from Hacker News

Silicon Valley layoffs aren’t a cost-cutting measure. They’re a culture reset

by lob_it on 11/17/22, 3:52 PM with 65 comments

by hobbitstan on 11/17/22, 4:27 PM
The Silicon Valley culture was aimed at attracting younger talent away from established companies, with childish perks like free food and video games, and a less rigid work structure. But it was never going be sustainable. At the core, the ‘promise’ that these new tech companies alluded to one day had to actually appear. And the slow creep of government regulation was always going to catch up too.
I always assumed most of these large companies would adapt and survive but it’s looking increasingly like they will not, or cannot.
by incanus77 on 11/17/22, 4:54 PM
> The last real deflation in tech was all the way back in 2000, 2001. There’s almost no one working in tech now who was around for that.
Oh?
by encoderer on 11/17/22, 4:38 PM
As long as tech companies remain fantastically profitable the culture will not change.
I see this as just a sour grapes piece from a journalist who has to cover tech from outside the bubble.
by rajin444 on 11/17/22, 6:11 PM
Software is one of the best tools we have for dealing with human communication issues (in a variety of ways). While there might not be many iPhone / fb / twitter size jackpots out there (until the next hardware growth enables new opportunities), there’s still tons of human communication problems to be solved.
Software is ultimately about replacing inefficient human communication and we still have a lot of that.
by bumbledraven on 11/17/22, 6:37 PM
> And as petty a thing as, “We’re going to give you smaller to-go boxes so you can’t take the steak we’re giving you and go feed your family with it.”
That's not "petty" – people shouldn't have been doing that in the first place. A take-home box should be for you, not so you can pile up food to "feed your family".
by unity1001 on 11/17/22, 8:55 PM
Some of the criticism doesn't make sense: Providing food, amenities, even accommodation has been a method with which private and state organizations around the world used to cut their costs and better the life standards of their members since the dawn of the modern economy after the industrial revolution.
Especially for organizations that have thousands of employees in one location, providing a cafeteria can be much cheaper for both the employees and the organization than thousands of employees going out to eat in private establishments at lunch time. The organization providing housing to employees to work around the bloated real estate sector can also be beneficial to the employeees and the organization. Similarly, Apple mulling its own health services is a good idea - they can reduce their costs and increase quality of life.
Its economies of scale after all. If you have tens of thousands of organization members in a location, it becomes an economy of scale that can reduce every member's and organization's costs directly.
If you do not provide such services to your members using economies of scale inside your organization and instead leave it to the free market by giving monetary compensation instead, you can bet that the free market will do everything in its power to suck all of that monetary compensation out of the hands of the employees by providing the minimum service in return to maximize profit.
by dahdum on 11/17/22, 6:41 PM
> And as petty a thing as, “We’re going to give you smaller to-go boxes so you can’t take the steak we’re giving you and go feed your family with it.”
That's what she thinks is petty? I wonder if she feels the same about replacing snack bars and drink fridges with free vending machines to slow down the workers who fill their backpacks full of Odwalla, Monster, and expensive snacks every night.
These benefits were worthwhile when employees appreciated them, but appeasing increasingly hostile and entitled workers is a losing battle.
by ben7799 on 11/17/22, 8:47 PM
The Facebook/Google crazy level of perks with 3 meals provided very day, dry cleaning, massages, etc.. ? Free alcohol in the office? That stuff can go, and people will have to deal with.
Some of the other stuff like untracked/unlimited PTO (It's never really unlimited) and free coffee and snacks is nice to have.
I'm in my 40s. I started internships in 1996. All this free food and alcohol, etc.. didn't exist till around 2010.
We would have occasional "hey we're working late so we're getting pizza" in the 1990s and 2000s. We would have "hey we're having a BYOB in the cafeteria friday afternoon." Not this constant culture stuff that constantly wasted tons of money. But Coffee has always been free & around.
It does seem like younger workers who have only experienced the current environment have gotten entitled to it. We used to have crunch time and working weekends and all that nonsense and we didn't have the perks. Sometimes the companies ran out of money anyway. Tougher times can kind of suck. But it still makes these jobs great. They always paid really well. You were still sitting in front of a computer and not stuck doing physical labor.
by 1letterunixname on 11/17/22, 10:34 PM
Somewhat. They're an excuse for corporations to cut people they don't really want and to shift their spending posture to austerity.
by P_I_Staker on 11/18/22, 9:14 AM
More of a scare crow. The government should investigate whether there's collusion.
by skyde on 11/17/22, 4:11 PM
time to start an Union then ?
by gumby on 11/17/22, 5:58 PM
"Tech is mature and growth is over". I remember that consensus headline from the 1980s.