Mark Zuckerberg's social media giant will reportedly hand out roughly 8,000 pink slips on Wednesday, May 20, eliminating about 10% of its global workforce. Notably, though, these cuts will arrive on the heels of one of the most lucrative quarters in the company's history: $56.31 billion in revenue and $26.8 billion in net income for the first three months of 2026...
Slashing 10% of your workforce annually is something Jack Welch thought of when he was CEO of General Electric; essentially it shifts that 10% of staff overhead cost straight to profits per year.
The justification they give for the figure is that it's the lowest performing 10% according to internal key performance indicator (KPI) metrics. What this effectively does is two fold:
Anyone who's focusing on delivering stuff the company needs long term isn't always or sometimes never will produce nice neat KPIs that can be measured along with the rest of the company. This means these people are under constant pressure and can often get swept up in the firings.
It makes KPIs, a measuring tool, the target which as any statistician will tell you that when you make the measurement a target it ceases to be a good measuring tool. Because everyone is automatically incentivised to deliver KPIs NOT the actual company deliverables that generate the added value and therefore the profit.
This means after 5 to 10 years of this cycle all that's left of the company's institutional knowledge is how to deliver for KPIs and the sycophants who best adapt to this reality. You get a hollowing out of the company.
If this AI fuelled trend keeps up then companies like Cisco and Meta will eventually implode at some point.
I remember the grocery store I worked at started posting the rate for each cashier of items scanned per minute logged into a register. They didn’t say anything about it, but I now realize they were probably leading into using that data as justification for something.
My dumbass 16 year old self thought “I’m going to get that number so high it breaks the system.” I would lock my station after the previous customer, and take a little time to face all of the UPC codes and look up produce codes and make a general strategy. Then, I would unlock the register, scan like a madman, then lock it and casually start bagging. The customers would get concerned they needed to hurry up based on my fervor, so I would tell them “Take all the time you need, see that show yesterday?”
Next time they posted the rankings, my number was 20x as high as second place. After a few weeks of getting my number a little higher each time, my boss’ boss came by and told me to knock it off since I was polluting their metrics. Next week no new rankings.
I like to think I inadvertently helped prevent KPI nonsense.
The grocery store I worked for, over 20 years ago, did something similar, with similar results. All it did was incentivize locking and unlocking the register as optimally as possible. They also tracked how often and when in the transaction you scanned the customer's loyalty card. It was to the point that basically cashiers who wanted to optimize their numbers wouldn't unlock the register until the customer had their loyalty card in hand.
This is the same grocery store chain that almost failed completely due to a impossible sales requirements in their meat department leading to redating meat and bleaching chicken to increase its shelf life. The company claims they never asked any of their meat departments to do anything like that, they just set impossible standards and held people accountable unless they were able to find a way to cheat.
It also fosters a culture of non-cooperation with colleagues (because they are now your competition), where workers and teams try to sabotage each other, or at least not help, and throw each other under the bus. So there's mutual mistrust too. And no one wants to take a risk and innovate, leading to further stagnation.
The justification they give for the figure is that it’s the lowest performing 10% according to internal key performance indicator (KPI) metrics
The thing is, that's not what layoffs are supposed to be. That's effectively firing someone for cause. Maybe in America the difference doesn't matter, but in the civilised world, at least in theory, it does. But in reality they can somehow get away with this and call it "layoffs".
If a company does layoffs, they should not be allowed to hire any staff in the same or similar roles for 12 months.
If a company does layoffs, they should not be allowed to hire any staff in the same or similar roles for 12 months.
Either that, or the laid-off workers should get right of first refusal for the positions. (Along with some additional incentive for the company not to game it.)
This blows my mind when I try to think about it. And this is only 10% of a supposed 80,000 globally. Facebook owns a bunch of companies though so I’m assuming they’re being counted too. Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus, etc
Yup. Not all value is easily and directly measurable. Trying to overmanage and only value measurable factors is incredibly counterproductive. But hey, that makes the stock price go up. So who cares about anything else.
makes KPIs, a measuring tool, the target which as any statistician will tell you that when you make the measurement a target it ceases to be a good measuring tool
This came up recently elsewhere and is known as “Goodhart’s Law”
This means after 5 to 10 years of this cycle all that's left of the company's institutional knowledge is how to deliver for KPIs and the sycophants who best adapt to this reality. You get a hollowing out of the company.
That happened (and continues to happen) to my former employer.
After years of layoffs and outsourcing, the company doesn't have anyone on staff anymore who knows how half of the systems work.
Theae days, if something is more than 5 years old, the operations and maintenance staff (entirely outsourced contractors now) have to pray the documentation is correct (or even obtainable) if they have a hope of fixing it if anything breaks.
I actually think a few % a year is healthy (1% feels right to me). I work at a company where we never lay anyone off and it’s led to a bunch of deadweight in the company that make work harder for everyone else. You gotta have some mechanism to let low performers go.
