Business Big Tech Layoffs Megathread - Techbros... we got too cocky...

Since my previous thread kinda-sorta turned into a soft megathread, and the tech layoffs will continue until morale improves, I think it's better to group them all together.

For those who want a QRD:

Just this week we've had these going on:

https://www.theverge.com/24048636/ebay-layoffs-1000-employees-january-2024

https://arstechnica.com/google/2024/01/google-ceo-sundar-pichai-promises-another-year-of-google-layoffs/

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/01/24/tech/sap-restructuring-ai-jobs-intl-hnk/index.html

But it's not just Big Tech, the vidya industry is also cleaning house bigly:

https://www.brokentoys.org/ludum-mortuus-est/

All in all, rough seas ahead for the techbros.

 

[Whoopsie Daisy]

I don't get it, you won't have productive workers come once a week at the office and WFH, but you would hire a faceless pajeet in India to do the work?

If unproductive workers want to stay at home and be unproductive, I may as well save a chunk of my wage bill and hire a dozen street shitters who will at least make something, shitty or not.

 

[Gender: Xenomorph]

If unproductive workers want to stay at home and be unproductive, I may as well save a chunk of my wage bill and hire a dozen street shitters who will at least make something, shitty or not.

You missed my point entirely.

If a person needs mre than 1h to commute to work they should get paid. Especially tech and office jobs.

Sure bro I need to pack my laptop, travel 45mins, to... What exactly? Sit 1h in a meeting doing nothing? Then try to work in a modern "office"?

You don't even get cubicles anymore; everyone is stuffed in cramped rooms like a public library or student computer lab. Not the most productive work environment...

 

[Whoopsie Daisy]

You missed my point entirely.

If a person needs mre than 1h to commute to work they should get paid. Especially tech and office jobs.

Sure bro I need to pack my laptop, travel 45mins, to... What exactly? Sit 1h in a meeting doing nothing? Then try to work in a modern "office"?

You don't even get cubicles anymore; everyone is stuffed in cramped rooms like a public library or student computer lab. Not the most productive work environment...

If you don'tlike it, work somewhere else. Sitting at home and throwing a tantrum like a toddler isn't my problem, or interest, and workers who do it show me I was right; they cannot be trusted to care enough about a job to just do it.

 

[Gender: Xenomorph]

If you don'tlike it, work somewhere else. Sitting at home and throwing a tantrum like a toddler isn't my problem, or interest, and workers who do it show me I was right; they cannot be trusted to care enough about a job to just do it.

I'm getting strong self-important middle-manager vibes.

Let's have a 2h meeting about this... After you're done with your 4h of daily "mingling" of course!

 

[Whoopsie Daisy]

I'm getting strong self-important middle-manager vibes.

Let's have a 2h meeting about this... After you're done with your 4h of daily "mingling" of course!

Meetings going for long than 15 minutes - 30 minutes if it's a bit of a crisis meeting, are absolutely useless.

Tar me with whatever retarded labels you want, you'll be wrong on all counts.

 

[Peaches the Wonder Cat]

Meetings going for long than 15 minutes - 30 minutes if it's a bit of a crisis meeting, are absolutely useless.

Tar me with whatever retarded labels you want, you'll be wrong on all counts.

I've never been in a 15 minute meeting. Some of them last hours.

At least at home I can browse the Farms while someone drones on.

 

[Whoopsie Daisy]

I've never been in a 15 minute meeting. Some of them last hours.

At least at home I can browse the Farms while someone drones on.

There's no need for a meeting to last hours. If it's my meeting, it's in and out, key points of discussion done and wrapped up in three, five minute sections.

Anything after that is a free flow of ideas, aimed at the topic and entirely voluntary. The best topics are where I can kick the managers out and get autistic with the engineers.

 

[Kuritan Deplorable]

There's no need for a meeting to last hours. If it's my meeting, it's in and out, key points of discussion done and wrapped up in three, five minute sections.

Anything after that is a free flow of ideas, aimed at the topic and entirely voluntary. The best topics are where I can kick the managers out and get autistic with the engineers.

