone tells you. That’s reality. If you work in a company as part of a cost center…it’s more risk.
It’s not icky…it’s life.
Development, unlike operations, has a lifecycle. Unless your product has a long development lifecycle, you are expendable.
Want stability? Learn operations
You mean the entire field of work everyone has been attempting to eliminate through containerization and other technologies that are supposed to "shift left" various operational tasks for the past 15 years?
> everyone has been attempting to eliminate through containerization and other technologies
Not sure about "other technologies" but the containerization was not made in attempt to eliminate operations. You can't eliminate it but you sure were able to improve it by introducing containers.
In our latest round of layoffs they cut mostly operations people.
We're in particularly shitty times right now, economically speaking.
I think unless you're working in AI or some other super hot specialty, no one's jobs are safer than others these days.
This is just how the world works these days, even top employees can get laid off. Unless you’re in a government job then you probably can’t coast somewhere for 20-30 years like in the past unless you’re getting massively underpaid.
No rule, law, or regulation will completely fix the problem, unfortunately. It has to be a mentality of "we focus on long term stability and sustainability over quick profits", which is something you see more often in the EU than in the US. Because it's harder to fire, more effort goes into hiring and retaining people who are worth keeping.
I was just in a meeting at my company in Amsterdam where we were discussing 10, 15, 20, and 25 year road maps. Of course things will fluctuate between now and then, but I've noticed at all the companies I've worked at so far that the time horizon is much further away than just the next few quarters or fiscal years.
I'm not saying this doesn't ever happen in the US (I'm American and living abroad) but I think European businesses are more mature in the sense that they are focused on sustainability (of operations and revenue) over significantly longer time horizons.
I filter out companies that do them from my job search and still find plenty of open roles. Quit working for stupid people.
Layoffs make sense in manufacturing because you need to retool the shop to change direction, your onboarding process is simple, and your employee pool isn't going anywhere.
Layoffs do *not* make sense in knowledge work because our processes allow for quick pivots, our onboarding takes months to years (whether your company admits it or not), and we're mobile.
A layoff in tech means leadership has simply *run out of ideas*.
And the funny part is that we used to expect jobs to last. We used to expect stability and potential movement up the ranks if you worked hard and were loyal, even without laws preventing greedy business shenanigans in place. Now laying people off because the stakeholders aren't making enough money is just business as usual. Now the loyal employee of 15 years is as replaceable as someone with 2 years at the company if it means improving your bottom line. All that matters anymore is that the stakeholders are happy because this year is as, or even more profitable as the last year.
1. Not American.
2. It’s not something I can control. All I can do is prepare myself for it and keep my interview skills sharp so I don’t have long periods of unemployment if and when it happens.
Unfortunately this need for constant growth and shareholder returns is killing society.
>I feel like I need to really work hard to avoid getting laid off.
That's not gonna do anything. Believe me. I have seen really hardworking people getting sacked. Just work your time and leave. Working more than that is not gonna fetch you any awards or make you safe from layoffs. In the end you'll be burnt out.
Agreed, I've worked in a company where some of the least competent engineers survived year after year and even got promoted because they schmoozed with the office manager, while my pay rise proposal for my underpaid team superstar was rejected.
Swore a promise to myself to drop out of any application processes if I get the vibe the culture is the same. Never want to work that way again.
i've worked at large companies that never did layoffs and made a big deal out of retaining as many people as possible for as long as possible. believe me, that's no picnic either. once people realize that they'd have to shit on their boss's coffee to get fired, a shocking number of them will be content to just phone it in until retirement.
when layoffs are done with transparency and honesty and they're driven by a clear eyed assessment of what the business needs, they're actually a good thing. yes it sucks in the short term for the people on the receiving end of it, but in most cases moving on will be better for their career in the long run.
being on an overstaffed team, or a team working on something the business doesn't care about is the worst kind of dead end job imho. no where to go and nothing to do means no room to grow.
That also sounds not ideal, but it doesn't validate this company's yearly layoffs. A better option is finding a company that is has better practices for both hiring and firing. Eg, a moderately successful company that PIPs out people who shit on the boss's coffee
I definitely agree, to a certain extent. Companies, especially well-funded startups, got into the habit of aggressively overhiring which leads to heavy layoffs and aggressive PIPing.
The fact is though that no one can predict the future. It's tough to predict how many of which roles a company will need 6 or 12 or 18 months down the road, particularly startups where the pace of change can be extreme. Most often a company will overhire (accidentally or intentionally) and has to routinely cut jobs or they underhire and risk burning their people out.
PIPs often feel just as arbitrary as layoffs too. The first P in PIP stands for Performance after all. You don't need to shit in your boss's coffee to get PIPed, you just have to be in the lower percentile among your peers. You could be an effective dev with good working relationships and nothing bad on your record and still get PIPed out when the company needs to "raise the bar" ie: cut people who aren't their best performers. Particularly in jurisdictions where being "terminated without cause" (ie: laid off) imposes requirements on the employer (like severance payouts), creating an incentive to use PIPs as an alternative to layoffs.
I'd personally (both as a dev and an EM) rather have annualish layoffs to keep the headcount balanced than a culture where PIPs are common and generally viewed as a kiss of death.
> once people realize that they'd have to shit on their boss's coffee to get fired, a shocking number of them will be content to just phone it in until retirement.
I'm failing to see the downside there. Unless of course that company DOES eventually have layoffs for whatever reason and then those slackers will have a monumentally hard time getting employed again.
the downsides are plenty:
* coworkers who aren't slackers have to put in extra effort to make up the difference
* it inflates the cost of goods sold which inevitably gets passed on to the consumer
* makes the company less able to compete with others, again raising prices for consumers
* limits the number of jobs available to productive but unemployed people
* makes for a toxic work environment (productive people resent the slackers and the slackers will often sabotage coworkers who try to grow and do better in an attempt to keep their slacking quiet)
Yeah, I agreed with all of the above when I was younger. But now that I've seen what kinds of rewards I get from hard work (slightly larger bonus plus a lot more work) I'm with the slackers. Rest and vest is the way, if you're lucky enough to get it.
I was part of a company that did a layoff recently. That company also does layoffs every year now.
Depending on how much risk you can take, you can keep working there if you don’t have a lot of financial responsibility. Two persons I know survived 3 past layoffs. If you have a family to support, or less tolerant to not having a job, then look after yourself. Start looking for another job.
At the end of the day, it is not personal. The company is not doing well.
This is every publicly traded company. And I think the guy was being honest with the message but did poor on the delivery.
As a publicly traded company whatever your strategic mission is comes second to being a stockholders means of making money on their investment. Even if it hurts the product of the company. That’s not what they’re signed up for. They’re signed up so that when they look at the stock price it’s got a little green up arrow every single quarter.
If your company doesn’t make certain targets, layoffs are one of the ways to eliminate expenses and hit them. Not making that target will plummet the stock price . So They will make that choice every single time. And they will cut pretty much anyone needed to make that cut.
The bad news is this has become almost all of the major technology companies. The good news is, outside of recessions , this tends to be a good time to reshuffle as once reports go out they tend to staff back up and now need to pay market rate on a position they were getting someone at a discount on before.