You gotta have some mechanism to let low performers go.
That's called "firing for cause."
Of course, that actually has accountability attached to it. Misusing layoffs for that purpose is an end-run around that accountability, which is why sociopathic corporations prefer it.
“For cause” at my company is gross malfeasance, not merely performing well below expectations. It’s the employer again putting themselves first: problematic employees are “harder” to get rid of than the status quo of letting them stick around indefinitely. Sucks for everyone else who has to work with them. Every company should cull a small number of people every year.
I know someone who worked a weekend event to show case a product and they did extremely well going nearly 15k in sales. They made $50 for the few hours it took to generate that. The amount of effort to prepare for this, drive there, waste weekend hours working is not worth $50. Especially with how much gas is. I don't understand why people don't just say no.
$50 sounds like a ridiculous commission under any circumstances. There are more numbers that we need before we can really judge the situation though. It’s not like $50 went to your friend and $14,950 went to their boss’s pocket. Surely there’s a cost to manufacture whatever it is being sold. Still, there’s no way that 0.3% is a reasonable sales commission.
I worked in customer support/sales for the largest ISP in my country. We were always understaffed because it was a shit job, so the turnover was high. We were forced to sign overtime, weekends and holidays included. I'll never forget this middle management asshole who enthusiastically attempted to convince me it's totally worth it. He does it, too, and he's always happy to see higher paycheck. At the end of the month that overtime amounted to ~€15-20 for me. Yeah, fun times. I was thrilled to kiss that job and its abusive management goodbye.
It’s an interesting case for leftists because there is no means of production to be seized. Nothing needed to create websites or apps is hard to get or proprietary. If anything, the means of production is capital itself, because only by paying people can you direct a lot of them to spend time on any particular thing. I wonder if communism has already addressed this case somewhere. I’m hardly educated on the topic.
What countries? This is capitalism baby, only way to stop it is to have a union strong enough to fuck Up that record profit if the CEO even jokes a out layoffs.
Japan. Layoffs are extremely difficult to pull off there. You have to show poor performance by the individual involved, and the standards for that are very rigorous. The government knows that unemployed people immediately become their problem, so they just demand that if a corporation wants to employ someone, they have to be willing to enter into that in an open ended arrangement. So unions aren’t the only way.
What I meant was you can dismiss people for poor performance, but that’s the only valid reason. You cannot lay people off in Japan in the sense of “we cut the budget and decided we don’t want to employ you anymore.”
However, that said… if you want to lay someone off, you can jump through a million hoops. I have seen people relegated to ridiculously inappropriate roles to convince them to leave. You can also mess with non-salary compensation if you want. And you can offer generous severance. And maybe you can convince people to let you “lay them off.”
Most of their profits are paid out to shareholders, like last year, and the year before that. Nobody should expect anything better from any capitalist corporation.
The stock market is a weird thing - prices seem to be tied to whether a company can make more this quarter than last quarter, and not tethered to whether a company makes a profit. I figure that they made record revenue and now need a strategy to make even more profit next quarter, which they hope to achieve by reducing expenses via layoffs.
I don’t like it, but the economy is more tethered to speculation than reality.
it’s not weird. it’s literally how capitalism works. it feels weird because it actually feels fucking wrong and disgusting but we are propagandized into thinking this is ok.
Nah, not even the basic "its capitalism" excuse works anymore for that idiocracy. Capitalism may force companies to increase earnings, which is already stupid enough in itself, but the timeframe that's measured in got reduced so much in the last few years that even short term goals are impossible without cutting costs.
Ten years ago monthly earnings were at most an indicator, what mattered most were fiscal years. It slowly evolved to quarterly earnings and now we are at a point were a single "bad" (as in, not as much profit as last month) can plunge your stock prices by 10+%.
Yes capitalism always fucked over the working class, bit it wasn't made to force big, profitable companies to self destruct for 0.5% higher monthly profits.
i think you neglect to consider capitalism’s growth (as a mechanic) itself. What you describe is exactly how it is working. What I believe is that this is an evolved economic system, designed from the start to “eat its own dogfood” so to speak.
It’s a pyramid scheme. You participate long enough to be able to move your money to a more stable platform and live off the measly interest that provides.
Yes that always irks me. We can have 15 “markers of a recession”, but as long as nobody says it’s name, it can’t be true. The media has the Voldemort approach to economics.
dont work hard for companys, better they do more likely you will get laid off with everyone else. Might happen anyway, but if they dont do well they might think they actually need people to do work.
Record profits > "We need to lay off workers to keep these numbers going up."
Not record profits > "We need to lay off workers to make these numbers go up."
CEO: I need the highest possible performance otherwise the board will fire me.
Board: We need the highest return otherwise we’re not willing to support the CEO.
Fund managers: We need to only invest in the most profitable ventures, otherwise people will move their money out of the fund I’m managing.
