> Nothing will make execs happier than having this line of thought popularized amongst engineers. It will allow them to hire cheaper, and exploit existing engineers more.
Why? The lay-offs are so broad, not selective at all. You're just as likely to get cut if you're working hard or not, if you're overpaid or underpaid. It's completely out of the employee's control, so why would it change the employee's behavior?
When companies make broad cuts, especially if they're eliminating projects or divisions they've decided are no longer important, the reality is that they don't do a lot of micro-optimizing at the individual level about who they keep and who they shed.
Sometimes you're just in the wrong place at the wrong time--and maybe it's even the impetus to do something different.
> It's completely out of the employee's control, so why would it change the employee's behavior?
Employees don’t have visibility into their peers actual performance. They see a silver of it and infer. This makes layoffs look random. Then, we rely on publicly reported “I was given a great review and still let go!” posts — which are all self-interested. No one wants to hire or refer someone who was doing poorly so there’s an incentive to fib or have selective amnesia.
The whole cohort of folks let go are incentivized to keep up the fiction that it was random.
All things being equal, there is no reason to layoff someone high performing over their less capable peer. I’ve never seen it done randomly, and I’ve sat in these meetings.
This is not to say whole divisions or companies haven’t been let go, but that’s not the same situation here. We’re talking about selective cuts across the entire company where core, or advertising lost some folks, while others remained. That is not random.
Layoffs that don't target whole teams are always a mix of politics and performance. The lie that they aren't is what people tell themselves to feel better.
Why? The lay-offs are so broad, not selective at all. You're just as likely to get cut if you're working hard or not, if you're overpaid or underpaid. It's completely out of the employee's control, so why would it change the employee's behavior?
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