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LinkedIn laying off nearly 700, mostly from core engineering teams
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- LewisVerstappen 3y ago> LinkedIn is now ramping up hiring in India, according the person familiar. So, laying off people in the US and hiring in India?
- tannedNerd 3y agoI feel like if US companies are proven to off shore jobs they should take a massive tax hit the same year. Like you are required to pay 5 years worth of the salary of the job you off shored into unemployment or retraining funds.
- passion__desire 3y agoIf there are global markets for products, they should be global markets for employment.
- elashri 3y agoThere is no global tax system so you don't have this effect you think you have.
- creato 3y agoThe global market for tech products isn’t that much lower friction than tech employment. India has a lot of tariffs. China has the great firewall and the “local partner” shakedown. US has export controls of many high tech products.
- passion__desire 3y agoTariffs may reduce volume slightly but not margins. I doubt Apple is selling it's devices at a loss.
- coldpie 3y agoI think you'd get the same result with a lot less overhead by just increasing corporate taxes a fraction of a percent (or just enforcing our current tax laws better) and making vocational training schools tuition-free.
- zitterbewegung 3y agoAssuming they pay their taxes and this is how we have to enforce it by a lawsuit which costs the government more. https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/11/irs-says-microsoft-owes-an-additional-29-billion-in-back-taxes.html https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/11/irs-says-microsoft-owes-an-a... If the corporate tax would increase then it might be cheaper to litigate.
- dougSF70 3y agoMicrosoft about to swallow a $25bn+ tax hit.
- mpclark 3y agoOw! That's nearly half an Activision...
- syntaxing 3y agoFunny you say that because this was part of the NAFTA agreement (I know this agreement doesn’t apply to India). I knew engineers that went to college with sponsorship from this agreement when they were laid off as technicians from off shoring due to the agreement. This absolutely should be the status quo.
- WalterBright 3y agoProtectionism doesn't make an economy more prosperous. Quite the reverse, it makes an economy uncompetitive.
- cryptonector 3y agoI used to think so, before I understood that we live in a mercantilist world economy. I still think protectionism would be bad in a less distorted economy, and I think it's bad in as-distorted an economy as ours (because people who are subjected to pressure are more likely to be adaptive and dynamic), but it's harder to make the case, don't you think?
- WalterBright 3y agoProtectionism means you're protecting inefficient industries. In a global marketplace, this means industries in other countries will out-compete yours.
- coolspot 3y agoUsually they out-compete yours because they burn coal and you have to buy solar, they commute in packed trains while you drive tesla to work, they live in tiny apartments, while your house has a backyard and frontyard.
- WalterBright 3y agoProtectionism is not a fix for comparative advantage. Regardless of the motives for protectionism, it will make your economy less competitive and less prosperous.
- Apocryphon 3y agoThe East Asian Tigers being a major counterexample: https://hir.harvard.edu/the-east-asian-miracle-where-did-adam-smith-go-wrong/ https://hir.harvard.edu/the-east-asian-miracle-where-did-ada... It's basically Ha-Joon Chang's whole deal- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Samaritans:_The_Myth_of_Free_Trade_and_the_Secret_History_of_Capitalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Samaritans:_The_Myth_of_Fr... https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/comment/hajoon-chang-protectionism-the-truth-is-on-a-10-bill-5334137.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/comment/hajoon-c...
- lotsofpulp 3y agoShould California impose massive tax hits to businesses that move jobs to other states?
- kozikow 3y agoThat would be very easy to circumvent. You can describe effectively the same software engineering job in a way that sounds completely different. "close a project" of the old team, etc.
- bee_rider 3y agoCompanies outsource because they think they can find better workers in another country (where better is some combination of better skills, lower compensation, or harder working). Fair enough. We should welcome that kind of competition, it makes everyone better when we fairly and do our best. They also outsource because they think they can take advantage of lax labor and/or environmental regulation in other countries. We should impose tariffs to level the playing field when countries don’t have these sort of regulations. Competition keeps us honest and innovating, it shouldn’t be avoided, it just needs to be fair and non-exploitive.
- gumballindie 3y agoLmao they wont allow remote work in the west but are fine with remote work elsewhere.
- nerdponx 3y agoThat or they are opening local offices overseas and expecting people to work on site there.
- dominick-cc 3y agoThe new doublethink
- paxys 3y agoWho says the overseas positions are going to be remote?
- passion__desire 3y agoThere would be communication overhead between teams. If companies are willing to take that, then they shouldn't have any argument against remote work irrespective of location and timezones.
