Meta and Google Are Cutting Staff. Just Don't Mention Layoffs. (wsj.com) 37
In response to stalling growth and intense competition, Meta Platforms executives have spoken of cost cuts, hiring freezes and "ruthless prioritization." One word the company hasn't used: layoffs. From a report: But Meta has begun quietly nudging out a significant number of staffers by reorganizing departments and giving affected employees a limited window to apply for other roles within the company, according to current and former managers familiar with the matter, in a move that achieves staffing cuts while forestalling the mass issuance of pink slips. The reductions are expected to be a prelude to deeper cuts, with Meta looking to trim its costs by at least 10% within the next few months, according to people informed of the company's plans. While some savings will come from cuts to overhead and consulting budgets, the people said, much of it is expected to come from reduced employment. In response to questions, Meta spokesman Tracy Clayton referred to Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg's July statement that the company would need to reallocate resources toward corporate priorities as pressures mount on the business.
DEPRESSION (Score:1)
Time to upcycle old nuggets (Score:3)
Time to upcycle old nugets, such as:
o Right-Sizing
o Reduction In Force (Riffing)
o Optimizing Headcount
o Personnel Realignment
o Reorganize (Re-org)
o Restructure
Those are some I remember reading in the news when I was little, back in the Dark Ages of the 70's - 80's.
Anyone here remember more? Or perhaps lived through them? Or had parents that did?
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Hire, Hire, Hire, Hire
Spend, Spend, Spend, Spend
This is what happens when management is incompetent.
Re:Time to upcycle old nuggets (Score:5, Insightful)
^ The real answer.
Software product management has gone as bonkers as the rest of the country is in politics. It's all about fads now. It's like the Kardashians. Things are popular because they are popular. The micromanagement shit show that Agile has become. Jira, which does everything - poorly., git which now makes you focus on the plumbing of code updates instead of actually writing the code. Software development is now about closing tickets and getting across an imaginary goal line.
Newsflash: Most software developers got into it because they were introverts who liked puzzles. Many, most in fact, were not into team sports (i.e. collaboration). Software development is not a fucking football game.
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Newsflash: Most software developers got into it because they were introverts who liked puzzles. Many, most in fact, were not into team sports (i.e. collaboration). Software development is not a fucking football game.
Damn well said! The growth of project managers was the beginning of the end. They starting hiring corporate douche-bags from business schools to manage development projects. Starting having to meet arbitrary goals that have nothing to do with successful software development. Don't worry, we'll fix that massive error in the first patch after release!!!
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^ The real answer.
Software product management has gone as bonkers as the rest of the country is in politics. It's all about fads now. It's like the Kardashians. Things are popular because they are popular. The micromanagement shit show that Agile has become. Jira, which does everything - poorly., git which now makes you focus on the plumbing of code updates instead of actually writing the code. Software development is now about closing tickets and getting across an imaginary goal line.
Newsflash: Most software developers got into it because they were introverts who liked puzzles. Many, most in fact, were not into team sports (i.e. collaboration). Software development is not a fucking football game.
Since you brought up tooling, the first part can be blamed on the other thing. When you really like puzzles, it's acceptable for everything to lean towards becoming a puzzle. Not exactly pulling the ladder up behind ourselves, but more like climbing the tallest, ricketiest ladders, and feeling just great about our accomplishment, so don't dare attack my ladder! Because I identify with my git mastery, or Jira... terraform... agileness... k8s... dumbass cloud API or my OS and I'm personally attacked when
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This is the most insightful thing I've read in a long, long time. I'm going to keep it in my "nuggets" file, properly attributed.
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Redudnancies.
"Please don't make me redundant." --David Brent (The Office, UK)
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Yah, that one I heard lots of when I got to the UK ('89-'91)
Along with very graphic descriptions of what people would do their PM of that era (I got there right before Thatcher quit). Ruin, Redundancies and Poll Tax were the hot topics of the day.
Made Redundant. Still has the same unpleasant hollow ring that ours does, too.
Euphemisms are for the weak of heart, or weak of mind. Why not call it what it is? Why sugarcoat it?
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We let sales and marketing take over every aspect of our lives. They even market being fired with friendly sounding words at first glance that are, as you say, hollow.
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My favorite (that I actually saw): "Involuntary separation from the payroll". You're not being laid off, we're simply removing a row in a table.
[Cue obvious Milton jokes.]
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Here's one:
"prioritized movement"
Employees in departments that are facing cuts are presented the option to move to other departments. Supposedly voluntary, but not.
Like the old bar closing time refrain: "You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here."
