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Comment by autokad | Hacker News Reader

the one thing that was befuddling to me, is that there wasn't a single smart company during the mist of the great recession (as far as I could tell) .

What I mean by that is, when a company has massive layoffs, presumably they keep their best employees. This gives other companies insight into what you have left, and they can now poach your best. likewise if you don't lay off, you dont convey that data to competitors.

If I were CEO during such a recession, I'd hire, not fire.

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"What I mean by that is, when a company has massive layoffs, presumably they keep their best employees. "

That's typically not how it's done. Most layoffs are by department or division and there is not much consideration for individual performance. Some people with a good network may be able to jump to a safe position.

Yep. In 2009 I was temping at a large textbook publisher until they laid off the entire copyediting department. curiosly, not so many cuts in upper management.

They sacked the what again? That cannot have been good for quality of the product.

A lot of times the people being kept around are those cheapest to keep, or those lucky enough to have been placed on a well-performing project at the company.

> presumably they keep their best employees

I don't think that's a safe presumption, especially in the case of mass layoffs. Often every team will have to shed people, so if a whole team is made up of high performers they'll still have to get rid of good people. Then you've got the cost cutting nature of laying people off, sometimes the highest paid will be the ones with a target on their back.

The high performers are often on duties that have them directing the future of the company, things like planning to upgrade/rewrite that old legacy system. When it comes to layoffs they'll be let go while poorer performers maintaining the old system will be kept because they're needed for immediate operations.

Companies will layoff anyone not involved with "keeping the light's on", that doesn't correlate with individual performance.

There are a lot of factors that go into layoff calculations, and often it isn't performance. In fact it can perversely be the opposite. Finished your project early? You're not doing anything now so you're expendable, bye! Or maybe you got into one too many heated arguments with your boss because you knew you were right and he was wrong.

And if you are bought by a PE it is often some guys spreadsheet that does the cutting. And many times that spreadsheet is total BS and used just because it seemed to work that one time they used it before.

"This gives other companies insight into what you have left"

I don't really understand... surely, you know exactly who the best employees in your competitors are just by searching for senior positions in Linkedin?

Is this sarcasm?

The company may want to keep its best employees, but those employees are by definition the best equipped to leave, the most likely to have experienced lay-offs before, the most expensive, and the most knowledgeable about the financial state of the company. Most of them are going to hop on LinkedIn the moment lay-offs are announced.

Very similar to equities purchases. You want to be buying “when there’s blood in the streets” (heavily distressed markets) not at the market peak.

This takes enough management savvy and foresight to manage your cash flow and reserves to enable absorbing talent from disadvantaged firms during times of economic uncertainty.

Is there blood in the streets right now? If so, why aren't you buying right now?

Both equities and labor are still relatively expensive at the moment.

Christmas Eve was the exact best day to buy. It looks like the rocket is taking off again and for real this time. Market has been very good the past few days and there’s a bunch of catalysts this week and earnings season coming up that could sustain the action. I opened positions again last week and am already up 12.8% with my portfolio. Good luck to all.

when a company has massive layoffs, presumably they keep their best employees

That is not how it works. Firstly positions are made redundant, not people. If the company is closing the widget factory, it doesn’t matter who is the best or the worst widget-wrangler, those positions simply don’t exist anymore.

Secondly you can’t hire wranglers just for the sake of it, you need demand for widgets in the market, and if there is such demand why did your competitor close the factory?

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