- paxys 3y agoCommunication overhead between teams is very different from communication overhead between individual people on a team.
- gumballindie 3y agoOverseas means remote from the main office. So regardless if they will be forced to be on site at their overseas office they will still be remote compared to their us office. And guess what - those bros in the us that wanted to be onsite to be creative will now have to communicate clearly with their remote colleagues in india whether they like it or not. But the idiots took away the rights of those in the us while those above them gave zero shits about them anyway and moved lots of jobs abroad. The winers here? Indians. Good luck and enjoy scuttlebutt, if still employed, suckers.
- d3w4s9 3y agoGoogle is doing the same thing. Same as my own employer. Funny that some people think "if we work in the office more, companies won't outsource jobs as much".
- pixelatedindex 3y agoMaybe not, but from the company’s perspective if you’re not in the office then it doesn’t matter how far away you are (with some time zone restrictions maybe, but remote work heavily relies on async communication anyway). So they’ll look for the cheapest labor they can get away with. I guess you can now have RTO in India though?
- WalterBright 3y ago> they’ll look for the cheapest labor they can get away with Don't you look for the best deal when you buy things? That's how markets work.
- pixelatedindex 3y agoYes, I am very much aware of that. My point is that as a worker if you really push for remote / WFH policies, it can backfire on you because location isn’t a constraint anymore. Why pay someone in the Bay Area when I can pay someone in Idaho? Or in this case India. I’m not saying I like it or prefer it, but it makes sense.
- paxys 3y agoIs anyone really surprised? Did you think the end result of the WFH movement was going to be companies continuing to pay you to live out of your Bay Area house?
- newsclues 3y agoNo people thought they could cash Bay Area paycheques while working from low cost rural areas with WFH.
- bluGill 3y agoThere is one advantage to Bay area when WFH: you can go into the office on request. I go into the office every 3 months or so - it is only a 7 mile bike ride. Sometimes things are better handled in person (I don't live in the Bay area). WFH with the ability to get into the office in a couple hours is valuable. Once you cannot get into the office easily if you need to you are worth less even if the need to get into the office is rare.
- paxys 3y agoIf you need to go to the office once every 3 months you can fly in from anywhere in the country. No need to live within commuting distance for that.
- bluGill 3y agoI cannot fly and be there with 2 hours notice though. Sometimes flights are full and you can't get there at all with less than a few weeks notice. Often you can, but the cost for same day tickets can be very high. Planning months in advance is done all the time, but it is hard. It is always easier to plan if you can look at the current most urgent project list and pick the top item. if you have to plan what will be on top in a few months that is a lot harder.
- paxys 3y ago
- dehrmann 3y agoIf people can work effectively from home, they can work effectively from their homes in Hyderabad.
- hackernewds 3y agoBold of you to assume it's the same people, that will deliver the same quality of work
- onlyrealcuzzo 3y agoDoesn't need to be the same quality if it's 1/5th the price. Businesses care about profits - not quality.
- halfmatthalfcat 3y agoThat will only last so long until consumers reject the terrible quality and move on to another, higher quality competitor - so the wheel will continue to turn and high quality developers will still be hired to produce high quality work.
- bogtog 3y agoAn Indian employee's salary being 1/5th of an American's, doesn't mean their cost to the company is only 1/5th. There is a general organizational/overhead cost to taking on more people. This cost, for one additional person, may be higher than even the American's salary
- smsm42 3y agoIn order to get a baby in 1 month just hire 9 women!
- _fizz_buzz_ 3y ago20 years ago when the first wave of outsourcing to India happened, a lot of the engineers there were not great. Nowadays there are amazing engineers in India also. They do know what they are worth though, so you cannot low ball them. But they are still working for quite a bit less than Bay Area folks.
- huytersd 3y agoWhy wouldn’t they? It’s like 7-10x cheaper.
- ss1996 3y agoThe difference is much lesser 7-10x in big tech (Google, Amazon, Msft, etc). Big tech's Indian offices pays about 1/3 to 1/4 of what they would earn in the company's USA office. Levels.fyi will corroborate this. Yes, while the average software engineer in India might earn 7-10x less than in the US, this isn't the case within major tech companies.
- onlyrealcuzzo 3y agoSalaries are 1/4th - but you also don't have as high of pension / payroll costs as in US. At l3 & l4 - when you factor in benefits (including health care costs), 401k matching, payroll taxes - it's probably 1/5th or less.