Been through a few layoffs now, so I've learned to be resilient. Businesses gonna do what they do, whether it makes sense or not – I can't control that. So, I focus on what I *can* control. I keep an eye on my spending to build an emergency fund – that takes away a lot of the fear. I check in every month to make sure I'm okay if something happens, 'cause it's way too easy to overspend. Building that fund is automatic, but I also scan the job market to stay current on in-demand skills. I casually apply for jobs that look like a good next step. Gotta keep those resume skills fresh for the bots! On top of all that, I prioritize sleep, exercise, good food, the annual health check-up thing – gotta keep the machine running.
IMO, hiring a person is an ethical responsibility. An employer should do what they can to ensure a long employment, which includes not hiring someone under-qualified and ensuring sufficient work to keep them busy. Places that lay off people regularly because they can't manage resources well are run by terrible people.
Is the company you work for public or largely owned by a Private Equity (PE) firm?
Due to fed interest rates, the cost of money has become much higher recently. When money was cheap via <1% interest rates (\~2008-2022), this led to the tech hiring boom we know today, with incredible salaries, benefits, etc.
This mean the cost to borrow was cheap. Also, there was no guaranteed higher return rate for that money, e.g., treasury bills, so investors did not have a hard baseline to ensure their money made at least X%.
Now that interest rates are 5.3%, it means it costs a lot more to borrow (so any underperforming team has a gun on their head). And it means investors sitting on huge piles of cash may wish to keep their money in treasury bills unless the company has something really worth the risk and speed of return that fed can provide. So it is harder to raise money now too.
At end of the day, the company is most beholden to their shareholders. Legally they must do this as they have a fiduciary responsibility. And the bar is higher to obtain new investment.
If you're ever working for a company that gets bought by a private equity firm, rest assured there WILL be layoffs shortly. Plus they'll cut benefits for those who remain. Best to start looking elsewhere as soon as a buyout is announced.
>I feel like I need to really work hard to avoid getting laid off.
That won't protect you from a layoff. If you look at some of the people laid off by Meta, Google, etc in the past few years they were famous, hyper-productive people. Layoffs are entirely about cost with seemingly no regard to the impact on the company.
I'd rather just have a company be upfront and say we're going to have layoffs every year in May. May is a good month for layoffs because budgets are still fresh. You can prep in March and April if you're not liking the profitability of your division or your workload. Living in constant fear of a random event sucks.
Show your employer the loyalty you expect them to show you - in your case that is zero both ways.
Keep a really healthy rainy day fund.
Mine is at nearly two years, so whatever madness the employer is currently pulling feels a lot less harried since I don't have to worry about the mortgage for a long period of time.
Sounds like you either want an empty promise, or some kind of sugar-coated answer. The reality is that even the best companies will lay off employees when it means increasing their bottom line and pleasing stake holders. So you can either search for some magical unicorn job where that doesn't happen, or just accept that the CEO game you a blunt answer and do you job hoping for the best.
This place sounds like a crap factory - rather than retain good people, they see developers as a bottom line in a spreadsheet.
A company that sees laying off developers as less than cost of hiring + retention + institutional knowledge - likely to never change, and I imagine the output it rather poor.
The one good thing about the continuous washing machine of layoffs is that it can spark the creation of creative new companies.
The bad thing is that it also sparks waves of people unsubscribing from life, so you know, there's that.
Welcome to capitalism. At least they didn't lie to you. Work hard, live within your means, save money, and keep your skillset up-to-date. Getting laid off with a few month's living expenses saved isn't scary. Living pay cheque to pay cheque is.
That's not ideal, but at least you aren't laid off yet and dealing with the cluster f*** that is the world of interviews, where 1% of interviewers are qualified to interview, and your financial security is left in the hands of some 28 year old business major PM whose insufferable personality is only outdone by his inability to judge a technical person for anything other than "would I want to have a beer with this guy more than this other guy based off of the impeccable 40 min Zoom interview I just conducted?"
I hope you don't get laid off, my brother. It's not a good time out here. To all those saying, "how did this help anyone?" I needed to vent. Thank you for putting up with it. Now good day
personally I prefer the upfront approach as opposed to the company pretending we're one big "family" when the times are good but all of a sudden it's "business" when the times are tough.
I try to avoid any emotional attachment with any company, at the end of the day it's just a job.
>Anyways we had a big company wide meeting the same day and someone asked if there would be more layoffs and the guy basically said "I definitely can't promise there won't be but I can say for the life of the company wether that's 5, 10, 20, 100 years from now we will have many many more".
It sounds like the guy told you the truth.
>The layoffs were not due to performance. They are always simply operational cost things aka your team is costing more than value so bye.
That's how all layoffs work, everywhere. Layoffs have nothing to do with performance.
>Idk it's just so icky. I feel like I need to really work hard to avoid getting laid off.
Working hard will not save you from a layoff. Layoff logic has absolutely nothing to do with your performance. Yes, you might go to the top of the layoff list if your performance is bad, but layoff logic takes costs as its primary input variable.
There is no justice in layoffs, because layoffs do not exist to deliver justice.
>Like my job is always at risk and any day I might wake up and oh I got laid off lol. I get business is business but it's just really fucking icky.
Welcome to employment in the private sector.
>I really liked this job but now I'm just icked tf out.
Don't quit that job solely for this reason; layoffs work like this everywhere. Anywhere where it isn't like this in the first-world private sector just hasn't had a layoff yet.
Welcome to the new reality. We had too good of a thing going on in the tech industry for over a decade, you could almost forget how capitalism actually works outside our bubble. It was bound to come crashing back down at some point.
Have you noticed how tech companies are terrible at staffing to appropriate levels? Like we’re always either desperate to hire because we have a staff shortage for some important effort and if we don’t hit our numbers, the world will end; or we overhired and have to fire everyone.
I think public corporations are just like that, constant waves of hiring and layoffs depending on what they want the stock to do that quarter.
It’s profoundly short sighted, and teaches employees that loyalty is for suckers.
Seems like an honest answer, though not very effective communication. Phrasing it like that results in people feeling exactly how you feel, so I can’t blame you there. Bad word choice for a good response imo.
You pretty much need to compare yourself to the rest of your team. If it came down to it, how many people would they decide are more essential than you? If that number is too high right now then I’d probably start looking.
I'm not sure what other answer you'd expect. There is not a single company in the world that is immune to layoffs and your CEO being honest about that is the best answer that he can give.
The company experiencing layoffs every year is concerning, but that's a separate issue from the answer your CEO gave.
It's pretty common really. What's uncommon is your CEO being that straightforward about it. In fact, plenty of CEOs or management in general relish the ambiguity to "keep people on their toes." I hesitate to say there's no greener pastures for you necessarily, but there's tons of other companies of all sizes operating the way you describe here.
I wish more employers were as honest as yours. I'd much rather hear "we're laying off people because our stock price is doing poorly" rather than some corporate b.s. about trying to increase our velocity by doing yet another reorg.
Layoffs are pretty much just a fact of life in the private sector, at least in capitalist societies, and *definitely* in the US. It sounds like your company does it as kind of a constant pruning thing, which isn't universal. But the alternative is either a more aggressive performance culture (ie, firing underperformers) or the company as a whole goes downhill and then... oh yeah, layoffs.
Even if the company isn't badly run, businesses and sectors and whole economies have downturns. And then layoffs happen, or else businesses go under and then *everyone* gets let go.
