from Hacker News

After Callous Layoffs, Workers Are Done with the Full-Time Work

by raunometsa on 2/7/23, 1:05 PM with 206 comments

by throwaway9191aa on 2/7/23, 2:14 PM
I made it for a little over 6 years as a full time freelancer before I went full time (about 6 years ago).
If you are going freelance to avoid getting laid off...
Since I became a full time employee I have actually gotten paid every month (almost never happened as a freelancer). I have never had to find a new contract, or had a contract fall through after turning down other work. I haven't had 90 day payment terms.
I just never found that magical "pick up work when you want, and actually get paid on time" sales pipeline. You are not your own boss. You have clients, who have deadlines, who are paying you to meet those deadlines. If you don't, you suddenly find yourself in violation of contract law. At your full time job if you miss a deadline, how often do you get fired? That has never happened to me. But I have absolutely not been able to deliver on a contract and not gotten paid because of it. Once a client thinks "We don't actually want to move forward with that project", they try to find a way to get out of the contract. There are no severance packages for freelancers. Just months of wasted time that won't be compensated.
by RobertDeNiro on 2/7/23, 2:05 PM
Zygmunt Bauman was right on the mark, 25 years ago.
> Forms of modern life may differ in quite a few respects – but what unites them all is precisely their fragility, temporariness, vulnerability and inclination to constant change. To ‘be modern’ means to modernize – compulsively, obsessively; not so much just ‘to be’, let alone to keep its identity intact, but forever ‘becoming’, avoiding completion, staying underdefined. Each new structure which replaces the previous one as soon as it is declared old-fashioned and past its use-by date is only another momentary settlement – acknowledged as temporary and ‘until further notice’. Being always, at any stage and at all times, ‘post-something’ is also an undetachable feature of modernity. As time flows on, ‘modernity’ changes its forms in the manner of the legendary Proteus . . . What was some time ago dubbed (erroneously) 'post-modernity' and what I've chosen to call, more to the point, 'liquid modernity', is the growing conviction that change is the only permanence, and uncertainty the only certainty. A hundred years ago 'to be modern' meant to chase 'the final state of perfection' -- now it means an infinity of improvement, with no 'final state' in sight and none desired.
by mattw2121 on 2/7/23, 1:48 PM
Workers aren't done with full-time work. Workers answered a survey saying that they are disillusioned with the idea of full-time work. In their idea of a perfect world, they would do freelance and not tie themselves to one employer. What would be really interesting is to follow up with those 109 that were actually laid off and see where they land. I'd wager 95% of them continue with full-time work, despite their answers on this survey.
by atdrummond on 2/7/23, 2:14 PM
Nothing was callous about the Google firings.
Real callous firings are when you wake up to your entire company no longer existing, your pension gone and corporate raiders walking off with billions.
Not being able to say goodbye on the internal message board is not a violation of your human rights.
Enjoy your many months of severance - something almost nobody else in your country enjoys.
by taylodl on 2/7/23, 2:31 PM
Workers aren't done with full-time work, they're done with allegiance to their employer. They're also done with giving free labor to their employer.
* Do I get paid overtime? No? Then I work 40 hours per week.
* You expect two weeks notice when I resign? That's cute!
* I'm jumping ship as soon as a better opportunity comes along. A better opportunity may be just working on a better project or learning new things.
* I will share my salary information. It's not private or top secret.
I'm sorry, this is the mess the MBA's made when the neocons took over the country in the 1980's. Everybody at the time saw this coming and now it's here. The employers made their bed and now it's time for them to lie in it.
I don't feel a bit sorry for them and I won't shed a single tear when the FAANG companies and their ilk whine that they're having a hard time finding workers, which they will inevitably do.
Too bad, so sad.
by dcre on 2/7/23, 1:48 PM
This is an advertisement for a contracting company posted on that very company’s website.
by aynyc on 2/7/23, 2:20 PM
1. Denial: nah, google/meta/apple/XXX would never laid me off!
2. Anger: WTF, I dedicated xx years to XXXX, how dare they!
3. Bargaining: I'll never work for the man again! I'll be my own boss!
4. Depression: This sucks, out of work sucks! I don't have a social circle to hang out with. My life sucks!
5. Acceptance: OK. Time to get a new job. Oh, look at that start up, their motto is change the world, join us and be the next xxx(ian/ler/mate, etc). Sounds awesome, let me ask my friend for a referral.