- ss1996 3y agoFair points, 1/5th is a good estimate.
- bluGill 3y agoPay in India is variable. They have a lot of great engineers who make good money - not what they would in the US, but the difference is not that much. They also have a lot of "engineers" who shouldn't be engineers doing the simplest tasks who may 10x less than they would in the US. If you just need a simple web app that is just like every other web app except with your logo you don't need the great engineers.
- berdario 3y agoGoogle L3 SWE in BLR: 36k https://www.levels.fyi/offer/4bb28696-b3a9-430e-af6b-87e139ba6399?currency=USD https://www.levels.fyi/offer/4bb28696-b3a9-430e-af6b-87e139b... Google L4 SWE in BLR: 64k https://www.levels.fyi/offer/3631ce80-f5fa-41e3-bd22-192a98ad493f?currency=USD https://www.levels.fyi/offer/3631ce80-f5fa-41e3-bd22-192a98a... Google L3 SWE in Bay Area: 236k https://www.levels.fyi/offer/8cb64099-ffcf-437f-baa3-a88ae7d71c48 https://www.levels.fyi/offer/8cb64099-ffcf-437f-baa3-a88ae7d... Google L4 SWE in Bay Area: 260k https://www.levels.fyi/offer/4468e21b-6650-4e6c-948b-e90ea1d293aa https://www.levels.fyi/offer/4468e21b-6650-4e6c-948b-e90ea1d... That's a difference between 4x and 6.5x I think that your 3x difference is definitely a lower bound, and it'll be closer to 6.5x than to 3x or 4x most of the time (though I don't see aggregated data per-company, per-region in levels.fyi (but I didn't bother logging in)
- throwaway9191aa 3y agoThis is something my company's internal RTO channels seem to have missed. What if large corporations really *did* collect enough data during covid to justify working from home? Now faang can justify outsourcing the rest of US based jobs. Force RTO in the US, replace those who leave with less expensive resources.
- q7xvh97o2pDhNrh 3y agoThis is actually a brilliant bit of insight/tinfoil that I'd totally missed, largely because all the things that FAANGs have been saying to justify RTO have been so daft. You're totally right, though. If the data shows that RTO has negligible benefit — or even, say, just a marginal 5-10% benefit — then the logical move is to force RTO for the most expensive headcount (since a 5% boost there will be the most valuable) and then hire globally-remote headcount for all the rest. That... really feels quite grim, the more I think about it. Time to go stare at my early-retirement spreadsheets and see where I can squeeze out some more velocity for myself, I suppose.
- sebazzz 3y agoMicrosoft has also been outsourcing parts of core development of other products, like dotnet and Windows components.
- eikenberry 3y agoAny reason it will work out better this time than it did the last time outsourcing was the new big thing? In my anecdotal experience this is just a rehashing of the last outsourcing craze with a new crowd and will end up the same way.
- muzz 3y agoSalaries in India have increased a lot-- they used to be one-tenth that of Silicon Valley but now they are more than one-third and closing in on one-half
- coldpie 3y agoGood news for those 700: because we don't have tech worker unions, they are able to individually bargain the terms of their layoff! ...right?
- SpicyLemonZest 3y agoI don't understand what the dunk is supposed to be here. Plenty of unionized companies have layoffs.
- burnished 3y agoI believe the implication is that those layoffs have better overall terms.
- SpicyLemonZest 3y agoBetter overall terms than what? As far as I can tell there's no information available yet on what kind of severance package these people got. It's definitely not in the source article.
- syntaxing 3y agoOP is talking about the terms of layoffs (as in the severance package) rather than about layoffs in general.
- paxys 3y agoI'm willing to bet that LinkedIn's severance terms are significantly more generous that what a standard union shop can negotiate for its members.
- Ensorceled 3y agoWhen my father was pushed into early requirement, he got a full years severance and has his pension was topped up to 100%. Do you think the LinkedIn people will get their pensions fully paid out?
- pcurve 3y ago"Broken down there are 137 Engineering management roles and 38 Product roles being reduced. Additionally, there will be 388 role reductions across our Engineering team" Companies have cut back on recruiters a while ago, so I guess they stopped money on linkedin. I wonder what areas will be impacted next.
- pastor_bob 3y ago"Today I had to say goodbye to my fellow LinkedInians. I am truly grateful for the 2 years I spent there creating value for shareholders of MSFT. Being pushed by my managers to excel and being able to learn from Satya Nadella's memos made it some of the most impactful years of my life. ETC ETC. Please refer me at your company. Thanks." - 700 linkedIn posts appearing today.
