Tailgate88 said:

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Owlagdad said:

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...... And we are letting in thousands at our southern border....where they gonna work?

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All they have to do is vote Democrat and the gubmint will take care of them.

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zephyr88 said:

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samurai_science said:

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https://www.newsweek.com/mass-layoffs-happening-2024-hiring-freeze-1855942


n the survey, nearly four in 10 companies said they are likely to have layoffs in 2024, prompting increased fears of a recession around the corner. More than half of companies also said they plan to implement a hiring freeze in 2024.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/brianbushard/2024/01/12/amazon-google-duolingo-cut-hundreds-of-jobs-here-are-the-2024-tech-layoffs/?sh=3fe6f413bd2e

Amazon, Google, Duolingo Cut Hundreds Of Jobs: Here Are The 2024 Tech Layoffs

https://tech.co/news/tech-companies-layoffs

2024 looks set to follow last year's trend for tech layoffs.

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Why am I supposed to worry about a language learning software company's employee count?

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Who said you are supposed to worry?

Tech company, the article is about a tech company, and tech companies laid off a lot in 2023, and the trend will continue in 2024. Anything else?

Oh no alert the news!

911sAg said:

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Oh no alert the news!

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I posted the news

dmart90 said:

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From the article, Spotify cut 1500 jobs (17%). AI makes a ton of sense there. But the real question in my mind is how the hell was Spotify a 10000 person company too begin with?

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Great question.


I've always wondered if companies hired more people than they actually needed as a way to show "growth" to help increase their value.

Does anyone know if that is, or can be, a factor?

I almost wonder if it's the opposite. Lots of tech firms have been over valued for a long time. It's like they start believing their own press clippings and get fatter. I've seen some with very bloated teams and it took an Elon type to come in and make cuts. I think there's bound to be more and tech will be volatile.

dreyOO said:

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I almost wonder if it's the opposite. Lots of tech firms have been over valued for a long time. I've seen some with very bloated teams and it took an Elon type to come in and make cuts. I think there's bound to be more and tech will be volatile.

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So you think by doing this these executives will benefit monetarily? That makes sense as well.

Absolutely. Very few execs will pay a price for it. It's the sheeple that believe in a company that is too full of hype and latte bars, rather than fanatically driven towards value creation. It happens way more frequently in tech in my experience.

No Spin Ag said:

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dmart90 said:

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From the article, Spotify cut 1500 jobs (17%). AI makes a ton of sense there. But the real question in my mind is how the hell was Spotify a 10000 person company too begin with?

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Great question.


I've always wondered if companies hired more people than they actually needed as a way to show "growth" to help increase their value.

Does anyone know if that is, or can be, a factor?

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That seems to be the case. When things were good, tech companies over-hired and over-promoted people, to demonstrate growth and increase their value. In 2023, when all the bills came due, and the insanity around the pandemic, started to wind down, revenue was not enough to cover the cost of those bills, and that's how you get layoffs.

No Spin Ag said:

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dmart90 said:

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From the article, Spotify cut 1500 jobs (17%). AI makes a ton of sense there. But the real question in my mind is how the hell was Spotify a 10000 person company too begin with?

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Great question.


I've always wondered if companies hired more people than they actually needed as a way to show "growth" to help increase their value.

Does anyone know if that is, or can be, a factor?

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"Growth" to increase their value typically means growing the paying customer base. Often that comes with a big upswing in hiring. So your profitability might be low or negative; but if the number of paying customers and revenue goes up a lot; its a growth business.

The company I work for was in the growth mode before private equity acquired us. Now it's all about the "rule of 40" (growth AND profitability). I have a hard time seeing us as 10000 person software company. And we are massively successful. Granted, we're not a consumer business so maybe that comes with a special kind of overhead I'm not aware of...

Thanks to all who replied to my question.

Just another example of how TexAgs knows stuff.

When they aren't selling houses then he economy fails, these interest rates are killing the home saLes market

Owlagdad said:

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...... And we are letting in thousands at our southern border....where they gonna work?

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Jobs? We don't need no stinking jobs!

No Spin Ag said:

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dmart90 said:

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From the article, Spotify cut 1500 jobs (17%). AI makes a ton of sense there. But the real question in my mind is how the hell was Spotify a 10000 person company too begin with?

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Great question.