I might have taken liberty to the original with sarcasm.
by chrisBob on 2/7/23, 1:51 PM
The article repeats over and over that 89% of workers want more flexibility than a normal job offers, but my view is that the pandemic started a trend of more flexibility for existing jobs. My coworkers are mostly on west coast time, but I am on the early end of Eastern Time and our company has no problem with that.
I work when I can, get my kid off the bus, and don't have a problem taking a day off here and there with our unlimited PTO policy. A few years ago I felt tied to an 8:30-5 schedule, but I think child care challenges during the pandemic have made a lot of employers more flexible.
by thedriver on 2/7/23, 1:22 PM
On the other hand, another way to have more financial security is to save and invest money. That way you have time to figure out something new if your current job ends for whatever reason. If you get paid relatively well, like many tech workers do, it's not that hard to save a decent amount of money. The lifestyle creep just gets most people.
by didgetmaster on 2/7/23, 3:26 PM
It seems to me that to be a successful contractor, you usually have to have a certain personality type. In addition to doing the actual work, you have to be able to drum up business on a regular basis. This requires someone who can build a good network of friends, colleagues, and clients and interact with them regularly.
Many programmers are introverted by nature. They went into programming because the idea of sitting alone in front of a computer all day did not cause a panic attack. They enjoy those long hours of 'solving a problem' using an IDE and testing the code over and over until it is right. They can sometimes go a whole week without engaging in a conversation longer than 10 minutes.
This personality type does not match up well with a contracting business that has to 'wine and dine' potential clients; come up with proposals and present them to others; and regularly interact with existing clients to work out details.
by ChrisMarshallNY on 2/7/23, 2:21 PM
I feel that a survey of only 500 people, asking rather softball, "in-a-perfect-world" questions, may not exactly be a bellwether.
When it comes to freelancing/contract work, a significant number of folks like the idea of it, but the reality of it is not something they are comfortable with.
I think a lot of these folks may find themselves facing the same thing I did. They are now considered "olds," and won't find the doors open as wide as they used to be.
Those added jobs are probably a lot of young, fresh, faces.
by bmac27 on 2/7/23, 2:15 PM
Obviously, there's plenty of bias here given the source, but I think on balance it either hinted at or laid out a lot of the issues we know about the state of 9-5 employment, most notably in the U.S, fairly well:
-Lack of control over schedule/location
-Lack of growth paths at many companies
-Lack of leverage/Inputs match outputs almost 1:1 (sell time, make a dollar)
-Not getting rewarded for the value you bring to a job; instead that value accruing mostly to people above you
-That feeling of being merely a line on a spreadsheet
Over time, I've learned that for some people, articles like this will really resonate and shake them to their core. (I happen to be in that category but I've experienced enough in previous entrepreneurial ventures for this enthusiasm to be tempered a little bit with reality every time I read things like this).
Others will recoil seeing this, their first instinct going to the (very real) risks in leaving that system and conclude they're far more comfortable optimizing for the familiar.
Both reactions are perfectly OK. There's no wrong or right answer. It's just what connects with you, as a person.
The key is to understand that, either way, you're in charge of your career, regardless of what kind of professional setup suits you best and makes you happiest.
by incrudible on 2/7/23, 2:38 PM
You don't want to feel "disposable"? Don't go work for a company with tens of thousands of employees where literally everyone is disposable, up to and including the C-suites, by design.
You want to work part-time? Guess what, you are asking for a job that is disposable, because someone else needs to even out the work gap you left.
That said, being disposable also comes with less responsibility and, by extension, less pressure. You want to feel important and valued? Go work at a small shop that isn't lavishly funded by OPM, where your work helps keep the company solvent.
Or, go work for yourself. You'll learn to appreciate the peace of mind of having a paycheck magically show up at the end of month, or getting at least some benefits when it doesn't anymore.
by nsmog767 on 2/7/23, 2:57 PM
The idea behind this is nice - "people want to diversify their risk and not be 'owned' by one company" - but I don't think it's in line with the way people are, unfortunately.
People like the simple, dependable nature of the biweekly paycheck — full stop. I run a services business, and I've talked to many amazing in-house folks who I'm sure could do the same (and be more successful than I am). What I've found is that for many people, the concept of not being sure what they'll make is simply unpalatable.