- bastardoperator 3y agoAnd? You'll be doing the same thing when your number gets pulled...
- pastor_bob 3y agoReaching out for referrals, yes. Praising the company that threw me out on the street. No thanks.
- electrondood 3y ago90% of work is performative bullshit anyway. LinkedIn is the epitome of performative bullshit.
- JohnFen 3y agoI certainly wouldn't, no. > creating value for shareholders of MSFT I laughed at this part. If being grateful about increasing shareholder value (without a mention of increasing value for users) is a common attitude there, that explains quite a lot about why LinkedIn is the way it is.
- renewiltord 3y agoSurprising. LinkedIn, even more than Google, was the biggest retirement home. You went there if you wanted to while away time being “blocked on another team” and stuff like that while being paid quite well.
- pastor_bob 3y ago>"We did not expect to share this important update with you all in the midst of such challenging times, but in the spirit of creating clarity, Tomer and I wanted to share some news regarding changes we are making to our orgs....Tomer and I made these decisions with deep consideration - Mohak & Tomer" Is it normal for a CEO like Satya Nadella not to write this email? Kind of off-putting that MSFT is keeping its hands clean here. Mohak and Tomer aren't making this decision.
- paxys 3y agoCommunication should be sent out by whoever made the decision and was in control of the outcome. LinkedIn operates almost completely independently from Microsoft, so it is appropriate for their leadership to be the ones taking the hit.
- pastor_bob 3y agoWhy not Ryan Roslansky then. Surely he's the one that made the call if anyone at linkedin
- MisterPea 3y agoMSFT generally has a hands off approach to acquisitions if the company delivers on financial metrics set by MSFT. Conversation probably started by Satya asking the LinkedIn CEO to just reduce X$ expenses and the LinkedIn leadership made these specific changes.
- salynchnew 3y agoLinkedIn negotiated its own independent P&L from Microsoft. If anything, it's a little weird that it didn't come from Ryan, but it seems like they likely announced layoffs a while back... and Product & Eng waited a while to actually make the cuts.
- crackinmalackin 3y agoI know it's not a apples to apples comparison, but the same parent company nonetheless. Not a good look after closing the deal on 69 billion for activision blizzard. Couldn't have set aside one of those billions to keep people employed a while longer MSFT?
- gdulli 3y agoThe parent company wants to know the viability of each business unit independently, one subsidizing another would obfuscate what's working and what isn't. And secondively, teams/orgs get bloated and keeping them larger than they should be hinders their progress.
- jacquesm 3y agoI guess they'll be updating their LinkedIn profile then. But seriously: while I hope they will land on their feet this might be a sign that there is finally an opportunity to start a competitor on a leaner basis.
- mjhay 3y agoIs another round of tech layoff contagion starting?
- lamontcg 3y agoThis might be the start of the recession. So many businesses out there with little to negative return on invested capital are looking at what happens if revenues decline and they need to borrow money in a "high for longer" interest rate environment. I don't think this one is just tech, but tech is a large part of the problem.
- rvz 3y agoYes, unfortunately.
- dboreham 3y agoMohak & Tomer excel at writing meaningless corporate-speak.
- neovive 3y ago> “As we continue to execute on our FY24 plan, we need to also evolve how we work and what we prioritize so we can deliver on the key initiatives we’ve identified that will have an outsized impact in achieving our business goals,” LinkedIn executives Mohak Shroff and Tomer Cohen wrote in the memo. Is this standard business communication lingo for layoffs?
- bilekas 3y agoThis is one of the worst examples of 'biz-speak' I've ever come across adding insult to injury for those 700 workers being let go.
- paxys 3y agoSuch memos aren't written for people who were fired but the people who are left. Basically "you're lucky to be here, now get to work on reaching your goals."
- onlyrealcuzzo 3y agoThis seems like corp-speak 101. You aren't doing layoffs. You're adjusting to a new market to maximize current opportunities. You have to always look at the bright side.
- rubberband 3y agoI would have liked it if they worked in "synergistic" and "paradigm" tbh. /s
- smsm42 3y agoWould it feel better if they hired a talented writer to write an heartfelt eulogy about how the loss of every single one of these 700 people makes their heart bleed tears of eternal sadness? Nobody would believe it. Everybody knows what it is about - they decided they have X people employed, and they want to have X-700 people employed. That's the beginning and the end of it. If you work for a small company, you will have personal relationship with decision makers, but in a corp where there are several zeroes in staff counts, that doesn't happen. So I don't think there's a point of being insulted about it - it's always going to be "we need less workers, and today it means less you".
