The reality of one's lack of value to one's own employer is often baffling. It makes you wonder how anyone manages to stay employed at all, since apparently everyone is replicable and unimportant. I have been through layoffs where other people on my team, doing the same job I did approximately as well, got laid off. No explanation given for why them and not me. And it could happen to me at any time.
It doesn't matter how good my evals are or how big my contributions. It doesn't matter that there are multiple multi-million-dollar revenue streams which exist in large part due to my contributions. It doesn't matter that I have been told I am good enough that I should be promoted to the next level. Raises barely exist, let alone promotions. Because theoretically some other engineer could have done the same work I actually did, the fact that I'm the one who did it doesn't matter and I deserve no reward for doing it beyond the minimum money necessary to secure my labor.
Under those conditions, why should I - or anyone - do any more than the minimum necessary to not get fired for cause? If the company doesn't see me as more than X dollars for X revenue, why should I?
Layoffs in particular are like this because they're planned very quickly by very small groups of people. Rumors of impending layoffs obliterate morale, so the people in charge do everything they can to maintain secrecy and minimize the time between people hearing about layoffs and the layoffs taking effect. This basically always translates to random-seeming decisions - priority 1 is to cut costs by X amount, choosing the right people to cut is secondary. This means that, for example, engineers that have received performance-based raises are punished since, on paper, they do the same job as lower-performing but lower-paid engineers.
Not defending the process(the right way to break this equilibrium is statutory requirements for layoffs a la the WARN act) but that's why you see the outcomes you do.
In this particular case the impending layoff was basically obvious to everyone months in advance (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42893463).
> Rumors of impending layoffs obliterate morale
Granted, but it seems like the current way of salary-first, performance-blind cutting obliterates it even harder.
Really, all options obliterate morale.
Laying off people who you rank as "low end" on the acceptable performance scale, might mean you kill structurally important bricks that were not optimizing for being higher than "high enough" on that scale, and cannibalizes people working on anything valuable long-term but hard to justify to management short-term.
Laying off high performers means people don't want their head to be poking up, so they sabotage their own visibility to try being "good enough", while also killing people's motivations.
Laying off randomly kills people's morale directly worst of all, because that implies there's nothing they can do to change the outcome, and impotence is worse, arguably, than anything else for many people.
Any style of layoff is going to be bad for morale, but rumors floating around tank morale for as long as those rumors exist, and then moral takes another hit on the actual day. In that way it makes sense to just rip the Band-Aid off.
Of course, if you ask me, a more sensible plan to keep morale and lower costs would be getting rid of a few executives, but what do I know? I'm just a number on a spreadsheet.
Managers don't have the kind of information necessary to plan layoffs that don't seem random. Anything they know is already being used for the usual hiring/promotion/compensation adjustment process.
It seems rather disappointing if typical management would make such impactful decisions so rapidly that their "on paper" analysis couldn't be made clever enough to consider more than a single variable.
Your relationship with your employer is no different than any other business relationship. You can do the bare minimum, just as there are many businesses that do the bare minimum toward their customers, and those businesses often have a low subsistence level of success; if you do the same, you may have the same level of success in your career.
An employment relationship can offer a lot of things for both sides. For the employer, your labor of course. For the employee, a salary of course. But it can also offer experience, access to other talented and intelligent individuals and access to capital to learn and try things, networking, relationships, opportunities for promotion and perhaps opportunities to find better employment elsewhere, or the skills and/or connections to start your own business.
Your attitude toward work should be the same as the attitude you take towards the rest of your life. You can "rot" or you can make the most of every opportunity.
This is a lesson that all senior developers know pretty well, that is why companies rather hire naive juniors, instead folks that already mastered how the game gets played, and cannot be sold on company mission, values, or whatever snake oil gets talked about during interview process.
And while I was still employed as a seasoned developer (before recently retiring) I felt it was my role to pass along some of my cynicism to the new hires and younger devs. Some of them seemed a little surprised to see me call bullshit in a group meeting. (Good luck to you boys and girls.)
Meanwhile, they all roll their eyes at the "jaded greybeard" advice. I know, because many years ago I was doing the eye rolling. I guess some lessons really can only be learned through experience.
The important part is that when they see the first thing you warned them about, they remember about all the other things you have also mentioned.
I like to think they'll remember some day.
Not all. You're talking about douchebag companies.
If I try to hire someone in the future, and I'm talking straight with a candidate, about how we do things and what we're looking for, and they just nod their head, like I'm going through BS rituals that your stereotypical MBA thinks is professional to say but not mean... I will be sad.
And if, while they're BSing me, they're congratulating themselves on having "mastered how the game gets played"... I will be angry.
(This is another reason I won't Leetcode interview. It's signalling that the company is all about disingenuous baggery theatre.)