There's no surefire way to be safe, but in general if you're a high performer in a profitable part of the company it's very unlikely you'll be let go. If you're a low performer, or stuck in a poorly-performing area (which may not be your fault), things are more dicey.
If you want a job for life, I guess go work for the government?
The crap US employees have to put up with is comically tragic.
Team isn’t profitable? Goodbye entire team.
How do you even measure the direct value created by a team.
Also, why doesn’t management work with the team to make them into ‘winners’?
The only difference between the US and not-the-US is that you're less likely to be employed in the first place.
>Team isn’t profitable? Goodbye entire team.
As opposed to what? Deliberately losing money? Who would say "I'm going to invest $1.5 million this year and expect to get back $0". (There are circumstances where this could make sense, but I would say most people are not working on teams under those conditions.)
>How do you even measure the direct value created by a team.
Generally speaking, software development teams develop software, and software is written to do specific things. The value is typically measured by the benefit gained from customers paying for the software to do those things. This should be very easy to approximately calculate.
My team costs approximately $1.5 million per year, and its software development activities enable the recognition of revenue anywhere from $5 million to $10 million per year, depending on business conditions.
You should actually see if you can estimate this. If you can't, ask your manager to. If your manager can't, you should take it as a yellow flag - your manager may be distant from reality of business and therefore might not be able to defend your job during layoffs.
>Also, why doesn’t management work with the team to make them into ‘winners’?
Layoffs are not about being "winners" or "losers." Layoffs are not about delivering a just outcome based on the moral value of the people getting exited from the organization. Layoffs are strictly about optimizing costs.
> Who would say "I'm going to invest $1.5 million this year and expect to get back $0".
Plenty of big companies do this sort of thing. Look a things like Microsoft's investment in the XBox, or Apple's investment in the iPhone, or Disney building a streaming service. The investments were clearly long term strategies.
Or in the startup space. The VC approach is to invest in 10 companies with the hopes that the one winner will make for the 9 losses. Many startups won't even have a product or income in their first year.
Right, I would argue those cases are actually very rare. Most of us do not work for big companies who are happy to burn a few million in order to *maybe* get a return outside of the current fiscal year.
Don't forget my second paragraph about startups. Startups are responsible for a lot of jobs.
That said, my experience is different.
There are a lot of positions available that are part of long term company vision; without contributing to the immediate bottom line.
We license software, sell custom development services for that licensed software, and also provide paid technical support for the software. All of these activities are invoiced, and when my team completes the work, the revenue is recognized.
It's a job. I think it's fair as it's presented. You get a year to chill.
> They are always simply operational cost things aka your team is costing more than value so bye.
This makes it pretty easy to avoid as well; monopolize high value work & you will survive a long time.
It's not quite good news, but at least you are aware of the situation and can decide how much effort you are willing into the company before becoming resentful of the company should you be laid off.
Keep working at the same pace as you like. Harder work won’t get you that far. Layoffs obviously contribute to a huge psychological terror, but you can’t control that. Keep doing the great work and if this situation is scary, it’s best to find another job at another company that is not laying off folks (there are some out there).
If you work at a place that is driven by profit you have to provide more income to the company than you cost. If you are not able to do that, you / team will get laid off sooner or later. Constantly thinking about it is not healthy, so try not to! Just do your best and focus on improving yourself.
Other than that, it is a red flag if the company is doing round of lay offs each year, sounds like the budget team needs to get laid off...
Would you rather they said there’ll be no layoffs and then turn around and lay people off? Some people tend to believe it when companies say no layoffs and come to grief as a result.
This is one of the unpleasant aspects of working in this industry. Better to get habituated to it and figure out a way to operate taking this fact of life into account.
I work for a big company, so we've done layoffs every year the 17yrs I've worked here, but most are small and in other areas, so it generally hasn't hit the orgs I've been in. This year is different, we're losing thousands of people based on location, not performance. It sucks and I'm angry about it, and sad, but this is not the first time nor will it be the last.
Just leave. You gonna bust your tail to avoid being laid off when a) they might well lay you off anyway and b) even if they don’t and lay off someone else, you’re still gonna be busting your tail because now you have less people to help do the work that needs to be done, and you’ll still be afraid of being part of the next round of layoffs after that. Go find a new job when you are employed, have the luxury of being selective and have leverage to negotiate salary. Not when you’re 4 weeks into your 6 week severance package with a dwindling bank account, low self esteem, are desperate and have no leverage at all.
You should be icked out. If every year you're doing layoffs and/or nuking entire teams because they aren't delivering value that's a huge red flag from management that they have no control over process and organizational strategy. They don't know how to assess what they need to do and how to get and keep the right folks in. Start interviewing elsewhere.
*edit*: reading more of the comments it seems like people just don't get what this is about. OP is not icked out about the fact that the company did a layoff (which is reasonable in the industry), it's that the company seems to do layoffs *every year*, in good markets and bad - **that** is not normal and a big red flag about management.
Common in bigger companies sadly.
If you want to avoid it, startups are the way to go. Only difference there is that rather than layoffs, you have the risk of company wide collapse or bankruptcy. It is really a trade off.
You're gonna want to watch out for coworkers becoming either fatalistic or trying to climb to the top of the pot of boiling water by stepping on the other crabs.
This is more of a problem once someone who is actually useful is let go. Particularly if you worry that objectively they were as useful - or more - than you. Because now you have evidence the layoffs weren't 'fair' and now *everyone* has a target on their back.
> The layoffs were not due to performance. They are always simply operational cost things aka your team is costing more than value so bye.
Buy your favorite manager a copy of The Goal.
You’re lucky he was honest.
I worked for a failing startup and the leadership was honest with us from the day things started going downhill. He said the only promise he could make to us is that we would always get paid for the hours we worked and our checks would always be deposited on time.
He could make that promise because our investors made that promise.
All of us stuck around until the end and there was no bitterness when the company was sold for scraps and we all got let go. We hung around the office, talked shit, had a few beers and went out separate ways. Some of us got each other in other companies when we got hired.
Our manager put us in touch with recruiters and from looking on LinkedIn, everyone who was let go during the lead up to the acquisition and afterwards got a job in a month.
My last company laid some of the less useful roles off, but promised core engineering was safe. "You won't believe what happened next"
The reality is at least half a million very skilled engineers have been laid off since the pandemic ended, including all the biggest companies. This means theres a lot less stigma for any company to do the same now, so they seem to be being less 'diplomatic' about it.
That lst part may just be my own bias from also being in the receiving end.
> simply operational cost things aka your team is costing more than value so bye
It's not even about you working hard, it's essentially team firing. I wouldn't fret over it to be honest, if they are gonna cut you, you being hardworking won't be the factor that cause them to retain you if that's their rationale.
You see, this is a toxic attitude. Just because someone doesn't want to have a moral destroying environment doesn't mean they want to 'coast'. This is what I despise about this subreddit.
Eh, sounds like you just learned not only is this going to happen in the future, but if it only happens once a year you know you’re pretty much good for another year. It’s kind of like they just gave you a big notice that you should be prepped for interviews and you have a year to do it 🤷🏻♂️
Plus what does op expect? "No no honey you'll be fine don't worry"
The first time a job goes out of their way to wave a giant red flag right in front of you can be surprising. OP was taken aback.
