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Tech's New Normal: Microcuts Over Growth at All Costs (wsj.com) 78

Posted by msmash from the new-normal dept.
The tech industry has largely recovered from the downturn, but Silicon Valley learned a long-lasting lesson: how to do more with less. From a report: Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Meta Platforms have been cutting dozens or a few hundred employees at a time as executives keep tight controls on costs, even as their businesses and stock prices have rebounded sharply. The cuts are far smaller than the mass layoffs that reached tens of thousands in late 2022 and early this year. But they suggest a new era for an industry that in years past grew with little restraint, one in which companies are focusing on efficiency and acting more like their corporate peers that emphasize shareholder value and healthy margins.

The launch of the humanlike chatbot ChatGPT late last year served as a bright spot of growth in an industry that was otherwise scaling back. Challenges regarding the technology and calls for regulation remain, but some of the biggest tech companies are starting to make it their priority. There is a reallocation of resources from noncore areas to projects such as AI rather than hiring new people, said Ward, who was previously a director of recruiting at Facebook and the head of recruiting at Pinterest.

Amazon eliminated several hundred roles this month from its Alexa division to maximize its "resources and efforts focused on generative AI," according to an internal memo. The company has also made small cuts in recent weeks to its gaming and music divisions. Facebook's parent, Meta, recently posted its largest quarterly revenue in more than a decade. It laid off 20 people weeks later. Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg said on an earnings call that the company would continue to operate more efficiently going forward "both because it creates a more disciplined and lean culture, and also because it provides stability to see our long-term initiatives through in a very volatile world."
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Tech's New Normal: Microcuts Over Growth at All Costs More

Tech's New Normal: Microcuts Over Growth at All Costs

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  • I think it's time to cut them. No more games.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Kisai ( 213879 )

      Why not cut all the office spaces and tell everyone they MUST work from home? seems like a no-brainer for shedding costs. The only "offices" that should be kicking around are the data centers. No cubicle farms need to exist.

  • Alexa, and other digital assistant, concerns (Score:3)

    by Hasaf ( 3744357 ) on Wednesday November 29, 2023 @12:47PM (#64041209)
    It seems like Alexa has been on the chopping block recently, That is not only from the mention in this article. I use mine for several trivial tasks. With a concern that it may be cut, can anyone recommend any good alternatives?

    I would be very hesitant to use Google Assistant for, what amounts to the same reason. These devices are not driving sales well and Google is notorious for cutting unprofitable services.

    I hesitate to go with Apple because I do not want the tie in to a more expensive eco-sphere.

    So, any other suggestions for simple things like light control, turning the AC on before I get home, reading the morning news brief, and similar trivial tasks?

    • It seems like Alexa has been on the chopping block recently...can anyone recommend any good alternatives?

      This is Slashdot, so: https://www.home-assistant.io/... [home-assistant.io]

    • My Echo Dot has officially been retired as of this morning. I fired it from it's single remaining task - being an alarm clock. No matter what I did, it would simply stop responding to voice until I pulled the plug and reset it. Recently it happened almost every day.

      I did everything. I worked with support, performed all requested troubleshooting tasks, did factory resets, firmware resets... nothing.

      So I bought an actual alarm clock, and the dot is on the shelf. Goodbye.

      • I see the principle behind Occam's Razor still works well.

        For the unaware ... that's a form of the K-I-S-S principle.

      • Almost the same to me. My Echo Dot lies in my kitchen and serves only two functions: as a timer and a music player.
        But almost every day I have to "wake it up" to starting using it. It's annoying.
        So, in the last few days I've been thinking to replace it for other devices.

        Alexa's never did much to me and almost everyone I know who got a device was excited at first but then gradually abandoned it. I also have been using Google Assistant in my car for a long time, now, and I have a strong impression that it's g

    • So, any other suggestions for simple things like light control, turning the AC on before I get home, reading the morning news brief, and similar trivial tasks?

      Guess that depends on if you're old enough to remember how you did all that before corporations invented privacy-warping devices under the guise of automation.

      Trivial implies easy or simple to accomplish. I think you meant to say task that is beneath me. If your time is that valuable to you and makes you wealthy, perhaps hire someone to do it for you. There's zero concern of that resource going away.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by ranton ( 36917 )

        If your time is that valuable to you and makes you wealthy, perhaps hire someone to do it for you.

        My time is valuable to me not because of the money I make with it, but because of the things I do which make me happy and fulfilled.