Pension companies: We need to only put our money in the most high performing funds.
You: I need the best return on my pension so I can retire as soon as possible.
If you’ve ever moved saved money to an account offering higher interest or performance, you’re part of this. I’m not saying that to blame, but people often don’t connect their own behaviour with the behaviour of the market.
Agreed. I participate as a thoughtless investor trying to maximize the growth of my savings but I hate that I have to even bother. Extra work, some guilt or anxiety around whether you made the right choices, and more complicated taxes. I think it’s horseshit that I’m effectively obliged to play in this casino the ruling class set up, just so my money retains its value against inflation.
I’m not against my money being used to grow businesses. But then just let the bank deal with it and pay me a fair interest rate for lending it to businesses. I still haven’t been given a good answer as to why the stock price of a company should have any effect on its day to day operations or revenue generation.
So they used to have pensions for most private workers, then they went to 401Ks which are self managed market based retirement funds.
The company has a management agreement with a brokerage (i.e. Fidelity) to manage the accounts and they pick which funds you can invest in.
You allocate how much you contribute, up to the IRS max.
Many companies give matching funds which means you get a 100% return on that amount right out of the gate.
In good years you can do very well, far beyond what pensions would've given.
The money is pre tax so you lower your income for tax purposes during your peak earning years.
You can still save and invest anyway you want in addition to this (i.e. IRA). You can still collect social security.
Downside...
You are limited in investments
You are not guaranteed returns since you are at the mercy of the bond and equities (stock) market. You can lose money in bad years.
You must pay income tax on it when you start taking distributions from it in retirement. The minimum mandatory distribution amount could push you into a higher tax bracket.
The big push away from pensions to 401Ks and IRAs means the market has become the main retirement savings for most Americans. Wall St and financial institutions love them because it pumped trillions of $ into the market and profits in fees into the financial firms. Companies no longer had to manage pensions and guarantee returns. Most gov jobs still have pensions.
Are people backwards here or something? You're explicitly stating that you're not defending them, and you're completely right in what you're saying. A company can have record revenues and record losses (negative profit) in the same period. That doesn't mean meta and zucky are anything short of horrible, it means the headline is crap. An informative headline would be " reports profits and announces layoffs". Saying they have record revenues tells us exactly nothing about whether layoffs are justified or not.
Case in point: My buddy's startup had record revenues this year, more than doubled since last year, if they keep going at this pace they'll be bankrupt by this time next year, since their income is smaller than their wage expenses.
Revenue is income before expenses. Profit is what's left over after expenses. Revenue can increase, but if expenses increase even more, profit declines.
That's why relating revenue to layoffs is apples and oranges.
I’m just brainstorming here, but do layoffs pave the way for hiring new grads at entry level wages, with more cutting edge knowledge?
Sure, that overlooks the loss of tacit knowledge that keeps the company running. I haven’t actually figured out yet how large companies can keep packaging out their senior employees that glue their disorganized systems together with undocumented knowledge.
That's an interesting question. Either there isn't much tacit knowledge in the company that they can't put in onboarding documentation, or the company is focusing on short term gains at the cost of long term stability
We converted our medium-sized network to Ubiquity a couple years ago, everyone who has ever had to touch a config or deal with paying for updates is absolutely giddy.
It's nowhere near perfect, but lightyears better than dealing with Cisco's bullshit.
Part of me is glad I'm getting the hell out of this system in the near future. My heart goes out to younger people being royally screwed by it and I don't see any way out of it within that system.
A wooden baseball bat starts at like $75 for quality wood and never runs out of ammo, in case you're worried that there are more rich sociopaths than there are bullets in your backpack.
Easier said than done lol. First of all, we are in a recession (we really are, if you factor out the fake AI growth), so having any job at all feels increasingly like a privilege. Second of all, I am pretty sure that there are more dickhead companies than good ones that care about their employees. Bonus points for difficulty if you just graduated from college/university and try to find an entry-level job. Those are basically non-existent these days.
Seems fine, employees were well compensated and supported. Its a big company 4000 isnt a huge amount. Interesting to see a bigger pivot to silicon and optics.
Do you honestly care about the month to month hirings and firings of Cisco? These companies are giants and restructure regularly. If Cisco comp their workers properly which they did then IDGAF.
This is economics mixed with some rage bait. None of this is a workers rights issue. This is just standard business in America they enjoy the benefits and consequences that come along. These are very highly mobile workers who were well paid and well compensated. These workers got better exit packages than every country with "strong workers rights". There is absolutely zero reason to pretend to care about this. Should cisco should just constantly expand its workforce infinitely, should they have published a detailed reason for letting every person go.
You'd expect this to be like oh 4000 people were laid off because cisco predicts a downturn in the economy but they're just restructuring and no longer require those people. They will hire more back for the new path.
