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How do you "accidentally" hire more people than you can afford? I could see two people both hiring a janitor without realizing it, but not "accidentally" hirin
by taylonr 14y ago
How do you "accidentally" hire more people than you can afford?
I could see two people both hiring a janitor without realizing it, but not "accidentally" hiring a lot of developers, designers or whatever else.
- trentmb 14y agoYou expect to make more revenue than you actually do.
- taylonr 14y agoSo you didn't "accidentally" hire people. You did it with a lack of foresight. To me, that's different. Saying you accidentally hired people makes it sound softer than it really is. If Raytheon or Boeing hired 2,000 people ahead of a defense contract they were sure they'd get, and didn't that wouldn't be an "accident." That would be poor planning (counting your eggs before they hatch kind of thing.) Either way, I don't really care either way about Zynga. I don't think I've ever played their games, but at the same time I'm not hoping they fail.
- davidw 14y ago> How do you "accidentally" hire more people than you can afford? Making predictions is difficult, especially about the future.
- taylonr 14y agoSo it's not really an accident. They meant to hire those people, they were just bad at forecasting. To me, those are separate issues.
- codeonfire 14y agoYou are a middle manager. Do you say "bob in the other department hired 5 people, so I guess I'll stick with the three I have"? Nope. You go straight to your VP and say a rival VP just got five guys, where's mine. If hiring is decentralized and no one is concerned about costs you end up growing exponential.
- Firehed 14y agoThen the VP is not doing his/her job correctly. Someone needs to be aware of the budget for salaries and be responsible for ensuring it isn't exceeded (and held accountable if it is). It's also very backwards (government-level!) thinking to be playing the hiring quota game like that. I'd much rather hire a few members in a kick-ass team than participate in a headcount battle.
- codeonfire 14y agoI agree with your statements, but those are arguments about how it should be, and not how it is.
- chris_wot 14y agoSeems to me that they need the level of developers they have, because they've said they are moving their whole division to India. That's not a mass redundancy, that's a mass replacement.
- SoftwareMaven 14y agoThat sounds like what would happen at Strawman, Inc. I've worked at a bunch of companies, big and small, and have never seen hiring justified like that. Now, getting people and teams transferred once they are hired? That's a whole different story.
- codeonfire 14y agoWhat do you propose caused Zynga management to vastly overhire and conduct layoffs?
- jrockway 14y agoThey expected faster growth than what actually happened. It's possible that the CEO approved each individual hire and they still could have overhired.