r/technology
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u/777fer
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Feb 02 '23
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Reddit Staffers Who Lost Jobs Livid at Being Painted As Low Performers Business
https://businessinsider.com/reddit-job-cuts-employees-livid-company-painting-them-low-performers-2023-2695
u/Particular_Look1965 Feb 03 '23
I was a remaining staff member at a mortgage company after layoffs in the 90’s. We found out about the layoffs at a meeting. Leadership claimed, “We kept the good people,” and I knew that was BS. I knew they would say the same about us when they had to layoff more of us. I found a different job.
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u/millionsofpeaches17 Feb 03 '23
In this context, "good people" means "lowest paid". 🫠
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u/phil151515 Feb 02 '23
I worked with a company that had higher (more people let go) quotas aimed a high performers. Those people were paid more -- so the company saved more $$$.
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u/D_D Feb 03 '23
Gotta get those numbers looking good for the next earnings report.
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u/TaylorSwiftsClitoris Feb 03 '23
They want to keep wages down. At a time when inflation is blamed for price increases and massive companies are making record profits, workers are asking for their fair share. But profits being reflected in wages is communism or something.
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u/Joelpher Feb 03 '23
Ha, my CEO just bought a mega mansion and within years of that let go of some of our most experienced people. And that decision is in turn currently driving out the people with any kind of expertise or intelligence. What's left on the sinking ship are the bottom scrapers and yes people and the innocent people in this looking to get out asap.
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u/Aromasin Feb 03 '23
My CEO just took a 25% pay cut, the executive leadership team took 15%, and all the senior managers took a 10% cut. All the juniors got sheltered from any cut to their base pay. There's coworker solidarity. It sort of baffles me that this isn't industry standard practice.
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u/wasdie639 Feb 03 '23
Well then the owners of the company will be sans a company cause of the shit CEO they keep employed. Most company owners have their wealth tied with the company they own. If it becomes worthless, they go down with the ship.
CEOs are often protected from that. They get paid regardless.
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u/BostonDodgeGuy Feb 03 '23
I really wish we'd stop sharing links to BI's paywalled content. The fuck is the point of an article we can't read.
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u/jda823 Feb 03 '23
Business insider is just terrible in general. But they pump out headlines that reddit eats up. No one even reads the articles.
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u/MadeByTango Feb 03 '23
It was started by a guy that was permanently banned from Wall Street by the SEC and wanted revenge on the people that ejected him for committing fraud.
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u/sheeeeeez
Feb 03 '23
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"As you can see from the chart our Q4 earnings grew at a stellar rate and make us poised to continue being a market leader in our industry"
"That's amazing!! How were you able to generate so much profit??"
"Oh! I just fired a bunch of people"
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u/DrDerpberg Feb 03 '23
Like a farmer selling their tractor to show more profit at the end of harvest, I wonder how it'll turn out.
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u/Blastie2
Feb 02 '23
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It's true, though. Mass layoffs don't generally target low performers. They target product areas and layoff decisions are usually being made at a management level so far removed from the actual work being done that they may as well be random.
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u/Gutotito Feb 02 '23 •
The last few times we had layoffs, "people leaders" in various departments were simply given a flat number; that's how many folks you had to let go. It's absurd how some of these decisions are made.
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u/WayneKrane Feb 02 '23
Our CFO just pulled a list of employees from each department and then highlighted the highest paid employees. She sent that list to each department head and asked them to justify why they are necessary to keep.
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u/parrywinks Feb 03 '23
Definitely got axed from my last job cuz I was the highest paid employee on the team. Had the most experience, got promoted after my first 6 months. Didn’t matter. At the end of the day I was a big number, not a person.
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u/Dr_Midnight Feb 03 '23
At the end of the day I was a big number, not a person.
Listen though. It was a very hard decision for the C-suite to make.
When they hop into their luxury car, head home to their multi-million dollar house, and use ChatGPT to form their "Letter from the CEO" to inform the workforce that they'll be "Eliminating roughly 7% of roles globally [...] [they'll be] reminded in moments like this, of something Martin Luther King said, that 'the ultimate measure of a [leader] is not where [they] stand in the moments of comfort and convenience, but where [they] stand in times of challenge and controversy.' [By the way, we're announcing promotions for some executives."