I've always wondered if companies hired more people than they actually needed as a way to show "growth" to help increase their value.

Does anyone know if that is, or can be, a factor?

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This is exactly what my company did. They hired 1000 WFH workers in COVID. Now, the CEO is saying that he doesnt even know what they all day. We let 150 go in Q4 along with a early retirement program, in all about 400 gone. We will cut another 200-300 this year I imagine.

Kelly Moore just shuttered plant in Hurst. Let 700 folks go.
And crap, painters used KM in our house, I will try and match before they close shop here.

Ags4DaWin said:

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Most of the jobs lost will be DEI and useless jobs held by woke feminists

Hopefully the correction forces alot of companies to cut back on their useless DEI programs that bring in no money and are solely for "nice feelings".

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Hopefully it will be like the dot.com collapse where all those folks will have to go find real jobs.

But just like 2001, those folks who were making $100k doing nothing will complain about how they used to make $100k but now they can only find jobs for $50k, half of what they think they're "worth".

No Spin Ag said:

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dmart90 said:

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From the article, Spotify cut 1500 jobs (17%). AI makes a ton of sense there. But the real question in my mind is how the hell was Spotify a 10000 person company too begin with?

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Great question.


I've always wondered if companies hired more people than they actually needed as a way to show "growth" to help increase their value.

Does anyone know if that is, or can be, a factor?

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I've got a situation where I'm seeing really dumb hiring decisions being made to support the execution of a plan put together by the new CEO.

I resisted hiring anybody in this low cost country a year ago when the plan was first launched.

But I'm now trying to hire somebody in this low cost country simply because I've been told to do so to be part of the team. So, I'm going to have a $50k/yr boat anchor on my team so that my higher ups can show the CEO that they're executing his plan, even though we're not going to benefit from it in any way for 6 months to a year. Ramp time would be so much faster with a US recent college grad.

dreyOO said:

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Absolutely. Very few execs will pay a price for it. It's the sheeple that believe in a company that is too full of hype and latte bars, rather than fanatically driven towards value creation. It happens way more frequently in tech in my experience.

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First thing to understand is that execs pay packet doesn't even matter. It's all about share price manipulation.

In the 1990s when Michael Dell became a Billionaire, I don't think he ever took more than $800k in salary.

And when I worked for a Boston based company during the subprime crash, we had our CEO take $1 while he took $15M in options.

Narrative that the economy is bad is fake news.

Getting laid off builds character.

DallasAg 94 said:

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One of our leaders last week make some interesting comment. He leads an org of over 500 people.

He said 2024 was going to be a tough grind and if you are not up for it and you are not committed, this company may not be for you and you might ought to find a more suited place.

When asked about layoffs he said (my interpretation) it is a month to month decision and as long as we have attrition, we will be fine.

Translation... please leave on your own so we don't have to pay a severance or announce layoffs.

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Man, that is one crappy message to send out to employees. I can't imagine morale at your company is very good. I'd bet the best of you leave when you can.

Reasonable sourcing. Could happen. Hope for the people impacted that it does not. Plenty of positive reasons to elect an actual conservative. Nobody roots for economic failure prior to an election more then dems when Repubs are in power. Let's not be them.

Sounds like companies are positioning to do what Elon did to X.

Funky Winkerbean said:

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Sounds like companies are positioning to do what Elon did to X.

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Focus on their core business and profitability instead of crusading for "social justice"

BudFox7 said:

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Narrative that the economy is bad is fake news.

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What are you talking about?

zephyr88 said:

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samurai_science said:

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https://www.newsweek.com/mass-layoffs-happening-2024-hiring-freeze-1855942


n the survey, nearly four in 10 companies said they are likely to have layoffs in 2024, prompting increased fears of a recession around the corner. More than half of companies also said they plan to implement a hiring freeze in 2024.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/brianbushard/2024/01/12/amazon-google-duolingo-cut-hundreds-of-jobs-here-are-the-2024-tech-layoffs/?sh=3fe6f413bd2e

Amazon, Google, Duolingo Cut Hundreds Of Jobs: Here Are The 2024 Tech Layoffs

https://tech.co/news/tech-companies-layoffs

2024 looks set to follow last year's trend for tech layoffs.

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Why am I supposed to worry about a language learning software company's employee count?

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I hope Duolingo fires their overactive DEI staff and not their software developers.

