Mediocre management loves ways to turn fuzzy analog judgements into hard specific numbers, which can be used to compare the value and success of people with pretend specificity.
That also sounds like a problem at the management level.
I’ve been lucky to have good managers that don’t micromanage, and also not had to deal with that spying software nonsense. They’ve ranged from people like my first manager in engineering here where I was told by the team lead that you will only hear from the manager if there is a problem. That was understandable given the amount of people he had to manage at that point, which included a lot of partner engineers in addition to our engineers. The expectation was that you knew the schedule, and what you needed to get done. So you did your work, and if you had things you needed help with then you speak up. These days they work harder to make sure the managers don’t have too many direct reports, and my current manager meets with members of her team every couple of weeks to see how they are doing and if there is anything they need. Still mostly the same thing though. They expect people to know what they are doing, not micromanage them, and basically just try to help facilitate things when people do need help from someone else or another team.
More beatings, please, that’s what makes us happy.
If it makes the stock go up, Zuckerberg and the shareholders will be happy.
Facebook laying off another 10k (!) and Zuck announces it in a jargon-filled upchuck that beats around the bush:
The image for that layoff article is [chef’s kiss].
The dilemma of being told there will be huge layoffs in 2-3 months: do you work hard or not for those months?
You work hard at finding another job.
Yup. If they’ve announced layoffs in 2-3 months then someone has likely already made a decision about you. Working harder the last few weeks won’t save your job if you’ve already got an X next to your name on the list.
At my first job out of college (big private tech company) they said I was on “probation” for work performance, happened in 2009, and they said it TOTALLY had nothing to do with the economy. But as soon as I was put on “probation” I focused all of my time looking for other work. It all worked out, because I didn’t like it there, they fired me, I got unemployment for 9 months, and landed a job I actually really liked doing, it paid less than my first job, but it was better than unemployment. Now I make more than double what I made at my first job, and actually enjoy my work.
A little weird to be interviewing with a company that’s about to lay off 10,000 people…
Those interviews tend to become self-fulfilling prophecies. You are “counseling” an employee and pretty much telling him/her that their future with the company is “iffy”. In decades past when a pension or guild membership or whatever might have been on the line, the employee might have been scared enough to change to conform to management demands. But nowadays, why would they stay?
About twenty years back I was between contracts working for a large consulting firm that I felt a fair amount of loyalty towards. In the parlance of consulting, I was “on the bench”, doing proposal work and waiting for a new assignment. I was fairly cheap, had lots of great accesses/certifications necessary for various government contracts, and had a really good reputation with our main client agencies.
After a month of writing proposals, I got called up to the “management level” of the company HQ. I was excited because I figured I was going to be briefed into a new contract. Instead, I got a half-hour lecture from a guy I had never met on how I’d damn well better find a new position in two weeks or I would be let go. Never mind that I had been pestering HR about new positions since before my last contract ended. The mood in the room was very disapproving and condescending – “this is your last chance to shape up” kind of thing, complete with a second person in the room who said nothing and was there to act as a witness in case I got angry, I suppose.
The meeting ended with what I’m sure was supposed to be a grim threat: “I hope I don’t have to see you in here in two weeks”.
I responded with a smile and “Oh, don’t worry, you won’t.” Then I went home, called a head-hunter, and had three better-paying job offers in a couple days. To this day I am mystified as to why they tried to pull that bullshit on me.
Garbage collect your stuff and eject yourself from the corp’s working set.
To stay with the lizard man’s word salad theme.
Yeah, the tech industry recruiters who are still employed have to have interesting jobs right now.
That said, given the number of people suddenly on the job market, it feels like it’s back to being a buyer’s market for the people who are hiring in tech.
That’s what I was afraid of,as an IT professional myself, but it doesn’t seem to be happening. The kind of skills that make one a good candidate for “big tech” translate really well to just going into any corporations IT department. Yeah it’s less cool and probably less lucrative but overall there are still plenty of IT jobs around. A few thousand in layoffs here and there from the big boys is more background noise than anything really impacting the IT labor market.
Yeah, coders and hardcore IT folks will always land.
Those of us in less code-related gigs, like content design, I think might see fewer opportunities than when I was looking for a change back in 2021.
I’m noticing at my employer that the recruitment pipeline is changing behavior. Whereas last year it was “thank God, looks like we have one decent candidate, let’s interview them and make an offer if we like them”. Now I’m seeing expectations that we will get our choice from multiple good candidates.
Every company has bloat but the size of those two Meta layoffs, nah. That’s cutting some muscle as well. I don’t keep up with their stock, are they tanking or performing that badly?