This article cites survey results but doesn't talk about all the reasons people don't enjoy or have success when they go it alone.
by naltroc on 2/7/23, 2:51 PM
There is nothing good about losing a job, no doubt.
What I find interesting is how this becomes another example of software engineers facing the same struggles that artists have always faced.
It happened first with open source software. People want to build cool stuff and make it freely available, asking for support in return. Reality check, nobody is paying your rent for your OSS. This is life-as-an-artist 101.
Wanting more control over your schedule and the work you take is super liberating! It comes at a lot of costs.
There is the time cost of finding clients and negotiating contracts.
There is the billing cost, of invoicing your customer and finding a secure way to receive payments. Many platforms take a cut.
There are the additional taxes of being self-employed: "In addition to regular income tax, freelancers are responsible for paying the self-employment tax of 15.3% in 2022" (https://www.rocketmortgage.com/learn/self-employment-tax)
There is the stress of not knowing how long your current clients need you, and when you will have to start hustling again. Historically, full-time work fixes this issue. It is currently in question with the state of the news.
It is generally easier to find freelance work for knowledge workers compared to creative workers. With the state of the news, the competition has become extremely fierce.
The freelancer life is a very different reality that you really have to check before committing.
Myself, I have absolutely enjoyed my experiences with freelance, and I believe it helped me develop an independent way of moving through the world. Now I'm happy to have gone from being a freelance musician of 9 years to full time tech worker. Food is great.
by gajus on 2/7/23, 8:55 PM
Hey there,
I'm co-founder of contra.com - we started our platform for people that wanted to be independent, set their own rules for working and carve their own path to success. Nearly everyone on our team has current or previous experience as a contractor or freelancer and we're really focused on making the best place for everyone to be successful.
Whether you're new to the work of indy working or have been doing it for years, check us out. We don't charge any commissions on your work, since you worked hard to make that money. In the second half of the year we even rolled out a feature that allows you to migrate your work easier from other contractor/freelancing sites to our platform so you can retain more of the money you've earned.
by yalogin on 2/7/23, 3:49 PM
I can confidently say nothing is going to change. People will forget this soon. There will be new companies and new “geniuses” and people will blindly pledge allegiance. It’s not meant to be disparaging, people always want to align with good positive growth stories and they will. The same thing happened in 1999, 2008 too. The cycle continued between 99-08 and then again between 08-now. If anything the idol worship of entrepreneurs increased and became more fervent. May be entrepreneurs became adept at marketing themselves or people became desperate but the worshipping culture got worse. Forget about workers are done with loyalty, I will consider it a win if the blind worshipping of entrepreneurs is dialed down.
by MrBuddyCasino on 2/7/23, 1:45 PM
An interesting case of outsourced externalities: degrading the common pool of workers by lowering loyalty and commitment.
Besides that, I can only recommend being your own boss to have more control over your professional destiny.
by throwawaysleep on 2/7/23, 2:16 PM
In the modern work paradigm, I can’t see why I would bother even report a bug in my employers software that was burning money.
As an employee, I don’t see much in it for me other than not getting fired, so I do the bare minimum.
by phpisthebest on 2/7/23, 2:08 PM
I have to wonder if this is not the goal of many of these companys
"Gig Economy" is great for the large companies (at least in the US) , they would much rather higher you as a Freelance contractor then having to pay ever increasing health care costs, more and more regulatory burden on what you have to offer and provide to employee's etc.
Must better to just call you a "contractor" and pay you 50% what an employee would cost in totality, but making you believe you are "making more" because you income is higher.
by sfpotter on 2/7/23, 2:11 PM
If you work full time, work is your life, or it’s whatever percentage of your life that you spend there on average per week. You can try to ignore this fact and focus on your life outside of work, but you’re just going to build cognitive dissonance over time and delay the day of reckoning. The only path forward is improving the quality of your life at work by improving labor regulations, and the only way to achieve that is through labor organizing, which means unions.
by cmrdporcupine on 2/7/23, 2:16 PM
As others have pointed out, dubious article.
And, dubious proposition. For myself... I quit my GOOG job a year ago, and I certainly felt this was through 2022, and pursued contracting and freelance and startups and open source stuff and enjoyed the freedom. But once layoffs really started to heat up through the summer, I started to feel the push to finding a "stable" fulltime job, found one, and am more than happy to be employed securely, given the market. Especially after yesterday when 150+ of my fellow Canadian ex-Googlers were dumped onto the job market.