If only I were so lucky, whenever we try to do engineering solutions meetings, managers always insist on hanging around to make sure their engineers don't promise to do any work. God forbid the network engineer realize "oh they just need a range dump" that'd take 5 minutes in the network tool and actually do it without three levels of approval and a scrum meeting on the other side. Meanwhile, I feel like half the opposite teams feel I'm a wizard because I build my systems for adaptability to likely common changes and asks to the point that I can, in the middle of the meeting, just do things to solve problems. Gives a lot more weight to when I say something actually takes effort to do.

I'm all for work queue management and making sure the teams don't just jump to the loudest ask, but it gets to the point where you can't even ask any meaningful questions because answering them sounds like it should be a process request and the manager nixes the line of inquiry.

 

[Whoopsie Daisy]

If only I were so lucky, whenever we try to do engineering solutions meetings, managers always insist on hanging around to make sure their engineers don't promise to do any work. God forbid the network engineer realize "oh they just need a range dump" that'd take 5 minutes in the network tool and actually do it without three levels of approval and a scrum meeting on the other side. Meanwhile, I feel like half the opposite teams feel I'm a wizard because I build my systems for adaptability to likely common changes and asks to the point that I can, in the middle of the meeting, just do things to solve problems. Gives a lot more weight to when I say something actually takes effort to do.

I'm all for work queue management and making sure the teams don't just jump to the loudest ask, but it gets to the point where you can't even ask any meaningful questions because answering them sounds like it should be a process request and the manager nixes the line of inquiry.

I'm sorry to hear that and fwiw I hate managers who can't manage and only do the job for power.
I haven't had the pleasure of working for IT, but if I ran an IT meeting it would be:
Here's what I need - 5 minutes
Is it achievable - Tell me in 5 minutes yes or no
What resources do you need to achieve it or to ensure you achieve it? - 5 minutes - longer if needed as this is your time and is value added for both of us.

After that, the management bit is done, I may sit in to bask in the autism and magic of shit I don't understand but have a great appreciation for.

You do your magic to achieve the goals, I'll do my magic to ensure you get the resources and praise that you need and to remove any roadblocks or wankers out of the way.

A competent manager should spend 95% of his time with his feet on the desk.

 

[Peaches the Wonder Cat]

I'm sorry to hear that and fwiw I hate managers who can't manage and only do the job for power.
I haven't had the pleasure of working for IT, but if I ran an IT meeting it would be:
Here's what I need - 5 minutes
Is it achievable - Tell me in 5 minutes yes or no
What resources do you need to achieve it or to ensure you achieve it? - 5 minutes - longer if needed as this is your time and is value added for both of us.

After that, the management bit is done, I may sit in to bask in the autism and magic of shit I don't understand but have a great appreciation for.

You do your magic to achieve the goals, I'll do my magic to ensure you get the resources and praise that you need and to remove any roadblocks or wankers out of the way.

A competent manager should spend 95% of his time with his feet on the desk.

My experience:

• The meeting now starts 5 minutes late, because they are afraid to start the meeting before everyone is there, and there's always someone who is late because another meeting ran over.
• Even if everyone is there we start late anyway and do water cooler talk.
• Meeting was scheduled for an hour, and we're going to take an hour goddamit! In fact we'll take an hour 5 minutes because we started 5 minutes late.
• There are blowhards who have an agenda and want to get in their prepared speech.
• There are morons who take five minutes for what could have been said in 30 seconds.
• There are idiots who haven't thought before they spoke and we spend 5 minutes on some dumb idea before someone can interrupt and point out the obvious flaw.
• The manager will not reign this in. Maybe they don't want to be seen as "rude" and get someone whining about "inclusivity", maybe they are retards, maybe they just don't care because if they didn't spend all day in meetings like the other managers, they'd be seen as not working.

You may be good, everyone else is terrible.

Frankly I'd love a corporate DOGE which fired everyone who spends half their day in meetings.

 

[indomitable snowman]

Frankly I'd love a corporate DOGE which fired everyone who spends half their day in meetings

A few years ago there was a push at the place I worked at at the time to be more efficient and have fewer meetings. Of course in order to implement this, there had to be a few meetings....

 

[Whoopsie Daisy]

You may be good, everyone else is terrible.

Frankly I'd love a corporate DOGE which fired everyone who spends half their day in meetings.