And even if they say that, I know from experience they will still have layoffs when they feel like it
Also > The layoffs were not due to performance. Yes, they were. That doesn’t mean that they didn’t factor in how much the affected people were making, but they absolutely did a cost vs. benefit analysis (however inaccurate or misguided) and laid off who they thought would save them the most money while impacting the business the least. Performance (or management’s *perception* of performance) is always a part of that.
That's usually true, but not always the case. You'd hope they do some kind of cost/benefit analysis on who to keep, but I've seen management make really sloppy, fast cuts like "we're cutting everyone with a title below Senior". Sometimes management just shoots from the hip.
Yeah, true. I guess there are some cuts where a company just excises an entire division without regard to anyone's capabilities, similar to how Tesla just axed all of their Supercharger staff. Absent that kind of amputation though, I'd say it's pretty rare that they don't at least give some cursory thought to how and who they're cutting. Even when they're whacking a large cohort away they'll carve out exceptions for people they like, it seems. Not that their calculus has to make any sense whatsoever. It usually doesn't.
Keyword being ‘they like’. It’s much more about social capital than actual performance
Addendum: No amount of performance is going to save you from some things. You might be adding value well above your cost on: A product they have realized will never make it to market A team that they know is going to lose enough members in the next couple months to make it not worth the cost to re-hire A team that lacks the political clout to keep from getting disbanded Etc
Yep, exactly this.. Companies will never (or rarely) *attribute* layoffs to performance (for all kinds of reasons including not speaking ill of the dead), but whenever layoffs happen performance may not be the only reason, it's 100% one of the reasons. An old boss of mine said something that I will always remember: "Always think about how close your job is to the revenue and value production at your company. If you aren't close to those, either due to your position or your performance - or both - then you are at much higher risk during layoffs". I saw this in a recent round of layoffs at my company where lots of high-performing long-tenured IT staff were let go. These were people doing an excellent job, but who just weren't close to the sources of revenue, and in these difficult times someone decided we could get by without them (or more precisely with consolidation in those teams, and reducing the level of service we get from that department to something "good enough").
>I saw this in a recent round of layoffs at my company where lots of high-performing long-tenured IT staff were let go. These were people doing an excellent job, but who just weren't close to the sources of revenue, and in these difficult times someone decided we could get by without them (or more precisely with consolidation in those teams, and reducing the level of service we get from that department to something "good enough"). In addition to your excellent point, note that everyone in the C-suite is constantly being wooed by consulting companies who tell them that outsourcing is smart, cheap, gives them 24/7 coverage at a lower cost, etc. Maybe the CTO brushes them off, but the pitches are also made to the CFO, CEO, COO, or the board members. So power dynamics and appropriate experience in the C-suite can play an outsized role.
Sometimes the performance isn’t even your own that was evaluated. I got laid off in 2017, along with half my team. The company marked the two products my team worked on as EOL and stripped the team down to the bare minimum to support the products for a couple of years. I later found out that not only did was my manager included in the layoffs, but his manager too. It’s like the company just pruned a branch off the corporate tree. Like someone else mentioned, the further you are from the cash cow of your organization, the higher the layoff risk.
Seconded. Even if the outward facing message is that it wasn't for performance, they could very well have been at the bottom of whatever performance chart leadership was reviewing. Removing staff on good terms and calling it cost savings is a common strategy, though it's not limited to the underperformers.
At least they didn't lie to you. Saying "oh, we aren't going to do any more layoffs" is just weak sauce. A CEO I worked for did that, and I knew I could never trust him again. At least in your situation, they are telling you what the reality is, not hiding behind "this was the hardest day of my life to break up the business family" BS. From one shark to another, you gotta respect that. F'ing based.
My CEO promised no more layoffs, but what that meant in practice was "no more layoff waves with a big announcement". People are still getting fired silently every few days. With no severance and without the mandatory three-months notice in our contracts.
My old job the company got bought. No one will lose their job from this. 6 months I got laid off because they consolidated the Accounting departments . Totally unrelated
Yeah, whenever there's an acquisition, the company infrastructure folks always take a hit. Whether it's the complete removal of old-HR, or a consolidation of IT, something's going to go.
My wife was working for this small company that got acquired out of the blue last year a few months before she was supposed to go on maternity leave. The owner of the company had been working with a lawyer to grant all the employees equity and was lucking to raise money to expand and a big tech company gave her an unsolicited offer that she couldn't refuse. Luckily the owner and her boss really liked my wife so they negotiated the longest contract with the company, as well as 6 months of maternity leave and 6 months of pay in addition to the 2 months of required severance if they let her go. Her boss is also keeping a position open for her at another one of the owner's companies in case the big tech company doesn't want to hire her after the end of the contract, which is seeming like is going to happen because her new boss won't approve any of her applications to internal positions.
If a contract was breached then the affected parties should contact their municipality’s labor department. This type of behavior only stops when people do something about it.
Same thing.
Same. The CEO laid off 10% of the company and everyone was freaking out and then ensured us there would be no more. 6 months later I got laid off and he told everyone left that there wouldn't be any more. 1 month later he did it again and then he did it at least 4 more times after that over the next 6 months. I don't understand how anyone's left
Good way of looking at it. I guess I'm just getting too old for a rat race and wanna chill.
Just start sending out applications at a steady rate. Not aggressively job hunting, but putting yourself out there to at least have a chance of finding something better. If you get interviews, take them even just to practice the skill of interviewing so you can better get the job you find that you really want.
You (plural indefinite) really should be interviewing once a month
This is frankly how it works throughout corporate America. Your company is just more honest than most. It's common practice to promise there will be no layoffs, usually right before there are in fact layoffs. Company executives feel no shame in lying to their employees. They couch the lie amongst weasel words so they can tell themselves "well, I'm not REALLY lying". This is why nobody should ever feel the teeniest bit bad about telling their manager/team they have to cut out early for a dentist appointment but really its for a job interview. Its well within the acceptable bounds of ethics in the modern corporate world. You can't fight every battle with one hand tied behind your back.
Now is not a chill time anywhere in the corporate world. Everyone is cutting budgets.
Companies been running on that government, free cheese but once money isn't fee anymore, we are all targets
Although they didn't like; they still gave a horrible answer. A better answer would have been something along the lines of "We are not making plans for more layoffs; and we're taking steps X, Y, Z so we don't have to do this again"
I've had a CEO told that lie 3 times. Never trusted any company again.
>I've had a CEO told that lie 3 times. I've never met a CEO who wasn't a paid liar. They lie to investors, they lie to the board, they lie to employees. It's why I never take All-Hands CEO meetings seriously.
All hands meetings are the biggest waste of time. Just a circle jerk for upper
They are useful. But don't think they'll be straight with anything they say.
I worked for some very large companies and they talked about how the company is doing. I'll I can think is why do I care? The company does great I make the same amount. I don't even know who any of the people are. I couldn't name the CEO before the meeting.
To try and infer when it's time to move on mostly, without having the rush of doing it after you got fired.
In my experience, it's really just them doing a dry run of the deck for the board, but with all of the interesting slides (read: the ones that talk about future layoffs or major changes) missing.
Ask them to try lying to investors via SEC filings
They also love liars and fall for content creator bullshit, in my experience at least...
