[roansh]

I wonder how many of layoffs that have happened, the ones coming are actually needed financially. For example: I suspect a lot of companies took the opportunity of the first covid lockdowns to fire some people?

Nothing against it since every company is just improving its chances of survival, just thinking out loud about the reasons they share publicly. Also, of course there would be some whose survival was in good shape, but the layoffs were just to increase the profits?

[culpable_pickle]

Founded in 2016. Raised 926 million dollars. On track for record profits this year.

Yeah, IMHO this was just an excuse to slim down the fat. Better returns for investors and better position to swoop in and grab other businesses that can no longer get funding. Shrewd but heartless IMHO.

[TuringNYC]

More likely: Worried about runway given difficultly of raising capital, cutting down to ensure burn-rate assumes capital isnt raised.

[choeger]

With profits, shouldn't you have an infinite runway?

[kabdib]

That depends on where your profits are coming from. If a large number of your customers depend (say) on VC funding . . .

[TuringNYC]

Only if the profits are sustainable and wont go down/away with the recession.

Also, with stocks not going up infinitely, comp needs to change to less stock ("free") and more cash, further reducing profits.

[stickfigure]

Yes, so assume the word profits should have quotes around it.

[nytesky]

I was confused as well. Did PP mean revenue?

[thathndude]

I think we’re seeing a lot of this in the economy today. I think a lot of the inflation were seeing is companies that know they can get away with it given the narrative, and taking the opportunity.

Same thing here, no one can dispute that the overall macroeconomic picture is deteriorating. So you have cover for some fat trimming

[thawaya3113]

The closest public info I can find is revenues of about $125mm in the past year.

With about 4000 employees, that’s an average of about $30k per employee.

That sounds pretty low to make any sort of profit.

[_fat_santa]

It could also be businesses reacting to the swinging pendulum of the economy, it's been a crazy 2 years.

First we have a booming economy, brought to it's knees by the pandemic. Everything shuts down so businesses lay off. But then it came back, in some places in a very major way, and businesses that were laying off yesterday are back hiring today. But as the economy cooled off again, companies realize they can't afford these inflated workforces and start making cuts again.

[formerkrogemp]

Or, software companies and employees aren't as important as they make themselves out to be?

[jussivee]

I was thinking the exact same thing. It's easy to say it's because of the market sentiments, but you could also use that as an excuse.

Covid lockdowns forced businesses to rethink their operational models. For some remote work etc. turned out to be profitable opportunities - you could do the same with less infrastructure.

On another note, their CEO said "There are exciting days ahead for OneTrust as we transform into the Trust Intelligence Platform company." That sounds pretty wtf. Like someone just put some fancy words in line.

[parkingrift]

Scale up rapidly and then mass fire the bottom 10-25% of performers. This is a well known tactic.

[PheonixPharts]

> bottom 10-25% of performers

I've been around awhile and seen plenty of layoffs, layoffs are almost never about performance at the individual level.

It's nice to believe they are because in times like these thinking to yourself "I'm a least in the top half of performers" can give the illusion that you're safe. However, this thinking is ultimately harmful because when you or your friends and colleagues do get laid off you will continue this thinking and considering it a valuation of your self worth, or the worth of colleagues you respect.

[mandelbrotwurst]

They're not primarily about individual performance, but if a company decides to cut X% of some group, it's going to make an effort to cut those it can most afford to lose, which is going to tend toward those they evaluate as lower performers, accurately or not.

[ruffrey]

I’ve recently seen this, but still performance was not the driver. A small company had two teams, a data eng team and a cloud products team. Both very high performing. The economic tide turned and they needed to cut % headcount to survive. Instead of cutting from both teams, they cut the cloud products team and put the idea on hold. This kept the long term play on data intact. They’ll hire full stack later. Yes they could afford to lose people, but not due to individual performance.

[parkingrift]

The differentiation here is that these layoffs are not for urgent financial reasons. This is similar to the recently announced Tesla layoffs.

You don’t lay-off 10% of your work force without need, and you don’t do it at random.

[onion2k]

I imagine this sort of move makes some of the top people leave along with the worst people. If I was in a company that cut 25% of the workforce I'd look for the door regardless of how good I was. Nothing happens in isolation.

[cupofpython]

I think the part about that strategy that bugs me is that the workforce doesnt know they are effectively doing a tryout for the company

But at the same time, these are probably the same companies that say "competitive work environment" somewhere on the job application so maybe employees should expect it

[mandelbrotwurst]

> these are probably the same companies that say "competitive work environment" somewhere on the job application so maybe employees should expect it

Anecdotally, I've seen touchy feely corporate tone along with this strategy, and would suspect that is a fairly common combination. What you describe certainly exists, but it's not always so obvious.

[cupofpython]

ugh, i hate it. "We are a family here" ... "haha jk, get lost"

[kasey_junk]

I keep hearing people say this, but when I worked doing layoffs I don’t think I ever saw a stack ranking happen. It was always either a)every team loses x% or more commonly b) getting rid of a function or location entirely.

At the end of the day the differences in employee performance just aren’t that big and everyone knows it’s hard to accurately judge.

[myth_drannon]

I only saw the highest paid/everyone in HCOL area and in many cases it was the top performers of the team.

[rr888]

This happens too. Its great to get paid top of band, until cost cutting comes around - you better be justifying it.

[tech_tuna]

Netflix and Amazon are big, vocal proponents of this.

[abofh]

I mean, rarely do companies have a stack of termination paperwork ready just in case - more likely it was handed down to line managers "We're trying to cut X$ out of our budget, you're responsible for Y% of that, please choose accordingly"

I've definitely had that list ready to go before (and also been on there fighting to say no, it's not tenable for the business to let Y% of my team go). It depends on circumstances and the team.

But yeah, if the company needs to save a few hundred grand off my budget this year, I know exactly who I'm taking off payroll - good enough to not get fired, but more work to keep them on task than they're producing. I'd rather half a dozen juniors that are amenable to direction than a superstar that's a fight to even give bowling bumpers to.

[tech_tuna]

There is always a list. When heads need to roll, the list comes out and heads are selected in some meaningful order.