        • If your time is that valuable to you and makes you wealthy, perhaps hire someone to do it for you.

          My time is valuable to me not because of the money I make with it, but because of the things I do which make me happy and fulfilled.

          Guess I never really found a lack of happiness or fulfillment by getting up and turning on the manually-operated light switch that still comes standard in every home. Probably why we're still building them that way.

          • I don't have to do that. My lights come on when it gets dark.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Pascoea ( 968200 )
            I guess you've never had to drag your ass out of a warm bed, re-dress yourself (or go in your birthday suit, if that's your thing.), walk through your entire house, and through a garage that's 10-below-zero, just to shut off the damn light you forgot to turn off earlier. That's incredibly unfulfilling.

            • I guess you've never had to drag your ass out of a warm bed, re-dress yourself (or go in your birthday suit, if that's your thing.), walk through your entire house, and through a garage that's 10-below-zero, just to shut off the damn light you forgot to turn off earlier. That's incredibly unfulfilling.

              Given that today's light bulbs consume a mere fraction of power, I'm hardly dragging my ass out of bed for that.

              Lived in 60-below zero environments. Having a back up plan for when the almighty do-it-for-me internet goes down is a hell of a lot more important.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by Pascoea ( 968200 )
                I'm not concerned the the power bill. I'm concerned that my neighbors are going to be pissed that there's 200 (effective) watts of flood light left on all night. I assume they wouldn't care if it's LED or not. (It's illuminating where my dogs go out. And I'm perfectly willing to temporarily potentially annoy my neighbors for my dogs' safety. I know my neighbors would do the same.) And I don't need the Internet to turn my lights off, Home Assistant runs just fine without connection to the outside world. I

                • So, any other suggestions for simple things like light control, turning the AC on before I get home, reading the morning news brief, and similar trivial tasks?

                  Your situation is as far removed as it can be from the original poster, which you are not.

                  I'd say motion sensors would be ideal for your situation. My argument is against relying upon everything-internet when it comes to automation. For not only the privacy-robbing concerns, but also curating a generation that is quickly becoming completely reliant upon it for even trivial tasks.

                  And I'm perfectly willing to temporarily potentially annoy my neighbors for my dogs' safety.

                  Given this, not even really sure what your concern is then. Again, motion sensors would likely suffice.

                  I know my neighbors would do the same.

                  Sounds like a non-concer

                  • Re: (Score:2)

                    by Pascoea ( 968200 )

                    Your situation is as far removed as it can be from the original poster, which you are not.

                    I do a few of those other things too, but you and I have gotten into this back and forth before, where you've shit over all of them as various forms of stupid or pointless. I was picking the most practical example for an actual "need" of mine that was met.

                    I'd say motion sensors would be ideal for your situation.

                    Tried them, they didn't meet my needs.

                    Given this, not even really sure what your concern is then. Again, motion sensors would likely suffice.

                    Again, motion sensors didn't work right. And I'm willing to annoy them for the 10 minutes while my dogs are out there, even the half hour between letting them out and crawling into bed. I'm not leaving it on all nigh

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jbengt ( 874751 )

        Guess that depends on if you're old enough to remember how you did all that before corporations invented privacy-warping devices under the guise of automation.

        The old way was mechanical time-clocks and light sensors.
        The new non-internet way is digital time-clocks and light sensors.

  • Higher interest rates are designed to create layoffs and get us fired. The idea is that when we're fired from our jobs we will struggle and burn through our savings and take lower paying jobs and that is what controls inflation. Balancing the books on the backs of the middle class.

    It's not really working because inflation is mostly driven by collusion and monopolies. Despite that inflation has cooled a bit because the current administration has signaled that they might enforce antitrust law just a littl

    • It's not really working because inflation is mostly driven by collusion and monopolies

      So, every large company of every type of industry colluded AT THE SAME TIME to drive up inflation? Yep, that seems reasonable.

      • no, that's what the federal reserve is for. oh and i guess the executive branch too.

      • Well, a report just published in the UK did actually conclude that many goods had price increases far beyond their cost increases aka greedflation. One example was the 25% increase in the price of infant formula over 2 years.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Chelloveck ( 14643 )

        So, every large company of every type of industry colluded AT THE SAME TIME to drive up inflation? Yep, that seems reasonable.