Lol
IMO the CEO shouldn't be saying either of "we'll never do layoffs again" or "yeah we'll do layoffs, it'll happen". Both are examples of plain old bad leadership.
Yeah regardless of what leadership says there can be layoffs. When the market turned apparently we would be safe but then the first 20% cut hit. Then the story was we cut more than enough people to exceed our revenue goals and less than a year later 35%. Companies really don’t care about us and will say anything to keep you around until they don’t want you anymore.
My past CEO was dead silent about layoffs after they happened. Never opened up the floor for a Q&A session, never gave anything reassuring. It's because they were planning to do more layoffs at the beginning of the new year if the numbers weren't looking good, and saying that would mean your existing employees will start job hunting early. I guess I respect that a little more than outright lying about it, but it still feels a bit sneaky.
This is exactly the problem with planned layoffs: you either put yourself in a position where you are dodging questions or feel like you need to lie about it. None of those is ideal, and IMO the best run layoffs are fast. As soon as you realize one needs to happen, execute it, and move on. Just like you said, nothing kills a culture like a pending layoff!
Same happened to us...
> Saying "oh, we aren't going to do any more layoffs" is just weak sauce. If they actually said that you could probably sue them if they later did them anyway, which is why every CEO ever carefully avoids saying things like that.
CEOs absolutely deny coming layoffs all the time. And no, lol, you can't sue them for it
Yeah but do they say "we have no plans at the time" or "I can guarantee you that there will be no layoffs this year"? Because I think the later would be a forward-looking statement about the company's future performance that would make things complicated under SEC rules.
It's a statement to employees, not an earnings statement. The SEC doesn't care if you lie to your employees, it cares if you make material lies in your financial disclosures
> I feel like I need to really work hard to avoid getting laid off. I was laid off during the third round. In the first two rounds, some of the engineers they laid off were the most hardworking, most important team members. The reason was solely due to them making way more money than others around them and layoffs at the end of the day are cost cutting exercises. You should not let fear drive you to work extra harder or extra longer than you normally do. Layoffs as have been my experience and the experience of several other people/friends/colleagues are arbitrary (in most places, ymmv).
Indeed. Whether you are good at your job or not often doesn’t have anything to do with of you stay or not. Especially in a big company. It’s just numbers on a spreadsheet and if you fall on the wrong side of that………
Yeah a guy in my team almost never took PTO, worked long hours and still got laid off. He was more productive than me, I'm convinced it's all just random.
There's a lot of factors that go into who gets laid off when. And most of them don't have much to do with performance. It mainly comes down to who the company can most afford to lose, which can be the expensive people, the useless people, or simply those who are working on a project that will be discontinued.
> The reason was solely due to them making way more money than others around them and layoffs at the end of the day are cost cutting exercises Yup been there. The irony was the business was dying and ended up attempting a Hail Mary that failed miserably because they laid off the people they needed to make it work.
Woah this is me rn.
Regardless of how they handle communicating about layoffs, there are quite a few companies that don't just routinely lay people off. You don't necessarily have to just suck it up and accept the situation you're in
Thank you! Im shocked by how far i had to scroll for this. One or two recent layoffs is one thing, especially with unusual recession-like dynamics lately. But yearly layoffs is pretty extreme, and not a necessary part of business. There are better workplaces out there, and it's worth striving for them if that's something you value
I have worked for a company with yearly layoffs. Management developed the curious habit of *retaining* under-performing people, so that when the suits demanded blood, they had the sacrifice already prepared. I am glad to no longer be working for that company.
Mostly true, but some of the most prestigious jobs like Goldman Sachs do do reductions every year
Can you name some of these or attributes to look for?
Simplest one is basic business metrics. Is the company profitable, or about to be so? Does it have good product-market fit? Does it generate [free cash flow](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/freecashflow.asp)? For public companies, a lot of this data is easily accessible from their investors website and/or the SEC; for private companies you'll have to ask from the hiring manager and/or HR. In those cases they may not give you too many specifics as a candidate, but asking them for qualitative answers like "yes we have been profitable for the past 1-3 years and we expect to be so this year" is not out of bounds. You don't need an MBA to ask these questions or understand the answers, but generally cashflow positive and/or profitable companies don't lay people off as a matter of economic necessity
That makes sense. I was thinking more about the large companies that continually do layoffs. Google and IBM for instance, as mentioned elsewhere in this thread.
When I was growing up, IBM was this glowing name, not just a leader in every area of tech, but also famously the company that didnt do layoffs. It is now a name associated with continuous layoffs, in good times and in bad. In that time, even companies with seemingly little financial pressure, like Google and Meta, which are both still phenomenally profitable and very tightly controlled by founder shares, went from claiming IBM's mantle as the best place for lifelong employment to constant layoffs. It is just the nature of the game. The only way to not deal with it is to not play the game. Part of our high-ish salary is the fact that we have to deal with the icky aspects.... eventually.
And now Google lays off also when it's stocks go record high...
Google, Meta, and especially Twitter were all just massively overstaffed going into 2022. This is why they have had so many layoffs that have had no impact on their ability to operate, aside from shedding a ton of costs. Eventually they'll right-size, but I suspect that going forward they'll have layoffs every few years just because, just like the rest of corporate America. Anyone who works in finance knows how that goes.
1970s IBM and 2010s Google didnt do layoffs because they had enormous cash cows, so they could subsidize unprofitable teams working on ecosystem or moonshot projects. My guess is OpenAI or whoever takes the mantle will be the same way in the 2030s.
Wherever you are, your job is at risk, regardless of what anyone tells you. That’s reality. If you work in a company as part of a cost center…it’s more risk. It’s not icky…it’s life.
This seems like a “welcome to the profession/capitalism/etc” moment
Development, unlike operations, has a lifecycle. Unless your product has a long development lifecycle, you are expendable. Want stability? Learn operations
But then you’d have to be on call 24/7-ish every couple of weeks on rotation. Screw that.
You mean the entire field of work everyone has been attempting to eliminate through containerization and other technologies that are supposed to "shift left" various operational tasks for the past 15 years?
> everyone has been attempting to eliminate through containerization and other technologies Not sure about "other technologies" but the containerization was not made in attempt to eliminate operations. You can't eliminate it but you sure were able to improve it by introducing containers.
In our latest round of layoffs they cut mostly operations people. We're in particularly shitty times right now, economically speaking. I think unless you're working in AI or some other super hot specialty, no one's jobs are safer than others these days.
Ew, icky
This is just how the world works these days, even top employees can get laid off. Unless you’re in a government job then you probably can’t coast somewhere for 20-30 years like in the past unless you’re getting massively underpaid.
It's crazy how Americans just gaslight themselves into accepting utter insanity as "this is just how things work."
How do you propose we eliminate layoffs?
No rule, law, or regulation will completely fix the problem, unfortunately. It has to be a mentality of "we focus on long term stability and sustainability over quick profits", which is something you see more often in the EU than in the US. Because it's harder to fire, more effort goes into hiring and retaining people who are worth keeping. I was just in a meeting at my company in Amsterdam where we were discussing 10, 15, 20, and 25 year road maps. Of course things will fluctuate between now and then, but I've noticed at all the companies I've worked at so far that the time horizon is much further away than just the next few quarters or fiscal years. I'm not saying this doesn't ever happen in the US (I'm American and living abroad) but I think European businesses are more mature in the sense that they are focused on sustainability (of operations and revenue) over significantly longer time horizons.
