I know many engineers at Meta and Google. They all say only chronic underperformers were laid off, and some chronic underperformers weren’t. It’s a different story for recruiters and middle managers, which were super bloated anyway.

So this is a good thing.

No you don’t. If you knew any people at those companies they’d tell you the layoffs were haphazard and confused.

5 of my close friends work at Meta, and 2 at Google. All engineers.

I visit the NYC Union Square and Hudson Yards offices regularly for dinner, and even the Seattle Westlake and MPK ones whenever I’m visiting. The mood there is much much better post layoffs. Possibly even better than it was pre COVID.

It’s pretty amazing how lively they are, right? Almost as if everyone was asked to return to the office?

That makes no sense. If I had to choose between two people to lay off, why would I get rid of the person that performs better?

Ask Meta and Google.

Riddle me this, Batman, but if that's true, why wasn't I laid off?

I don't know whether "only chronic underperformers were laid off" is true or not, but...

It sounds like a meme that a big company might want to have internally, if they were trying to both reduce regretted/uncontrolled attrition, while also lighting a fire under people who the company thinks are complacent.

But the company would not say that publicly (nor want employees to say that too loudly), because that would be a big liability, defaming tens of thousands of people while they are job-hunting. Also, a jerk move.

Regardless, I'd normally expect any big company layoffs to likely include people that the company or some layer of management has wanted to get rid of (for various reasons, not all the fault of the employee). But layoffs will also hit people based on what project they're on, what department, what role, and simply because their manager was given a target number to reduce.

I also know of multiple high-performers who knew/assumed layoffs were coming, and already wanted to leave, so quietly put in a word with a trusted manager/exec, that they would like a severance package when the time comes. (And then the manager could keep another person or two they would've had to reduce otherwise.)

Celebrating layoffs is some end stage capitalism.

Already being discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37249002

That one was posted later, so we'll merge it hither. Thanks!

Why doesn't T-Mobile adopt the Mint Mobile approach of allowing customers to pre-pay for a year of service? One billing per year instead of 12, no frills, service that Just Works: you could slash a lot of personnel overhead in the billings department and end up with a better product in the end.

Sticker shock.

Same reason car sales people focus on the monthly payments instead of the total cost.

I only use prepaid phones because it allows me control of billing and I can avoid hidden fees. I'd imagine the byzantine billing nightmare is a money making feature.

T-Mobile owns Mint Mobile.

Price segmentation/discrimination. You can earn more if you sell at the maximum price that each customer is able or willing to pay, assuming it exceeds your cost of goods sold.

There are only 3 mobile networks in the US. But using MVNO, they can sell the same wireless broadband infrastructure to different people at different prices.

There is also QCI. You pay more, you (ideally) get higher priority.

https://www.reddit.com/r/NoContract/comments/tn4733/qci_leve...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QoS_Class_Identifier

> mostly corporate roles

Middlemanagers that failed to Left-Shift LOL. Good riddance ... the only time T-mobile ever makes the news it's because of their terrible management practices. Or for missing the boat on Security and data breaches. Or for selling customer data to advertisers. I recommend a copy of "who moved my cheese" and a best of luck.

Corporate roles include normal Software Engineers and Electrical Engineers. Telecom is extremely software heavy as 5g is deployed via K8s.

> 5g is deployed via K8s

Why is this a requirement of 5G and where can I learn more?

It’s not a requirement as such, it’s just that many of the major players have chosen to implement the constituent services via Kubernetes.

We are talking about Nokia or Ericsson or the actual provider? Since 15-20 years now the provider doesn't build anything. All that remains vaguely interesting is managed by subcontractors and externals. The actual number of people who are full time employees and still do tech at a telecom operator is close to 0. They are users of pre-built solutions and everything is offshore or managed by the firm that sold the software. This includes NFV, SDN, and the O&M plane, and other places (where actual innovation still happened in the past decade)