From archive.ph:
When Snap laid off 1,300 workers at the end of August, one employee at the company was already prepared. The employee had heard rumblings of impending job cuts for weeks, and as a relatively recent hire, they knew they were vulnerable.
"I cleaned my entire computer of anything personal, logged out, erased cookies, etc," the Snap employee, who wished to remain anonymous, told Fortune.
When a DM from their manager arrived on layoffs day, the Snap employee was thrown for a loop: They were not being laid off. They were one of the lucky ones keeping their jobs.
Mixed in with the relief of escaping the layoffs was the sadness of watching less-fortunate colleagues and friends get the axe. Then came the glum realization that their own job was about to get much tougher.
"Our team was already understaffed and now we lost half of it," the Snap employee said. "So it's frustrating; they expect us to still go out and win with these products, yet we have fewer resources."
The situation is bad enough that the Snap employee said they'd considered quitting since then. "Many other folks are still considering quitting," they added.
Welcome to the new reality inside tech companies as a faltering economy and rising interest rates force businesses to look for ways to cut costs. Snap is among dozens of startups and large companies that have laid off employees in recent months, including Twilio, Patreon, Netflix, and Meta.
[...] Challenger, of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, said efforts to reward remaining employees are important in the wake of layoffs — especially when remaining workers will be asked to do more. If job duties change, titles and salary should change with it, Challenger said. If more money isn't an option, leaders can offer flexibility during this time, in the form of remote work options or flexible work hours, to help ease the transition.
"Uncertainty is sometimes enough to push valuable talent out the door after a layoff," Challenger said.
What have been your feelings when you have escaped being made redundant but when you watch many of your colleagues who have been less lucky leaving? Does the workload remain the same or even increase, but with less resources to do it?
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by drussell on Tuesday October 04 2022, @01:38PM
Someone stole my CD many years ago... I suppose I should download and burn a copy, you know, for posterity, but I assume you're talking about some other Snap!
The Madman is BACK, and on the ATTACK!
You go, MC Turbo B!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Freeman on Tuesday October 04 2022, @01:55PM (7 children)
Management is expecting More with Less. Now, get to it!
There was some quote that I can't find now. It was about how you could do less with less, less with more, or more with more. But, you can't actually do More with Less. Doing more with less is a managerial myth. You may be able to cut out some dead weight, you may be able to find some stupid stuff that you can stop doing, but you can't expect people to be perfect little machines. Even "perfect little machines" aren't perfect.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 5, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 04 2022, @02:50PM (2 children)
Sure you can! They say it all the time: you need to work smarter, not harder.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 05 2022, @03:13AM
Well, that's what they teach in MBA schools and seminars these days. It's been my experience that putting a nontechnical MBA over the engineering team was a surefire way to destruct any future innovation in a company; they won't even be able to keep their machinery running as soon no one knows how it works.
This is a USA-centric POV, however, as we simply outsource our manufacturing overseas and our technology to the cloud and grow rich selling permissions for others to rent something we own, like "rights" to do anything that might compete with a monopoly business model, with "free enterprise" allowed when it's part of the mad rush to the bottom.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Friday October 07 2022, @10:25AM
Working smarter usually means working for someone else.
(Score: 4, Touché) by Opportunist on Tuesday October 04 2022, @03:41PM
Well, let's try it right now. Let's find out what we can do with 30 hours a week, shall we?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by hopdevil on Wednesday October 05 2022, @01:09AM
More with more is hard enough
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 05 2022, @03:40AM
Somebody's not giving 110%. That's where you get the "more" from.
(Score: 5, Touché) by maxwell demon on Wednesday October 05 2022, @04:33AM
Not true. You can definitely produce more bullshit with less brain.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Dale on Tuesday October 04 2022, @02:33PM (2 children)
I worked for a large national homebuilder during the big crash in 2007/2008. Our division was lucky and only lost half of its employees since we were in a market less impacted than others. It was still a bloodbath. The company straight up used the line "you're lucky to have a job at all" for years while shoveling all the work on the remaining people. The only thing that came of it locally in our benefit was we never went off summer dress code the following summer which allowed us to ditch ties permanently and allowed for jeans. During covid when the housing market couldn't get stuff built fast enough everyone was running around like crazy. The company was making buckets of money that was just insane. Of course they were super slow to come out of conservative mode and reward anyone for the windfall. Companies will talk out of both sides of their mouths and try and reap the benefits from both sides of any equation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 05 2022, @03:17AM
I'd love to see a male hire get reprimanded for failure to honor the dress code for failure to wear a tie...