(Context: Save for where contextual brackets were added, this is an actual quote from the PagerDuty CEO)
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u/parrywinks Feb 03 '23 edited 28d ago
The decision was made by 3 execs in total isolation, HR and middle management weren’t even told of the layoffs until they were presented with lists the morning of. Then in an all hands meeting afterward they trashed everyone who got laid off and said it was their fault for not creating value.
Fortunately got a job with equity that pays 40% more shortly after, but others haven’t been so fortunate.
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u/v0idl0gic Feb 02 '23 edited Feb 02 '23
Talk about absurdity, take software engineering for example, the top performers on a team of say 12 people often produce 2-4x the output of the average member of the team depending on the week and task, but probably only make, at most, 50% more than the team average. Now consider that the top performer is also probably capable of strategic consultation because they can see the forest through the trees and the average number of the team probably can't.
Now instead stack ranking a team as a function of the ratio of perceived value to salary is perfectly reasonable when efficiencies need to be extracted. Just to keep in mind there are minimum head counts to provide things like on-call coverage.
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u/Sardonislamir Feb 03 '23
As well, don't take out members that support that engineer because they also have a value added purpose of keeping distractions off that performers back.
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u/Dragonsoul Feb 03 '23
People's value just can't be quantified easily with any numeric value.
Like, guy in our office, doesn't get a huge amount of work done, but he's also very knowledgable, and the reason his work isn't getting done is because he's chatting about other peoples cases all the time, so he's got a real good idea of the bigger picture. Not really management material, not a strategic guy, and doesn't want the extra work..and on paper he's a low performer, but if you got rid of him, everyone else's performance would go down.
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u/gbardelli Feb 03 '23
Organisational knowledge. That's what I, as a lowly manager, would call this. It's important. Those people usually aren't the top performers, but they are the top enablers for your top performers. Without them you're surrounded by people who can't reach their top speed, because they don't have the knowledge and security net provided by these organisational knowledge workers.
It is effectively not quantified easily and often overlooked. But if as a manager you know what you're doing, what your people are doing, then you should know better to let go one of those workers. Replacing them without proper preparation (such as knowing they are retiring, etc.) can prove extremely costly.And if as a manger you can't recognize these people, you're the one who should be laid off.
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u/jun_hei Feb 03 '23
I feel like I'm that guy..... I know that I'm not doing that much work myself, but I know for a fact that I'm helping 10 other people do their job way better and I'm able to help onboard new people faster.....
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u/roflcopter44444 Feb 03 '23
You are overthinking that the people up top care to go too much into detail. All the want to see is that the Big Wage Number go Down and Big Stock price Number go Up. This is what happens when the people up top only last for 3-5 years, there are never going to be there for the negative aspects of their decisions to truly manifest, so they have no reason to think that far down the line.
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u/iwasstillborn Feb 03 '23
Stack ranking have some rather undesirable incentives. You're safe staying in a shitty team, but not in a great one. All of a sudden you have incentivised your employees to actively turn down challenges. Great.
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u/Cainga Feb 02 '23
My first company had a zero sum annual review system. So all employees needed to average a 3/5. So if you want to give someone praise and give them a 4 or 5 you need to arbitrarily give someone else a 2 or 1. So it lead to a nepotism and kiss up system.
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u/SearchElsewhereKarma Feb 03 '23
That might be the dumbest system of performance management I’ve ever heard
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u/XediDC Feb 03 '23
Indeed. I’ve been subjected to it, but have given people the scores they deserved and refused to back down. (And told the people their scores in writing, to make sure it couldn’t be “adjusted”.)
Most companies are allergic to firing managers, but it can be used for good too.
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u/mich_fadiye Feb 03 '23
Same at my company, but in our case it just means basically everyone gets 3/5, no matter how well you perform. Incredibly frustrating!
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u/FreebasingStardewV Feb 03 '23
This is the way it's been at most companies I've worked at, but because promotions and raises are tied to the ratings so a manager can't give out a 4 or 5 to more than one person per year because it's not in the budget.
