7 ms·

Makes me sad to read it as an ex-Elastic employee. AI is used to justify the redundancies, and the company still expects to grow in this fiscal year. In the SE

Makes me sad to read it as an ex-Elastic employee. AI is used to justify the redundancies, and the company still expects to grow in this fiscal year. In the SEC filling the specifically mention more “head count” in “go-to-market” roles [1]. > a reduction of approximately 7% of our workforce > Advances in AI, automation, and technology are reshaping how work gets done, and we're changing with them. (…) That's what this reorganization is for: a simpler structure, with fewer layers, less complexity, and less friction. > The changes we announced today are a sign of confidence in the business, not a retreat from it. We continue to invest in key growth areas and expect total headcount to grow year-over-year this fiscal year [the SEC filling says “ The Company plans to continue hiring in key strategic areas and locations, including continuing to grow headcount in customer-facing go-to-market functions, and expects total headcount to grow this fiscal year compared to last fiscal year, as it continues to invest in future growth opportunities”] [1]: https://ir.elastic.co/financials/sec-filings/sec-filings-details/default.aspx?FilingId=19559144 https://ir.elastic.co/financials/sec-filings/sec-filings-det...

ai_slop_hater 3mo ago
I've grown to hate executives. This is obviously an AI-generated nothing burger. They never mean what they say publicly.
- sandeepkd 3mo ago
  Do not want to sound like as if I am taking their side but the reality is that all these decisions are mandated by some subset of investors in one way or another. These executives are replaceable, and they would be replaced if they do not toe the line. In other words these executives happen to choose a easy and beneficial path rather than standing up for the long term right thing for the company.
  - Grombobulous 3mo ago
    The thing is, a profitable company that sees an obvious efficiency staring it in the face is still going to take that efficiency. I don’t think a lot of us employees will be happy to admit that AI is turning out to be a legitimate productivity aid that is allowing individuals to accomplish more work per person. We’d rather sit here and stew about companies “blaming AI for layoffs” but I imagine that is only sometimes the case. A somewhat related tangent: I have had the thought that many parts of the Japanese system of hiring for life might actually be really appropriate for the AI age. That system seems to result in a lot of companies finding ways to reshuffle employees into making some kind of product that has market value rather than the Western reaction that that seems to favor downsizing and focusing the company on a smaller set of markets in the name of ruthless efficiency. This seems to result in many Japanese firms making a wide breadth of interesting products at very high quality levels. If your company is profitable because AI is increasing efficiency (allegedly, of course), why layoff 7% of your employees when you could instead assign them to make something new or complementary to your current product line? Western companies seem to refuse to do that out of a sense of focus and efficiency, but maybe giving that strategy a go more frequently would result in unrealized opportunities.
    - brianwawok 3mo ago
      I’d love to hire for life, but what commitment can an employee give? It can’t be one sided or it’s terrible.
      - Grombobulous 3mo ago
        The level of commitment to employees from Japanese corporations is astoundingly high compared to ones in the US. Not that I would romanticize them as a whole, as a lot of aspects of Japanese corporate work culture are not to be envied.
    - kanbankaren 3mo ago
      > many parts of the Japanese system of hiring for life This is a terrible strategy. It encourages inefficiency to metastasize throughout the company. No wonder Japan is stuck in a rut since the 90s and its debt-to-GDP ratio is 205% which is one of the highest in the world. Your romantic idea of Japan would get destroyed by just browsing www.reddit.com/r/japanlife/ Japan has one of the worst work culture and low productivity in the world.
      - Grombobulous 3mo ago
        That’s why I said “many parts” and not “all.” I wouldn’t want to pick up a good number of their practices, but I think a company seeing layoffs as an embarrassing last resort is a positive trait. I also think that concepts like debt to GDP ratio are somewhat detached from corporate policies.
        andsoitis 3mo ago
        > but I think a company seeing layoffs as an embarrassing last resort is a positive trait. Don’t most companies think of layoffs as a last resort? I don’t think one ought to be embarrassed about correcting course when you have made a mistake. It takes courage.
        3mo ago
  - eli_gottlieb 3mo ago
    Ok so get rid of the investors then.
    - Wolfbeta 3mo ago
      That's what the pollution is for.
    - Chu4eeno 3mo ago
      Just get Dodge v. Ford Motor Co reversed.
  - mrcwinn 3mo ago
