[vichu]

As far as I can tell from anecdotal reports by friends at some of these companies, many of these tech layoffs have been done with little rhyme or reason - at least with regard to technical skill, individual contribution, and team cohesion. There's inklings of metrics that the suits decided on, but it is murky and unclear.

It seems like few to no people in any of their managerial chains were consulted.

I'm curious to hear from HNers if any of you were in the room that got to decide who got to stay and who had to go.

[dragonwriter]

> It seems like few to no people in any of their managerial chains were consulted.

From a worker perspective, line and middle managers look like bosses.

From an executive perspective, they look like workers. They are usually also cut in layoffs (often disproportionately, even: increasing management span of control in layoffs is common.) If you consult with them on coming layoffs they’ll either try to protect themselves and the employees they see as key (regardless of the corporate objectives of the layoffs) – or they’ll bolt and try to get the best staff out safe with them before the layoffs hit and they are competing with others for limited opportunities.

So, no, they aren’t consulted.

[jonathankoren]

> From a worker perspective, line and middle managers look like bosses. From an executive perspective, they look like workers

THIS.

I used to think that managers had some sort of secret knowledge they hold close among themselves. Then I became a manager.

FYI: Your manager is often just as much in the dark as you.

[scruple]

> From a worker perspective, line and middle managers look like bosses. From an executive perspective, they look like workers.

A former employer had layoffs this week. Of the people I knew who were laid off, at least 60% were management. Many of them were at the Director level and up to VP and even an SVP.

[notacoward]

I've known managers who had to lay off people in their teams, even as they knew that they themselves were being laid off too. That must really suck.

[david38]

Not at all. The manager did it for money. For what, a month’s salary? If it were sick, it would be less common.

[notacoward]

> The manager did it for money.

You assume a lot. Or maybe project. In the cases where I've been close enough to see, the managers were maintaining empathy and professionalism toward their team members even as they were facing uncertainty themselves. That's still hard. Whether they were staying for the money doesn't change that. Managers are people too, and not everyone is motivated solely by money.

[Ozzie_osman]

There is no way to lay off thousands of people with rhyme or reason. Too much to coordinate with too much secrecy/liability. So it ends up being really broad cuts, like:

  - entire business unit or team
  - everyone hired after date X
  - everyone in geography Y
  - everyone with some level and at or below a certain perf threshold

It's chops with an axe not incisions with a surgical tool.

Being really good can save you from that last bullet points but not the other. It can also help you find a new job that much faster.

[krackers]

   - employee_id % 10

[srean]

That is decimating.

[ThePowerOfFuet]

For those who aren't aware that it's not just wordplay:

https://www.etymonline.com/word/decimate

[hulitu]

Depends on the language. Rust is safer /s

[scruple]

> everyone hired after date X

In one case of layoffs this week, I know of people who were laid off that were in the first ~100 employees. I speculate that this specific layoff was purely financially motivated.

[hawkice]

My employer had two rounds of layoffs recently. People from my team were let go both times. Neither time did my team lead get consulted. No higher manager regularly interacts with me or anyone else on the team, although I now have once a month meetings with a slightly more senior engineering lead.

I asked which factors led to being let go. First round, it was underperformers, then tenure. Second was purely tenure. Now I'm the most recent eng hire on the team. My tech lead insists I'm far too valuable to lose, and wouldn't be on the list for any future layoffs. But how could his boss know? Perhaps they care. Other teams got wildly upset when similarly critical people got let go, though, and I don't recall that being undone.

I have little information about my employer, my own future, or how these decisions will be made. That information would be valuable to me. I'm curious if there are employers who would prefer to make the change of more honor for less base pay. I might accept, depends on details.

[scruple]

> My tech lead insists I'm far too valuable to lose, and wouldn't be on the list for any future layoffs

I've been told things like this in the past. Each time it triggered my Spidey-Sense. I've yet to get hit by a layoff, but 75% of the tech companies I've worked for have experienced layoffs in the '00s, '10s, and now '20s.

The last time a manager told me this I took it as a sign of incoming trouble and found a new employer. That former manager, a VP, was laid off this week. As another HN user commented in this thread, most management are also just workers. As such, they don't have really have the pull to say these things. IMO, they're trying to stop the bleeding.