I'm sorry your meeting suck so much balls. I've been there, then moved into management because 90% managers are weak, useless, power-hungry arseholes who need removing from their role. The only reason they are managers is because they can't do the work; be it IT, shop floor, construction etc.

Corporate DOGE exists to some extent, it does need more bite and less bark though.

 

[Ahriman]

https://www.economist.com/business/2024/10/23/are-bosses-right-to-insist-that-workers-return-to-the-office

"-Uhm wagie... I won't say it again... get back in your cagie."

 

[Ahriman]

A bit of humor.

Also,

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/12/amazons-rto-delays-highlight-why-workers-get-so-mad-about-mandates/

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/12/companies-issuing-rto-mandates-lose-their-best-talent-study/

 

[Ahriman]

Consider the following:

https://x.com/revenant_MMXX/status/1871977305255653675

What is the answer to the H1B question?

 

[FedPostalService]

Consider the following:

View attachment 6789539

https://x.com/revenant_MMXX/status/1871977305255653675

What is the answer to the H1B question?

Do not redeem to H1B, saar!

I don’t know how these people realise that importing the third world to replace the blue collar jobs will one day earn them the swinging from a lamppost one day don’t realise that doing the to white collar workers will probably make that happen faster.

 

[Ahriman]

Do not redeem to H1B, saar!

I don’t know how these people realise that importing the third world to replace the blue collar jobs will one day earn them the swinging from a lamppost one day don’t realise that doing the to white collar workers will probably make that happen faster.

IIRC, you've said you're Brit, which means... the UK is basically an Indian/Paki satellite state by now. "Part and parcel", he said.

I'd imagine that it's no different over there, in your neck of the woods.

 

[FedPostalService]

IIRC, you've said you're Brit, which means... the UK is basically an Indian/Paki satellite state by now. "Part and parcel", he said.

I'd imagine that it's no different over there, in your neck of the woods.

We’ve not imported them for white collar jobs, we just use them to cook food, deal drugs, claim benefits, and rape our women.

We had southern European graduates to keep the white collar workforce wages lower. At least you could marry them and they’d fully integrate.

Since Brexit I’ve been on a lot of calls with teams based in Bangalore. We’ve offshored a lot of IT jobs. It’s been a fucking disaster and those jobs are slowly coming back.

Avoiding PL but a shocking number of FS jobs were offshored but they’re came back due to the amount of incompetence and outright fraud that was starting to do reputational damage.

For some reason the UK government is allergic to bringing in high skilled workers and will make it hard for them to come in so they can fudge the immigration numbers and let more boat monkeys in,

 

[Ahriman]

We’ve not imported them for white collar jobs, we just use them to cook food, deal drugs, claim benefits, and rape our women.

We had southern European graduates to keep the white collar workforce wages lower. At least you could marry them and they’d fully integrate.

Since Brexit I’ve been on a lot of calls with teams based in Bangalore. We’ve offshored a lot of IT jobs. It’s been a fucking disaster and those jobs are slowly coming back.

Avoiding PL but a shocking number of FS jobs were offshored but they’re came back due to the amount of incompetence and outright fraud that was starting to do reputational damage.

For some reason the UK government is allergic to bringing in high skilled workers and will make it hard for them to come in so they can fudge the immigration numbers and let more boat monkeys in,

I can believe that - word on the street is that American companies are now going harder into poaching talent from South American countries (Colombia, Brazil, Argentina) since there's much closer "cultural proximity", along with not having to deal with the atrocious time zones. And also, the work ethic/quality, as well as their English proficiency, is much higher.

Imagine not having to put up with their atrocious accent every day.

So yea, their days are numbered.

 

[FedPostalService]

I can believe that - word on the street is that American companies are now going harder into poaching talent from South American countries (Colombia, Brazil, Argentina) since there's much closer "cultural proximity", along with not having to deal with the atrocious time zones. And also, the work ethic/quality, as well as their English proficiency, is much higher.

Imagine not having to put up with their atrocious accent every day.

So yea, their days are numbered.

I will say this though, professional Indian woman are usually really hot, so that’s a plus.

Although I did have to essentially act as a project manager recently as the off shore one was retarded and couldn’t do the needful.