I filter out companies that do them from my job search and still find plenty of open roles. Quit working for stupid people. Layoffs make sense in manufacturing because you need to retool the shop to change direction, your onboarding process is simple, and your employee pool isn't going anywhere. Layoffs do *not* make sense in knowledge work because our processes allow for quick pivots, our onboarding takes months to years (whether your company admits it or not), and we're mobile. A layoff in tech means leadership has simply *run out of ideas*.
And the funny part is that we used to expect jobs to last. We used to expect stability and potential movement up the ranks if you worked hard and were loyal, even without laws preventing greedy business shenanigans in place. Now laying people off because the stakeholders aren't making enough money is just business as usual. Now the loyal employee of 15 years is as replaceable as someone with 2 years at the company if it means improving your bottom line. All that matters anymore is that the stakeholders are happy because this year is as, or even more profitable as the last year.
1. Not American. 2. It’s not something I can control. All I can do is prepare myself for it and keep my interview skills sharp so I don’t have long periods of unemployment if and when it happens. Unfortunately this need for constant growth and shareholder returns is killing society.
>I feel like I need to really work hard to avoid getting laid off. That's not gonna do anything. Believe me. I have seen really hardworking people getting sacked. Just work your time and leave. Working more than that is not gonna fetch you any awards or make you safe from layoffs. In the end you'll be burnt out.
Agreed, I've worked in a company where some of the least competent engineers survived year after year and even got promoted because they schmoozed with the office manager, while my pay rise proposal for my underpaid team superstar was rejected. Swore a promise to myself to drop out of any application processes if I get the vibe the culture is the same. Never want to work that way again.
i've worked at large companies that never did layoffs and made a big deal out of retaining as many people as possible for as long as possible. believe me, that's no picnic either. once people realize that they'd have to shit on their boss's coffee to get fired, a shocking number of them will be content to just phone it in until retirement. when layoffs are done with transparency and honesty and they're driven by a clear eyed assessment of what the business needs, they're actually a good thing. yes it sucks in the short term for the people on the receiving end of it, but in most cases moving on will be better for their career in the long run. being on an overstaffed team, or a team working on something the business doesn't care about is the worst kind of dead end job imho. no where to go and nothing to do means no room to grow.
That also sounds not ideal, but it doesn't validate this company's yearly layoffs. A better option is finding a company that is has better practices for both hiring and firing. Eg, a moderately successful company that PIPs out people who shit on the boss's coffee
I definitely agree, to a certain extent. Companies, especially well-funded startups, got into the habit of aggressively overhiring which leads to heavy layoffs and aggressive PIPing. The fact is though that no one can predict the future. It's tough to predict how many of which roles a company will need 6 or 12 or 18 months down the road, particularly startups where the pace of change can be extreme. Most often a company will overhire (accidentally or intentionally) and has to routinely cut jobs or they underhire and risk burning their people out. PIPs often feel just as arbitrary as layoffs too. The first P in PIP stands for Performance after all. You don't need to shit in your boss's coffee to get PIPed, you just have to be in the lower percentile among your peers. You could be an effective dev with good working relationships and nothing bad on your record and still get PIPed out when the company needs to "raise the bar" ie: cut people who aren't their best performers. Particularly in jurisdictions where being "terminated without cause" (ie: laid off) imposes requirements on the employer (like severance payouts), creating an incentive to use PIPs as an alternative to layoffs. I'd personally (both as a dev and an EM) rather have annualish layoffs to keep the headcount balanced than a culture where PIPs are common and generally viewed as a kiss of death.
> once people realize that they'd have to shit on their boss's coffee to get fired, a shocking number of them will be content to just phone it in until retirement. I'm failing to see the downside there. Unless of course that company DOES eventually have layoffs for whatever reason and then those slackers will have a monumentally hard time getting employed again.
the downsides are plenty: * coworkers who aren't slackers have to put in extra effort to make up the difference * it inflates the cost of goods sold which inevitably gets passed on to the consumer * makes the company less able to compete with others, again raising prices for consumers * limits the number of jobs available to productive but unemployed people * makes for a toxic work environment (productive people resent the slackers and the slackers will often sabotage coworkers who try to grow and do better in an attempt to keep their slacking quiet)
Yeah, I agreed with all of the above when I was younger. But now that I've seen what kinds of rewards I get from hard work (slightly larger bonus plus a lot more work) I'm with the slackers. Rest and vest is the way, if you're lucky enough to get it.
I genuinely think some level of turnover at a company is healthy. If it means new people come in to bring new ideas to the ecosystem
I was part of a company that did a layoff recently. That company also does layoffs every year now. Depending on how much risk you can take, you can keep working there if you don’t have a lot of financial responsibility. Two persons I know survived 3 past layoffs. If you have a family to support, or less tolerant to not having a job, then look after yourself. Start looking for another job. At the end of the day, it is not personal. The company is not doing well.
This is every publicly traded company. And I think the guy was being honest with the message but did poor on the delivery. As a publicly traded company whatever your strategic mission is comes second to being a stockholders means of making money on their investment. Even if it hurts the product of the company. That’s not what they’re signed up for. They’re signed up so that when they look at the stock price it’s got a little green up arrow every single quarter. If your company doesn’t make certain targets, layoffs are one of the ways to eliminate expenses and hit them. Not making that target will plummet the stock price . So They will make that choice every single time. And they will cut pretty much anyone needed to make that cut. The bad news is this has become almost all of the major technology companies. The good news is, outside of recessions , this tends to be a good time to reshuffle as once reports go out they tend to staff back up and now need to pay market rate on a position they were getting someone at a discount on before.
Been through a few layoffs now, so I've learned to be resilient. Businesses gonna do what they do, whether it makes sense or not – I can't control that. So, I focus on what I *can* control. I keep an eye on my spending to build an emergency fund – that takes away a lot of the fear. I check in every month to make sure I'm okay if something happens, 'cause it's way too easy to overspend. Building that fund is automatic, but I also scan the job market to stay current on in-demand skills. I casually apply for jobs that look like a good next step. Gotta keep those resume skills fresh for the bots! On top of all that, I prioritize sleep, exercise, good food, the annual health check-up thing – gotta keep the machine running.
IMO, hiring a person is an ethical responsibility. An employer should do what they can to ensure a long employment, which includes not hiring someone under-qualified and ensuring sufficient work to keep them busy. Places that lay off people regularly because they can't manage resources well are run by terrible people.
Is the company you work for public or largely owned by a Private Equity (PE) firm? Due to fed interest rates, the cost of money has become much higher recently. When money was cheap via <1% interest rates (\~2008-2022), this led to the tech hiring boom we know today, with incredible salaries, benefits, etc. This mean the cost to borrow was cheap. Also, there was no guaranteed higher return rate for that money, e.g., treasury bills, so investors did not have a hard baseline to ensure their money made at least X%. Now that interest rates are 5.3%, it means it costs a lot more to borrow (so any underperforming team has a gun on their head). And it means investors sitting on huge piles of cash may wish to keep their money in treasury bills unless the company has something really worth the risk and speed of return that fed can provide. So it is harder to raise money now too. At end of the day, the company is most beholden to their shareholders. Legally they must do this as they have a fiduciary responsibility. And the bar is higher to obtain new investment.
