I just read another LinkedIn post from a person who lost her job and wanted to say farewell to colleagues. I’ve read a lot of posts like this. Probably you have as well. This one was the last straw. I’ve begun to feel like I’m watching something terrible happening right in front of me without saying anything about it. My dad graduated from the Naval Academy, served his country, got his first civilian job and worked at that company his entire life. It wasn’t uncommon for men of that generation to work their whole career at one company. It’s not possible that those companies never had a bad quarter or a bad year, but they managed downturns without layoffs. Workers weren’t acquired and disposed of like potted plants. This was before human dignity was replaced by managerial elites with no interest in the development, prosperity, security, freedom or well-being of… Read more →
EppsNet Archive: Layoffs
See You in Hell
[See You in Hell is a feature by our guest blogger, Satan — PE] Greetings mortals — I saw a post on LinkedIn from a woman who just lost her job at Google. There are lots of layoffs happening in the US economy. Joe Biden says the American economy is “stronger than hell” but I can assure you that the economy in Hell is much stronger than the Biden economy in the US. No layoffs here, ever. The LinkedIn poster said, “I feel God’s grace in this transition and know He has greater things ahead.” I can’t help noticing that people who believe that God is going to make good things happen in their life have a lot of bad things happen in their life. Check back in when you lose a limb, honey. See you in Hell . . . Read more →
Don’t Believe Your Eyes, the Economy is Strong!
BREAKING Spokesperson for Hell disputes Biden’s claim that the U.S. economy is “strong as hell” Quote: “Data shows Hell’s economy is currently much stronger than America’s” pic.twitter.com/czwnQAMGCn — News That Matters (@ThatmattersNews) October 17, 2022 According to LinkedIn, here are some of the companies doing layoffs so far in February: Convoy Tackle DocuSign KPMG Wix The RealReal DigitalOcean Bank of America Criteo Sprinklr PICO ServiceTitan Vicarious Surgical Betterment Divvy Homes Neiman Marcus Group Udemy iRobot LinkedIn Terminus Showtime HackerEarth Channel Advisor United Talent Agency Electric Collective Health TripleLift Rigetti Computing Twilio Daily Harvest Dandy Bark Olive AI News Corp Yahoo GitHub GitLab Disney GoDaddy JPMorgan Chase Affirm Medly Gusto Nomad Health Zoom Magic Eden Protocol Labs Bittrex Chainalysis Prime Trust CoinTracker VinFast Gong EBay Secureworks Boeing Dell Technologies Clari Workato Drift Kyruus Desktop Metal Getir Salesforce Highspot Getaround Autodesk Tilting Point Mindstrong Athenahealth Genesys Replica Sendoso Articulate MediaMath Dialpad Wheel… Read more →
Accountability Without Consequences
‘I was too ambitious’: Spotify CEO announces layoffs among 6% of employees as tech job cuts continue — msn.com Spotify CEO Daniel Ek said that the decision to restructure Spotify is an “effort to drive more efficiency, control costs, and speed up decision-making,” adding that he takes “full accountability for the moves that got us here today.” I love it — and when I say I love it, I mean I don’t love it — when someone says they take “full accountability” for some disaster, knowing perfectly well that there won’t be any personal consequences. There’s no accountability without consequences. Had he said “I’m forfeiting my salary for the year and donating it to the employees who lost their jobs,” now that’s something I could respect. Popular Bookstores, Including Barnes & Noble, Are Closing Locations, Starting Feb. 11 — bestlifeonline.com JCPenney Is Closing Even More Locations, Starting Next Month —… Read more →
All is Well! All is Well!
