https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/linkedin-laid-off-california-workers-19607067.php

'A cesspool': Laid-off California tech workers are sick to death of LinkedIn
Tech workers hate the Bay Area company's site. But more than ever, they need it.

The pay was good, he said, and he thought he’d be able to parlay the hourly contract into a full-time job. But after a Cruise vehicle dragged a pedestrian in San Francisco on Oct. 2, the startup began to spiral and money dried up. Kohlheyer’s contract ended, and after a break, he was back unhappily “trolling LinkedIn all day” by late February. Again, the self-aggrandizing, corporate-speaky posts really bothered him.
“There’s just such a capitalist-centric mindset on there that is so annoying as a worker who has been fundamentally screwed by companies,” he said. “Wading” through LinkedIn, he said, it’s hard to tell if people feel like an alternative to the top-heavy, precarious tech economy is even possible.

“Is [LinkedIn] a terrible sign that we live in a capitalist hellscape?” he asked. “Hell yes! But we do live in a capitalist hellscape, and girl’s gotta eat.”

 

While the pay might be "good", while it lasts, one often does better in a contest with fewer contestants. So that part of California, while there may be good pay, is also a high cost of living area. And while the sunshine may be nice, there is more to life than nice weather.

 

https://www.theverge.com/2024/8/1/2...00-employees-and-will-cut-10-billion-in-costs
Intel is laying off 15,000 employees and will cut $10 billion in costs

 

Post #243 is why I found it better to work in a small company.
No board of directors that is responsible ONLY TO THE SHARE HOLDERS!!! That is the law for publicly traded businesses, the ones that sell shares.

 

Post #243 is why I found it better to work in a small company.
No board of directors that is responsible ONLY TO THE SHARE HOLDERS!!! That is the law for publicly traded businesses, the ones that sell shares.

We have a saying down here that goes: "It's better being a mouse's head than a lion's tail"

 

https://www.theverge.com/2024/8/1/2...00-employees-and-will-cut-10-billion-in-costs
Intel is laying off 15,000 employees and will cut $10 billion in costs

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Nvidia will not have immunity from the chip cycle. Those high up the hill will hit harder when they fall down that hill.

 

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I find it totally OBSCENE that any CEO of any organization gets paid that much. No matter what they are able to do for profits.
The only possible exception would be if that individual would freely raise the dead as favors to those folks suffering from the loss. But that sort of individual would probably have no use for the money.

 

I find it totally OBSCENE that any CEO of any organization gets paid that much. No matter what they are able to do for profits.
The only possible exception would be if that individual would freely raise the dead as favors to those folks suffering from the loss. But that sort of individual would probably have no use for the money.

I find it OBSCENE that any individual cares what any other individual gets paid, unless they are responsible for hiring and paying them.

CEOs of publicly traded companies get paid to make decisions that earn the share holders more money, just like good basketball players get paid (obscene?) salaries to a) win games and b) draw big crowds and advertising.

If you are a shareholder of a publicly traded company, and you think the CEO is overpaid, sell your stock (and avoid any corresponding gains or losses). Put your money where your mouth is. Use your freedom. Don't infringe on others'.

Edit: the market for good CEOs is highly competitive (probably the most competitive of all markets). The salaries paid reflect this.

 

The Sin of Envy

 

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-i...eamline-its-structure-and-boost-profitability

Dell reportedly cuts over 12,000 jobs as it seeks to 'streamline' its structure and boost profitability

 

I find it totally OBSCENE that any CEO of any organization gets paid that much. No matter what they are able to do for profits.
The only possible exception would be if that individual would freely raise the dead as favors to those folks suffering from the loss. But that sort of individual would probably have no use for the money.

The claim that he is paid that much is also highly misleading -- divide it by 10 and you are close.

The vast majority of that $179M (like just short of $170M of it) was from one-time incentive awards as part of his new-hire package. His base salary was $1.1M, he received a $1.75M signing bonus, and he received a one-time non-equity incentive bonus of %5.1M. There's also other compensations in there that are about $1M on top of his base salary, and those might be things that are ongoing. So his annual compensation without incentive awards is more like $2M, but with ongoing bonus and incentives ends up being in the $12M to $17M range, significantly less than he made at VMware in 2019 ($24M) and 2020 ($42M) and in the ballpark of what he made on either side of those years ($17M in both 2018 and 2021). You're not going to lure someone away from that kind of compensation to take on heavy and risky challenges at your company without front-loading things pretty heavily.

Let's look at it from a few perspectives.

A company hires a top-tier candidate away from another top-paying company for about the same overall annual total compensation after the first year. To get him to sign, you agree to give him stock and stock options amounting to 0.2% ownership in the company, plus first-year bonus of about 50% of his ongoing total compensation.

After that, his ongoing total compensation, including stock, stock-options, and bonuses, is expected to about $10/employee per month.

 

I find it OBSCENE that any individual cares what any other individual gets paid, unless they are responsible for hiring and paying them.

CEOs of publicly traded companies get paid to make decisions that earn the share holders more money, just like good basketball players get paid (obscene?) salaries to a) win games and b) draw big crowds and advertising.

If you are a shareholder of a publicly traded company, and you think the CEO is overpaid, sell your stock (and avoid any corresponding gains or losses). Put your money where your mouth is. Use your freedom. Don't infringe on others'.

Edit: the market for good CEOs is highly competitive (probably the most competitive of all markets). The salaries paid reflect this.