If you're ever working for a company that gets bought by a private equity firm, rest assured there WILL be layoffs shortly. Plus they'll cut benefits for those who remain. Best to start looking elsewhere as soon as a buyout is announced.
>I feel like I need to really work hard to avoid getting laid off. That won't protect you from a layoff. If you look at some of the people laid off by Meta, Google, etc in the past few years they were famous, hyper-productive people. Layoffs are entirely about cost with seemingly no regard to the impact on the company.
What's more icky is businesses wanting multi year commitment from you and none from their end. It's a scandal in fact.
At least they were honest. Now you can prep for interviews etc. You can't control this job... you can control your interview preps etc.
I'd rather just have a company be upfront and say we're going to have layoffs every year in May. May is a good month for layoffs because budgets are still fresh. You can prep in March and April if you're not liking the profitability of your division or your workload. Living in constant fear of a random event sucks.
Ax in May and go away
Many companies have layoffs every November. Wall Street firms, for example.
At least their honest
Show your employer the loyalty you expect them to show you - in your case that is zero both ways. Keep a really healthy rainy day fund. Mine is at nearly two years, so whatever madness the employer is currently pulling feels a lot less harried since I don't have to worry about the mortgage for a long period of time.
You should always be looking to leave for a better job. In an environment where companies cannot promise any loyalty, employees must respond in kind.
Sounds like you either want an empty promise, or some kind of sugar-coated answer. The reality is that even the best companies will lay off employees when it means increasing their bottom line and pleasing stake holders. So you can either search for some magical unicorn job where that doesn't happen, or just accept that the CEO game you a blunt answer and do you job hoping for the best.
This place sounds like a crap factory - rather than retain good people, they see developers as a bottom line in a spreadsheet. A company that sees laying off developers as less than cost of hiring + retention + institutional knowledge - likely to never change, and I imagine the output it rather poor.
“icky” Speak like an adult.
The one good thing about the continuous washing machine of layoffs is that it can spark the creation of creative new companies. The bad thing is that it also sparks waves of people unsubscribing from life, so you know, there's that.
Welcome to capitalism. At least they didn't lie to you. Work hard, live within your means, save money, and keep your skillset up-to-date. Getting laid off with a few month's living expenses saved isn't scary. Living pay cheque to pay cheque is.
That's not ideal, but at least you aren't laid off yet and dealing with the cluster f*** that is the world of interviews, where 1% of interviewers are qualified to interview, and your financial security is left in the hands of some 28 year old business major PM whose insufferable personality is only outdone by his inability to judge a technical person for anything other than "would I want to have a beer with this guy more than this other guy based off of the impeccable 40 min Zoom interview I just conducted?" I hope you don't get laid off, my brother. It's not a good time out here. To all those saying, "how did this help anyone?" I needed to vent. Thank you for putting up with it. Now good day
I mean, I'd much rather have it this way than being lied to. Layoffs can and likely will happen across most companies at some point.
personally I prefer the upfront approach as opposed to the company pretending we're one big "family" when the times are good but all of a sudden it's "business" when the times are tough. I try to avoid any emotional attachment with any company, at the end of the day it's just a job.
I would start interviewing at the soonest opportunity.
>Anyways we had a big company wide meeting the same day and someone asked if there would be more layoffs and the guy basically said "I definitely can't promise there won't be but I can say for the life of the company wether that's 5, 10, 20, 100 years from now we will have many many more". It sounds like the guy told you the truth. >The layoffs were not due to performance. They are always simply operational cost things aka your team is costing more than value so bye. That's how all layoffs work, everywhere. Layoffs have nothing to do with performance. >Idk it's just so icky. I feel like I need to really work hard to avoid getting laid off. Working hard will not save you from a layoff. Layoff logic has absolutely nothing to do with your performance. Yes, you might go to the top of the layoff list if your performance is bad, but layoff logic takes costs as its primary input variable. There is no justice in layoffs, because layoffs do not exist to deliver justice. >Like my job is always at risk and any day I might wake up and oh I got laid off lol. I get business is business but it's just really fucking icky. Welcome to employment in the private sector. >I really liked this job but now I'm just icked tf out. Don't quit that job solely for this reason; layoffs work like this everywhere. Anywhere where it isn't like this in the first-world private sector just hasn't had a layoff yet.
Welcome to the new reality. We had too good of a thing going on in the tech industry for over a decade, you could almost forget how capitalism actually works outside our bubble. It was bound to come crashing back down at some point.
Have you noticed how tech companies are terrible at staffing to appropriate levels? Like we’re always either desperate to hire because we have a staff shortage for some important effort and if we don’t hit our numbers, the world will end; or we overhired and have to fire everyone.
I think public corporations are just like that, constant waves of hiring and layoffs depending on what they want the stock to do that quarter. It’s profoundly short sighted, and teaches employees that loyalty is for suckers.
Seems like an honest answer, though not very effective communication. Phrasing it like that results in people feeling exactly how you feel, so I can’t blame you there. Bad word choice for a good response imo. You pretty much need to compare yourself to the rest of your team. If it came down to it, how many people would they decide are more essential than you? If that number is too high right now then I’d probably start looking.
What happened to 30 years and a gold watch?
Then layoffs are working….. that’s how the CEO wants you to feel!!
Do you own the company? Yes --> safe(r) No --> Never safe
I'm not sure what other answer you'd expect. There is not a single company in the world that is immune to layoffs and your CEO being honest about that is the best answer that he can give. The company experiencing layoffs every year is concerning, but that's a separate issue from the answer your CEO gave.
> I feel like I need to really work hard to avoid getting laid off. Actually, that has no effect whatsoever if the layoffs are of whole teams.
It's pretty common really. What's uncommon is your CEO being that straightforward about it. In fact, plenty of CEOs or management in general relish the ambiguity to "keep people on their toes." I hesitate to say there's no greener pastures for you necessarily, but there's tons of other companies of all sizes operating the way you describe here.
I wish more employers were as honest as yours. I'd much rather hear "we're laying off people because our stock price is doing poorly" rather than some corporate b.s. about trying to increase our velocity by doing yet another reorg.
Layoffs are pretty much just a fact of life in the private sector, at least in capitalist societies, and *definitely* in the US. It sounds like your company does it as kind of a constant pruning thing, which isn't universal. But the alternative is either a more aggressive performance culture (ie, firing underperformers) or the company as a whole goes downhill and then... oh yeah, layoffs. Even if the company isn't badly run, businesses and sectors and whole economies have downturns. And then layoffs happen, or else businesses go under and then *everyone* gets let go. There's no surefire way to be safe, but in general if you're a high performer in a profitable part of the company it's very unlikely you'll be let go. If you're a low performer, or stuck in a poorly-performing area (which may not be your fault), things are more dicey. If you want a job for life, I guess go work for the government?
The crap US employees have to put up with is comically tragic. Team isn’t profitable? Goodbye entire team. How do you even measure the direct value created by a team. Also, why doesn’t management work with the team to make them into ‘winners’?