129 Comments
floofloof@lemmy.ca · 146 pts · 80d
Meta is doing the exact same thing:
https://moneywise.com/news/top-stories/meta-layoffs-8000-workers-zuckerberg-ai-spending
ThePyroPython@lemmy.world · 132 pts · 80d
Slashing 10% of your workforce annually is something Jack Welch thought of when he was CEO of General Electric; essentially it shifts that 10% of staff overhead cost straight to profits per year.
The justification they give for the figure is that it's the lowest performing 10% according to internal key performance indicator (KPI) metrics. What this effectively does is two fold:
Anyone who's focusing on delivering stuff the company needs long term isn't always or sometimes never will produce nice neat KPIs that can be measured along with the rest of the company. This means these people are under constant pressure and can often get swept up in the firings.
It makes KPIs, a measuring tool, the target which as any statistician will tell you that when you make the measurement a target it ceases to be a good measuring tool. Because everyone is automatically incentivised to deliver KPIs NOT the actual company deliverables that generate the added value and therefore the profit.
This means after 5 to 10 years of this cycle all that's left of the company's institutional knowledge is how to deliver for KPIs and the sycophants who best adapt to this reality. You get a hollowing out of the company.
If this AI fuelled trend keeps up then companies like Cisco and Meta will eventually implode at some point.
binarytobis@lemmy.world · 68 pts · 80d
I remember the grocery store I worked at started posting the rate for each cashier of items scanned per minute logged into a register. They didn’t say anything about it, but I now realize they were probably leading into using that data as justification for something.
My dumbass 16 year old self thought “I’m going to get that number so high it breaks the system.” I would lock my station after the previous customer, and take a little time to face all of the UPC codes and look up produce codes and make a general strategy. Then, I would unlock the register, scan like a madman, then lock it and casually start bagging. The customers would get concerned they needed to hurry up based on my fervor, so I would tell them “Take all the time you need, see that show yesterday?”
Next time they posted the rankings, my number was 20x as high as second place. After a few weeks of getting my number a little higher each time, my boss’ boss came by and told me to knock it off since I was polluting their metrics. Next week no new rankings.
I like to think I inadvertently helped prevent KPI nonsense.
greybeard@feddit.online · 16 pts · 79d
The grocery store I worked for, over 20 years ago, did something similar, with similar results. All it did was incentivize locking and unlocking the register as optimally as possible. They also tracked how often and when in the transaction you scanned the customer's loyalty card. It was to the point that basically cashiers who wanted to optimize their numbers wouldn't unlock the register until the customer had their loyalty card in hand.
This is the same grocery store chain that almost failed completely due to a impossible sales requirements in their meat department leading to redating meat and bleaching chicken to increase its shelf life. The company claims they never asked any of their meat departments to do anything like that, they just set impossible standards and held people accountable unless they were able to find a way to cheat.
W98BSoD@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 3 pts · 79d
https://www.reddit.com/r/GenX/comments/1cmqbyl/remember_the_food_lion_scandal_in_1992/
Danquebec@sh.itjust.works · 3 pts · 79d
That's quite funny, would love to see it in action.
Brummbaer@pawb.social · 42 pts · 80d
I think we are already seeing that with Microsoft. Another 2-3 rounds of AI and they forget how to build windows.
WaxRhetorical@lemmy.world · 18 pts · 80d
Are you telling me they ever knew how to build Windows?
stringere@sh.itjust.works · 15 pts · 80d
4x pain + 1 glass
Or, alternatively:
floofloof@lemmy.ca · 37 pts · 80d
It also fosters a culture of non-cooperation with colleagues (because they are now your competition), where workers and teams try to sabotage each other, or at least not help, and throw each other under the bus. So there's mutual mistrust too. And no one wants to take a risk and innovate, leading to further stagnation.
testaccount789@sh.itjust.works · 11 pts · 80d
But that will be a problem for the next guy.
stringere@sh.itjust.works · 4 pts · 80d
Today's fires are for next quarter's employees to fix.
Zagorath@quokk.au · 27 pts · 80d
The thing is, that's not what layoffs are supposed to be. That's effectively firing someone for cause. Maybe in America the difference doesn't matter, but in the civilised world, at least in theory, it does. But in reality they can somehow get away with this and call it "layoffs".
If a company does layoffs, they should not be allowed to hire any staff in the same or similar roles for 12 months.
grue@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 80d
Either that, or the laid-off workers should get right of first refusal for the positions. (Along with some additional incentive for the company not to game it.)
kent_eh@lemmy.ca · 4 pts · 79d
The workload doesn't decrease, it just gets spread to the remaining workers who are already overloaded because of the previous round of layoffs...
pelya@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 80d
With Meta it very much looks like overhiring. What are those 8000 workers even doing, designing CSS for each individual ad on Facebook?
some_designer_dude@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 80d
This blows my mind when I try to think about it. And this is only 10% of a supposed 80,000 globally. Facebook owns a bunch of companies though so I’m assuming they’re being counted too. Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus, etc
grue@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 80d
Implementing additional forms of wankery in the "Metaverse".