        Pretty much exactly that, yeah. Oh, they didn't all get together in some smoke-filled room and twirl their mustaches. But they all had similar thought processes. It started with post-pandemic supply chains being whacked and causing some legit increased cost. Then other companies who didn't have bad supply chain problems said, "Hey, we can raise our prices too and blame it on the supp

        • It started with post-pandemic supply chains being whacked and causing some legit increased cost.

          Yes, and when one industry raises cost, that can have ripple effects across other industries. Remember how we all stopped buying gas/oil? And then a year later, after said industries scaled waaaay back, we demanded them to ramp back up to original levels? And then were outraged when the price increased? And how a lot of people were shoveled gobs of borrowed government money, so had lots more money in the economy? Doesn't ring a bell?

          And BTW: turor2u.net? Really now?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by linuxguy ( 98493 )

        My company is raising prices for our customers. Our essential costs have not gone up. Our server hosting costs have actually gone down in the past couple of years. However, we have hired more people in order to grow the business. We have a captive audience with our customers. In our case, we are hoping that some of our customers chalk up the increases to global inflationary pressures. I imagine we are not alone.

        All this talk of inflation allows some businesses to raise prices, even when their underlyi

    • I see our favorite conspiracy theorist is still spreading F-U-D on /.

    • Sounds like you've been watching too much of Men in Black.

    • I kind of doubt we'll see much in the way of deflation for prices. The best we can hope for is minimal inflation, which would be price stagnation. I seriously doubt you'll see prices on every day goods and services go down. Maybe on cars and houses, but only if inventory starts to back up, though that's unlikely to happen for housing.

  • Marketing-speak detected. Article will contain zero information content.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      Indeed! Companies cut small quantities of staff all the time, but we usually don't hear about it because it's a "small quantity", i.e. "under the radar". It's the mass layoffs that make the news.

      Seems somebody has invented a bot to restate obvious things using newfangled buzzwords.

      Oh, and they are not "fired", but "involuntarily retired".

  • FANG are experiencing record profits. C-levels and ownership are raking in record amounts of cash. Yet, the workers are being pushed to work harder, longer, with fewer benefits. Sure, some techies are making 200K-300K at the cost of 70+ hours a week. But is is worth it? Is it sustainable? 3 to 5 years later you're burned out. Remember workers, those yachts ownership is buying come from your labor. Unionize. get better hours, demand benefits and job security. That's how we take this country back, claw

    • Just make killing CEOs for shits and giggles legal and the problem is already solved.

    • If I could pull down 200-300k per year for 3-5 years, yes it would be worth 70 hour work weeks. I'd save the majority of it and change roles after paying for a house in cash.

      Of course, I'm use to getting by on 60k and if I worked 70+ hours, I wouldn't have time to spend the money I was making anyway. 5 years I could say, fuck off, and just bail, taking a significantly easier job making 60-70k but only working 40 hours (or less, since my overhead dropped with no house payment).

      I suppose I just prefer a modes

  • I remember the first time I looked for funding for a software project over $2M. The executive I was approaching told me, "You're asking for too little You need to be less conservative - the problem you're trying to solve is larger than the money you're asking for." My response was, "Let's worry about that in year two. If you give me $10M, I'm going to waste $5M for sure." Obviously that was me speaking from my own lack of experience in efficiently using money... but it scales. I do not understand how any co

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Dan667 ( 564390 )
      it is a problem if they are constantly letting people go and they have a reputation as a meat grinder. That is the rep that amazon has now and I would never work there no matter how much above market they might pay. They focus on the wrong things. Retaining your best workers should be a huge priority and it isn't.
    • If you're focused on penny pinching though you can't scale a business. It might be possible for two clever people in a garage to make millions but to make billions you need a motivated and large team

      • I didn't say large teams were unnecessary, or that you can't do great things with them. I only said they are probably wasteful. I'm willing to bet the "unit of contribution per team member" gets smaller as the team size increases.

  • Like just responsible hiring and management, maybe focus on a sustainable business model rather than just easy debt money growth to juice stock prices short term or payroll cuts to juice stock prices short term.

    Of course they would have to use some of that supposed business acumen and that's just not what is taught today. You don't graduate Harvard Business School by leading with tempered and measured management and a focus on employee satisfaction. No sir that will not do.

    • I'm still quite convinced that somewhere in that MBA curriculum is a mandatory lobotomy. I just wonder in what semester it has to happen.

