Several companies I know seemed to lie and use Covid as a convenient excuse to not give out raises (or give shitty bonuses, etc) to save money in the short term. Meanwhile hiring and earnings don't match up to those actions.
In 2020 the company I worked for did ~25% temp salary reduction so they could feel safe that they could keep everyone employed and such. 3 months after everyone did it they said "thank you thank you we are so happy we don't need to let anyone go". 2 months later they laid off ~50% of the development team and people throughout the company...
At the end of the year they said no bonuses, followed by an email saying despite covid they made a profit.
I recently left a “good steady pay, low learning, low growth” company for a “risky pay, tons of learning, high growth” company.
I think COVID exacerbated winners and losers. The gaps between companies offering opportunity and stale companies is growing. People won’t stay at a company that rewards 2 years of heads down pandemic work with “Due to current conditions, we can’t fund bonuses. Raises will be less than inflation, and we can only promote people when their boss leaves.”
Not sure how widespread this is, but my company is doing fine, business is up, yet due to COVID-19, is delaying raises and retirement contributions. Companies have a good excuse for layoffs and for not increasing salary.
This is happening everywhere. The place where I work a very large, rich University gave out two 3% raises since COVID started and at one point temporarily cut everyone's salary by 5%. The only way to make more was to get a promotion or apply for a role on another team.
You are correct. There’s a particular company that’s local to me that hired away a bunch of my mediocre engineers at very high salaries because they were printing money during COVID.
In 2022 their operations cost was 150% of revenue and I have to imagine that those people are sweating a bit now.
This company is already dead before covid-19. The virus just accelerated it and likely gives the executives somewhere else to point the blame. It takes large companies years to die. Just look at Sears.
There is a hospital here in Colorado that during covid-19 told its employees it needed people to work more hours at reduced pay because of covid-19. After that the leadership turned around and gave themselves bonuses.
They had $500M in the bank. The whole "COVID affected our revenue" was a made up lie to save face. Every company has been using COVID as an excuse to do a lay off they've been meaning to do.
You can maintain a browser for that cash (or buy Instagram or Whatsapp). But you can't maintain a bunch of execs siphoning money into the pockets while the org runs like a headless chicken.
Many companies use misleading job descriptions, claiming remote work etc. But they do not mention that it is only due to covid and that they will not give up their offices. For whatever obscure reason.
I remember COVID when tech stocks shot right up, probably because everyone was stuck having to use tech and other companies looked in free fall
Then COVID ended and now we’re going back to normal, and tech stocks are also going back to before
If you change your lifestyle because you got a $100k windfall, you are going to realize that your income never changed. Companies that hired because they thought their COVID-inspired valuation was permanent were mistaken
I’m currently working for a tech company that was negatively impacted by COVID, did not get a random influx of cash and so did not hire and so currently does not have to lay anyone off.
If that were the case, it seems like it wouldnt have taken covid to tip the balance so much, and it would have tipped back much more quickly. I've never worked at a company that would come anywhere being classed as optimizing for productivity, there has always been a huge amount of wasted time and resources.
Yeah, places that I'm used to working do things like: when covid hit and work dried up, the company told employees to go out and find charity work and the company would pay your full salary to do the charity work.
They share in the profits with the employees and such.
I mean sure, it's not 100% a save job. If something truly terrible happened and the company went bankrupt etc, then of course you can still lose your job.
But no time have I ever seen or felt like they would ever lay off people unless the company literally couldn't go on to survive some other way.
Wages are a huge part of it, but right now these companies are trying to go from < 25% capacity to > 100% capacity in just a few weeks. Companies got used to being in an employers market for the last decade or more to an employee market overnight.
Plus there are a ton of other factors affecting employees that I really wish reporters would research more. Just a few the ones I've heard:
* Got a different (often better) job
* Went back to school full-time to get or finish a degree
* Lack of transportation - sold their car during COVID and can't afford to buy one now
* Lack of childcare - can't find or afford childcare now (demand is pushing up prices there too)
* Staying home with the kids - after being forced to do it some people decided staying home to raise the kids is a better life and they could afford to do it
* Unemployment is still paying better than any job they can find
* Retired - some people were putting it off and others decided to retire early rather than go back to work
* Long COVID - still sick or physically impaired months later
* Dead - COVID or other causes
Long-COVID is the one I would personally like to see statistics around. I know a couple people in their 30s and 40s that are still unable to function normally 6+ months after being seriously sick with COVID.
It's also very indicative at this time, during pandemic about those companies chopping regular employees pay versus not doing anything to top line C suite.
Many companies reduced pay by 10%-20% or stopped 401k match or even pay raise when C suite still made profits from recent stock moves.
Do we actually have high employment at the moment?
The way I understand the current situation, one one hand there was a lot of covid money and on the other hand a lot of people were fired by their companies during covid. This in turn made them unwilling to go back and work the same job, on the same salary as before, for a company which preferred to cater to their profits than to their employees.
>Because we all know corporations were keeping prices and profits low before COVID because it's good for PR.
Is this the same corporations that didn't want to pay "essential workers" a living wage and/or give them reasonable hours? I find it doubtful that they turned over a new leaf during covid because it was "good for PR".
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