[ghaff]

I wrote a comment on some other thread but there's just a lot of wrong place/wrong time at an individual level. If a company is doing a substantial layoff there just isn't the time, energy, or resources to train and fit people who may be generically "better" at some level into roles that already have people presumably doing adequate jobs filling them.

People are not fungible. Someone can be in a role where they're really valuable. But the company evolves and roles evolve and the needs are different. Sure, they might be able to excel in a new role eventually--but maybe it's not optimal to try to make them fit especially at a senior level.

[mulmen]

Ok then why do we still have recruiters and HR? If their job is impossible why do we pay them to pretend otherwise? If people aren’t fungible why do we force them into fungible roles?

If the reality is that people are fungible and leadership is just out of touch and made bad decisions then they’re the ones that should be canned.

Hiring people is expensive. Firing people is expensive. Reorganizing people requires competent leadership.

[giantg2]

"Ok then why do we still have recruiters and HR? If their job is impossible why do we pay them to pretend otherwise?"

The same reason many devs exist - people convinced them it's better or more convenient to have an expert. The number of systems that could be an excel sheet...

[ghaff]

And even if you mostly just have temps and contractors, you still need some HR/recruiters at any sort of scale. And you do still have costs associated with, especially, onboarding new people.

[ghaff]

You're cutting a division. You're cutting a project. Yeah, if you were hiring into a new position, you might hire some of the people you're cutting. But you probably aren't. So, yeah, you might try to retain some specific people but you mostly aren't interested in doing a large-scal rewizzle which will probably disrupt things even more than the layoff is already going to do.

[mulmen]

Then why hire at all? If it’s all a project or disposable division just hire temps and contractors.

[ghaff]

That's the case with many roles in many industries. Films are largely made on a project basis today rather than stars being tied to a studio.

In US tech, companies today generally prefer some degree of continuity/culture of employees and many employees prefer some degree of stability but it's hard to argue that there isn't less of both than in the past.