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Just a note, but this is a perfect time for companies to lay off low performers without getting a lot of flak. This is usually the case when you see companies l

Just a note, but this is a perfect time for companies to lay off low performers without getting a lot of flak. This is usually the case when you see companies lay off people while continuing to hire as well.

xoxoy 6y ago
GM is not hiring. The auto industry is being hit hard right now. And Cruise is notorious for being a toxic mess as is.
- kevindeasis 6y ago
  On other forums it seems like it splits into two group. One group says that it depends on the team and that they love their current team. And the other group is how working for Cruise is the worst decision they've made in their life. My curiosity is with, how does a company totally change their culture and do a complete 180%? From having workers completely hating their current company to completely not seeing themselves in moving to a different company. As some companies used to have employees mentioning it is the worst tech company in the bay area to one of the best in the bay area
  - saalweachter 6y ago
    I'm not sure this makes Cruise particularly unique. There are a lot of FAANG and ex-FAANG employees on this board, and you can find lots of people who love their job and feel like they are well-treated, compensated and respected and doing a meaningful impactful job, and there are plenty who felt ignored, underpaid and disrespected while working as a cog in an machine designed to sell ads.
    - cmrdporcupine 6y ago
      I think you'll find most FAANG developers feel quite well paid. But cog in a machine definitely describes many of the complaints.
  - csdreamer7 6y ago
    I would recommend reading the Open Organization by Jim Whitehurst to get example of how process affects employee motivation.
tree3 6y ago
True, but GM and other auto makers aren't selling cars right now. They are impacted severely
baddox 6y ago
Comments like this show up on all stories about layoffs. I don’t really understand your point. There’s never any reason to have layoffs unless the company deems it a good financial decision, right? And surely all layoffs would hit the lowest performers (by the company’s estimation of performance, which obviously might be flawed), right? So what is the difference between “the company did layoffs of its lowest performers due to financial pressure caused in part by the pandemic” and “the company did layoffs of its lowest performers using the pandemic as an excuse to avoid bad PR”? To me those are nearly identical scenarios.
- foota 6y ago
  One indicates the state of the company and might indicate wider issues for the industry and the other doesn't?
- thinkharderdev 6y ago
  It's true (or roughly true) that there isn't a reason to do layoffs unless the company deems it a good financial decision. But it's not true that a company will do layoffs whenever it's a good financial decision. You may know that there are low performers but choose not to let them go because you're worried about morale more generally to that other high performers will take it as a sign of trouble and jump ship. But in a bad economic environment that is less of an issue because high performers are probably more risk averse and fewer competitors are hiring anyway.
- cbanek 6y ago
  Well I think in good times, it's trickier to do a layoff. Like you said, it can appear like it's related to financial pressure. In good times, if you do a layoff, investors/shareholders will worry that you are doing it due to financial pressure or limited opportunities to use those employees to make money (growth). The way to say it isn't about financial pressure is to take the PR hit and say these are low performers. Which kind of implies you messed up by hiring them. So either way, it hurts you in good times. Now in bad times, it's considered "prudent," because everyone is under financial pressure. Laying off people preemptively wins in both ways in that in can look like you're eliminating financial pressure when everyone is worried about it (as opposed to the good times, where you will be singled out), as well as being able to get rid of the lowest performers and reducing pay of everyone else while avoiding bad PR, and even being considered good because you're still employing the rest. As long as the business remains solvent it's a win-win for the company. Not saying this is good or bad for the economy or the employees, but just reflecting on some of the game theory of this.
Ididntdothis 6y ago
"lay off low performers " From layoffs I saw as a contractor, layoffs of this size are often not based on individual performance. Usually it's whole departments or functions that get laid off. If you have a good network you may be able to jump somewhere else.
asdff 6y ago
Last in, first out.
throwaway1940 6y ago
From what I’ve heard about the Airbnb and Lyft layoffs, many people who were affected were actually high performers who were paid well but working on projects that were deprioritized by upper management. Laying off these people allowed them to satisfy their budget cuts while laying off relatively few people. Continuing to hire sounds strange, but if the offers are lower the company will still save money. Pausing the recruiting pipeline would also hurt them once things start picking up again.
- malandrew 6y ago
  I don't know how this makes any sense. Engineering is the only way to automate things to allow a business to scale sublinearly. Why layoff high performing engineers when you can reassign them to problems where the goal is to automate things enough to reduce costs to below the cost of keeping them around. Any high performer should be able to create enough value within 6 months to pay the salary for the hole year. If anything, you buy your company the optionality to further layoff non-engineers that you can't yet layoff until their job is automated. Now this may not be possible at smaller companies but at a company the size of AirBnB or Lyft certainly has enough problems that could still be better automated to help reduce costs further.
  - gamblor956 6y ago
    If there isn't sufficient work available, there isn't sufficient work. For a highly-paid employee, you sometimes just can't create sufficient other work for them to do if you eliminate the work they were originally doing and other people are already doing the work they could putatively have been assigned to. And quite honestly, a person's understanding of non-engineering functions would have to be extremely limited to think that more than a fraction of them could be automated away. Software has been the "it" industry for decades now. Jobs that haven't been automated by now are hard for software/robotics to take over.
    - malandrew 6y ago
      At both AirBnB and Lyft, I promise you there is sufficient work. I've had AirBnB employees ask me about joining the company to work on a large money saving problem I've got experience with that I'm certain they still have because it wouldn't be possible to have implemented since the last time I was asked.
sp332 6y ago
They let Rob Fuller @mubix go, which makes me lean toward the idea that they let expensive people go instead of low performers.

