[clnq]

Assuming there is some ebb and flow in demand, they should keep employees around with nothing to do, yes.

Moreover, there is natural attrition. They can stop hiring, promote internally, and so on, until they’ve reached their desired head count.

The point is that both of these are doable when the company is wildly profitable. And they should be done for the negative secondary effects of layoffs (ruining lives, morale loss, people following their laid off friends out of the company, etc).

It seems like these days companies don’t even freeze hiring and grow competencies in house in times like these that much. They just assume (often wrongly) that they’ll quickly hire everyone they need once the demand picks up. But it takes years of training before an employee is fully integrated and has all the institutional knowledge to perform at their peak, and it takes many months to fill difficult positions.

Some people who have been around tech for a good number of decades have seen this fashionable layoff footgun used more than once.

[AnimalMuppet]

> Assuming there is some ebb and flow in demand, they should keep employees around with nothing to do, yes.

Disagree. Especially if they knew they were hired for a surge that would end.

[McDyver]

Then they should have hired contractors for the specific timeframe, no?

Otherwise it's just corporate greed: we know we'll have a surge in demand, so we buy new vessels and containers and manpower to last us 2 years; we make huge profits, discard this surplus and blame it on the "new normal" (FTA)

[FirmwareBurner]

>Otherwise it's just corporate greed

By that logic, every business around us operates on corporate greed since their sole purpose is to increase their profits and bring down costs, not to be a UBI jobs program.

Sure, certain large and profitable companies with sizable market caps could easily stomach having even more idle workers coasting all day for great paychecks, with a corresponding reduction in profits and still stay afloat, but why would they?

[McDyver]

Not necessarily. They can be profitable without being greedy.

In this case they could have just said "we don't have capacity to fulfill all new demands, we can happily run at full capacity, and charge more if needed". Other companies could have taken up the slack, new businesses popping up, etc. Instead, they recruited people who prioritised this new job, just to be let go.

[FirmwareBurner]

>Not necessarily. They can be profitable without being greedy.

Sure, but then they'll be overtaken by their competitors who will rake in more profits as they don't mind being greedy, and your shareholders won't appreciate that.

Greed and capitalism are basically synonymous, as the end game of capitalism is to accumulate as much wealth and market cap as possible, at the expense of your competition, until you own the whole pie.

Preaching to companies "just be OK with being a little poorer this time", while their competitors are using every dirty trick in the book to get ahead, will never work.

If you want a level playing field for everyone to not be greedy, it must come from regulations that hold companies accountable, not expecting companies to voluntarily act in favor of their labor force out of the kindness of their hearts, as that will seldom happen.

[clnq]

I ran a tech startup for several years and I can say you have a simplistic view of this. My company didn't want to be a unicorn, it didn't want VC money, and it didn't want the whole pie. It was funded out of pocket until it became profitable. It was under capitalism, and yet we had no investors other than the founders to be greedy for. We just built a product that was important for us, and we were content with earning enough for this to be worthwhile.

Capitalism is not synonymous with greed. We just idolize greedy people. We call them things like "successful", "self-made", "inspiring", or "capitalist" to absolve them of their greed. In the Soviet Union, people would call greedy people "successful", "self-made", "inspiring", and "communist".

It's really just the greed.

[AnimalMuppet]

> Then they should have hired contractors for the specific timeframe, no?

No. Knowing that the downturn is inevitably coming (because it always does) is not the same as knowing when the downturn is coming.

That means the outrage in your last paragraph is rather misplaced.

[BobaFloutist]

Then hire year-by-year (or 6-month by 6-month) contractors with the explicit understanding that they're being hired to cover a surge that they expect to end, and that their contract will not be renewed after it ends.

[AnimalMuppet]

Why should they?

In what world would that be better than continuous employment as long as needed, for either the company or the employees? (The good times usually last longer than just one year.)

More to the point: Why do you think you have the right to tell them how they should structure their employment practices? Why do you think the entire economy should be restructured to match your preferences?

I agree with making it clear that they are being hired to cover a surge.

[BobaFloutist]

You know, I was going to respond with my thoughts, and then I realized they mostly applied to the United States. In a country with guaranteed off ramp/severance pay, most of my concerns are significantly less relevant. That being said...

More to the point: Why do you think you have the right to tell them how they should structure their employment practices? Why do you think the entire economy should be restructured to match your preferences?

Of course I have the self awareness to recognize that I'm just a random guy sitting on the couch supplying my 2¢ on the employment practices of an enormous corporation in a different country. But I assume that's not what you're talking about, since a fundamental conceit of Hacker News (and, frankly, most of the internet) is that random anonymous people bored at work or at home with vastly varying competence, understanding, and reasoning are free to indulge their hubris and make broad, sweeping judgements well outside their own domains, safe in the knowledge that they have zero power to actually enact those judgements.

So that makes the question more "Why should the public have any interest or say in the business decisions of a private corporation?" And if we don't already see eye-to-eye on that, I very much doubt that we will, since it tends to be a very baked in opinion.

[creer]

Depending on the country, hiring for 6 month, 1 year, permanent, etc is extremely regulated. There is very little leeway or choice to the company ... aside from hiring outside that country.