Unfortunately for you you work and live in an environment created by other companies and its likely that if your company succeeds its one acquisition or bad top level management play from invalidating everything you implicitly or even explicitly promised.
I have worked for "good companies" before - and they have a tendency to make money and be targets for bad companies, add enough zeroes and even the good guys sell.
Which are the non douchebag companies?
Start by eliminating all publicy traded companies from the list, and you've increased the percentage of non douchebag company in your list by quite a bit.
"I have been through layoffs where other people on my team, doing the same job I did approximately as well, got laid off. No explanation given for why them and not me. And it could happen to me at any time."
Usually there is a hidden variable that you don't know. It is your salary. That is why it sometimes looks surprising when senior roles are cut that look extremely valuable to the company from the outset. Maybe they were that valuable but still deemed to expensive.
> Usually there is a hidden variable that you don't know.
This is frequently the case. I've worked at big employers (comparable in level of corporate-ness to Google if not absolute size) where the layoff process, roughly was:
1. Aggregate layoff target gets set and apportioned amongst functional leaders, then targets cascaded down to the line manager level.
2. Managers fill out a stack ranking spreadsheet for their team across a few metrics including a boolean "diversity" field[0]. There were many rumors about the "diversity field", most notably that anyone so flagged would not be fired, but so far as I could tell these were false (see point #4)
3. People to be fired are developed based on these lists (I.e., if a manager has to fire two people, then the two lowest-ranked employees per the spreadsheet are selected.)
4. HR does a meta-analysis of all to-be-fired employees, ensuring that a disproportionate number of employees from protected classes are not impacted. If too many are, then some of the next-lowest-ranked employees are selected to be fired in their stead.
As far as I could tell, the only part of the process where any sort of individual, human consideration was occurring was maybe at the line manager level if they decided to tweak the stack rankings based on who they felt deserved to be protected. And then, to the extent that happens, you have all the problems with bias and favoritism that come into play.
0 - I realize this is probably controversial, but I saw it with my own eyes.
For some perspective, the bulk of this is simply illegal in the Netherlands, likely other countries in the EU as well:
- layoff plans must be communicated ahead of time. Minimum 30 days notice, usually much more
- Needs to be negotiated with worker representatives (works council, syndicate if there is one)
- LIFO principle for layoffs, newest employees are let go first. Stack ranking not possible
- Any kind of discrimination is forbidden
- At a minimum, you get 2 months pay + accrued holidays
It's baffling to imagine that you could learn about your job disappearing from one day to the next, and be immediately left out in the cold.
> layoff plans must be communicated ahead of time. Minimum 30 days notice, usually much more
In the United States, employers with more than 100 full-time, non-probationary employees must provide 60 days notice of most planned layoffs[0]
> - LIFO principle for layoffs, newest employees are let go first. Stack ranking not possible
This is functionally equivalent to a stack ranking in that it is a forced-distribution scheme. It is just based on a single factor that is outside of the employee's control. Say what you want about stack ranking, but people do have a large degree of control over their job performance.
> Any kind of discrimination is forbidden
In the United States any kind of job discrimination against members of protected classes[1] in illegal. Even inadvertently disparately impacting[2] members of a protected group is illegal.
0 - https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/termination/plantclosings
1 - https://www.eeoc.gov/employers/small-business/3-who-protecte...
2 - https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/disparate_impact
> In the United States, employers with more than 100 full-time, non-probationary employees must provide 60 days notice of most planned layoffs[0]
This seemed quite surprising to me, and from reading your reference, I don't think it's nearly as broad a protection as it seems to me like you're stating it. the law seems to apply to companies that you describe, but the types of events that they need to provide notice for don't seem like "most planned layoffs" to me; the employee guide lists the following as potentially being covered:
• A plant closing (see glossary)—where your employer shuts down a facility or operating unit (see glossary) within a single site of employ- ment (see glossary and FAQs) and lays off at least 50 full-time workers;
• A mass layoff (see glossary)—where your employer lays off either between 50 and 499 full-time workers at a single site of employment and that number is 33% of the number of full-time workers at the sin- gle site of employment; or
• A situation where your employer (see glossary) lays off 500 or more full-time workers at a single site of employment
I don't think most layoffs in the US are due to shutting down an entire office, a third of an office with at least 150 people, or 500 people from the same office. I'd expect most layoffs to either be much less concentrated in a single location or not large enough to hit the defined thresholds.
[0] https://www.dol.gov/agencies/eta/layoffs/warn [1] https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/ETA/Layoff/pdfs/Worke...
Most states have a WARN act that covers even more. For example, California - https://edd.ca.gov/en/jobs_and_training/Layoff_Services_WARN...