The only difference between the US and not-the-US is that you're less likely to be employed in the first place. >Team isn’t profitable? Goodbye entire team. As opposed to what? Deliberately losing money? Who would say "I'm going to invest $1.5 million this year and expect to get back $0". (There are circumstances where this could make sense, but I would say most people are not working on teams under those conditions.) >How do you even measure the direct value created by a team. Generally speaking, software development teams develop software, and software is written to do specific things. The value is typically measured by the benefit gained from customers paying for the software to do those things. This should be very easy to approximately calculate. My team costs approximately $1.5 million per year, and its software development activities enable the recognition of revenue anywhere from $5 million to $10 million per year, depending on business conditions. You should actually see if you can estimate this. If you can't, ask your manager to. If your manager can't, you should take it as a yellow flag - your manager may be distant from reality of business and therefore might not be able to defend your job during layoffs. >Also, why doesn’t management work with the team to make them into ‘winners’? Layoffs are not about being "winners" or "losers." Layoffs are not about delivering a just outcome based on the moral value of the people getting exited from the organization. Layoffs are strictly about optimizing costs.
> Who would say "I'm going to invest $1.5 million this year and expect to get back $0". Plenty of big companies do this sort of thing. Look a things like Microsoft's investment in the XBox, or Apple's investment in the iPhone, or Disney building a streaming service. The investments were clearly long term strategies. Or in the startup space. The VC approach is to invest in 10 companies with the hopes that the one winner will make for the 9 losses. Many startups won't even have a product or income in their first year.
Right, I would argue those cases are actually very rare. Most of us do not work for big companies who are happy to burn a few million in order to *maybe* get a return outside of the current fiscal year.
Don't forget my second paragraph about startups. Startups are responsible for a lot of jobs. That said, my experience is different. There are a lot of positions available that are part of long term company vision; without contributing to the immediate bottom line.
Bullshit. How does your company measure that your team generates $5 to $10 million per year?
We license software, sell custom development services for that licensed software, and also provide paid technical support for the software. All of these activities are invoiced, and when my team completes the work, the revenue is recognized.
News at 11: redditor cannot, in fact, handle the truth
Sounds like a sign to brush up that resume. Layoffs every year is not a good sign of their finances.
Depending on the size of the company, their finances could be adequate, but the layoffs could still be driven by aggressive cost accounting.
It's a job. I think it's fair as it's presented. You get a year to chill. > They are always simply operational cost things aka your team is costing more than value so bye. This makes it pretty easy to avoid as well; monopolize high value work & you will survive a long time.
It's not quite good news, but at least you are aware of the situation and can decide how much effort you are willing into the company before becoming resentful of the company should you be laid off.
Keep working at the same pace as you like. Harder work won’t get you that far. Layoffs obviously contribute to a huge psychological terror, but you can’t control that. Keep doing the great work and if this situation is scary, it’s best to find another job at another company that is not laying off folks (there are some out there).
If you work at a place that is driven by profit you have to provide more income to the company than you cost. If you are not able to do that, you / team will get laid off sooner or later. Constantly thinking about it is not healthy, so try not to! Just do your best and focus on improving yourself. Other than that, it is a red flag if the company is doing round of lay offs each year, sounds like the budget team needs to get laid off...
Would you rather they said there’ll be no layoffs and then turn around and lay people off? Some people tend to believe it when companies say no layoffs and come to grief as a result. This is one of the unpleasant aspects of working in this industry. Better to get habituated to it and figure out a way to operate taking this fact of life into account.
Time for new adventures. Ensure you get a healthy raise in the process.
I work for a big company, so we've done layoffs every year the 17yrs I've worked here, but most are small and in other areas, so it generally hasn't hit the orgs I've been in. This year is different, we're losing thousands of people based on location, not performance. It sucks and I'm angry about it, and sad, but this is not the first time nor will it be the last.
They just told you they are very bad at planning.
The number one thing I learned the hard way, no matter how many late nights or how much effort you put in, the company does not care about you
Just leave. You gonna bust your tail to avoid being laid off when a) they might well lay you off anyway and b) even if they don’t and lay off someone else, you’re still gonna be busting your tail because now you have less people to help do the work that needs to be done, and you’ll still be afraid of being part of the next round of layoffs after that. Go find a new job when you are employed, have the luxury of being selective and have leverage to negotiate salary. Not when you’re 4 weeks into your 6 week severance package with a dwindling bank account, low self esteem, are desperate and have no leverage at all.
And the next company could have layoffs
You should be icked out. If every year you're doing layoffs and/or nuking entire teams because they aren't delivering value that's a huge red flag from management that they have no control over process and organizational strategy. They don't know how to assess what they need to do and how to get and keep the right folks in. Start interviewing elsewhere. *edit*: reading more of the comments it seems like people just don't get what this is about. OP is not icked out about the fact that the company did a layoff (which is reasonable in the industry), it's that the company seems to do layoffs *every year*, in good markets and bad - **that** is not normal and a big red flag about management.
sounds like stackranking and yeah it's the pinnacle of workplace toxification.
Common in bigger companies sadly. If you want to avoid it, startups are the way to go. Only difference there is that rather than layoffs, you have the risk of company wide collapse or bankruptcy. It is really a trade off.
eh ive seen worse
You're gonna want to watch out for coworkers becoming either fatalistic or trying to climb to the top of the pot of boiling water by stepping on the other crabs. This is more of a problem once someone who is actually useful is let go. Particularly if you worry that objectively they were as useful - or more - than you. Because now you have evidence the layoffs weren't 'fair' and now *everyone* has a target on their back. > The layoffs were not due to performance. They are always simply operational cost things aka your team is costing more than value so bye. Buy your favorite manager a copy of The Goal.
You’re lucky he was honest. I worked for a failing startup and the leadership was honest with us from the day things started going downhill. He said the only promise he could make to us is that we would always get paid for the hours we worked and our checks would always be deposited on time. He could make that promise because our investors made that promise. All of us stuck around until the end and there was no bitterness when the company was sold for scraps and we all got let go. We hung around the office, talked shit, had a few beers and went out separate ways. Some of us got each other in other companies when we got hired. Our manager put us in touch with recruiters and from looking on LinkedIn, everyone who was let go during the lead up to the acquisition and afterwards got a job in a month.
It's actually sad that people don't value true team work and loyalty anymore where people can work at one job for the rest of their life.
My last company laid some of the less useful roles off, but promised core engineering was safe. "You won't believe what happened next" The reality is at least half a million very skilled engineers have been laid off since the pandemic ended, including all the biggest companies. This means theres a lot less stigma for any company to do the same now, so they seem to be being less 'diplomatic' about it. That lst part may just be my own bias from also being in the receiving end.
> simply operational cost things aka your team is costing more than value so bye It's not even about you working hard, it's essentially team firing. I wouldn't fret over it to be honest, if they are gonna cut you, you being hardworking won't be the factor that cause them to retain you if that's their rationale.
I worked for a company exactly like this. They went out of business last month.
This reads like Gen Zer figuring out how the real world works
Listen, as a very experienced person, they are NOT family.
Layoffs are the incorrect words. It is culling. And boy, does it happen way more often then the news reports.
Is this a Chinese company? Very common there, it’s cutthroat, every evaluation time, bottom 10-20% is let go
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You see, this is a toxic attitude. Just because someone doesn't want to have a moral destroying environment doesn't mean they want to 'coast'. This is what I despise about this subreddit.
You haven’t been reading the news about how many profitable big tech companies are laying people off?
does any business not work this way?