Razak@lemmy.ca · 4 pts · 79d
Yup. Not all value is easily and directly measurable. Trying to overmanage and only value measurable factors is incredibly counterproductive. But hey, that makes the stock price go up. So who cares about anything else.
Blooper@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 80d
God willing
assertnull@programming.dev · 3 pts · 79d
This came up recently elsewhere and is known as “Goodhart’s Law”
kent_eh@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 79d
That happened (and continues to happen) to my former employer.
After years of layoffs and outsourcing, the company doesn't have anyone on staff anymore who knows how half of the systems work.
Theae days, if something is more than 5 years old, the operations and maintenance staff (entirely outsourced contractors now) have to pray the documentation is correct (or even obtainable) if they have a hope of fixing it if anything breaks.
farting_gorilla@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 79d
My experience is nowadays documentation is even going to go away, as the answer to fixing things is more and more going to be "get Claude to fix it"
kent_eh@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 78d
Yeah that will certainly work (eyeroll) to deal with things that were done 10 years ago as a workaround to some other undocumented incompatibility.
MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 79d
But that would be turnover rate, not cuts.
errer@lemmy.world · -2 pts · 80d
I actually think a few % a year is healthy (1% feels right to me). I work at a company where we never lay anyone off and it’s led to a bunch of deadweight in the company that make work harder for everyone else. You gotta have some mechanism to let low performers go.
10% is way too high though
grue@lemmy.world · 14 pts · 80d
That's called "firing for cause."
Of course, that actually has accountability attached to it. Misusing layoffs for that purpose is an end-run around that accountability, which is why sociopathic corporations prefer it.
errer@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 79d
“For cause” at my company is gross malfeasance, not merely performing well below expectations. It’s the employer again putting themselves first: problematic employees are “harder” to get rid of than the status quo of letting them stick around indefinitely. Sucks for everyone else who has to work with them. Every company should cull a small number of people every year.
Croquette@sh.itjust.works · 9 pts · 80d
It should be case by case. Simple as that.
gurty@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 80d
I was about to say, two layoff posts on my feed back to back. Not a good sign.
HootinNHollerin@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 102 pts · 80d
Sgarcnl@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 79d
Nice! Thanks.
SnoringEarthworm@sh.itjust.works · 62 pts · 80d
Me, after firing the Cisco CEO: We just made $53 million in revenue!
Assassassin@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 60 pts · 80d
Despicable
Switorik@sh.itjust.works · 36 pts · 80d
I know someone who worked a weekend event to show case a product and they did extremely well going nearly 15k in sales. They made $50 for the few hours it took to generate that. The amount of effort to prepare for this, drive there, waste weekend hours working is not worth $50. Especially with how much gas is. I don't understand why people don't just say no.
scarabic@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 80d
$50 sounds like a ridiculous commission under any circumstances. There are more numbers that we need before we can really judge the situation though. It’s not like $50 went to your friend and $14,950 went to their boss’s pocket. Surely there’s a cost to manufacture whatever it is being sold. Still, there’s no way that 0.3% is a reasonable sales commission.
Switorik@sh.itjust.works · 9 pts · 80d
They don't get paid commission. Since people continue to work for companies like this and are OK being paid so little, nothing will change.
grue@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 80d
Yeah, I was gonna say, that sounds more being paid an hourly rate (at sub-livable wage, BTW) and $0 commission.
IronBird@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 79d
who works a sales position without commision?
AbsolutelyClawless@piefed.social · 4 pts · 80d
I worked in customer support/sales for the largest ISP in my country. We were always understaffed because it was a shit job, so the turnover was high. We were forced to sign overtime, weekends and holidays included. I'll never forget this middle management asshole who enthusiastically attempted to convince me it's totally worth it. He does it, too, and he's always happy to see higher paycheck. At the end of the month that overtime amounted to ~€15-20 for me. Yeah, fun times. I was thrilled to kiss that job and its abusive management goodbye.
falynns@lemmy.world · 35 pts · 79d
American Capitalism 101. Sacrifice future growth for immediate profits.
Schal330@lemmy.world · 33 pts · 80d
Can't be expecting the peasants to share in the success of their hard work! Better to fire them and rehire them for cheaper when they are desperate.
scarabic@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 80d
It’s an interesting case for leftists because there is no means of production to be seized. Nothing needed to create websites or apps is hard to get or proprietary. If anything, the means of production is capital itself, because only by paying people can you direct a lot of them to spend time on any particular thing. I wonder if communism has already addressed this case somewhere. I’m hardly educated on the topic.
Danquebec@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 79d
Operating Facebook is rent-seeking, in a way. Any company could make another Facebook, but without people on it, there's no point going on it.
ZombieCyborgFromOuterSpace@piefed.ca · 28 pts · 80d
In some countries, this is illegal.