    That’s not how it works. Investors don’t mandate operational decisions. That’s for… operators. What they do ask for, in exchange for their investment, are things like revenue growth or certain margins. You can crap on those investors. The answer then is to never take their money. But without money, the job probably wasn’t created in the first place. So the result is the same. By the way, ever work alongside a really crappy non-executive and wonder how on earth they’re keeping their job? I sure have.
    - tancop 3mo ago
      most investors want maximum short term profit. execs have to do what they say because of fiduciary duty and shareholder votes to fire them. the only way to prevent it is use debt financing exclusively or make every investor sign a contract that limits the companies duty to "dont do things that will actively lose money". thats hard when a lot of vcs strategy is extract as much as possible and let it fall.
- BobbyTables2 3mo ago
  An AI can also regurgitate others decisions, based on a much wider knowledge base than these executives. AI hardware costs are nothing compared to executives’ stock options too…
- deleted 3mo ago
  [deleted]
- twelve40 3mo ago
  this is a bit... general? there are companies with bullshit executives for sure, then there are companies who slay it. i hate to list the details because people start picking on details, but in my mind MS under Satya made a 180 from crap to relevant. All the while i realize what kind of shit goes on inside and if you read Blind your eyes will bleed. Yet Satya took it from a pure 100% bullshit executive and made it relevant. So not all executives are equal.
gaiagraphia 3mo ago
[flagged]
- callc 3mo ago
  Please write nicer comments. Everyone has their own problems and their own feelings. Their socioeconomic conditions do not invalidate them.
  - gaiagraphia 3mo ago
    [flagged]
christophilus 3mo ago
ex-Elastic here, too. It was a great place to work pre-IPO. It seems the culture has shifted a lot since the IPO, though.
- echelon 3mo ago
  Might've been better if AWS and GCP didn't steal your goodies and take so much meat off the bones. Fair source > Open source. Trillion dollar companies need to pay to play. Open source removes your jobs, your exit equity, and transfers it to the hyperscalers. Sucks that it happened to you guys.
  - limagnolia 3mo ago
    Elastic isn't Open Source though, they abandoned Open Source. It seems to me like this is an example of non-Open Source whatever licensing causing job loss. Or just plain bad leadership.
    - echelon 3mo ago
      They switched from open source when big tech stole their goodies. It was too late to stop it.
      - limagnolia 3mo ago
        Big tech didn't steal anything. Elastic used open source software as the foundation of their product (specifically, Apache Lucene), and released their product as open source. The license allowed Elastic to do so, and likewise, the license Elastic used allowed "big tech" to use Elastics product. If it wasn't for open source, Elastic wouldn't exist. Then, Elastic whined about Amazon using Elastic under the open source license they used to build their product. They whined that Amazon wasn't contributing enough. So they switched the license to their product. So Amazon took over maintaining the open source software. Doing exactly what Elastic asked them to do. Sorry, but everything about Elastic, and especially this most recent announcement of layoffs, scream "bad leadership".
gaiagraphia 3mo ago
[flagged]
- asda_ 3mo ago
  Feels like you're annoyed the company ever tried to make a buck off their labor at all. Give your product away for free and this is what you get.
- tibbar 3mo ago
  This seems kind of weirdly confrontational? Elastic was founded by the guy who created elasticsearch. Why shouldn't he make a living selling services around the software he created? This is a terrific success story!
grey-area 3mo ago
What’s also sad is looking at the quotes you posted GAI was obviously used to churn it out - it’s a simulacrum of thought, signifying nothing. This is what the CEO is trying to claim will save the company, and unfortunately this is the sort of mediocrity relying on LLMs gives you.
- ffsm8 3mo ago
  > This is what the CEO is trying to claim will save the company Maybe I'm misreading it, but I didn't get the "we're forced to do this" vibe, which "saving" would imply. To be this reads more like a strategic reduction in workforce as the product has stabilized.
dzonga 3mo ago
>more “head count” in “go-to-market” roles Software engineers tend to put their heads in the sand, once a company/product reaches a certain maturity - it's the time for it to be milked. You need less product people - hence why most companies end up outsourcing to India etc, "A.I" is just outsourcing to "agents". Now Salespeople - they can keep selling - and as long as they're willing buyers. this is all part of the Product Maturity lifecycle. One day the product stops being an attractive cash cow - then it gets sold to PE & finally dies or remains a zombie. as an engineer - your job is to know where in the product lifecycle the company|product you're currently working on is.

