But, i wonder, in general, if all these layoffs are to some degree something overdue that companies wanted to do anyways and are now just taking the opportunity to do it whilst still saving face.
I think you're also going to see management at surviving businesses exploit the downturn to their advantage. Lots of rationalization as to why you won't see raises, why you'll need to work more to pick up the slack, lots of "be greatful" (there's some validity here), lots of pay/hour cuts, etc. that will likely perpetuate long after the crisis has rebounded and balance sheets are in the green again. Its funny how quickly businesses react to cut costs but are slow to react to shore up their current employees.
You're also going to see employers who lay-off yet justify continual hiring in this marketplace. Businesses will try to capture high quality labor talent at reduced costs (due to competition) and lock in those rates for awhile (hoping some will stay and be happy with modest raises on their significantly reduced labor rates).
One place I work with, management claims everything is fine and they've locked down all non-essential hiring, but I keep active monitoring on popular labor marketplaces for them and see continual updated advertising, even after they've claimed to stop hiring. Some of it's automated but I know for a fact a few places manually renewed listings intentionally. They're not locking hiring, they're looking for discounts right now because they know they're financially solid and will weather this storm just fine.
I love many aspects of technology but am really growing to hate industry practices to the point of looking at career changes.
Agree with your post (and upvoted) but wanted to point out that these labor practices common to capitalism and so you're likely to find it just as bad outside of tech. In some industries, worse than others, for sure. But this is the Faustian bargain that we signed up.
(Personally, having worked some really terrible jobs outside of tech, I wouldn't leave it.)
1) Those little docks like in Venice (cf. "Let me off at this jetty" in The Last Crusade).
2) The jetty server library that Jenkins uses which shows up in error messages.
The whole point - the only purpose of a codename is that it doesn't give the game away.
A:
Jokes aside, I believe my parents income in 1993 was less than 10% of the poorest non-white guy in the US. So your 'white guy' accusation kinda lands flat.
If I learned that the accidentally visible filename of the PowerPoint in that meeting was “EjectorSeat.pptx”, I’d be some combination of angry and alarmed about management’s attitude. That would be a definite “update my resume and call up some former colleagues for lunch” kind of moment at the very least.
I think people reasonably expect that when a company makes a serious decision that affects hundreds of people’s livelihoods, that they effect a pretty somber tone.
This case sounds like an unfortunate mistake, I’m sure they intended to present the material in a somber manner. That said, it begs the question on if what should be expected behind closed doors.
The tone of the presentation is far less important than the tone in the minds of the people doing the presenting. You can present as somberly as you want, but if a laugh track is secretly playing inside their heads, they can fuck all the way off. Workers deserve actual compassion, not the facade of it.
Which OP sort of implied the sentence right after.
I'm pretty sure if most people heard the discussions that go on in management meetings, especially at high levels, they'd be pretty irate. I've been in a few at different organizations and I don't have the moral flexibility to treat people like disposable garbage our sociopathic business 'leaders' have. Most people suspect this is the case but are satisfied to hear PR lies--as long as the message isn't offensive (which I don't understand why, I prefer direct messaging so we can cut the BS).
We need a serious social revolution in labor rights and expectations in this country. Not sure if its a really bad or good time for it but I think its one of the two.
I don't have that experience, but my suspicion is that the cartoon bosses in peoples' heads might not be an accurate picture of actual bosses? Laying people off doesn't seem to be easy for most managers, or at least those who talk about it.
And even then, the only person who fully knows the real you... is yourself.
"Last links post I included tech company Triplebyte in the shame list for refusing to let employees switch to work-from-home, then firing them. A representative of Triplebyte contacted me and asked me to explain their perspective, which is that they took the pandemic seriously and went all-remote around the same time as everyone else. The reluctance to let employees switch to work-from-home applied only to a few employees in early March, before the scale of the crisis was widely appreciated, and they say that they would have tried to make accommodations if they had understood the seriousness of the requests. They had been planning the downsizing for a while, it was really unlucky that it ended up in the middle of a pandemic, and they tried to make it as painless as possible by offering good severance pay, etc. I’m relaying their statement because I’m realizing it was probably unfair of me to single them out in particular – my hearing a lot about this was downstream of my having a lot of friends who work(ed) for Triplebyte, and my having a lot of friends who work(ed) for Triplebyte was downstream of them being a great company doing important work which all my friends wanted to work for. I continue to generally respect them and their vision (see here for more), and you don’t need to give them any more grief over it than they’re already getting."
>The rumor is that it had planned the downsizing for a while, wanted the employees to be in the office to hear about it in person, and didn’t care how much risk it had to expose the soon-to-be-ex-employees to in order to make it happen.
i.e. making them come in to the office for the layoff notice, after it was known the public needs to social-distance and minimize gatherings.
That part is still bad, and it's not retracted, nor does Triplebyte dispute making them come in to the office to be informed of the layoffs.
In any case, it would be nice if he updated the original post with a link to the retraction, otherwise people won't see any unringing of the bell when they go back to that link.
Sometimes difficult decisions have to be made but a one-on-one conversation with the person is always preferable to a (mass) notification, in my opinion.
As the parent (tomp) noted, the risk profile is basically that with the SIP situation, so this is an exception to the general rule.
In my experience the mods are super responsive and more than willing to look into things & hear you out. If this person cares enough to reach out about it they should have the opportunity. And if they’ve been shadow banned for a good reason I imagine they would be told as much.
https://twitter.com/kateconger/status/1255526352813535232