RIotingPacifist@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 80d
What countries? This is capitalism baby, only way to stop it is to have a union strong enough to fuck Up that record profit if the CEO even jokes a out layoffs.
scarabic@lemmy.world · 24 pts · 80d
Japan. Layoffs are extremely difficult to pull off there. You have to show poor performance by the individual involved, and the standards for that are very rigorous. The government knows that unemployed people immediately become their problem, so they just demand that if a corporation wants to employ someone, they have to be willing to enter into that in an open ended arrangement. So unions aren’t the only way.
some_designer_dude@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 80d
America’s trick for this is to let the unemployed become their own problem! 👏
stringere@sh.itjust.works · 6 pts · 80d
Wrong. The unemployed are just temporarily displaced slaves waiting to become homeless so they can be put in prison for poorcrime.
charonn0@startrek.website · 2 pts · 79d
I'm curious how it's considered a "layoff" if it's based on performance rather than the job itself being eliminated.
scarabic@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 79d
It’s not.
What I meant was you can dismiss people for poor performance, but that’s the only valid reason. You cannot lay people off in Japan in the sense of “we cut the budget and decided we don’t want to employ you anymore.”
However, that said… if you want to lay someone off, you can jump through a million hoops. I have seen people relegated to ridiculously inappropriate roles to convince them to leave. You can also mess with non-salary compensation if you want. And you can offer generous severance. And maybe you can convince people to let you “lay them off.”
ZombieCyborgFromOuterSpace@piefed.ca · 2 pts · 80d
Exactly
MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip · 3 pts · 79d
Other countries handle capitalism different.
merdaverse@lemmy.zip · 26 pts · 80d
Most of their profits are paid out to shareholders, like last year, and the year before that. Nobody should expect anything better from any capitalist corporation.
NottaLottaOcelot@lemmy.ca · 24 pts · 80d
The stock market is a weird thing - prices seem to be tied to whether a company can make more this quarter than last quarter, and not tethered to whether a company makes a profit. I figure that they made record revenue and now need a strategy to make even more profit next quarter, which they hope to achieve by reducing expenses via layoffs.
I don’t like it, but the economy is more tethered to speculation than reality.
flandish@lemmy.world · 17 pts · 80d
it’s not weird. it’s literally how capitalism works. it feels weird because it actually feels fucking wrong and disgusting but we are propagandized into thinking this is ok.
Jako302@feddit.org · 1 pts · 79d
Nah, not even the basic "its capitalism" excuse works anymore for that idiocracy. Capitalism may force companies to increase earnings, which is already stupid enough in itself, but the timeframe that's measured in got reduced so much in the last few years that even short term goals are impossible without cutting costs.
Ten years ago monthly earnings were at most an indicator, what mattered most were fiscal years. It slowly evolved to quarterly earnings and now we are at a point were a single "bad" (as in, not as much profit as last month) can plunge your stock prices by 10+%.
Yes capitalism always fucked over the working class, bit it wasn't made to force big, profitable companies to self destruct for 0.5% higher monthly profits.
flandish@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 79d
i think you neglect to consider capitalism’s growth (as a mechanic) itself. What you describe is exactly how it is working. What I believe is that this is an evolved economic system, designed from the start to “eat its own dogfood” so to speak.
anon_8675309@lemmy.world · 15 pts · 80d
It’s a pyramid scheme. You participate long enough to be able to move your money to a more stable platform and live off the measly interest that provides.
tempest@lemmy.ca · 5 pts · 80d
Line go up dog, just give in and roll around in the slop with the rest of us.
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 2 pts · 79d
One of the biggest (official) recession indicators, is whether or not the public thinks we're in a recession.
NottaLottaOcelot@lemmy.ca · 3 pts · 79d
Yes that always irks me. We can have 15 “markers of a recession”, but as long as nobody says it’s name, it can’t be true. The media has the Voldemort approach to economics.
IWW4@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 80d
../shrug
Stock prices are tied to what they did last quarter….
sheetzoos@lemmy.world · 21 pts · 79d
This will continue to happen until sociopath executives see consequences.
Footer1998@crazypeople.online · 6 pts · 79d
Or, you know, workplaces organize and form strong labor unions?
Mwa@thelemmy.club · 18 pts · 79d
my god we have so many layoffs this year.
kent_eh@lemmy.ca · 9 pts · 79d
And the year isn't even half over yet.
Just wait until the full impact of Trump's bullshit works its way through the economy.
The carnage will be felt for a decade or more.
MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip · 15 pts · 79d
The usual self-cannibalism game.
reksas@sopuli.xyz · 13 pts · 79d
dont work hard for companys, better they do more likely you will get laid off with everyone else. Might happen anyway, but if they dont do well they might think they actually need people to do work.
IratePirate@feddit.org · 12 pts · 79d
Who are you kidding?