I learned real quick not to ascribe any personal value to annual performance reviews. There's soooo much bullshit behind them that it's not worth the pain. Just take an honest assessment of myself and ask trusted co-workers to be open with me about my faults.
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u/bitchkat Feb 03 '23
I had one manager tell me shit like "you're a five but I'm giving you a 3 so it stays within bounds of not having to go to the performance review committee". He had a big spreadsheet to keep individual and team numbers below the threshold. Bite my ass Mike if you're not willing to give accurate reviews and defend them.
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u/dasnoob Feb 03 '23
This where I'm at..also raises are zero sum. Org heads are given 3 percent. If someone gets 4... Someone else gets 2.
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u/pm_me_your_buttbulge Feb 02 '23
I once worked at a place where my boss was told to lay off one person. I was in IT. He OFFERED to lay off two to help the place "save money". A week later they sent in a request for 20 iPads, new phones for c-levels, and the c-levels got Macbook Airs. This was when MBA's were brand new.
We didn't have WiFi. If you're new and playing the home game - MBA's didn't have Ethernet ports (and still don't). Instead of getting a USB-> Ethernet they said to just install WiFi.
They were "losing money" but spending it like it was going out of style.
Fast forward six months later and my boss quits because he "found out" the C-levels were just greedy. No shit you fucking moron.
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u/rstbckt Feb 03 '23
People seem to often equate wealth and status with intelligence.
Nope.
It’s mostly dumb luck, both in who their parents are and who they know, and being in the right place at the right time and having the ability to make the best of an opportunity when it presents itself.
With that amount of wealth any idiot can grow even wealthier by just not doing anything (their money grows on its own because of interest on investments). Most of these wealthy individuals fail upwards and claim any success beyond the massive failures they discretely brush under the rug is due to their unique blend of smarts and hard work.
Nope.
These captains of industry market themselves as entrepreneurs, but they are really just living off interest and other people’s hard work.
Call them what they are: leeches.
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u/CU_Tiger_2004 Feb 03 '23
I've witnessed directors/executives simply given a reduced budget, and they have to figure out how to make their numbers match. Kind of hard to do anything except reduce headcount at that point.
So the higher ups don't even look at these reductions as actual people, just numbers in a report that they want cut down for a given quarter or fiscal year.
Then a year or so later, the rehiring begins when productivity falls.
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u/asdaaaaaaaa Feb 02 '23
That's assuming the numbers/MBA's even can accurately estimate production. Many of the time numbers don't accurately reflect people's value due to being constrained to one or two variables. Many a time someone might not look like they're holding the company together on paper, but are crucial to getting things done. The reality is that the people making these decisions are just trying to add up numbers on a paper, and probably don't think about it much beyond that. Half the time stuff like this is more about the person making the demands, not the people affected as well, especially when they're spending just as much on non-essentials at the same time.
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u/PurifyingProteins Feb 02 '23
The company I’m employed gave managers of certain areas a number of terminations required, based on cost benefit analysis, where some members that were great performers and very senior were let go because of their cost, while some who got on managers bad side for bringing up grievances but were good employees were let go and were smeared in their performance evaluation. So I feel like there was some degree of personal vendettas from egomaniacs.
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Feb 02 '23
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u/ElectroFlannelGore Feb 02 '23
Oh wow. Reddit pitting people against one another to foster a hostile environment and create sensational headlines. WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT‽
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Feb 02 '23 edited Feb 10 '23
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u/InTheMorning_Nightss Feb 02 '23
That's usually what companies say on the surface... to reduce wrongful termination lawsuits. Behind the scenes, the company will often decide what are their strategic/key investment areas and what aren't. They will then ask organization/team leaders and managers who they nominate to put on the chopping block.
From there, HR combs through that to ensure there aren't any trends or patterns that would point to some form of discrimination or retaliation leading to wrongful termination. For example, if a manager nominated all the women on their team, then HR will probably push back on that pretty hard. The manager would have to show some type of documentation trail that highlights why all of them were the weakest performers, and even then, HR might not bite, because then the lawsuit can be about what existed in the system to allow men to perform better than women.