While federal law has:
California law has:> In the United States, employers with more than 100 full-time, non-probationary employees must provide 60 days notice of most planned layoffs[0]
I'm not sure how that works, because I've been at a US company that did layoffs and they suddenly announced the layoff saying the impacted employees would be notified within a day.
Except for France and other European countries, where they announced the beginning of the process meaning the number and list of people let go wasn't decided yet (it would have been illegal).
There's no such thing as a protected group in US law - a protected class means a certain property of someone that employment decisions can't depend on, not a value of that property.
First, I'll say it is pretty common to use the terms interchangeably. I don't think anyone was confused by what I wrote, or that your "clarification" was in any way helpful. See, for example, these legal groups using the term "protected group" in relation to US employment law:
* https://www.osbar.org/public/legalinfo/1095_DiscriminationEm...
* https://pedersenlaw.com/practice-areas/discrimination/
Secondly, I used the phrase "protected group" referring to disparate impact, and here, your assertion (to the extent it has any validity at all) is simply incorrect. The entire idea is to ferret out subtle acts of discrimination that have an outsize impact on a group consisting of members of a protected class, and in the case law you see the phrase "protected group" used explicitly. For example:
0 - https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=637945611431669...Companies in the US have been blatantly discriminating against some classes for years, and now must turn around and blatantly discriminate against other classes now (based on the current ‘anti-DEI’ stance). Racism and sexism in hiring in Europe and Asia has always been a thing, and quite blatant too.
it’s also a bit baffling that someone who’s been at the company longer than myself could have an advantage simply for being born before me, or for applying before me.
Is work performance not a key deciding factor? One could argue that’s absurd.
I don’t think the way it’s done in the U.S. is “right”, but i don’t think what you listed is right either.
Layoffs are for companies to reduce the size of their workforce and lower operating costs, skill distribution remains the same – there are various exceptions to ensure this.
If some employees are underperforming they should already be on their way out. That also is a process protected by law (no at-will employment here), otherwise layoffs would just be an excuse to expedite firings without going through the necessary steps. In short, being employed assumes you can perform at a satisfactory level, which makes sense to me. The flipside is that hiring is a much bigger commitment as people are not disposable.
Voluntary severance packages are usually offered ahead of layoffs, and include compensation based on years worked, so things can balance out a little.
The whole regulations are more about the social impact. Younger employees have an easier time re-arranging their lives and finding new jobs, are less likely to apply for welfare, and still have time left to switch careers, so this benefits everyone.
>Layoffs are for companies to reduce the size of their workforce and lower operating costs, skill distribution remains the same – there are various exceptions to ensure this.
But since this subthread is discussing LIFO layoffs, the problem is that generally the last in is also the lowest paid - not always of course - but if so it means that to hit your operating cost point you might need to reduce more people than you would if you could pick and choose.
Seniority based systems are ‘I got mine, f u’ or ‘politics in action’ depending on how you look at it.
More senior employees have usually figured out how to get leverage on the employer over time.
Non-seniority are usually ‘cheapest is best’, or ‘do what I say, or else’.
Both have pros and cons for everyone involved. There is always some system though, even if it’s emergent.
> LIFO principle for layoffs, newest employees are let go first. Stack ranking not possible
Newer employees often see this as incredibly unfair.
If it’s the rule, everyone knows it. There is no guessing about randomness or hidden variables, and ultimately less favoritism than a line manager coming up with a stack ranking.
Looking at the larger picture, what otherwise tends to happen is that older people get pushed out. Then we have a massive issue of them ending up unemployed because nobody wants to hire them. This is compounded by the retirement age being pushed further and further away.
Because it is unfair. It just tends to benefit people employed today
It's not about being fair to the individual, it's about producing a better outcome for society. In this case, saving money on welfare (that's also in great measured pooled across society, not an individual account).
Parents being able to take sick days to care for their kids, or 50yo being able to take leaves to take care of their dying 80yo parents are also unfair to kids in their 20s just starting out.
The only fair system is a random lottery - which is also the most terrifying for everyone.
Then again, if we did have a random lottery that required all employees (up to and including the CEO) to participate, then perhaps we'd see fewer layoffs...
why would the company want that?
I think you need to look at some of the recent Dutch firing sprees and figure out if that'd actualy respected ;)
Thank you for sharing this important information. What does a company in the Netherlands do when an employee is underperforming? Do they get "PIP'd" like Amazon? Then, eventually let go with some standard severance package?
I can't talk about the Netherlands but if it's like France: the process is very different in the case of layoffs, where you want to reduce the workforce for economical reasons (e.g. shrinking revenues), and firing an individual employee. In the first case employees are not let go on the basis of the performances.