Record profits > "We need to lay off workers to keep these numbers going up."
Not record profits > "We need to lay off workers to make these numbers go up."
sunbeam60@feddit.uk · 7 pts · 79d
CEO: I need the highest possible performance otherwise the board will fire me.
Board: We need the highest return otherwise we’re not willing to support the CEO.
Fund managers: We need to only invest in the most profitable ventures, otherwise people will move their money out of the fund I’m managing.
Pension companies: We need to only put our money in the most high performing funds.
You: I need the best return on my pension so I can retire as soon as possible.
If you’ve ever moved saved money to an account offering higher interest or performance, you’re part of this. I’m not saying that to blame, but people often don’t connect their own behaviour with the behaviour of the market.
Rooster326@programming.dev · 2 pts · 79d
I agree. The stock market was a mistake
wabasso@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 79d
Agreed. I participate as a thoughtless investor trying to maximize the growth of my savings but I hate that I have to even bother. Extra work, some guilt or anxiety around whether you made the right choices, and more complicated taxes. I think it’s horseshit that I’m effectively obliged to play in this casino the ruling class set up, just so my money retains its value against inflation.
I’m not against my money being used to grow businesses. But then just let the bank deal with it and pay me a fair interest rate for lending it to businesses. I still haven’t been given a good answer as to why the stock price of a company should have any effect on its day to day operations or revenue generation.
Fizz@lemmy.nz · -3 pts · 79d
That doesnt even make sense
MadhuGururajan@programming.dev · 6 pts · 79d
congratulations on finally getting on the same page as the article and the rest of us
Fizz@lemmy.nz · -3 pts · 79d
So you think Cisco is shrinking its workforce?
Rooster326@programming.dev · 2 pts · 79d
It's literally in the article and the headline...
Fizz@lemmy.nz · -1 pts · 79d
Long term they are growing. In a year or two they be at 90k and then 100k in a decade or two. The employee count cant just sit static.
smeenz@lemmy.nz · 0 pts · 79d
It hurt to read that post. Grammar much ?
lechekaflan@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 79d
aeronmelon@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 80d
“Correlation.”
SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 79d
Well if you don't have to pay people then yah, revenue will go up for now.
Collect your bonus, get your stock, bail and move to the next job. Sell the stock before the damage you caused rears its head.
Scrollone@feddit.it · 5 pts · 79d
Finance should be banned
HrabiaVulpes@europe.pub · 3 pts · 78d
Just ban or heavily tax stocks.
Oh, billionaire just used stocks as collateral for his loan? 30% tax
Selling or buying stock? 20% tax
SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 78d
Bring back pensions first then
HrabiaVulpes@europe.pub · 0 pts · 78d
Pensions? For billionaires?
SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 78d
401Ks have replaced pensions for most Americans.
HrabiaVulpes@europe.pub · 1 pts · 78d
No idea what that is. Sounds like it belongs with WH40K
SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 77d
So they used to have pensions for most private workers, then they went to 401Ks which are self managed market based retirement funds.
Downside...
The big push away from pensions to 401Ks and IRAs means the market has become the main retirement savings for most Americans. Wall St and financial institutions love them because it pumped trillions of $ into the market and profits in fees into the financial firms. Companies no longer had to manage pensions and guarantee returns. Most gov jobs still have pensions.
SnarkoPolo@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 79d
You better thank the Job Creators for the right to work, Serfs! Now go gratefully into the gig economy, singing the praises of Tr*mp.
felixwhynot@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 80d
Line go up!!!
Triumph@fedia.io · 7 pts · 80d
Revenue is not profit. I'm not defending them, but relating revenue to layoffs is apples and oranges.
Nurse_Robot@lemmy.world · 17 pts · 80d
Almost 27 billion is net profit
Triumph@fedia.io · 15 pts · 80d
Fuck em then.
thebestaquaman@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 80d
Are people backwards here or something? You're explicitly stating that you're not defending them, and you're completely right in what you're saying. A company can have record revenues and record losses (negative profit) in the same period. That doesn't mean meta and zucky are anything short of horrible, it means the headline is crap. An informative headline would be " reports profits and announces layoffs". Saying they have record revenues tells us exactly nothing about whether layoffs are justified or not.
Case in point: My buddy's startup had record revenues this year, more than doubled since last year, if they keep going at this pace they'll be bankrupt by this time next year, since their income is smaller than their wage expenses.
Triumph@fedia.io · 2 pts · 80d
Thank you.
theherk@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 80d
More like comparing orange peels to oranges. One is a component of the other.
felixwhynot@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 80d
I suppose the implied question is, “why are they firing people when making record revenue?”
Triumph@fedia.io · 11 pts · 80d
Revenue is income before expenses. Profit is what's left over after expenses. Revenue can increase, but if expenses increase even more, profit declines.
That's why relating revenue to layoffs is apples and oranges.
