[puszczyk]

Makes me sad to read it as an ex-Elastic employee.

AI is used to justify the redundancies, and the company still expects to grow in this fiscal year. In the SEC filling the specifically mention more “head count” in “go-to-market” roles [1].

> a reduction of approximately 7% of our workforce

> Advances in AI, automation, and technology are reshaping how work gets done, and we're changing with them. (…) That's what this reorganization is for: a simpler structure, with fewer layers, less complexity, and less friction.

> The changes we announced today are a sign of confidence in the business, not a retreat from it. We continue to invest in key growth areas and expect total headcount to grow year-over-year this fiscal year [the SEC filling says “ The Company plans to continue hiring in key strategic areas and locations, including continuing to grow headcount in customer-facing go-to-market functions, and expects total headcount to grow this fiscal year compared to last fiscal year, as it continues to invest in future growth opportunities”]

[1]: https://ir.elastic.co/financials/sec-filings/sec-filings-det...

[christophilus]

ex-Elastic here, too. It was a great place to work pre-IPO. It seems the culture has shifted a lot since the IPO, though.

[echelon]

Might've been better if AWS and GCP didn't steal your goodies and take so much meat off the bones.

Fair source > Open source.

Trillion dollar companies need to pay to play.

Open source removes your jobs, your exit equity, and transfers it to the hyperscalers. Sucks that it happened to you guys.

[limagnolia]

Elastic isn't Open Source though, they abandoned Open Source. It seems to me like this is an example of non-Open Source whatever licensing causing job loss. Or just plain bad leadership.

[echelon]

They switched from open source when big tech stole their goodies.

It was too late to stop it.

[limagnolia]

Big tech didn't steal anything. Elastic used open source software as the foundation of their product (specifically, Apache Lucene), and released their product as open source. The license allowed Elastic to do so, and likewise, the license Elastic used allowed "big tech" to use Elastics product. If it wasn't for open source, Elastic wouldn't exist.

Then, Elastic whined about Amazon using Elastic under the open source license they used to build their product. They whined that Amazon wasn't contributing enough. So they switched the license to their product. So Amazon took over maintaining the open source software. Doing exactly what Elastic asked them to do.

Sorry, but everything about Elastic, and especially this most recent announcement of layoffs, scream "bad leadership".

[cowsandmilk]

It’s been five years since they changed their license. Today’s layoffs cannot be blamed on AWS and GCP. It’s been years and they have differentiated products now.

[democracy]

It does actually. I am pro-OSS as sharing knowledge and innovation, I am not sure at this stage I am happy sharing my work with people using LLMs for anything... OSS gonna change for sure.

[ai_slop_hater]

I've grown to hate executives. This is obviously an AI-generated nothing burger. They never mean what they say publicly.

[sandeepkd]

Do not want to sound like as if I am taking their side but the reality is that all these decisions are mandated by some subset of investors in one way or another.

These executives are replaceable, and they would be replaced if they do not toe the line. In other words these executives happen to choose a easy and beneficial path rather than standing up for the long term right thing for the company.

[Grombobulous]

The thing is, a profitable company that sees an obvious efficiency staring it in the face is still going to take that efficiency.

I don’t think a lot of us employees will be happy to admit that AI is turning out to be a legitimate productivity aid that is allowing individuals to accomplish more work per person.

We’d rather sit here and stew about companies “blaming AI for layoffs” but I imagine that is only sometimes the case.

A somewhat related tangent: I have had the thought that many parts of the Japanese system of hiring for life might actually be really appropriate for the AI age. That system seems to result in a lot of companies finding ways to reshuffle employees into making some kind of product that has market value rather than the Western reaction that that seems to favor downsizing and focusing the company on a smaller set of markets in the name of ruthless efficiency. This seems to result in many Japanese firms making a wide breadth of interesting products at very high quality levels.

If your company is profitable because AI is increasing efficiency (allegedly, of course), why layoff 7% of your employees when you could instead assign them to make something new or complementary to your current product line? Western companies seem to refuse to do that out of a sense of focus and efficiency, but maybe giving that strategy a go more frequently would result in unrealized opportunities.

[majormajor]

> I don’t think a lot of us employees will be happy to admit that AI is turning out to be a legitimate productivity aid that is allowing individuals to accomplish more work per person.

Growth companies respond to efficiency by asking "what can we do now that we can get more done."

Stagnant companies say "how can we cut costs."

The math is pretty simple. If you expect that doing more will have positive ROI, you do more; if you think your position is about as strong as it can ever be, and don't have ideas for growing the space or your spot in it, you assume that more spend on new things would be negative ROI.

And if you're stagnant and there are prevailing narratives giving you an excuse to cut costs without scaring investors into thinking you've lost optimism, you jump on it even if you haven't even verified if the productivity gains are real for your employees.

[Grombobulous]

Essentially what I am suggesting is companies leaving growth phase or who are generally “stagnant” to not just cut employee headcount but instead redeploy them to seek out new opportunities. This is especially true if the company isn’t facing any pressing financial crisis or net loss.

[kanbankaren]

> many parts of the Japanese system of hiring for life

This is a terrible strategy. It encourages inefficiency to metastasize throughout the company.

No wonder Japan is stuck in a rut since the 90s and its debt-to-GDP ratio is 205% which is one of the highest in the world.

Your romantic idea of Japan would get destroyed by just browsing www.reddit.com/r/japanlife/

Japan has one of the worst work culture and low productivity in the world.

[Grombobulous]

That’s why I said “many parts” and not “all.” I wouldn’t want to pick up a good number of their practices, but I think a company seeing layoffs as an embarrassing last resort is a positive trait.

I also think that concepts like debt to GDP ratio are somewhat detached from corporate policies.

[andsoitis]

> but I think a company seeing layoffs as an embarrassing last resort is a positive trait.

Don’t most companies think of layoffs as a last resort? I don’t think one ought to be embarrassed about correcting course when you have made a mistake. It takes courage.

[kanbankaren]

> I also think that concepts like debt to GDP ratio are somewhat detached from corporate policies.

Corporate policies ultimately decide growth. More growth leads to higher profits and higher tax collected by the Government which in turn means they don't have to borrow more.

[brianwawok]

I’d love to hire for life, but what commitment can an employee give? It can’t be one sided or it’s terrible.

[Grombobulous]

The level of commitment to employees from Japanese corporations is astoundingly high compared to ones in the US.

Not that I would romanticize them as a whole, as a lot of aspects of Japanese corporate work culture are not to be envied.

[eli_gottlieb]

Ok so get rid of the investors then.

[Chu4eeno]

Just get Dodge v. Ford Motor Co reversed.

[Wolfbeta]

That's what the pollution is for.

[mrcwinn]

That’s not how it works. Investors don’t mandate operational decisions. That’s for… operators. What they do ask for, in exchange for their investment, are things like revenue growth or certain margins.

You can crap on those investors. The answer then is to never take their money. But without money, the job probably wasn’t created in the first place. So the result is the same.

By the way, ever work alongside a really crappy non-executive and wonder how on earth they’re keeping their job? I sure have.

[BobbyTables2]

An AI can also regurgitate others decisions, based on a much wider knowledge base than these executives.

AI hardware costs are nothing compared to executives’ stock options too…