ai_slop_hater 3mo ago

I've grown to hate executives. This is obviously an AI-generated nothing burger. They never mean what they say publicly.

sandeepkd 3mo ago
Do not want to sound like as if I am taking their side but the reality is that all these decisions are mandated by some subset of investors in one way or another. These executives are replaceable, and they would be replaced if they do not toe the line. In other words these executives happen to choose a easy and beneficial path rather than standing up for the long term right thing for the company.
- Grombobulous 3mo ago
  The thing is, a profitable company that sees an obvious efficiency staring it in the face is still going to take that efficiency. I don’t think a lot of us employees will be happy to admit that AI is turning out to be a legitimate productivity aid that is allowing individuals to accomplish more work per person. We’d rather sit here and stew about companies “blaming AI for layoffs” but I imagine that is only sometimes the case. A somewhat related tangent: I have had the thought that many parts of the Japanese system of hiring for life might actually be really appropriate for the AI age. That system seems to result in a lot of companies finding ways to reshuffle employees into making some kind of product that has market value rather than the Western reaction that that seems to favor downsizing and focusing the company on a smaller set of markets in the name of ruthless efficiency. This seems to result in many Japanese firms making a wide breadth of interesting products at very high quality levels. If your company is profitable because AI is increasing efficiency (allegedly, of course), why layoff 7% of your employees when you could instead assign them to make something new or complementary to your current product line? Western companies seem to refuse to do that out of a sense of focus and efficiency, but maybe giving that strategy a go more frequently would result in unrealized opportunities.
  - brianwawok 3mo ago
    I’d love to hire for life, but what commitment can an employee give? It can’t be one sided or it’s terrible.
    - Grombobulous 3mo ago
      The level of commitment to employees from Japanese corporations is astoundingly high compared to ones in the US. Not that I would romanticize them as a whole, as a lot of aspects of Japanese corporate work culture are not to be envied.
  - kanbankaren 3mo ago
    > many parts of the Japanese system of hiring for life This is a terrible strategy. It encourages inefficiency to metastasize throughout the company. No wonder Japan is stuck in a rut since the 90s and its debt-to-GDP ratio is 205% which is one of the highest in the world. Your romantic idea of Japan would get destroyed by just browsing www.reddit.com/r/japanlife/ Japan has one of the worst work culture and low productivity in the world.
    - Grombobulous 3mo ago
      That’s why I said “many parts” and not “all.” I wouldn’t want to pick up a good number of their practices, but I think a company seeing layoffs as an embarrassing last resort is a positive trait. I also think that concepts like debt to GDP ratio are somewhat detached from corporate policies.
      - andsoitis 3mo ago
        > but I think a company seeing layoffs as an embarrassing last resort is a positive trait. Don’t most companies think of layoffs as a last resort? I don’t think one ought to be embarrassed about correcting course when you have made a mistake. It takes courage.
        3mo ago
- eli_gottlieb 3mo ago
  Ok so get rid of the investors then.
  - Wolfbeta 3mo ago
    That's what the pollution is for.
  - Chu4eeno 3mo ago
    Just get Dodge v. Ford Motor Co reversed.
- mrcwinn 3mo ago
  That’s not how it works. Investors don’t mandate operational decisions. That’s for… operators. What they do ask for, in exchange for their investment, are things like revenue growth or certain margins. You can crap on those investors. The answer then is to never take their money. But without money, the job probably wasn’t created in the first place. So the result is the same. By the way, ever work alongside a really crappy non-executive and wonder how on earth they’re keeping their job? I sure have.
  - tancop 3mo ago
    most investors want maximum short term profit. execs have to do what they say because of fiduciary duty and shareholder votes to fire them. the only way to prevent it is use debt financing exclusively or make every investor sign a contract that limits the companies duty to "dont do things that will actively lose money". thats hard when a lot of vcs strategy is extract as much as possible and let it fall.
BobbyTables2 3mo ago
An AI can also regurgitate others decisions, based on a much wider knowledge base than these executives. AI hardware costs are nothing compared to executives’ stock options too…
deleted 3mo ago
[deleted]
twelve40 3mo ago
this is a bit... general? there are companies with bullshit executives for sure, then there are companies who slay it. i hate to list the details because people start picking on details, but in my mind MS under Satya made a 180 from crap to relevant. All the while i realize what kind of shit goes on inside and if you read Blind your eyes will bleed. Yet Satya took it from a pure 100% bullshit executive and made it relevant. So not all executives are equal.

