Latest / Roast the Post Podcast / Rolling Layoffs: Tech's New Normal | Grounds for Discussion

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Rolling Layoffs: Tech's New Normal | Grounds for Discussion · Roast the Post Podcast

• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: Jen, I was reading some of the news on the interwebs today and I came across
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: something that was kind of interesting.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: So this headline comes from Reuters and it's via GeekWire.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's about workforce strategy.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: The headline is "Amazon cuts hundreds of retail roles during its own prime big day
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: deals." A little bit of background:
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: Amazon confirmed a new round of corporate job cuts in its stores unit, affecting
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: fewer
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: than 1,000 employees in the US, India, and the UK, timed during its major shopping
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: event,
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: and following roughly 30,000 corporate job cuts since October of last year, with
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: leadership framing the changes as reducing layers of management and removing
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: bureaucracy
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: to create a more functional, adaptive company.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: That's what they say they're trying to do with this.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: That brings a big question to mind for me.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: When a company keeps announcing rolling layoffs with no end state, is it
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: restructuring the organization?
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: Or has permanent uncertainty itself become the point?
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: Are they monopolizing on this instability to do whatever they want?
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: What do you think?
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_01: So this is interesting because I feel like it's very similar to what we talked
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_01: about, a headline we talked about last week, where
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: they said, hey, layoffs are coming, don't know when, don't know who, but like
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: gird your loins.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: And so this feels really similar, similar to that. Okay, that's... I think yes.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's definitely a new state for businesses like Amazon.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_01: So really large corporations, large organizations.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: I think that anyone who is working for one of those organizations should know that
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: that's what comes with the territory.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_01: You should expect that they will constantly have rolling layoffs.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: and I see what you're saying.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: Back in the day, it was like this is a one-off and we're doing this because
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: we need to increase our...
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_01: yeah, it's corrective action, course correcting, whatever it is.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_01: And then that was it.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: but I think even in smaller companies now we are actually seeing it more often than
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: than ever before.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: And so I do think this is a new normal.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: I think that rolling layoffs are to be expected.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_01: And if you are going to work for a company like that, know
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: that's going to be at play.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: I think, and I don't know if it's still the same way, but a few years back, it was
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: very prestigious to work at Amazon in whatever capacity.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_01: It was like, you got it, you're in, and this is an incredible opportunity for you,
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: and you're made.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: Ticket.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: It's not that way anymore.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: And it's because of those layoffs.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: And they can say they're doing it to reduce
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: management and bureaucracy, but the act in and of itself is an act of
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: management and bureaucracy.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: So I find that to be wildly inaccurate as a reason as to why this is happening.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, to answer your question, this is the new normal, unfortunately.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: you would think that you would find more stability working at a very successful
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: organization, a very famous organization like Amazon, but that's no longer the case.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_01: You might be safer working at like a mom and pop.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_01: shop than anywhere else in this market and in this economy.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah. And you can make the, you can say the same thing about the other big tech
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: companies too, right?
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: Meta has been doing similar things with rolling layoffs where there's no end in
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: sight.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: Alphabet, Google's parent company, they've announced layoffs in a similar vein.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: This is endemic to large tech companies that have accumulated massive,
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: massive amounts of wealth and are financially doing very, very well.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: Like none of these companies are posting losses.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: But they're still producing layoffs, like they are posting losses to your point,
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: like going back, you know, a ways and layoffs were corrective actions, one and done.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we'll write the ship and then things will go back to normal.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: They've all kind of been in this mode where this is now normal.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: And that makes you think if they're building institutional muscle to incorporate
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: revolving door layoffs into their corporate structure and into their systems.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: What are they doing to make the
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: practice of laying people off easier and have less impact on the organization?
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: That's a terrifying thought, right?
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: Because they have the resources to make this a normalized thing and to reduce the
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: impact on the organization over time of all of these layoffs.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: If that's the case, what's the point of working for them? Why would you want to?
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: Why would you want to work for any of these companies anymore if this is the
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: baseline?
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: This is exactly right.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, I was thinking about Meta, I was thinking about Google when I was saying
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: this is the new normal. Absolutely.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: And you make a really good point.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: Why would you want to work there?
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: Back in the day, again, I'm such an old lady because I'm constantly talking about
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_01: like back in the day, picture
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_01: it's Sicily 1932, whatever...
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: a person who worked at, say, an Amazon or a Google would put on their LinkedIn
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: profile or their resume.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_01: ex-Google, ex-Amazon.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_01: And that meant something.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_01: That was like, sh*t,
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: you know your stuff, whatever.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_01: What does that mean today?
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think it carries as much weight as it used to, because now you look at some
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: of these companies that maybe have infamous toxic culture or it's competitive or
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: whatever, that loud working that we talk about.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: and you might think to yourself as a potential employer, I don't want to bring
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: that culture and that kind
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_01: of social contract and ways of being, I don't want
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: that in my company.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want someone who worked there and was cutthroat and whatever it takes and a
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_01: talent, only, yeah, you want a talent, whatever, top talent, "A Players."
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want to bring that into my culture.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think it meant a lot more back in the day than it does now.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: It meant
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_01: great training programs and management capabilities and this and skill sets.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't know if it's still, yeah.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: But what did that mean for someone who was looking for a job, saying, I used to
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: work at this place?
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: it meant, great and may and I think they do still have, great training
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: programs and things like that.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: But I think in terms of cultural complexity and how that can impact
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: Someone coming into a different organization means something else now.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, might not have as much cachet, that's for sure.