7 ms·

I don’t work in tech (and my question here will prove that) but how does a company lay off 10,000 people without seriously harming their product or ceasing prod

I don’t work in tech (and my question here will prove that) but how does a company lay off 10,000 people without seriously harming their product or ceasing products all together? Is tech that bloated? What are people doing all day where it’s realistic to lay of 10,000 people?

hellomyguys 4y ago
>Is tech that bloated? Yes >What are people doing all day where it’s realistic to lay of 10,000 people? They're probably in meetings, while a fraction of their time is actually spent doing work.
gabereiser 4y ago
Teens by the millions are addicted to the scroll... They could just put it on autopilot at this point and their revenue streams wouldn't budge.
- gretch 4y ago
  This mentality wouldn’t have worked out for MySpace or Snapchat or Facebook and it’s probably not going to be good for whoever is momentarily king of the hill.
  - satvikpendem 4y ago
    I wonder if there will ever come a point where the algorithms are really just that good to keep people and newer generations hooked permanently, and that currently we are still in a supoptimal local maxima. For example, people play at the same casinos for decades.
    - gabereiser 4y ago
      Will ever come? It's here now. https://wallaroomedia.com/blog/social-media/tiktok-statistics/ https://wallaroomedia.com/blog/social-media/tiktok-statistic...
stu2b50 4y ago
Working on R&D for anticipated features. The number of employees that work purely on KTLO is going to be under half at least. The rest are justifying the large revenue multipliers tech stocks get - from their rather high growth rates, which are from expansion and moonshots that pan out. Now that interest rates are high, the calculus for expansion projects is very different. You may very well be spending more money than you anticipated returning from your moonshots.
- x86x87 4y ago
  the twitter approach! let go of all people that are not needed for KTLO
  - wpietri 4y ago
    And then another 25%. And then fire anybody who is honest with the CEO.
    - x86x87 4y ago
      And call it muskops! Musk now singlehandedly keeps twitter up!
- seizethecheese 4y ago
  This is not borne out by the data. The data shows most layoffs are in recruiting, HR, product, design, data science. Yes, it’s cutting new projects but it’s also just trimming fat.
  - hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
    I don't understand your comment. If you're cutting back on future features, not existing operations, you'd absolutely expect product and design to take a big hit, and then of course recruiting and HR because your employee counts are down and you're not hiring. Data science tends to span both (future product dev and analysis of existing functionality), and data science can be particularly tricky to assign a value to, so not surprised there are also significant cuts there.
newaccount2021 4y ago
[dead]
nathanvanfleet 4y ago
Maybe they had internal teams that were working on a new social network app and are now divesting from that (not working on it, not releasing it). Maybe they had a lot of smaller teams who were iterating on the experience to increase engagement, lower friction etc which they will now not pursue etc. "Bloat" is a bit naive that somehow they are just paid to look at the left corner of their office or something. The company built out teams to look into new experiences or to make the experience better and they are going to be doing less of that at least for a while
loeg 4y ago
It's essentially the same as R&D layoffs in other industries, it's just that tech companies have comparatively huge R&D departments funded by outsized proceeds from other business units.
tootie 4y ago
Not everyone at a tech company works on the product. It takes a ton of staff to do things like marketing, ad sales, content moderation. They may be backing away from some markets or maybe they automated a lot of the work.
darth_avocado 4y ago
1. You stop pretty much building anything new. That’s what most people are working on. 2. If you go deeper with cuts, most things will continue to work. But behind the scenes it’s a dumpster fire with people just trying to keep things running as much as possible. Things still work, but there will be bigger consequences down the road. 3. You go even deeper. Things work until they don’t. People who can fix it are no longer there. You decide to diversify away from that part of business and lose revenue. The thing is there is a bloat in every single organization you have and tech companies are no different. But depending on how big 10000 is as a percentage of your total headcount, the impact can be anywhere from small to catastrophic
paxys 4y ago
The vast majority of employees at any tech company are working on the next version of the product. So huge layoffs will not impact their ability to keep the lights on, but will likely have an impact on the product roadmap a few months or even years down the line.