Microsoft to Lay Off 10,000 Workers as It Looks to Trim Costs — msn.com Google to lay off 12,000 employees, the latest tech giant to cut thousands of jobs — usatoday.com Regal Cinemas is closing 39 more movie theaters. See the list — cnn.com Another day, another round of layoffs and closures, another sunshine up the butthole economic report from the Biden administration: We’re not in a recession! Employment numbers are great! Someone is lying to me and I don’t think it’s Microsoft, Google and Regal Cinemas. Read more →
Unemployment Stays Unbelievably Low
Bed Bath & Beyond to Close Three More Stores in Los Angeles, Orange Counties https://t.co/ELCIzMhY3Q — Paul Epps (@paulepps) January 14, 2023 The company is closing about 150 stores overall, plus layoffs in corporate and supply chain. You can swap new company names (Coinbase, Goldman Sachs, etc.) into these layoffs and closing stores stories every day and still get sunny government economic reports based on nothing I can see except unbelievably low unemployment numbers. And when I say “unbelievably low,” I mean literally not believable (see here and here). Read more →
Unemployment Numbers Don’t Make Sense
From a Daily Wire newsletter: Tech giant Meta is laying off 13 percent of its workforce across all of its companies: Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, etc. That amounts to around 11,000 jobs — the biggest tech layoff of the year. That’s an especially high number when you remember that since its founding 18 years ago, Facebook has never had to cut back its workforce. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg appeared to address the layoffs in a leaked video Wednesday afternoon, saying, “I want to say up front that I take full responsibility for this decision…It was one of the hardest calls I’ve had to make in the 18 years of running the company.” And… the company has signaled investors to expect further bad news in the fourth quarter. This comes after Meta announced a second straight quarter of declining revenue in October. Everywhere you look, big tech is struggling. Last week,… Read more →
Inflation Numbers and Unemployment Numbers
Latest inflation report came out today (BLS is the Bureau of Labor Statistics): Annual inflation via BLS just out: 42.9% airline fares33.1% utility gas30.5% eggs18.2% gasoline17.2% chicken15.7% coffee15.2% milk14.7% bread10.1% furniture9.2% vegetables8.2% all items8.2% fruit8.1% ham7.6% women apparel7.2% used cars6.7% rent3.7% men apparel — Ryan Struyk (@ryanstruyk) October 13, 2022 Core inflation excludes energy and food, so we get to say that inflation is at 8.2%, which is still the highest in 40 years, but most of the items on that list are energy and food, and many are a lot higher than 8.2%, so the 8.2% number doesn’t do justice to the enormity of current inflation. Biden economic adviser Jared Bernstein said this: What the president said was that a recession is far from inevitable and I think what he was referring to there is the strength of our job market. Look, you just don’t have a recession when… Read more →
“Get the Vaccine” — Joe Biden
OK grandpa, now go take a nap. That’s the only Biden quote I have. Nothing on the latest jobs report, massive layoffs, high gas and energy prices, high food prices, high crime, empty shelves, open borders or Afghanistan. If you have any good ones, let me know and I’ll post them here. Read more →
An Open Letter to My Former CEO
Today is my last day with Company X. I’ve really enjoyed working with my colleagues. That said, the events of two weeks ago really made me ill. To call an all-hands webinar, announce that the company is losing too much money, as a result of which 80 people will have their jobs taken away, then boom, meeting over. Not even the decency to take a comment or question. I feel like those 80 people probably did not lose the money, probably just did what they were told to do to the best of their ability. The responsibility for losing the money lies with whoever told them what to do, starting with the CEO. There’s a law of the sea, I think it’s a good law, that the captain goes down with his ship. Not that he grabs hold of 80 people and throws them overboard, then follows up with a… Read more →
Laid Off
I guess I should have seen this coming when they eliminated free bagels on Fridays. Or when we stopped printing things on plotter paper because the paper vendor stopped coming around shortly after we stopped paying him. The retention list was heavily weighted toward young women with big tits and the managers’ poker buddies. Two of the laid-off developers had to be hired back within 30 minutes of being let go, when someone in authority belatedly realized they were working on the company’s only billable project. None of us will be retiring on our severance package, since there wasn’t one. We’re now faced with the one thing we all feared enough to stay with this company so long in the first place: trying to find another job in the worst tech market in 20 years. Thus spoke The Programmer. Read more →