A lot of people here are upset that layoffs happen, and that's totally fair. Layoffs suck for everyone involved. Managers have to make really hard decisions, coworkers will have to carry more workload, and most painfully people are without a job.
My personal 2 cents? The only thing I care about is the severance and networking support you get from the company. If I got laid off and my company said, "Yeah, we laid off all the useless people," but they gave me 6 months severance, then that's a win for me. Way better than the company that says, "This was an impossible decision to be made, and we sincerely believe every single one of you is an incredible individual who has allowed us to achieve all that we have." and then gives you 2 weeks of severance.
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u/kokainkuhjunge2 Feb 02 '23
I hope they fired the low performers who create the reddit mobile app. That thing is truly a piece of shit.
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u/kobachi Feb 03 '23
Try the mobile website it’s somehow way worse
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u/ONLY_COMMENTS_ON_GW Feb 03 '23
NSFW post?? You've gotta view it in the app for some stupid fucking reason! It literally only exists to get more app users lol
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u/Cmonster234 Feb 03 '23
And when you tap to open the app, it takes you to the app store... even if its already installed.
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u/pineappleshnapps Feb 03 '23
And then won’t take you to the link when you click open.
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u/fullup72 Feb 03 '23
Browsing without logging in? You have to click a bazillion times to read the comments.
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u/Tuner420 Feb 03 '23
The day old.reddit.com stops working might be the day i'll stop using Reddit
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u/megamanxoxo Feb 03 '23
Try the new modern website. Still dog shit. Somehow I'm still using their 10 year old interface on the old subdomain.
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u/BUHBUHBUH_BENWALLACE Feb 03 '23
Old.reddit or death
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u/XenonBG Feb 03 '23
The day they switch off old.reddit is the day I leave, not to come back.
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u/karl_hungas Feb 03 '23
Or whoever is in charge of their video player. Its the worst.
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u/TheRealAndrewLeft Feb 02 '23
I hope the whole Reddit NFT/crypto team is cut.
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u/asdaaaaaaaa Feb 03 '23
They have a crypto team? Were they actually trying to release their own crypto or something? I don't really track Reddit as a business.
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u/njm1314
Feb 03 '23
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Just remember kids, every single company ever will happily gut you at the drop of a hat. Never be loyal to an entity that doesn't know the meaning of the word.
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u/UnrequitedRespect Feb 03 '23
Reddit staffer who lost their job AMA incoming lol
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u/SpaceboyRoss Feb 03 '23
The same thing happened to me. I got fired on Monday regarding my performance. Thing is we just had layoffs a couple months ago, my mentor was let go. Then we had a restructure and my boss hasn't really shown up in the office since October but he has been on Slack at least. He used to show up all the time. There really hasn't been much assigned and needed to be done. The team I was on was created in the middle of last month. The closest thing regarding performance I was told is "our time is valuable so don't spend much time on pet projects". But I was working on finding a solution so we didn't have to clone every git repository manually. Everyone was on vacation anyway and I didn't have anything else to do so like what should I have done? And the meeting that I was told I'm fired was supposed to be with my boss but it was with the CTO and HR. Just a little longer and I would've gotten my stock options. Almost 6 months of working at this company. My mentor who was let go and the one who replaced my old one were both surprised with my skills and said that I have excellent performance.
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u/aquarain Feb 03 '23
Don't let it get to you. Sounds like you were a victim of overhiring. Happened to me a couple times where I got hired for gigs and then shortly thereafter Yet Another Reorg eliminated my gig. But they kept me on for a while as the middle managers did the Thunderdome routine to decide who if anyone would move forward with the team. So I got in a lot of Reddit.
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u/Yangoose Feb 03 '23
I worked at a place for almost 10 years and got the highest marks possible on every review. Layoffs happened and I was gone.
Businesses do stupid shit all the time.
You can drive yourself crazy but there's no point.
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u/pjotter15 Feb 03 '23
sounds like a new company that grew too fast and didn't know what they were doing. what did they hire you to do?
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u/SpaceboyRoss Feb 03 '23
They've been around since 2010. I was hired as a DevOps Engineer. The company has like a few hundred employees.