- ThomW 3y agoThis is my fault. I finally unsubscribed from one of their annoying pointless emails that I never open this weekend.
- jongjong 3y agoDamn. The market is already so tough for software engineers right now and the supply of engineers is going to increase again. I don't see how wages can drop lower than they are now. I think some engineers may have to consider a career in construction, plumbing, retail or other. Software development is just not worth the hassle and strain. Not to mention that it has become laborious, repetitive and inefficient without much autonomy in terms of choice of frameworks, tools, etc... Software development appears to have become a low-status, menial office job. Not to mention that we are now extremely replaceable; not only because of AI (which makes developers more productive) but because of standardized frameworks like React which allow juniors to churn out features fast with limited knowledge of software development; this means that seniors can often be replaced with juniors. Maybe security will be the next big thing? All these juniors churning out code using frameworks but not understanding what's really going on under the hood might introduce more security vulnerabilities. Not to mention all the disgruntled, jobless developers who might turn to hacking to make ends meet. I guess people who are really into software development may want to consider moving into consulting, management or teaching. I also noticed a lot of bs jobs opening up dealing with regulations and compliance. I remember when I joined the industry in 2012, being a developer was very special; you would interact directly with the company directors, you could choose all your tools and frameworks or even build your own from scratch. You could also decide to focus on back end or front end as there was no clear separation in responsibilities. I guess that's the downside of joining an industry which essentially didn't exist 50 years ago; you never know how it's going to end up. It's not like being a lawyer or doctor which has remained high status and high pay for thousands of years. There's a whole social architecture designed around propping up lawyers' and doctors' pay by constraining the supply of graduates and imposing artificial requirements. On the other hand, software developers tend to be extremely compliant and willing to work overtime for free, not interested to unionize, you don't even need a degree (very low bar to entry), etc... The highly compliant, overworked ones force the rest of us to match them in their degree of compliance and overwork to remain competitive. It's really a sad race to the bottom.
- jihadjihad 3y agoThis is one of the more perplexing takes I've seen, assuming this isn't satire
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- danielovichdk 3y agoI have said it for years. There are too many great software engineers for bad management to use. When product and software management works well, one side effect is the realisation that we don't need to be so many software engineers. But that is just experience the ladt 20 years.
- mvdtnz 3y ago5% quarterly revenue growth during an exceptionally tight quarter and they're cutting jobs? What on Earth?
- delaynomore 3y agoNadella is not happy with 5%!
- Eumenes 3y agoDoes LinkedIn still use Ember? LinkedIn is one of those companies that pivot to [new framework] every six months to keep their engineers happy. I guess its cause the product is so boring.
- NicoJuicy 3y agoIn 2 years they are going to hire again and AI integrations everywhere, because it costs too much
- stfp 3y ago> For those who are directly affected by these changes, you will receive a calendar invitation within the next hour Is it just me or does this suck a lot? Thousands of people unsure about their fate, refreshing their calendar, checking for... the lack of an invite? So much added stress and anxiety. Surely they could send two versions of the email, specifying to each person if they are affected or not.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 3y agoAt least there was a timeline. Last layoff at my company said invitations would be sent later today. No timeline on when. So people were sitting around all day wondering if they still had a job.
- maximinus_thrax 3y ago> Thousands of people unsure about their fate, refreshing their calendar, checking for... the lack of an invite? So much added stress and anxiety. > within the next hour This is great. One hour? Last time we had layoffs I was watching my calendar daily for weeks! There was no timeline at all. I had anxiety every morning logging into work. I think that was a huge part of the burnout I'm currently experiencing.
- saos 3y ago> LinkedIn is now ramping up hiring in India, according to the person familiar with the matter. There it is
- HtmlProgrammer 3y agoCouldn’t come up with enough new things to add to user profiles to justify 700 engineers
- CSMastermind 3y agoThe older I get the less enthusiastic I get about government regulations with a few exceptions. First, ones that balance the cost of negative externalities, clearly not being accounted for in the behavior of market participants. Second, ones that increase the information about a market (transparency) so that all participants can make better decisions. To that second end I would really love to see governments force companies to report headcount on a per role basis and anonymized compensation data about each of these roles on a monthly basis. That way would could more easily contextualize posts like this one.
- TurkishPoptart 3y agoHopefully they get a free subscription to LinkedIn Pro (or whatever it's called) in their severance.