Hey this has been happening at my work! It definitely isn’t a complete dumpster fire over here now, that knowledge and experience from those hundreds of people wasn’t critical or anything, the people who are left are totally working well and not just scraping by under constant fear of being fired next, it’s fine
My company built a big lab with expensive equipment and then laid off the person who was an expert in using all of it.
My company 😢
This shit sucks. Some Silicon Valley shit company bought ours and they’re closing us down after only half a year. Feels so unfair. Our company was doing well while theirs is going down the shitter with huge loans and promising the moon but delivering fuck all. Silicon Valley culture is toxic shit
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True, but we never expected that to happen with our company which was built on entirely different values. I am now committed never to let those vultures anywhere near a company I care about if I can help it, no matter their offer
Well, this is because it’s access to Money that determines power, not actual merit.
That’s the purest Capitalism you can think of and you see it at such an extreme level in present day Tech Startup Culture because nowadays it’s basically the Even Wilder Wild West Of Finance so it operates by the same principles of Finance - (I actually went from Investment Banking to Startups back in the UK a few years ago and for me it looked a lot like the Founder and Investor level culture of the latter was very similar to that in the wildest bits of the former). Back in the 90s Startups weren’t quite like that, but nowadays it’s different.
That kind of thing also operates at the people level: I’ve seen Startups with so-so ideas get jump-started with a couple of millions because mommy and daddy of a main founder are rich whilst ideas with a lot better legs to go places keep limping along unable to generate sufficient cash flow to takeoff or to get enough investment to do what’s needed to generate more cash flow, until running out of founds.
What survives is either those with access to lots of no questions asked money upfront (which actually works because a well funded half-arsed idea can still triumph in the market over barelly funded good ideas) or those who manage to portray their stuff as paradygm-changing (“The next Google!!!”) which why one sees incredible levels of bullshit in the Startup space and endless jumping on hype-trains (like, for example, anybody looking for funding now will be pitching “something-something-AI !!!”)
Imagine how many brilliant innovations have been lost to the world because of this…
I don’t even know if that list would be a fair one because those are things we know were killed. We don’t know how many unannounced or secret projects were killed that were basically completed.
My understanding is that these projects are a side-effect of how Google judges promotions. If you’ve “created a new product”, that puts you higher on the list to get promoted.
There are no incentives nor resources for maintaining those products. So you see a long list of “ideas” from Google that are abandoned immediately after someone got their promotion.
Well “brilliant” may be a stretch for a lot of those…
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As long as you don’t go full Elon, company can get away with it. You are just coping hard.
Add in re-hiring those same employees at a lower rate or off-shoring to India to get 3x the head count for the same wage and that’s basically what’s going on.
3x times the headcount 9x times the lead times. Spend more for less!
Also 9x the terrible flaws that scare away customers.
Spent about the same for more people to do less work and lower quality work.
Note that 99% of the time the offshore labor geography does have talent, but they aren’t going to work for an offshoring shop, they will work for real companies in that geography. The offshoring companies thrive on essentially fraud, no matter what country they are in.
I immediately distrust anyone wearing a suit, I’ve just realised.
All employees are replaceable by a series of sales pitches on what AI is about to do right around the corner. That will keep pumping the stock price right up until the impending massive crash.
That’s a problem for the poors and whoever is holding the bag after I retire.
Shareholders aren’t the big issue. CEOs paying themselves hundreds of millions of dollars is.
Emphasis added since some seemed to not be reading all the words.
Well it’s about time we set up a union for workers in IT in general.
Too many people think the world belongs to those who dream, who imagine a better future…
It does not. It belongs to those who do the work that runs the world
[Verse 1] When the union’s inspiration through the workers’ blood shall run There can be no power greater anywhere beneath the sun Yet what force on earth is weaker than the feeble strength of one For the Union makes us strong
[Chorus] Solidarity forever Solidarity forever Solidarity forever For the Union makes us strong
[Verse 2] Is there aught we hold in common with the greedy parasite Who would lash us into serfdom and would crush us with his might? Is there anything left to us but to organize and fight? For the union makes us strong
[Chorus] Solidarity forever Solidarity forever Solidarity forever For the Union makes us strong
[Verse 3] It is we who plowed the prairies, built the cities where they trade Dug the mines and built the workshops, endless miles of railroad laid Now we stand outcast and starving 'midst the wonders we have made But the union makes us strong
[Chorus] Solidarity forever Solidarity forever Solidarity forever For the Union makes us strong
[Verse 4] All the world that’s owned by idle drones is ours and ours alone We have laid the wide foundations, built it skyward stone by stone It is ours, not to slave in, but to master and to own While the union makes us strong
[Chorus] Solidarity forever Solidarity forever Solidarity forever For the Union makes us strong
[Verse 5] They have taken untold millions that they never toiled to earn But without our brain and muscle not a single wheel can turn We can break their haughty power gain our freedom when we learn That the Union makes us strong
[Chorus] Solidarity forever Solidarity forever Solidarity forever For the Union makes us strong
[Verse 6] In our hands is placed a power greater than their hoarded gold Greater than the might of armies magnified a thousandfold We can bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old For the Union makes us strong
[Chorus] Solidarity forever Solidarity forever Solidarity forever For the Union makes us stron
Performance reviews what’s that?
Oh, they still do these…
I’ve heard some stories where managers had to lay off most of their team, then put the remaining on performance plans, and then when those people were fired, they had no directs and then had to convert to a IC role they were woefully unable to do, transfer (lol good luck), or leave.
“Lean! Agile! Cost discipline!”