A fulltime job right now is golden. More and more people are going to feel this way as things become unstable. With thousands of very qualified recently laid-off people dumped onto the market, compensation rates are going to fall, interviewing is going to get tougher, work more stressful, etc. Competition for consulting gigs will also get difficult.
by rcarmo on 2/7/23, 2:34 PM
This reads like a very biased, clickbait extrapolation from a highly localized sample population, and barely registers as realistic when read from outside the US, and should be flagged as opportunistic clickbait.
(About the only thing I can relate to in the title is the callousness/corporate insensitivity of the layoff process)
by eigenhombre on 2/7/23, 2:28 PM
I've worked less than full time for a good portion of my career -- sometimes salaried, sometimes on contract. If you can make it work financially, I highly recommend it. I can do unrelated personal work at a much higher level when I have 10+ hours per week available to advance it. And my energy for the "day job" is at its best when it doesn't eat up all my time, so my results per hour are better.
The pattern is rare enough that there is a cultural barrier, at least in the US (and possibly worse elsewhere?). I accept that there will be fewer opportunities, and plan to do outstanding work during the hours I'm engaged. My employer gets a happy me and benefits from (by now) decades of experience. I hope that more tech (and non-tech) workers will join me in advocating for this sort of arrangement so it becomes more common.
by tr3ntg on 2/7/23, 2:34 PM
I’m in the A.Team network (the group behind this post) and I’ll say that they don’t even have many contracts available right now.
If their own ability to find work for contractors is any signal, contracting is a horrible replacement for full time opportunities. It’s unpredictable.
by lordnacho on 2/7/23, 1:46 PM
It's not just that people have figured out loyalty isn't rewarded. That has surely been known for a while.
With WFH, you can be constantly looking for a new job. Who's going to know if you take an hour to talk to some recruiter? Just like Tinder/etc has upended dating, tech workers can be courted constantly. I take calls from recruiters all the time, I don't even think of it as disloyalty.
You can even actually work multiple jobs from home. Tech makes it possible, though you're often going a step deeper into breaking contracts when you do that.
Then there's also working on your own side gig, which is much easier to do when WFH is a reality.
by sequoia on 2/7/23, 3:01 PM
News flash: the grass looks greener on the other side!
I’ve done both, most of my advice is the same as others who’ve contracted. One thing I’ll add: get retainer contracts! I had one contract that paid a couple hundred per month for me to be “on-call” if the main programmer was out in a small one-man shop. If they didn’t use their allotted hours, every couple months we’d check in, review something etc.
I got a full time job but if I were still contracting this is where I’d focus a lot of attention: finding gigs that pay you monthly for maintenance, on-call etc.
by Andrew_nenakhov on 2/7/23, 2:32 PM
People who are done with the Full-Time Work can always try a few other options:
- Starting their own company (and good luck managing all that stress and uncertainty while trying to do some work while securing a steady income)
- Becoming a freelancer (be your own boss, pick up work when you want it... at least that's how it goes in theory)
- Retiring (this one is not bad but only limited for people of appropriate age or with significant savings)
- Being unemployed (that really sucks, as you might imagine, especially if you have a family to feed)
- And, as a last resort, looking for a Full-time job again.
by jchw on 2/7/23, 2:16 PM
The mantra that runs American businesses, certainly American tech businesses, feels broken. Companies bend over backwards to make their financials fit the narrative of constant growth and are rewarded for it even when they get there by callously cutting costs rather than investing in the long term. Nearly no loyalty between employees and employers, and not much between companies and customers either. All that seems to matter anymore is the quarterly financial report.
Sometimes it feels like you need to hit the reset button.
by xianshou on 2/7/23, 3:47 PM
This article perfectly illustrates how small, steady distortions give birth to hyperbolic claims.
Actual question (in article): 62% [of knowledge workers] said that the recent waves of layoffs have made them feel less secure committing to one employer.
Preview text (below headline): 62% of knowledge workers say they don’t feel secure committing to one employer anymore.