[ivanmontillam]

I was in a company where I was part of the middle management, and my upper management boss knew that we had to lay off some people in the company (mainly sales).

My boss asked me to select one person to be laid off, as we have been chosen to be reduced by a single headcount (sales saw much blood). I picked our newest guy; our ROI per person was a bit long, so it was an easy choice.

The upper management bargained about keeping some extraordinary people, but I was not in that meeting. I was in another discussion on votes about top performers, and that one got contentious as some personal preferences (favouritism) arose between managers.

[scruple]

> I was in another discussion on votes about top performers

Good grief, that sounds horrible.

[medellin]

From someone who has always been very close to management all my career and is now a manager. The unfortunate truth is a lot of this comes down to social capital. That is the starting point and then the rest is all figured out after.

We truly don’t have the metrics when we are asked for laying off large amounts of people. Any metric we might find would just be gamed so it comes down to how liked you are.

[lazyasciiart]

I work at one company named in recent headlines, and have friends at some of the others. These layoffs have been decided at levels too high to even know if someone is liked.

[bruce511]

Sure, there are cases where the axe is swung broadly, and individuals cannot protect themselves because they were not individually targeted.

However the point of being "liked" is as good s proxy measure as any other. People like working with people they like. Things that get you liked are often related to either overall usefulness (I like, and thus protect, the people who make my day easier).

Like any measure it can be gamed, but it's certainly a measure that doesn't hurt to optimize. (no one was chosen to be cut because "they are well liked")

Conversely being disliked can certainly bump you up the queue.

[monero-xmr]

After a long time in the industry what I like to do now is give each department head a budget target. Then they can decide however they want within that. If they want to then give their own lower managers a budget, great. Or they can do it themselves.

The point is I make each VP / director fight for budget, then once that’s decided, I wait and see what the results are. They may keep a very expensive person or they may keep more cheaper people. Up to them to know who to keep and who to lose.

I do stick my hand in the process occasionally to save someone I like, or have a history with. That’s my prerogative as a leader. But in general I defer to the process.

[medellin]

When entire teams are getting axed all bets are off. But even in that case your manager being buddies with the VP is going to help a little

[tra3]

> many of these tech layoffs have been done with little rhyme or reason - at least with regard to technical skill, individual contribution, and team cohesion. There's inklings of metrics that the suits decided on, but it is murky and unclear.

Maybe it’s even simpler. We all complain about the interview process, but it doesn’t end there does it? The management kinda knows what you’re doing but at a very high level. The management has no idea how productive John is vs how productive jack is, unless jack is actively unpleasant to work with. Maybe it just turns into another kind of social popularity contest.

[tehlike]

The no consulting is intentional.

Things leak too fast otherwise.

[Spivak]

Also, semi-blindly firing based on some opaque metrics doesn’t open you up to wrongful termination or discrimination lawsuits.

[tehlike]

Exactly. Also good from laid-off person pov (considering...) as if it were just performance metric, most people wouldn't be able to get hired, or even considered for interview...

[nonethewiser]

Seniority has been the most consistent theme from what I've ve seen.

[lazyasciiart]

I've seen people argue that, but I actually think it's mostly supported by confirmation bias: when two people are laid off, one of them is a senior developer that works with many others and one is a fresh grad who started four months ago and hasn't worked outside her immediate team, many more people will hear that the senior developer is gone.

[gitfan86]

There are a lot of people high up in large organizations that do not care if the company loses individuals with high output and high skills. All they care about is making themselves look good and get promoted. So yes, if they can get a list of 10k people to fire together very quickly that may make them look good even if that list has no rhyme or reason to it.

But also there are people who are just barely productive enough to not get fired at these companies. Layoffs are a great time to get rid of them without going through all the effort of documenting that they are just barely not doing enough to keep the job. Large companies are afraid to fire people without good documentation of the person doing a bad job or something wrong because they could be sued for wrongful termination.

[jeffbee]

Random layoffs seem more fair. Otherwise, everyone who leaves a company at a certain time gets stigmatized as a low performer.