  • Apparently, there is a new paradigm: hire everyone you can, then fire all the ones who turn out to be losers, except for minorities, who will sue you if you fire them. Because you can't tell anything about an applicant any more, this might actually be a good strategy.

    • So... you'll end up with people who quit because they don't want to drag along the minority losers you can't fire?

      I can't really say I would call that strategy smart.

  • Typical decisions (Score:3)

    by smooth wombat ( 796938 ) on Wednesday November 29, 2023 @01:49PM (#64041429) Journal
    After all their cuts they'll wonder why things aren't moving along any faster [starecat.com].

  • God I hate this "role" euphemism (Score:3)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Wednesday November 29, 2023 @02:23PM (#64041561)

    Amazon eliminated several hundred roles this month

    Say it like it is already: Amazon fired several hundred employees. That's what's going on here, It's real actual human beings who lost their jobs, not fucking roles.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dgatwood ( 11270 )

      Amazon eliminated several hundred roles this month

      Say it like it is already: Amazon fired several hundred employees. That's what's going on here, It's real actual human beings who lost their jobs, not fucking roles.

      Not necessarily. Realistically, most cuts usually involve the destruction of at least some open headcount. A company the size of Amazon likely has thousands of unfilled roles, so it would be entirely possible for them to eliminate several hundred roles without firing any actual human beings, but rather by choosing to not hire replacements for people who have left or by choosing to not hire people to handle anticipated future needs.

      Whether open headcount is included in the publicly announced number of elim

    • Re:God I hate this "role" euphemism (Score:5, Informative)

      by Petersko ( 564140 ) on Wednesday November 29, 2023 @04:04PM (#64041905)

      Well, there's a good reason not to do as you suggest. "Eliminated several hundred roles" is not the same as "fired several hundred employees". There are legal ramifications to firing, in some regions related to the ability to access unemployment benefits. Role elimination is not a "for cause" termination.

      Role elimination precludes rehiring in the same position. That's why being laid off is different than being canned.

    • Amazon eliminated several hundred roles this month

      Say it like it is already: Amazon fired several hundred employees. That's what's going on here, It's real actual human beings who lost their jobs, not fucking roles.

      Not necessarily true. Roles can be consolidated, with people moving to different roles w/o getting fired. Also, roles can be eliminated not by firing currently employed people, but by reducing or even eliminating new hires for those roles.

  • You can save a TON of money by simply axing the useless bloat at the top.

    • What?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by xwin ( 848234 )
      You must be really bad at math. Lets take Broadcom for example, a public company with all the pay data for top executives available. They have 20000 employees. Say each one gets paid $350K on average including bonus and not including stock compensation. That makes 700M yearly payroll. The CEO makes $6.6M in cash compensation https://www.salary.com/tools/e... [salary.com] . That is less than 1% of total payroll. And the company does not have a lot of middle management. Between CEO and an engineer only 5 layers.
      If you c
  • You don't need as many employees to make things shittier and shittier.

  • They can fire the top earners (Score:3)

    by freedom_india ( 780002 ) on Wednesday November 29, 2023 @07:41PM (#64042461) Homepage Journal
    If cutting costs is the goals, then fire the top ten earners.

  • There has never before been a time when the tech industry has had to learn the valuable lesson of doing more with less, of not hiring everyone in sight just in case they might have a fresh idea. Fortunately, the very smart people who run these companies were able to identify and respond to the problem immediately, as this is the first time it has ever happened. Surely this means we have solved management of tech companies for the entire future.

  • Just because a "role" is eliminated, it doesn't mean anyone was fired. The person who was in that role just needs to find a new one -- and most do.

    In fact, according to Glassdoor and LinkedIn Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, etc. are all still hiring.

    The only thing going on here is that managers are actually being asked to manage for the first time.

    • Just because a "role" is eliminated, it doesn't mean anyone was fired. The person who was in that role just needs to find a new one -- and most do.

      At least in cases I know about, you are laid off, but you're given application priority for a different role within the company, but you're still left to your own devices. It still sucks emotionally especially since it comes out of nowhere and you feel betrayed.

      What should happen is that each person being laid off should be told their role will be eliminated i

  • It's about boosting record profits even higher by pushing down employee wages with layoffs. While the "do more with less" and "year of efficiency" bullshit is touted, the token cutbacks on perks is just pointless enshitification that makes good employees more motivated to leave and work for cool companies that don't treat their employees like shit.

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