Headline: After Callous Layoffs, Workers Are Done With the Full-Time Work Model
As Scott Alexander might say, the media rarely lies, but it loves to play telephone with itself.
by say_it_as_it_is on 2/7/23, 2:34 PM
I want everyone to know that I personally hold myself responsible for these failures, but I won't be stepping down from my leadership position. It weighs heavy on my heart losing so many of my corporate family members. I love you all. Please don't say bad things about me in public because I will be trying to convince investors of my next big revolutionary opportunity, distancing myself from the current failures that I hold myself responsible for.
by Bhilai on 2/7/23, 4:04 PM
> In a survey of 500 knowledge workers in the US ...
Apparently none of these folks were on a visa because to my knowledge, work visa holders cant really do freelance work. Nor can the folks on visa work for multiple employers. Surprisingly this article does not even mention visa based restrictions on employees and their state after being laid off. So I am not sure how representative this is of any sentiment amongst laid off people.
by dasil003 on 2/7/23, 3:46 PM
I get that this is an advertisement, but the message lacks credibility. Workers that are most impacted and feel "betrayed" by layoffs are likely to value stability. Giving up full-time work is not a path to greater stability. If that's what you want, it's still better to go full-time, and just temper your expectations about the durability of your employment.
by CommanderData on 2/7/23, 2:32 PM
I can see alot of emotion filled posts on here and LinkedIn about layoffs. It sucks but us employees service our employers.
They will fire and hire as they choose, emotions mean nothing in a business decision like this. If you're hurt and don't want to play along. They will find someone who does. It's as simple as this.
Also contracting offers you less job security, I don't think you realise.
by AndrewKemendo on 2/7/23, 2:20 PM
Workers have not been getting the benefits of growth since 1971 and we're sick of it
It's time to transition from a competition to a cooperation economy and it's going to take centuries - but if we don't do it soon we're going to face a social and ecological calamity that makes COVID-19 look tame in comparison.
My opinion is that humanity solved material scarcity by the year 2000 and by continuing on the path of hoarding based capitalism, we now produce the wrong goods which is actively self destructive to the species.
I write more about this here:
https://kemendo.com/Myth.pdf
by debarshri on 2/7/23, 2:12 PM
What I don't understand is the organisations they are laying off are also hiring. For eg. I saw Miro firing bunch of people last week and then hiring new people. I feel this is like bait and switch. CEOs take responsibility of the layoff but it feels like they dont really care. If employers are not loyal then why should the employees be.
by StevePerkins on 2/7/23, 3:40 PM
It should be called out more prominently that this website belongs to a freelancer firm. This thread is free advertising for a corporate P.R. piece, and doesn't reflect anything more broad and genuine than that.
If you're going into freelancing because you don't like layoffs, then good luck with that.
by tonnydourado on 2/7/23, 2:32 PM
> 500 knowledge workers—including 109 that had recently been laid off—in the US
Before commenting on the content of the article, I'm wondering if this is a sample worth giving any attention to?
I'm no statistician, but drawing from a sample of 500 to make sweeping statements about "Workers" seems disingenuous, at least.
by ergest on 2/7/23, 2:21 PM
There have been other periods of massive layoffs. (I’ve personally witnessed 2001 and 2008) Weren’t workers disillusioned with full time work back then or has it become easier and more acceptable to freelance in the last decade? Was it perhaps the callousness of the layoffs that ignited these emotions?
by chillbill on 2/7/23, 2:04 PM
This is extremely misleading.“500 knowledge workers in the US” hardly constitutes “workers” in the title.
by peter_retief on 2/7/23, 2:12 PM
Layoff's are not new and will continue with the slow down in the world economy, many people will have to reinvent themselves in a world where their skills are no longer needed. I feel for older workers who will find it harder to find new work.
by ronmoddesette on 2/7/23, 2:30 PM
Layoffs have been happening forever, I don't understand why all these stories are raising concerns. Lay-offs suck, but aren't anything new.
by nszceta on 2/7/23, 2:09 PM
But they aren't done with the $4000 a month mortgage with dropping equity value that's holding them hostage.
by shanedanger on 2/7/23, 3:30 PM
gigantic surprise: you're "family" when it means sacrificing for the company, and you're a human sacrifice when the company needs to make its shareholders feel better about the economy.
by sva_ on 2/7/23, 2:10 PM
Curious domain name.
by revskill on 2/7/23, 2:01 PM
It's a shame that most of people (HR recruiters) consider fulltime work == remote work. They're totally orthogonal concepts. It's a LOL for me. And it's also a sign that an article is written by sales/marketing/HR people.
Wake up, non-tech people: Fulltime != Remote.