I can imagine that there are multi-use spaces all fitted out with IKEA furniture that you can buy on the spot (but not haul out directly with you... rather, arrange same-day delivery from the suburban IKEA store nearest to that city).
A real testament to how many broken business models have been funded by VCs in the last decade... they can't even make money delivering food when the government has ordered everyone into their homes.
It's a complete failure. People don't want to pay outrageous prices, so they don't buy in. Restaurants don't want to pay fees. The companies want to make money so they have to squeeze somewhere - squeeze customers, you lose customers. Squeeze drivers, people no longer drive. Squeeze restaurants, they don't buy in.
Owners of commercial real estate in urban markets are the ones who have been winning, seeing their property values skyrocket even as they put the squeeze on their tenants.
How much of the middle class can afford to routinely eat at restaurant prices, especially now that many people are stuck at home with their families, thus changing the opportunity cost of cooking?
Under and unemployed people staying in their homes are not going to order. They save money. People working from home could order but many of them feel insecure abut the future and also save money. Notice spike at the end: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PSAVERT (the Dec 2012 spike was due to accelerated payment of bonuses and compensation in anticipation of increase in tax rate)
You can innovate and VC all you want, but it the demand decreases, so does the revenue.
I'm sure that's a factor, but I think its more about peoples monthly expenses going down since so many things are closed. No vacations, no sporting events, no weddings, etc.
Well you have to realize that most managers have no idea why they have it so good. When so many children are starving to death worldwide, why do they live in a 4 bedroom house with a pool? Do they have exceptional talent or intelligence? No. So they fundamentally operate from a place of fear. It’s like Twitter holding onto 140 characters forever — they had no idea why they were so successful, so their approach was “don’t touch it, you might break it.”
If you are a heart surgeon or Lebron James you can understand why you are making so much money — you have exceptional skill at something in high demand. The average manager is more like someone who found a bank error in their favor and prays every morning that it isn’t discovered.
> If you are a heart surgeon or Lebron James you can understand why you are making so much money — you have exceptional skill at something in high demand.
No need to reach for an analogy here, you could just say “if you are an engineer.”
In my experience what you’re saying is rarely true at the top tech companies, the managers there generally either come from a tech background themselves or they show an unexpectedly strong understanding of technical aspects of the product anyway, and typically have strong organizational and people skills that clearly stand on their own as rare and valuable.
What you’re saying is almost always the case at small- to mid-size tech companies (which is most of them), and I think it’s because they’re perpetually unable to attract and retain top tech talent... so anybody that can code is de facto placed and kept in a role where they’re coding, and ideally only coding.
A side effect of that is the pool of candidates for promotions and managerial positions is reduced to “only people who can’t code.”
It creates this bizarre situation where the company is looking to its least talented people and least impressive outside candidates to fill the management positions, and actively trying not to promote or give any credit to its most impressive and productive people (because then they might realize their value and demand something the company can’t give them).
These are also the companies most likely to be running against deadlines and having people work evenings and weekends, because again, they can’t attract or retain enough talent to comfortably hit those deadlines. They’re always able to create those deadlines though, because as it turns out, it’s a lot easier to sell software than it is to make software.
Then at 5pm on Friday when all the engineers are looking forward to another 4 hours of coding, all the managers get to throw up their hands and go “I’m useless anyway, I guess I get to go home now!”
And they might as well.
(If you’re an engineer and this sounds familiar to you, go apply to 50 tech companies right now because you’re way more valuable than you realize)
The difference in top companies is the people who got in, know they have it real good, because they specifically studied leetcode for 6 months to try and get in.
Average managers didn't and so they just derp around hoping everything'll turn out alright.
That sounds a bit dismissive. What if they realize "I'm not a super star, but I'm above average in these desired skills. Therefore I get a nice house, but no multi-acre villa like some NBA superstar".
I think you're adding a bit too much personal animosity towards management.
And I think you're giving management too much credit.
The vast majority of management does not have goals/behaviors they are measured in.
I'm still fascinated that it's largely considered impossible to have a VP count how many 1:1's a manager had or how many times they gave positive vs. negative feedback. Imagine if no one kept any statistics for any sports player, and just say "it's too hard, you have to manually count".
Most managers should be fired, they largely are flailing around underneath directors who should also be fired, underneath VPs who have so little control over their org they largely are future predictors with no inputs (aka random output).