More to the point, it also reflects simple economies of scale.

In most companies and industries, leadership doesn't actually "make" anything that produces revenue -- as the guy that owned the air compressor manufacturing company that my dad worked for for nearly 30 years said, the only people that produce revenue for the company are they guys in the shop turning wrenches to build compressors. The engineers, the managers, the accountants, the secretaries, and the salespeople are revenue parasites -- their role is to do things that make it possible for the guys turning the wrenches to produce revenue in exchange for getting some of the revenue they produce.

Consider that you start a business and arrange it so that each person will earn the same amount of the net profits, but that each employee will then pay you 10% of their portion in exchange for you fronting all of the money to start the business, and for keeping all of that investment at risk. But you also agree that, if the company grows, that you will cut your rate in half each time it grows by a factor of four.

In the first year, you have a total of ten people (yourself included) and the company makes $2 million in revenues ($200k/person), of which half are in direct expenses like rent, utilities, insurance, materials, whatever. That leaves you with $100k/person, of which the other employees each pay you $10k, leaving them with $90k each and allowing you to walk away with $190k, or nearly twice what any of the others make. Numbers like this are not uncommon at this scale.

Now let's say that your leadership expands the business to a total of 40 employees and you drop your claim on their portion from 10% to 5%. To keep things simple, let's assume that the company still brings in $200k/person -- perhaps in inflation-adjusted dollars -- (making total revenues $200 million) and the total expenses are still 50%, leaving each employee's portion of the net profit stable at $100k. of which they have to pay you $5k each, leaving them with $95k and you with $295k, or nearly 3x their salary. Are you being greedy? Are the people that were paying you $10k and that are now paying you only $5k being cheated?

Now let's say that you eventually grow it to 40,960 people (it's quadrupled a total of six times), so your rate is now 0.15625%. Each employee now pays you $156.25, instead of their original $10,000 (for the original employees, if any are still around, since this has probably taken quite some time to achieve), but your compensation is now right at $6.5 million. Is that obscene?

 

https://www.theverge.com/2024/8/14/24220357/sonos-layoffs-august-2024-app
Sonos lays off 100 employees as its app crisis continues

Sonos confirmed the layoffs to The Verge on Wednesday afternoon, providing a statement from CEO Patrick Spence. “We made the difficult decision to say goodbye to approximately 100 team members representing 6 percent of the company,” Spence said. “This action was a difficult, but necessary, measure to ensure continued, meaningful investment in Sonos’ product roadmap while setting Sonos up for long term success.”
Spence also said that “our continued commitment to the app recovery and delighting our customers remains our priority and we are confident that today’s actions will not impact our ability to deliver on that promise.”

"Spence explained on the company’s Q3 earnings call that the app debacle would cost between $20 and $30 million."

Gota pay for that screw-up somehow...

 

https://apnews.com/article/cisco-job-cuts-technology-layoffs-78ad036870555f53fe03739cf1ae76f9
Cisco cuts thousands of jobs, 7% of workforce, as it shifts focus to AI, cybersecurity

 

https://www.ttnews.com/articles/gm-1000-software-engineers-us

General Motors Co. is cutting more than 1,000 software engineers as the automaker moves to lean up its software and services organization, said a person familiar with the matter.

More than 600 of the layoffs will be in Michigan, the person said. The moves come two months after former Apple Inc. executives David Richardson and Baris Cetinok were promoted to senior vice president roles in the group.

 

https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/california-tech-companies-laid-off-table-scraps-19723851.php
Calif. tech companies see laid-off workers as 'table scraps,' recruiters say
One recruiter said that a senior director even called them 'damaged goods'

 

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/08/29/mee...-collar-jobs-and-launch-trade-businesses.html
Meet the Gen Zers skipping college to take blue-collar jobs and launch trade businesses: ‘One of the smartest decisions I ever made’

 

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/08/29/mee...-collar-jobs-and-launch-trade-businesses.html
Meet the Gen Zers skipping college to take blue-collar jobs and launch trade businesses: ‘One of the smartest decisions I ever made’

I've never understood the disdain that developed for the skilled trades. They have always been a good source of well-paying and fulfilling careers. I believe that a lot of it was driven by colleges, particularly for-profit colleges, intentionally trying to spread the notion that you had to have a college degree to get a good job, and also that any job that didn't require a college degree was not only low-paying, but inherently undesirable. Both of which are silly notions. But they got everyone to buy into it. Businesses increasingly required college degrees (in something, anything) to get jobs that didn't need one. The fact that they didn't require a degree in a relevant field, just a degree, attests to that. The high schools started shelving what used to be vibrant skilled-trade programs because they were being seen as demeaning to the students that participated in them.

 

I've never understood the disdain that developed for the skilled trades. They have always been a good source of well-paying and fulfilling careers. I believe that a lot of it was driven by colleges, particularly for-profit colleges, intentionally trying to spread the notion that you had to have a college degree to get a good job, and also that any job that didn't require a college degree was not only low-paying, but inherently undesirable. Both of which are silly notions. But they got everyone to buy into it. Businesses increasingly required college degrees (in something, anything) to get jobs that didn't need one. The fact that they didn't require a degree in a relevant field, just a degree, attests to that. The high schools started shelving what used to be vibrant skilled-trade programs because they were being seen as demeaning to the students that participated in them.

Wood shop, electronics, and drafting were my favorite classes in high school.