Then show up next day in a dress!
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 05 2022, @03:42AM
> Companies will talk out of both sides of their mouths and try and reap the benefits from both sides of any equation.
Of course. It's THEIR bonus, not yours.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday October 04 2022, @02:56PM
I learned that lesson early in my career: never bring anything personal to the office and never use anything in the office for anything except work. Later on I came to bring my own devices into the office; I'd complete the 2-day work task in an hour using the work computer and then work on my own projects on my own computer using my own connection via my cell phone. If you ever want to launch your own business, it's the only way to go.
Companies want to extract more value out of you than they actually pay you for, so it's only fair to return the favor. Loyalty stopped being rewarded a long time ago, if it ever was.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Opportunist on Tuesday October 04 2022, @03:43PM
Because either you get fired, then you need a new one. Or you get retained, then you want to get out of working two jobs for the salary of one. Either way, you need another job.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 04 2022, @05:04PM (4 children)
"When a DM from their manager arrived on layoffs day, the Snap employee was thrown for a loop: They were not being laid off. They were one of the lucky ones keeping their jobs."
This genderless employee, does it have a split personality, or is it somehow of royalty (which I don't think, because then it wouldn't serf at Snap)? The proper singular pronoun for something of unspecified gender still is "it", no matter how much some mentally disturbed want otherwise.
(Score: 4, Touché) by Immerman on Tuesday October 04 2022, @06:28PM
Does their gender matter? Are you hoping you might have a chance with them?
No? Then why the F should anyone waste the time and effort to mention it rather than using centuries old gender-neutral pronouns?
(Score: 5, Informative) by vux984 on Tuesday October 04 2022, @11:13PM (1 child)
Learn to English better. The the rules for when it is ok to us "it" to reference a human being in proper english are extremely limited, and quite subtle. Yes, cases do exist where it is allowed:
Examples:
"The phone has been ringing all day in your office. Someone's clearly been trying to reach you but I don't know who it is." -- is ok
"It's a boy! We named him George. He weighs six pounds..." -- is also ok.
And there are other cases. But the vast majority of the time, 'it' is considered extremely disrepectful and rude:
"It was not beign laid off" - nope.
"It was one of the lucky ones keeping its job" - nope.
These phrases would never have been acceptable use of 'it' to refer to an employee whose gender was unknown or irrelevant. Not now, not in the 1980s, not in the 1950s, not in the 1920s, not the 1850s... never in modern english.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 05 2022, @03:48AM
"Hey there's someone on the phone for you."
"What do they want?"
"Blah blah blah"
Guaranteed everyone on this thread has used they like this. So yeah, shut the fuck up everyone. Me included.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 05 2022, @12:49PM
Count me in as one who refuses to use plural pronouns to refer to singular people.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday October 04 2022, @06:39PM (2 children)
Junior person didn't lose his job, while senior people walked? Do the math. Ten people in their first two years of a career cost the company less than three people in the last two years of their careers. I've accumulated raises and benefits and perks that no junior person has, and it all costs the company money. Health is another major concern. The company wants to keep younger, healthier people around, and let the older, less healthy people go. If there isn't a union around to prevent it, that's the treatment you can expect.
(Score: 5, Touché) by wisnoskij on Tuesday October 04 2022, @09:41PM
We get articles after article about how you get better salary increased by changing jobs than asking for raises. So statistically the new employees cost more.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 05 2022, @03:54AM
Truth is nobody cares about the quality of the work unless it affects them. The managers don't get the crappy service, or install the crappy part, or decipher the bad instructions. So they don't care. As long as they get their narcissistic supply they'll grind the place into the dirt.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 05 2022, @02:36AM (1 child)
From the oh-snap! Dept.
(Score: 2) by Fnord666 on Wednesday October 05 2022, @02:18PM
Perfect. Added to the story and thanks!