Why is firing someone hurting them when it's not working out? Both the company and the person would be better off doing something else.
We have attached shame and this idea that it is "hurtful" likely because it is so rare. At a place like a hedge fund, firing the bottom 10% of people is relatively normal, so being fired can sometimes just mean "you had a bad 6 months" not "you am a terrible person who does not deserve to work anywhere" (which seems to be how tech people and Europeans think of it). In that environment, there isn't any shame involved in the firing and everyone gets on with their lives (usually including a cushy severance package).
The executive failed to ensure profitability which is their entire focus. They are the ones that should be laid off first. You're giving them a pass which is literally the crux of the problem, these people are allowed to fail up at others expense. I'm talking about the dropbox layoffs, you're talking about just cause termination which is again completely meaningless in California.
I am telling you that "layoffs" are the mechanism by which silicon valley makes just cause termination culturally acceptable. If a silicon valley firm decided to fire the bottom 5%, they would lose huge amounts of talent that doesn't want to work in a "competitive" environment. If the bottom 10-20% happen to get "laid off" every 3 years, that's just an "unfortunate oversight" and a "management oops" that they take "full responsibility" for.
These layoffs do not generally happen when executives and companies fail; they happen as a matter of course. They are, of course, accompanied by rhetoric about executive failure (again, a cultural cover), but nothing more. When executives actually fail, executives get fired.
I'm telling you I disagree and I think your explanation is rather comical. Dropbox's slow growth in 2023 and 2024 is directly tied to an under performing executive team. Executive accountability is mostly gone and you're doing a great job furthering my point by trying your hardest to explain why poor leadership is culturally acceptable.
How is Dropbox's poor performance tied specifically to a poor executive team? The end of ZIRP and a bad core product are likely more to blame. This was likely the end of dropbox no matter what the execs did.
Also, can you explain the layoffs at Google this way? The layoffs at Meta? Microsoft? TikTok? Are all of these the result of underperforming executive teams? Are they even related at all to business trouble?
Or is it perhaps something closer to what I am suggesting?
Layoffs happen in waves at these companies. It really has nothing to do with performance. They do it every time they can, and the best explanation for that is that they are trimming the fat. Companies all say "we hit hard times" when they do this, but most of them really didn't. The issues with Dropbox's core business have likely been foreseen for 5-10 years.
>The end of ZIRP and a bad core product are likely more to blame. This was likely the end of dropbox no matter what the execs did.
Yeah, but we'll blame the workers anyway for "underperforming". nevermind that the only real change was that they got harder to get tax breaks on.
>Are they even related at all to business trouble?
I kinda agree with you, but also: yes they all had business troubles. Meta fumbles with VR hard and shuttered its in-house VR studio that otherwise put out well acclamed games. Microsoft is on shakey ground with OpenAI and their Xbox division is fumbling from the worst time to spend $70m on an aquisition. Tiktok may or may not be banned from the Unites States and that will take a hit (this one isn't really their fault, but alas).
How is it not? They're steering the ship. They're in charge, they're the decision makers. If the company is failing, how could it not be the executives problem?
We used to live in an age where leadership meant something, when people took responsibility for their failures. Now executives make excuses, they even have people like you making excuses for them, and instead of forgoing a bonus or handing over the reigns to more qualified team, they play with peoples livelihoods and you think that's perfectly acceptable, even called it cultural.
Anyway, given the age we live in, I'm not surprised at all to see people kissing their asses.
>Why is firing someone hurting them when it's not working out?
"Not working out" is doing a Herculean amount of lifting. In this case, "not working out" is "we want to make earnings calls look better and do more work with less people". Yes, you are hurting everyone in your company by doing that.
>We have attached shame and this idea that it is "hurtful" likely because it is so rare
Yes. I'd really hope that the singular good thing from this 5,6,8 round interview cycle for hiring that you somehow didn't hire someone who managed to underperform on the job. Maybe I'd even agree with you about firing culture if I believed for a second that it meant they'd be more lax in the 4 month interview process and do more probation trials.
But that's just hopes and dreams for now.
>At a place like a hedge fund, firing the bottom 10% of people is relatively normal, so being fired can sometimes just mean "you had a bad 6 months" not "you am a terrible person who does not deserve to work anywhere" (which seems to be how tech people and Europeans think of it)
Again, tell that to the recruiters. You're seeing it among peers, but there's a lot of stigma that if you got laid off you must have been "one of the bad ones". It's absolutely not true, but with so much fascination on "why did you leave your job" you can see how people really feel.
>there isn't any shame involved in the firing and everyone gets on with their lives (usually including a cushy severance package).
Yeah, I wish. Not all tech companies are created equally.
Mind you I hate stack ranking, but if you're going to something as fast paced as a hedge fund, those 6 months will pay you well. So you're rolling the dice youself there.
> Again, tell that to the recruiters. You're seeing it among peers, but there's a lot of stigma that if you got laid off you must have been "one of the bad ones". It's absolutely not true, but with so much fascination on "why did you leave your job" you can see how people really feel.
Yeah, I agree with you that this is mostly on the risk-aversion of recruiters. There seems to have been this vicious cycle of firing being harder and more stigmatized combined with companies being more picky when they hire. Nobody really benefits from this, though.
