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A comment on Macroeconomic Changes Have Made It Impossible for Me to Want to Pay You. Parent comment

Re:Macroeconomic Changes Have Made It Impossible for Me to W... by brookst on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @01:12PM (#34521964)
Apologies if I sounded like I was unsympathetic to the people. I’ve been laid off, I know it hurts.

But I guess I don’t see how empathizing with that means. . . What? Microsoft should cancel an investment they think is strategic? Microsoft should keep job roles they no longer things are important?

Highly profitable companies like Microsoft are not zero sum. Nobody said “let’s lay people off so that we can invest in openAI”. Each decision is made independently, for its own ROI. If they believed that keeping these people and making the investment was the best approach, they have the funds to do so, easily.

I love the McSweeney’s piece, and I’m sympathetic to those laid off, I just don’t get the innuendo that a company should do something differently.

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Re:Macroeconomic Changes Have Made It Impossible for Me to W... by t-writescode on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @01:46PM (#34522421)
A useful question I think can be asked in circumstances like this is "what value does this new comment bring to the table?"

If a family in financial trouble just lost their son to a car accident, for example, is it the right time to say "well, at least you won't need to pay for his college."?

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Re:Macroeconomic Changes Have Made It Impossible for Me to W... by ShroudedNight on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @02:47PM (#34523203)
There is a third option: Redeploying existing talent to the new strategic objectives.

Especially in software, skills are pretty fungible, and most of the support organization's on-going requirements are likely to be highly agnostic of what, specifically, is being engineered.

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Re:Macroeconomic Changes Have Made It Impossible for Me to W... by s1artibartfast on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @03:12PM (#34523515)
If the company actually thought they could make more money by redeploying, they would. Positive ROI strategic objectives are not obvious or readily available. If they were, the company would already be pursuing them.

IT does bring up an interesting alternative. What if instead of layoffs, companies provided an ultimatum:

Your employment costs $X. You have 3 months to find a new source of $X+1 revenue that requires your continued labor.

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