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As a layoff strategy, I would expect it to be counterproductive. The people most likely to quit skew toward high-performing individuals who feel confident in t
by deweller 2y ago
As a layoff strategy, I would expect it to be counterproductive. The people most likely to quit skew toward high-performing individuals who feel confident in their ability to get a remote job elsewhere. And vice versa.
- nickpp 2y agoSample of one, but around me best engineers came back to work soon after Covid ended, show up every day, communicate and collaborate. The less productive are the ones dragging their feet, coming up with excuses to stay home and hide as much as possible from peer scrutiny. Almost like best engineers enjoy coming and working with the team, while the worst dread it.
- marricks 2y agoI’m sure the ones who love to suck up and don’t have a social life were chomping at the bit to come back, no doubt.
- nickpp 2y agoYou have a point: the best engineers do tend to have an underdeveloped social life. On the other hand, the ones that love to suck up are the ones with the great social skills. Again, sample of one, so take with the grain of salt, do not draw generic conclusions, etc.
- spacemadness 2y agoOh, I'm certainly taking it with a giant pile of salt alright, because what you said was insulting nonsense pointed directly at remote workers. And you can't say don't draw generic conclusions when you tried to do exactly that.
- nickpp 2y agoThe very first words of my initial message warned you I am talking strictly about my team. I do know excellent engineers working solely remote. Not on my team though, and they are freelancing contractors. Different organizations, different dynamics.
- roguecoder 2y agoA lot of companies aren't trying to hire the "best" programmers. Places like Amazon won't let engineers use highly-skilled techniques anyway. The high-profile RTO places tend to hire in bulk for programmers that will do as product tells them. Weeding out people who value quality over conformity is a goal.
- philwelch 2y ago> Places like Amazon won't let engineers use highly-skilled techniques anyway. I’m curious what you mean by this.
- papichulo2023 2y agoProb need a few dozens to build the frameworks and a few hundreds to glue them to the services that require them.
- senderista 2y agoI work with an Amazon engineer who has been working on storage systems since 1990 (NT kernel) and is an absolute wizard. He could probably write a durable concurrent B-tree in an afternoon.
- Malidir 2y agoThose deemed essential get exceptions!
- marcosdumay 2y agoLayoffs in profitable companies are always counterproductive. At best, it signals the company is done with growth and is going for a high-profit, low investment (including low innovation) policy.
- Malidir 2y agoDepends on how it is measured as to whether it is a success.
- jjk166 2y agoThat's not always true. Layoffs can spur growth if you are dropping dead weight, for example by eliminating under performing business units, consolidating redundant functionality, or simply correcting previous bad decisions that led to over-hiring.
- marcosdumay 2y agoIf you are looking for freeing resources that you can redirect, firing your "resources" won't help redirecting them... unless you think you don't need the people that are working for a while at your company and can get better ones by hiring. But if it's the second one, well, you'd be stupid and my best possible explanation up there doesn't apply anymore.
- jjk166 2y agoFiring 50 employees with skillsets you don't need to hire 50 employees with the skillsets you actually need will very much help redirect your resources. It's pretty tough to transmute an accountant into an engineer.
- munk-a 2y agoThose aren't layoffs - at least as they're commonly implemented - they're performance based firings. Layoffs are done in a mass manner and tend to be highly inaccurate - they're often based off of BS kpis.