I say this from a place of love - I think they're all working very hard. But I've only ever met 1 manager in my life that counted their small interactions with their reports to try and improve.
I'm not giving management any credit, but I believe they have a pretty good idea why they are hired and paid well, and if it's just "because I've studied this and that, have those certifications and know how to use KPI in a sentence". I don't believe that managers by and large suffer from impostor syndrome and therefore try to gain control of their situation by adding surveillance because of fear.
They may have plenty of room for improvement, but their actions aren't motivated by "I don't know what I'm doing here", rather "I don't trust my employees enough to let them run free". That's a very different motivation and confusing the two will only lead to not understanding actions and reactions.
It's not just management... it's all white collar middle class workers in America. Why aren't they inhaling dust in a coal mine or dying of a preventable disease? None of us really have any idea.
You can do this quite affordably in huge numbers of countries if you can earn your income with a decent remote job in the US. The things to think about are time zone, tropical disease, quality of food, and safety. There are a whole range of places from Arkansas, to Costa Rica, to Panama, to Nicaragua.
The thing you'll lose out on is anyone you know, unless you can get them to go with you, or can make new friends in your destination.
There's some kind of work that's best done by individuals (writing a novel). There's some kind of work that's best done by teams (planning an invasion). The work that's best done by teams is currently much better performed in meatspace than over any kind of digital communications channel.
If you have great skills you can do that today. If you don't have great skills and a company has made itself amenable to remote work, then why would they hire you at a Bay Area salary instead of firing you and hiring someone already in that location for half your salary?
Almost all US case law has held that any jurisdiction can make anything illegal unless there's a specific higher-ranking (state or federal) law protecting that act from being made illegal.
There is supporting state statute law for public health orders to prevent communicable disease; that statute law is also what makes it a crime to violate such orders.
I'll just quote the first part (after the rather extended title) of the Alameda County order, which cites the statutory authority both for the order itself and for criminal prosecution of violations:
> Please read this Order carefully. Violation of or failure to comply with this Order is a
misdemeanor punishable by fine, imprisonment, or both. (California Health and Safety
Code § 120295, et seq.; Cal. Penal Code §§ 69, 148(a)(1))
> UNDER THE AUTHORITY OF CALIFORNIA HEALTH AND SAFETY CODE SECTIONS 101040, 101085, AND 120175, THE HEALTH OFFICER OF THE COUNTY OF ALAMEDA (“HEALTH OFFICER”) ORDERS:
I really don’t get this criticism of “laying off over Zoom.” What are they supposed to do, visit them in person at their home and infect them with Covid while laying them off? All meetings are over Zoom now.
A manager 1:1 or immediate-working-team video call would have been more respectful way to end a working relationship, no? Something that includes some amount of personal communication/conversation rather than a mass broadcast anonymous message?
Treating someone as a person, rather than a resource. If it were happening to you, what would you hope for?
You are making a lot of assumptions, one is that the managers weren't laid off too. In that case, there is nobody to do a 1:1 with.
Do you know the worst thing about a layoff, knowing that people are being laid off and not knowing what's happening to you or the details of the layoff. In your scenario, the first few people who were laid off are very likely going to reach out to their work friends and soon everyone knows there are layoffs, but no one knows who's getting let go. So you do you prolong this suffering, or do you make it quick and provide a way to ask questions afterwards? I think quick is better.
I've been through an in person layoff, and nobody spends time with those who are leaving. We did the visit each person and tell them their fate, and it sucked. But we spent only a few minutes with each person, because we had to make it relatively quick. Everyone had to wait in their offices to find out their fate.
No matter what way you choose, there is always going to be an armchair quarterback saying the way you did it is wrong. Layoffs are hard and there is no way to make everybody really happy about them.
Or even better, I'd hope for a written email explaining the detail instead.
I never encountered a layoff. But I encountered several rejections after on-site interviews.
And, every time, the recruiters insisted on talking on the phone. It wasted my time. Scheduling a phone call required scheduling it the next day and finding available time and etc.
Just tell me the outcome. Personal communication is great, but it shouldn't waste people's time.
I'd be happy with the generous severance package and move on with my life. But do you honestly care about a generic exit interview? Do you think any employer cares that much? Seems like a total waste of time for everyone involved given the circumstances.
I think that makes sense if you assume the manager were not let go. But in a layoff case, they usually chop the entire org, which is as huge as 100+ people.