gaiagraphia 3mo ago

[flagged]

callc 3mo ago
Please write nicer comments. Everyone has their own problems and their own feelings. Their socioeconomic conditions do not invalidate them.
- gaiagraphia 3mo ago
  [flagged]

christophilus 3mo ago

ex-Elastic here, too. It was a great place to work pre-IPO. It seems the culture has shifted a lot since the IPO, though.

echelon 3mo ago
Might've been better if AWS and GCP didn't steal your goodies and take so much meat off the bones. Fair source > Open source. Trillion dollar companies need to pay to play. Open source removes your jobs, your exit equity, and transfers it to the hyperscalers. Sucks that it happened to you guys.
- limagnolia 3mo ago
  Elastic isn't Open Source though, they abandoned Open Source. It seems to me like this is an example of non-Open Source whatever licensing causing job loss. Or just plain bad leadership.
  - echelon 3mo ago
    They switched from open source when big tech stole their goodies. It was too late to stop it.
    - limagnolia 3mo ago
      Big tech didn't steal anything. Elastic used open source software as the foundation of their product (specifically, Apache Lucene), and released their product as open source. The license allowed Elastic to do so, and likewise, the license Elastic used allowed "big tech" to use Elastics product. If it wasn't for open source, Elastic wouldn't exist. Then, Elastic whined about Amazon using Elastic under the open source license they used to build their product. They whined that Amazon wasn't contributing enough. So they switched the license to their product. So Amazon took over maintaining the open source software. Doing exactly what Elastic asked them to do. Sorry, but everything about Elastic, and especially this most recent announcement of layoffs, scream "bad leadership".

gaiagraphia 3mo ago

[flagged]

asda_ 3mo ago
Feels like you're annoyed the company ever tried to make a buck off their labor at all. Give your product away for free and this is what you get.
tibbar 3mo ago
This seems kind of weirdly confrontational? Elastic was founded by the guy who created elasticsearch. Why shouldn't he make a living selling services around the software he created? This is a terrific success story!

grey-area 3mo ago

What’s also sad is looking at the quotes you posted GAI was obviously used to churn it out - it’s a simulacrum of thought, signifying nothing. This is what the CEO is trying to claim will save the company, and unfortunately this is the sort of mediocrity relying on LLMs gives you.

ffsm8 3mo ago
> This is what the CEO is trying to claim will save the company Maybe I'm misreading it, but I didn't get the "we're forced to do this" vibe, which "saving" would imply. To be this reads more like a strategic reduction in workforce as the product has stabilized.

dzonga 3mo ago

>more “head count” in “go-to-market” roles Software engineers tend to put their heads in the sand, once a company/product reaches a certain maturity - it's the time for it to be milked. You need less product people - hence why most companies end up outsourcing to India etc, "A.I" is just outsourcing to "agents". Now Salespeople - they can keep selling - and as long as they're willing buyers. this is all part of the Product Maturity lifecycle. One day the product stops being an attractive cash cow - then it gets sold to PE & finally dies or remains a zombie. as an engineer - your job is to know where in the product lifecycle the company|product you're currently working on is.