Firing individual employees for performances or because they made a serious offense is a different completely process. Whether they get a severance package or not depends on the reason of the firing.
Yes and no, as it is a difficult process because employer needs to prove it is not their fault that employee is not performing. To begin with you need to collect data over time, so pip is kind of a choice you’d go through to start collecting detailed info, then it might be that a simple course could help solve this if it is a knowledge based issue, then maybe there is another job in the company the employee could switch to, etc. Without any doubt employers do not like the process, it is easier to eliminate positions instead because it is not technically firing.
> diversity field
If this was even in the spreadsheet, whether or not it were used, the current administration would love to hear about it.
This was more than a decade ago, so I doubt they care that much, and if you want to accuse me of being a liar, please have the integrity to just say that.
ok, and also "big thieves hate little thieves." Very-well paid executives (stock) remove very well paid employees (salary) and benefit from the actions. This is an old situation in industrial business -- the high tech crowd are filled with self-grandeur and do not believe it, on a large scale IMHO.
Eh, or you could think of it as ‘cut 10 people to move the needle x percent, or cut 1’.
If you need to hit a specific number, guess which one is going to be less paperwork….
The part here too is ‘valuable to whom’. If they can saddle the middle manager or director with the same responsibilities/expectations, while cutting 10% (say) of the costs - guess what they are going to do.
Is it ultimately short sighted? Probably. But good luck connecting point A and point B in these situations when everyone is thinking quarter to quarter.
You spend half your waking hours at work.
Having a shitty attitude for that much of your life is no way to live.
On the contrary, being stuck in a situation where your livelihood can disappear at a moment's notice due to factors beyond your control is no way to live, but it's also not really something most people will ever be able to avoid. I don't at all buy into the idea that somehow pretending the situation isn't shitty is somehow more virtuous or fulfilling; what you call a "shitty attitude" sounds more like "being realistic about how one's work is valued" to me.
> being stuck in a situation where your livelihood can disappear at a moment's notice due to factors beyond your control is no way to live
That is literally the only way to live. Disaster stalks us an is only ever one misstep away (sometimes literally). In rare instances people can even just fall over and die.
In the sense that there should be food and shelter for everyone, even poor people; strictly speaking I think most countries have already agreed to that. Although how well that gets implemented is open to a lot of debate. But beyond that everything can always change at a moments notice.
I've spent several decades writing software. Got laid off 1-2 times per decade.
I still tried doing a good job every day, and feel very good about that.
To me, being realistic about the risk of losing my job at any time means having enough money that I can be unemployed for 6-12 months.
The major way good programmers get jobs is by being recommended by people they've worked with at previous companies. That doesn't happen if you deliberately do as little good work as you can get away with.
My "shitty attitude" comment is maybe more a personal philosophy that something universal. But I do not want to spend each work day being bitter and resentful. You may intend to punish your shitty employer, but I think you're mostly poisoning your own mind.
Working hard for a place that will not reward me is no way to live.
And with less dedication, I can spend far less than half my time there ;)
Nor is sticking your head in the sand.
Check out the book called "The Gervais Principle" which develops this kind of cynical approach to a significant depth.
I've noticed a disturbing trend in the last year or so where a company announces a significant layoff, saying it needed to let go of "underperforming employees" or similar wording. I've been in this industry for a long time, experienced several layoffs, but this way to announce a layoff (publicly calling-out "underperforming employees") feels new to me. It also feels shady - like, announcing to the industry, "Don't hire these losers we just got rid of. LOL"
> Under those conditions, why should I - or anyone - do any more than the minimum necessary to not get fired for cause?
No, you shouldn't. I know it feels like "but I thought that if I like cleaning my own apartment then getting a job as a janitor would leave me deeply fulfilled" but that's not how it works.
You're right but our current model of society depends on there being people who don't ask the same question.
If you do only the minimum necessary to not get fired, then wouldn’t you be the person that needs to be fired the next time the the budget is cut, since you are the lowest ROI of all, all other things equal?
In theory, you'd think so.
In practice, due to the phenomenon described here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43662738, it's less relevant than you think. Specifically at Google, there have been reports of high performers, recently promoted with excellent ratings before and after the promotion, getting the sack.
In my experience, people who do good work do so because they enjoy the work and feel motivated, not due to any kind of performance management system or threat. Destroy the joy or motivation, and you've just destroyed a large part of the performance of these self-driven people.
People often talk about "10x engineers", but not how it's possible to destroy a 10x engineer and turn them into a (let's be generous) 2x engineer, and I think capricious layoffs are a great way to do just that.
No. It's clear individual level of effort doesn't matter. That's the point.
Cheer up - Sometimes it’s also a convenient cover for reprisals, back stabby office politics, racism/sexism, etc.