HollywoodBQ said:

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Funky Winkerbean said:

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Sounds like companies are positioning to do what Elon did to X.

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Focus on their core business and profitability instead of crusading for "social justice"

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If only we could get government to do that.

In the airline's, furloughing is the common way to adjust expenses from the bottom. Last fall UPS adjusted from the top, offering early retirement to about 5% of the pilots instead. The takers were very senior. About two years of retirements taken care of. Figure a 2 year recession based on that.

HollywoodBQ said:

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BudFox7 said:

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Narrative that the economy is bad is fake news.

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What are you talking about?

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Are you short the market? What's your bottom target?

Unemployment is like 3.7%. Lol. Market about to break for new ATHs in spite of relatively extremely high interest rates. When those come down, watch out.

Inflation and Biden both suck ass, but pretending like the economy is in the ****ter is silly.

BudFox7 said:

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HollywoodBQ said:

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BudFox7 said:

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Narrative that the economy is bad is fake news.

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What are you talking about?

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Are you short the market? What's your bottom target?

Unemployment is like 3.7%. Lol. Market about to break for new ATHs in spite of relatively extremely high interest rates. When those come down, watch out.

Inflation and Biden both suck ass, but pretending like the economy is in the ****ter is silly.

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Unemployment, really?

Back before the dot.com bust we were down in the 3.8 range but compare Labor participation rate of 2001, 2007, 2019 versus now and tell me what you see.

And don't blame the difference on Boomer retirements.

There are so many people out there not working or under working. If those people got off their asses and got jobs, they'd send unemployment negative (compared to where it is right now - obviously it wouldn't be negative because the size of the workforce would grow).

Of course for them to get jobs, the economy would need to be actually booming, not still recovering from the China virus.

Jetpilot86 said:

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In the airline's, furloughing is the common way to adjust expenses from the bottom. Last fall UPS adjusted from the top, offering early retirement to about 5% of the pilots instead. The takers were very senior. About two years of retirements taken care of. Figure a 2 year recession based on that.

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Former employer did the early retirement thing last decade but it really only benefited people who were already planning to retire. They didn't catch a whole bunch of people on the fence and push them over.

Jetpilot86 said:

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In the airline's, furloughing is the common way to adjust expenses from the bottom. Last fall UPS adjusted from the top, offering early retirement to about 5% of the pilots instead. The takers were very senior. About two years of retirements taken care of. Figure a 2 year recession based on that.

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I thought we had a pilot shortage and that's the reason that 50% of all new pilots need to be females or POCs. Other pilots on the board have said so.

If UPS is cutting pilots, then there ain't a shortage.

Logos Stick said:

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Jetpilot86 said:

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In the airline's, furloughing is the common way to adjust expenses from the bottom. Last fall UPS adjusted from the top, offering early retirement to about 5% of the pilots instead. The takers were very senior. About two years of retirements taken care of. Figure a 2 year recession based on that.

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I thought we had a pilot shortage and that's the reason that 50% of all new pilots need to be females or POCs. Other pilots on the board have said so.

If UPS is cutting pilots, then there ain't a shortage.

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Sort of. Cargo boomed while the Pax pilots got paid half pay to sit at home. Now Pax are booming, for now, and Cargo is slowing back to 2019 levels. My theory is that UPS management was concerned if bottom of the list furloughees went Pax, they might not come back when cargo recovers of pax are still strong.

Was at my car dealership yesterday, 1/3 of the service writers were gone, about 20% of the sales staff based on the empty offices I usually see full.

Personally, I think the economy is being supported with smoke and mirrors based on what my eyeballs tell me. However, an old Wall Street rule is "don't fight the FED" and they are selling everything out right now to keep the economy afloat at least through election day.

HollywoodBQ said:

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Jetpilot86 said:

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In the airline's, furloughing is the common way to adjust expenses from the bottom. Last fall UPS adjusted from the top, offering early retirement to about 5% of the pilots instead. The takers were very senior. About two years of retirements taken care of. Figure a 2 year recession based on that.

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Former employer did the early retirement thing last decade but it really only benefited people who were already planning to retire. They didn't catch a whole bunch of people on the fence and push them over.

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Ours caught the ones within 2 years of mandatory retirement, ones close or out on long term medical that were senior also. It also caught the least productive senior pilots who had the most vacation and could game that part of the system best.