[clnq]

A lot of people are talking about the numbers. But top senior engineers are hard to find. The ones who were let go also took institutional knowledge with them. This is why they are in demand, they are “proven” and they can operate much better in that role than their replacements.

I was not let go, but I left a company along with a wave of others (mostly those senior enough to be certain that they’ll find great work) when the company U-turned on their remote work promises. The team I was on was responsible for a major feature of the product, and only had two very senior software engineers, who both left in protest when it was ultimatum-style demanded that they’d move into commutable distance. It’s almost like we were let go. Like many people, we had moved away from an expensive city during the pandemic and were not looking to come back.

The company has replaced us with more than 15 contractors of junior to mid skills. Despite this, they are now periodically emailing us to come back, and work remote. It started as “come back, we will let you be remote”, and has evolved to much more appealing offers over time.

The difference between us and many more contractors is not that we’re John Carmacks and the contractors are graduates. It’s part seniority, but much larger part - a ton of knowledge about the systems the company had and the types of systems in the industry used for the feature we were responsible for.

Good luck replacing institutional knowledge with cheap labor. Every company thinks they’re special and they’ll have a great time with this footgun. And good luck to them! But I don’t know anyone who has found good employment now and wants to return to that.

Some layoffs could be more “amicable”, so I can imagine people wanting to return. But it will be hard for those in the industry who legitimately got much better jobs, which a lot of seniors that dedicated long tenures to the footgun company did. On the other hand, juniors might be easier to swap out than long-time seniors, though there are still costs to training them. It’s a lot of extra work before one employee is fully replaced by another.

[bb88]

> Despite this, they are now periodically emailing us to come back, and work remote. It started as “come back, we will let you be remote”, and has evolved to much more appealing offers over time.

I'm not sure that's a genuine ask. As soon as you help train the newbs up, they'll lay you off all over again.

But also realize that you and your co-worker were n=2 out of maybe 1000. You might be rounding errors on the effects management were looking for.

[clnq]

I think management was seeing such collateral damage as just rounding errors. But it did not work out this way.

Engineers above the senior level were far more likely to leave than juniors. This was because finding remote, well-paying work even today is still a lot easier for a senior, principal, fellow engineers, than it is for those less experienced. I would say principals and seniors were most likely to leave. They left the company I was talking about 2:1 compared to others.

Fellows/distinguished level engineers didn’t leave much either. But probably because the RTO mandate was negotiable for them, as many other things. Moreover, it might be difficult to move laterally to a different company and remain at that level, with that pay.

It was mostly that the middle fell out.

I guess companies always think they’ll get the undesirables and replaceables out with layoffs, but through a lot of secondary effects (morale, distrust, lack of stability, leaving friends, and so on) they often get rid of the people that are most in demand and hardest to replace.

It might not be 2:1 in every case, but I do believe that the ones in demand are most likely to leave in “soft” layoffs like forced RTO or whatever Musk was doing at X, where the employees themselves choose whether to to or stay and submit. If you just decimate the company evenly, the outcome could be less destructive.

[bb88]

I feel culture is emotional manipulation (e.g. the Cameo "Fameo" [1] or family). This works until layoffs need to happen, and then any justification for removing those same family members are justified.

So as an employee (not necessarily you, though), if you're angry that you got laid off, it's because you drank management's gas lighting kool-aid. And further, you shouldn't be amazed at how far the C-staff will go to protect their bonuses. Even if it means reducing your "Fameo" to 1/10th of what it was.

I'm also sure they made a calculation. If they want to get rid of 1/2 the company, lay off about 1/3. The rest will be through attrition. Those co-workers getting laid off, they're not usually management's problem anymore. They're yours to figure out. Hope you can self organize after half your staff is gone!

But in all honesty if management just said, "Thanks for you hard work. The company is doing really well. We're fortunate enough to be growing instead of shrinking..." -- I think that level of honesty would do wonders for employees when it came time to do a layoff.

[1] https://archive.ph/2023.10.23-081817/https://www.nytimes.com...