Layoff’s

my friend works at google and says it's easily overstaffed by 2x

Whenever any manpower cost rationalisation is to be done, Companies have to ensure they dont lose their best talented folks. Hence, if you cut salary for everyone, the smart folks would be the first to leave the Co as they can easily get good hike in the market outside and you’re left with average folks only. But if you layoff say, bottom 10%ile performers, your company output might actually go up and everyone is also pushed to work harder from there on. Hence, always layoffs should be preferred over salary paycuts.

The decision makers don’t care what I think 🙂

Better to cut the C suite salaries and shareholders returns. Firing your average employee would not save as much money.

If you are a C level or managers reading this. Remember you caused all this because of your greed for growth. I love that Apple managed to not fall deep into this trap

The idea is that companies are overstaffed ahead of a recession, and hence need to trim people they had hired in expectation of future growth

Cutting down everyone’s salary could lead to continued inefficiency plus lower morale

My company did that in Covid. No incentives or variable pay during Covid. As things improved, the arrears were paid.

sometimes i wonder if there is a shortage of swes as faang influencers keeps sharing stats