But so what? There’s no gotcha here; it’s not like Microsoft or Google or Amazon claimed they were cash poor and could t afford to pay people. They are changing the areas they spend money in. Would it be better if they were only cutting back and not also investing in new areas?
* showing profits
* showing multi-billion in investments in new companies
* when the money saved is tiny compared to the increased year-over-year profits
"But so what?"
Their response is _exactly_ on topic. There is a real sting on these human lives where a company has decided they don't have value relative some new tech purchase. This is contrary to particular ethics frameworks many of us are familiar with around human value.
But I guess I don’t see how empathizing with that means. . . What? Microsoft should cancel an investment they think is strategic? Microsoft should keep job roles they no longer things are important?
Highly profitable companies like Microsoft are not zero sum. Nobody said “let’s lay people off so that we can invest in openAI”. Each decision is made independently, for its own ROI. If they believed that keeping these people and making the investment was the best approach, they have the funds to do so, easily.
I love the McSweeney’s piece, and I’m sympathetic to those laid off, I just don’t get the innuendo that a company should do something differently.
If a family in financial trouble just lost their son to a car accident, for example, is it the right time to say "well, at least you won't need to pay for his college."?
Especially in software, skills are pretty fungible, and most of the support organization's on-going requirements are likely to be highly agnostic of what, specifically, is being engineered.
IT does bring up an interesting alternative. What if instead of layoffs, companies provided an ultimatum:
Your employment costs $X. You have 3 months to find a new source of $X+1 revenue that requires your continued labor.
Shareholders like me are the ones you have to convince, not some CEO or abstract concept of a corporation.
Fair warning, you will have to convince me that it is more important than supporting my children and maximizing my retirement.
There is basically no risk that a different group of stockholders with more voting power want to run it as a public works jobs program
I do think it is unethical to jerk people around (e.g. new hires), but I think generous severance goes a long way towards addressing this.
Most workers don’t want to use their leverage to make corporations make better decisions - they want to use their leverage to get paid more.