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u/nukem996 Feb 03 '23
You were fired so they didn't have to give you stock. People don't realize that silent layoffs are like this. The company fires you for performance by taking work away or changing the metrics on good performance.
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u/TrickieDownMyFatCunt Feb 03 '23
Īt's 2023, video play back still doesn't work.
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u/050607 Feb 03 '23
It's 2023, people still prefer old Reddit than the garbage they shat out later on.
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u/GunBrothersGaming Feb 02 '23
"Reddit Staffers who were laid off found out when their roles were reduced to Reddit Mod."
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u/air_lock Feb 03 '23
My employer has been laying off a ton of people, seemingly without any relation to performance or pay. It honestly seems completely random. Extremely high performing people, extremely low performing people, and both high and low salary grades. It makes no sense at all.
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u/mjh2901 Feb 03 '23
So in California an employer telling people they laid people off for a cause and what the cause was is considered blackballing and illegal, even if it's just a casual "they are low performers" This is the other side of at will. I would assume these Reddit staffers are getting employment law attorneys.
I would read the article but paywall.
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u/PassengerStreet8791
Feb 03 '23
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It’s so unfair and rough for people impacted and being sidelined as low performers. I won’t mention the companies but a recruiter recently reached out for a tech role and I told him I’m not looking but they shouldn’t have a hard time finding talent these days. He responded saying most of the companies he’s working with there is a “do not hire” for people laid off unless it’s an internal reference.
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u/Andire Feb 03 '23
That's fuckin disgusting. Especially since these people are getting cut through no fault of their own. Fuckin Elon tried to get people to quit instead of having to lay them off and give severance with the fuckin "extremely hard core" email...
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u/-BetchPLZ Feb 03 '23
Yeah that doesn’t sound right at all lol.
I’m currently job hunting and recruiters are working extra hard to scoop up recently laid off talent. It’s extra competitive because a lot of people are scouting roles in tech but I just received an offer I’m considering this morning. The very first thing I told both the recruiter and the department head I interviewed with was that I was laid off early last month…
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u/MassholeLiberal56 Feb 03 '23
They never fire upper management folks because of the gold-plated multi-million dollar severance packages they all get when they leave — for any reason. Such a one-sided racket.
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u/xjuslipjaditbshr Feb 02 '23
Valid concern, since you can be in the top 10% in the world, but bottom 20% in your team. Like you might be worse at football than Messi but still make your national team.
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u/CakeNStuff Feb 03 '23
This place used to be so different 12 years ago.
There was this intense community on Reddit and the general presence of the company was broadly admired openly and discussed. Stuff like this couldn’t fly back then because everyone kind of knew all the public facing Reddit staff.
Things were different. I’m going to ramble.
I’m not joking when I say I was there when I was watching Reddit crawl out of the dark hole of the internet. I’ve seen what Reddit threads looked like from before I joined and man things were sparse. In hindsight I feel like I can claim I was there when things really started cooking ~2010 ish.
I was just a young teen with the internet. It wasn’t anything inherently magical in what I was doing. The things on reddit at that time though we’re truly special. I can talk about that if anyone wants to hear an old internet dude ramble.
I found so many interesting things through reddit. Things that I still find interesting today and are incredibly niche. The things I’ve liked and like were and are influenced by reddit now.
Reddit was a major influence in my life.
For better and for worse.
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u/olivebrown Feb 03 '23 edited Feb 04 '23
Remember the collective outrage when Victoria got fired? And how drastically the quality of celebrity AMAs declined afterward? And when you didn't need an email address to sign up?
Edit: TIL you still don't need an email address to join reddit
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u/doubleUTF Feb 03 '23
I remember when AskReddit was created. the creation of IAMA after that seemed truly revolutionary at the time, like introducing a new way for people to interact with the internet.
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u/oldcreaker Feb 03 '23
"We've got salaried folks happily working 80 hours a week - and you're only working 60? You're a low performer, go clean out your desk."
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u/WayneKrane Feb 02 '23
My company just got rid of all the highest paid people in each department. Didn’t matter about skills or knowledge.