hellomyguys 4y ago

>Is tech that bloated? Yes >What are people doing all day where it’s realistic to lay of 10,000 people? They're probably in meetings, while a fraction of their time is actually spent doing work.

gabereiser 4y ago

Teens by the millions are addicted to the scroll... They could just put it on autopilot at this point and their revenue streams wouldn't budge.

gretch 4y ago
This mentality wouldn’t have worked out for MySpace or Snapchat or Facebook and it’s probably not going to be good for whoever is momentarily king of the hill.
- satvikpendem 4y ago
  I wonder if there will ever come a point where the algorithms are really just that good to keep people and newer generations hooked permanently, and that currently we are still in a supoptimal local maxima. For example, people play at the same casinos for decades.
  - gabereiser 4y ago
    Will ever come? It's here now. https://wallaroomedia.com/blog/social-media/tiktok-statistics/ https://wallaroomedia.com/blog/social-media/tiktok-statistic...

stu2b50 4y ago

Working on R&D for anticipated features. The number of employees that work purely on KTLO is going to be under half at least. The rest are justifying the large revenue multipliers tech stocks get - from their rather high growth rates, which are from expansion and moonshots that pan out. Now that interest rates are high, the calculus for expansion projects is very different. You may very well be spending more money than you anticipated returning from your moonshots.

x86x87 4y ago
the twitter approach! let go of all people that are not needed for KTLO
- wpietri 4y ago
  And then another 25%. And then fire anybody who is honest with the CEO.
  - x86x87 4y ago
    And call it muskops! Musk now singlehandedly keeps twitter up!
seizethecheese 4y ago
This is not borne out by the data. The data shows most layoffs are in recruiting, HR, product, design, data science. Yes, it’s cutting new projects but it’s also just trimming fat.
- hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
  I don't understand your comment. If you're cutting back on future features, not existing operations, you'd absolutely expect product and design to take a big hit, and then of course recruiting and HR because your employee counts are down and you're not hiring. Data science tends to span both (future product dev and analysis of existing functionality), and data science can be particularly tricky to assign a value to, so not surprised there are also significant cuts there.

newaccount2021 4y ago

[dead]

nathanvanfleet 4y ago

Maybe they had internal teams that were working on a new social network app and are now divesting from that (not working on it, not releasing it). Maybe they had a lot of smaller teams who were iterating on the experience to increase engagement, lower friction etc which they will now not pursue etc. "Bloat" is a bit naive that somehow they are just paid to look at the left corner of their office or something. The company built out teams to look into new experiences or to make the experience better and they are going to be doing less of that at least for a while

loeg 4y ago

It's essentially the same as R&D layoffs in other industries, it's just that tech companies have comparatively huge R&D departments funded by outsized proceeds from other business units.

tootie 4y ago

Not everyone at a tech company works on the product. It takes a ton of staff to do things like marketing, ad sales, content moderation. They may be backing away from some markets or maybe they automated a lot of the work.

darth_avocado 4y ago

1. You stop pretty much building anything new. That’s what most people are working on. 2. If you go deeper with cuts, most things will continue to work. But behind the scenes it’s a dumpster fire with people just trying to keep things running as much as possible. Things still work, but there will be bigger consequences down the road. 3. You go even deeper. Things work until they don’t. People who can fix it are no longer there. You decide to diversify away from that part of business and lose revenue. The thing is there is a bloat in every single organization you have and tech companies are no different. But depending on how big 10000 is as a percentage of your total headcount, the impact can be anywhere from small to catastrophic

paxys 4y ago

The vast majority of employees at any tech company are working on the next version of the product. So huge layoffs will not impact their ability to keep the lights on, but will likely have an impact on the product roadmap a few months or even years down the line.