_stranger_@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 79d
to answer your question though, it's because Cisco is run by sigma grindset assholes.
nieceandtows@programming.dev · 6 pts · 79d
What is the logical progression to this kind of a thing. Is there going to be a turning point or is bottom a long long way to go?
Rekorse@sh.itjust.works · 5 pts · 79d
This is just a game to them, they have nothing to lose no matter what happens.
wabasso@lemmy.ca · 4 pts · 79d
I’m just brainstorming here, but do layoffs pave the way for hiring new grads at entry level wages, with more cutting edge knowledge?
Sure, that overlooks the loss of tacit knowledge that keeps the company running. I haven’t actually figured out yet how large companies can keep packaging out their senior employees that glue their disorganized systems together with undocumented knowledge.
III@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 79d
Neither have the large companies. The only difference between you and them is that you have acknowledged this loss of knowledge.
nieceandtows@programming.dev · 2 pts · 78d
That's an interesting question. Either there isn't much tacit knowledge in the company that they can't put in onboarding documentation, or the company is focusing on short term gains at the cost of long term stability
some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org · 5 pts · 79d
You guys, all those employees contributing to their huge profits were actually a liability and now they'll be so much more efficient.
/s because people take sarcasm literally
thatradomguy@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 80d
Cisco can take their campus fabrics/DNA and shove it up their arse. They stopped trying a long time ago and IOS is still a pain to use.
rumba@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 79d
We converted our medium-sized network to Ubiquity a couple years ago, everyone who has ever had to touch a config or deal with paying for updates is absolutely giddy.
It's nowhere near perfect, but lightyears better than dealing with Cisco's bullshit.
lechekaflan@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 79d
Fucking suits.
Shit like this is why I had to learn the trades as backup while I was still in the game, in this case training to be a computer technician.
ozoned@piefed.social · 3 pts · 80d
LINE GO UP ALWAYS AND FOREVER!
As long as you don't look at all the other lines.
DandomRude@piefed.social · 3 pts · 80d
IWW4@lemmy.zip · 3 pts · 80d
Same shit happened the last time Cisco laid off a bunch of people.
SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 79d
Part of me is glad I'm getting the hell out of this system in the near future. My heart goes out to younger people being royally screwed by it and I don't see any way out of it within that system.
PattyMcB@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 78d
I'm with you. After this position ends I'm changing careers. Tech has gone to shit lately.
username123@sh.itjust.works · -1 pts · 78d
Which system, specifically
BillCheddar@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 79d
A wooden baseball bat starts at like $75 for quality wood and never runs out of ammo, in case you're worried that there are more rich sociopaths than there are bullets in your backpack.
Patrikvo@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 79d
Traditionaly these situations require the use of tar and feathers.
GreenKnight23@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 80d
this is going to sound really harsh, but hear me out.
stop working for assholes
FirmDistribution@lemmy.world · 15 pts · 80d
we'd be unemployed if we did this.
MrSusan@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 79d
Good for you if you have the privilege to choose
JcbAzPx@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 79d
There aren't any non-assholes to work for. Your advice boils down to give up and become homeless.
bridgeburner@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 79d
Easier said than done lol. First of all, we are in a recession (we really are, if you factor out the fake AI growth), so having any job at all feels increasingly like a privilege. Second of all, I am pretty sure that there are more dickhead companies than good ones that care about their employees. Bonus points for difficulty if you just graduated from college/university and try to find an entry-level job. Those are basically non-existent these days.
newton@feddit.online · 1 pts · 79d
👿
Auth@lemmy.world · -5 pts · 79d
Seems fine, employees were well compensated and supported. Its a big company 4000 isnt a huge amount. Interesting to see a bigger pivot to silicon and optics.
Footer1998@crazypeople.online · 6 pts · 79d
How does boot taste?
wabafee@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 79d
Leathery? With a hint of shoe wax.
Auth@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 78d
Do you honestly care about the month to month hirings and firings of Cisco? These companies are giants and restructure regularly. If Cisco comp their workers properly which they did then IDGAF.
Footer1998@crazypeople.online · 2 pts · 78d
If you can't see how layoffs are used to suppress worker rights and keep pay as low as possible then I'm sorry but you are a total fool.
Auth@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 78d
This is economics mixed with some rage bait. None of this is a workers rights issue. This is just standard business in America they enjoy the benefits and consequences that come along. These are very highly mobile workers who were well paid and well compensated. These workers got better exit packages than every country with "strong workers rights". There is absolutely zero reason to pretend to care about this. Should cisco should just constantly expand its workforce infinitely, should they have published a detailed reason for letting every person go.
You'd expect this to be like oh 4000 people were laid off because cisco predicts a downturn in the economy but they're just restructuring and no longer require those people. They will hire more back for the new path.
Footer1998@crazypeople.online · 2 pts · 77d
You sure do love deep throating that boot, huh? Are you a small business?