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:

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

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All in all, rough seas ahead for the techbros.
 
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Snap drops over 500 employees or 10% of it's workforce.

Snap Becomes Latest Tech Company to Cut Jobs
The New York Times (archive.ph)
By Yiwen Lu
2024-02-05 14:47:24GMT
Snap, the parent of messaging app Snapchat, on Monday said it would lay off more than 500 employees, joining other tech companies in a wave of new cost-cutting measures.

The layoffs amount to 10 percent of its global work force; the majority will occur in the first quarter of 2024.

“We have made the difficult decision to restructure our team,” the company said in a securities filing, adding that it would take pretax charges of $55 million to $75 million, primarily for severance and related costs.

Amazon, Google and Microsoft have announced layoffs this year, following tens of thousands across the sector last year.

Snap laid off a small number of employees on Friday, Business Insider reported.

The company is set to report earnings on Tuesday. Cost-cutting measures at other companies have buoyed stock prices. Snap shares were trading about 2 percent lower before the market opened on Monday.

Like other social media companies reliant on advertising, Snap has had a rough couple years. Changes by Apple to its privacy policy in 2021 made it tougher for advertisers to track users — something that hurt Snap and also had a heavy effect on Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.

Snapchat, which has more than 400 million daily active users, experienced a revenue decline in the first two quarters of last year and only 5 percent growth in its most recent quarter, which ended Sept. 30.

In 2022, Snap cut 20 percent of its work force, or 1,300 jobs, and also discontinued at least six products. It let go nearly 20 product managers in November and in September shut a division that sells augmented reality products to businesses, laying off 170 people.
 
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>The US economy added 353,00 jobs in january

Every jobs report has been revised into the negative "later on" once Biden took office.
They "adjust" these reports using stupid shit like claiming people are aging out of the workforce to remove the negative numbers, until they can no longer cover it up.
The job numbers are more cooked than the CPI.
 
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Ahriman said:
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https://twitter.com/GergelyOrosz/status/1753346958742126702
Ayy lmao
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Local law so sure whatever, but I'm really curious why spotify has a couple hundred people in a satellite country like that, and what this council thinks they're actually going to change about the outcome. I'd imagine the usual intent is to go through the business and verify that other cost cutting measures were attempted first, and that layoffs are performance or needs oriented. But this satellite likely accounts for $0 direct revenue, so its probably an immediate and irrefutable black hole - Even if we assume that the satellite office is a huge european datacenter team, they're not fiscally linked to the actual revenue being generated in any non-internal accounting books.
 
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davids877 said:
Impacted employees in the U.S. will receive transition support that includes additional time on payroll, the March RSU vest (if eligible), cash severance, extended healthcare coverage, job placement resources, and support for anyone on a company-sponsored visa.
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That's actually pretty generous. Some (hopefully not paltry) sum of cash up front, some salary continuation (that's nicer than it sounds, trust me), and the extended healthcare coverage is a very good life raft. The healthcare coverage thing especially -- anybody who's ever been laid off and found themselves staring down the barrel of that first COBRA notice and the fucking $1k+ per month quote it contains will be delighted to see this included in a severance package.

That vesting bit is an out-of-the-ordinary gift too. The last time I was laid off (back in 2001) I'd have killed to have my stock options instantly vested the day I was escorted out. They were worth $50k on paper and I'd have sold them in a heartbeat knowing the company was going to shit. Six months later, of course, the company went bankrupt and those options became worthless before they could vest. Cunts.

ETA:

Kuritan Deplorable said:
Local law so sure whatever, but I'm really curious why spotify has a couple hundred people in a satellite country like that, and what this council thinks they're actually going to change about the outcome. I'd imagine the usual intent is to go through the business and verify that other cost cutting measures were attempted first, and that layoffs are performance or needs oriented. But this satellite likely accounts for $0 direct revenue, so its probably an immediate and irrefutable black hole - Even if we assume that the satellite office is a huge european datacenter team, they're not fiscally linked to the actual revenue being generated in any non-internal accounting books.
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Yeah, that's completely retarded (the Works Council thing, that is, not your comment). Spotify will likely just say "oh okay, lol, we're closing up shop, fuck all of you, enjoy cleaning up the mess." To be blunt, it's what I'd do, especially since (as you pointed out) there's almost no chance that office generates revenue.

So it comes down to which choice is less expensive: dealing with keeping the office open amid this inability to even alter the workforce composition, or cutting your losses and leaving the whole thing behind. It may cost millions to shut down that office, but since they won't be paying any payroll there afterward, it might end up cheaper overall.

Reminder that Walmart once famously canceled a fully constructed and weeks-away-from-opening Supercenter because the locals successfully unionized and won a court battle forcing Walmart to let them do so. It never occurred to anybody involved that they'd just shrug and say "see 'ya" rather than deal with more of their bullshit, so they just rammed it right through. Then lost hundreds of local jobs and tax revenue. Bit of a pyrrhic victory there.
 
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So far seems the vast majority if not all of these firings are bullshit jobs like sales rep., ad people, HR, etc...not coders, devs and other "tech bros".

Basically they are nuking all the idiots who were already mostly useless fodder even before they could replaced by a few API calls to a GPT assistant.
clipartfan92 said:
Snap drops over 500 employees or 10% of it's workforce.
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How is snap still afloat? who the fuck uses it anymore? its too old for zoomers and I haven't used it since 2015 or so.
blargenheimer said:
Spoiler: Pichai's modest home
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I'm actually disappointed knowing how exceedingly noveau riche these brahmin poojets can be. See the one who built a skyscraper mansion for example...
 
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Ahriman said:
While on the same topic,

View attachment 5701044

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Article said:
Take Google or Microsoft, two companies with very similar math. These companies both have about 200,000 employees. Both have laid off somewhere around 10,000 employees in the past year or so. And both CEOs are paid similar amounts, with salaries of about $2 million a year.

For these companies, cutting 10,000 employees saves them about a billion dollars a year in costs. Cutting the CEO's salary entirely would save just 0.2% of that.
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In 2022, Sundar Pichai earned $226 million and Satya Nadella earned $54.94 million.

The real executive fat though isn't the CEO though, it's the hundreds of mid-level VPs who do absolutely nothing but collect millions in compensation each.
 
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Iwata has a point. If you're in charge, and shit fucks up, you should absolutely be held accountable for it. Too many higher-ups are getting rewarded for failing, and the staff suffers because of it.

On the other hand, as a leader, you should also know when to trim the fat, and Nintendo isn't exactly a saint... it's gotten kinda chubby (at least on the American side)
 
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PyroJohn said:
Middle Managers are the worst.
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Especially when they're spineless, and refuse to make any decisions. I've worked with a few managers in my time who despite having shit delegated to him from above, would always go back to said higher leadership on literally every decision that needed to be made at his level, and for the stuff he did control below the line like prioritization and the like, he'd just not do it, "leave it to the teams", which usually lead to terrible coordination and mismatch as 4/5 parties would be stalled because the 5th group decided they wanted to do something completely different.

At least CEO's actually have to direct shit, and can't just deflect it all.
 
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