And to top it all off executives never have to eat the shit they caused in the same way the rest of the workforce at the company ends up having to
Similarly when goals are linked to earnings and the company reports adjusted earnings... So changing the earnings by disregarding some expenses or some sales out of the calculation. The one in charge of this adjustment can play to allow or dismiss bonus for the year.
Re:Why Layoffs Don't Work
by steveBK123 on Sunday March 09, 2025 @06:39PM
(#43314659)
I worked at one place that would frequently do "hiring freeze, consultants only!" thing followed by "fire all the consultants, FTEs only!" thing every other year. Clearly some OpEx/CapEx budget arb.
Also would do incredible things like mandate firm wide sending all consultants home for rest of year in early/mid December to save 3-4% lol. Did this at least twice in 5 years.
One year there was a fairly large failed projects with a dozen senior devs and they had nothing to do but also weren't fired because "we don't have budget for severance". This was in July. Guys started showing up to work in sandals and baseball caps.
This was all at a bank with over 100k employees.
I worked at a firm that for 2-3 years straight would report great Q1,Q2,Q3 numbers.. tell employees it's looking like a good year. And then Q4 report a total wipeout loss that negated the quarterly earnings and swung the company to flat or a loss. Whoops, sorry, no raises, cutting bonuses.. and need to do some layoffs.
Behavior like this reminds us that the numbers are not real real in a scientific sense, but only in a relativistic accounting sense.