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Time to upcycle old nugets, such as:
o Right-Sizing
o Reduction In Force (Riffing)
o Optimizing Headcount
o Personnel Realignment
o Reorganize (Re-org)
o Restructure
Those are some I remember reading in the news when I was little, back in the Dark Ages of the 70's - 80's. Anyone here remember more? Or perhaps lived through them? Or had parents that did?
I remember during the recession of the 1970's, when many parents were losing their jobs, Sesame Street explained to kids that their parents were being "fucked up th
Don't mention the war! (Score:2)
I mentioned it once, but I think I got away with it.
Quiet quitting being rooted out (Score:2)
Federal and State WARN rules (Score:2)
Both Federal and State government have what are known as WARN ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org])
rules covering layoffs. This is the reason companies want to avoid saying the work "layoff"
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Both Federal and State government have what are known as WARN ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]) rules covering layoffs. This is the reason companies want to avoid saying the work "layoff"
It doesn't matter what the company calls it, if it matches the legally defined definition [ecfr.gov], it's a mass layoff.
Everyone's cutting staff (Score:1)
It's not working because there's still a ****ton of money to be made and you need staff to make it. Plus the gov't's about to do a half trillion in long delayed infrastructure spending and that means jobs jobs jobs!
Somebody ran the numbers and found 96% of all jobs get
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Rsilvergun:
Everyone's cutting staff
Also rsilvergun:
It's not working because there's still a ****ton of money to be made and you need staff to make it
Make up your mind, man!
And to counter your statement that Democrats make for more jobs, I can offer this:
1. Every time I've lost a job it's been in a Democrat-president era (Dot-Com crash, and later an M&A during Obama's reign)
2. Every time I've gotten a job, it's been in a Republican-president era. This one I currently have, I got 2018.
Also rsilvergun:
"Plus the gov't's about to do a half trillion in long delayed infrastructure spending and that means jobs jobs jobs! "
This administration is driving the country squarely into ruin, and you expect some kind of WPA from them? With two years
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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I hate to admit it (Score:2)
We didn't notice the dam
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1. Every time I've lost a job it's been in a Democrat-president era (Dot-Com crash, and later an M&A during Obama's reign)
2. Every time I've gotten a job, it's been in a Republican-president era. This one I currently have, I got 2018.
Repeat after me: Correlation is not causation.
Actually, repeat after me: Extremely small sample sizes don't yield believable correlation coefficients.
Oh cool I've got a stalker again (Score:2)
The two comments are not inconsistent. They're meant to contrast each other. It's called a rhetorical device. Sorry you might want to take a creative writing class.
To spell it out bluntly a lot of companies are cutting staff in the hopes of causing a recession that will lower wages. However those companies are not internally consistent and many of them are vacillating back and forth from firing and hiring.
Furthermore some companies aren't playing ball an
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Things like the ability to drag you back into the office and make you work unpaid overtime (or "quiet quitting" as they call it).
That's not quiet quitting. Quiet quitting [gallup.com] describes what happens when an employee is disaffected to the point where they're just trading their time for a paycheck without putting any real effort into doing the job, but not so dissatisfied that they leave for employment elsewhere.
What you're referring to -- making the job so unpleasant that the employee eventually gives up and quits, is called "quiet firing" and is an increasingly common strategy to avoid laying people off and having your unemployment insur
Get rid of managers and executives (Score:1)
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But they have power.
It social....engineering (Score:3)
Why spend millions in layoffs when you can just persuade people (fear/panic) to quit on their own? Layoffs costs money and Meta is afterall a social media company and thus know a thing or 2 about social engineering. Google, then-some... That's where "ruthless prioritization" comes in play. Old corporations used to call it "pigeon holing" (putting a employee in a dead end job hoping he'd leave on his own), and I'm sure Meta has put a faster, scalable, socially and more modern spin to it.
For God's Sake... (Score:2)
...don't mention the layoffs!
Semantics (Score:2)
It's not a lay off. It's a re-org.
Heard it first at my first job out of college (this company was a competitor to DoubleClick) when they started to lay people off in early mid 2001. Then after 9/11 everything went down hill. I myself was let go on Dec 7, 2001. The night before we had an unhappy hour and afterwards a bunch of us just came back to the office to pack up our things because a lot of thought we were going to go.
That date shall also live in infamy.
Misleading headline (Score:2)
As a Google shareholder, I freaked when I saw the headline "Meta and Google are cutting staff". But then there was no mention of Google.
The WSJ link is wsj.com/articles/meta-and-google-are-cutting-staff-just-dont-mention-layoffs-11663778729 but the article itself has the headline "Meta Quietly Reduces Staff in Cost-Cutting Push". Sounds like the WSJ changed their mind.
However, the article does say "Google has required some employees to apply for new jobs".