xoxoy 6y ago

GM is not hiring. The auto industry is being hit hard right now. And Cruise is notorious for being a toxic mess as is.

kevindeasis 6y ago
On other forums it seems like it splits into two group. One group says that it depends on the team and that they love their current team. And the other group is how working for Cruise is the worst decision they've made in their life. My curiosity is with, how does a company totally change their culture and do a complete 180%? From having workers completely hating their current company to completely not seeing themselves in moving to a different company. As some companies used to have employees mentioning it is the worst tech company in the bay area to one of the best in the bay area
- saalweachter 6y ago
  I'm not sure this makes Cruise particularly unique. There are a lot of FAANG and ex-FAANG employees on this board, and you can find lots of people who love their job and feel like they are well-treated, compensated and respected and doing a meaningful impactful job, and there are plenty who felt ignored, underpaid and disrespected while working as a cog in an machine designed to sell ads.
  - cmrdporcupine 6y ago
    I think you'll find most FAANG developers feel quite well paid. But cog in a machine definitely describes many of the complaints.
- csdreamer7 6y ago
  I would recommend reading the Open Organization by Jim Whitehurst to get example of how process affects employee motivation.

tree3 6y ago

True, but GM and other auto makers aren't selling cars right now. They are impacted severely

baddox 6y ago

Comments like this show up on all stories about layoffs. I don’t really understand your point. There’s never any reason to have layoffs unless the company deems it a good financial decision, right? And surely all layoffs would hit the lowest performers (by the company’s estimation of performance, which obviously might be flawed), right? So what is the difference between “the company did layoffs of its lowest performers due to financial pressure caused in part by the pandemic” and “the company did layoffs of its lowest performers using the pandemic as an excuse to avoid bad PR”? To me those are nearly identical scenarios.

foota 6y ago
One indicates the state of the company and might indicate wider issues for the industry and the other doesn't?
thinkharderdev 6y ago
It's true (or roughly true) that there isn't a reason to do layoffs unless the company deems it a good financial decision. But it's not true that a company will do layoffs whenever it's a good financial decision. You may know that there are low performers but choose not to let them go because you're worried about morale more generally to that other high performers will take it as a sign of trouble and jump ship. But in a bad economic environment that is less of an issue because high performers are probably more risk averse and fewer competitors are hiring anyway.
cbanek 6y ago
Well I think in good times, it's trickier to do a layoff. Like you said, it can appear like it's related to financial pressure. In good times, if you do a layoff, investors/shareholders will worry that you are doing it due to financial pressure or limited opportunities to use those employees to make money (growth). The way to say it isn't about financial pressure is to take the PR hit and say these are low performers. Which kind of implies you messed up by hiring them. So either way, it hurts you in good times. Now in bad times, it's considered "prudent," because everyone is under financial pressure. Laying off people preemptively wins in both ways in that in can look like you're eliminating financial pressure when everyone is worried about it (as opposed to the good times, where you will be singled out), as well as being able to get rid of the lowest performers and reducing pay of everyone else while avoiding bad PR, and even being considered good because you're still employing the rest. As long as the business remains solvent it's a win-win for the company. Not saying this is good or bad for the economy or the employees, but just reflecting on some of the game theory of this.

Ididntdothis 6y ago

"lay off low performers " From layoffs I saw as a contractor, layoffs of this size are often not based on individual performance. Usually it's whole departments or functions that get laid off. If you have a good network you may be able to jump somewhere else.

asdff 6y ago

Last in, first out.

throwaway1940 6y ago

From what I’ve heard about the Airbnb and Lyft layoffs, many people who were affected were actually high performers who were paid well but working on projects that were deprioritized by upper management. Laying off these people allowed them to satisfy their budget cuts while laying off relatively few people. Continuing to hire sounds strange, but if the offers are lower the company will still save money. Pausing the recruiting pipeline would also hurt them once things start picking up again.

malandrew 6y ago
I don't know how this makes any sense. Engineering is the only way to automate things to allow a business to scale sublinearly. Why layoff high performing engineers when you can reassign them to problems where the goal is to automate things enough to reduce costs to below the cost of keeping them around. Any high performer should be able to create enough value within 6 months to pay the salary for the hole year. If anything, you buy your company the optionality to further layoff non-engineers that you can't yet layoff until their job is automated. Now this may not be possible at smaller companies but at a company the size of AirBnB or Lyft certainly has enough problems that could still be better automated to help reduce costs further.
- gamblor956 6y ago
  If there isn't sufficient work available, there isn't sufficient work. For a highly-paid employee, you sometimes just can't create sufficient other work for them to do if you eliminate the work they were originally doing and other people are already doing the work they could putatively have been assigned to. And quite honestly, a person's understanding of non-engineering functions would have to be extremely limited to think that more than a fraction of them could be automated away. Software has been the "it" industry for decades now. Jobs that haven't been automated by now are hard for software/robotics to take over.
  - malandrew 6y ago
    At both AirBnB and Lyft, I promise you there is sufficient work. I've had AirBnB employees ask me about joining the company to work on a large money saving problem I've got experience with that I'm certain they still have because it wouldn't be possible to have implemented since the last time I was asked.

sp332 6y ago

They let Rob Fuller @mubix go, which makes me lean toward the idea that they let expensive people go instead of low performers.