Metadata
- Author: Ed Zitron
- Full Title:: Tech CEOs Screwed Up
- Category:: 🗞️Articles
- URL:: https://www.businessinsider.com/fire-blame-ceo-tech-employee-layoffs-google-facebook-salesforce-amazon-2023-2
- Finished date:: 2023-02-07
Highlights
This sort of responsibility dodging is running rampant around Silicon Valley. CEOs at companies like Amazon, Microsoft, Salesforce, and Meta set their companies on an unsustainable course, investing in boneheaded new ventures and assuming the pandemic-driven tech boom would be a new normal. Now that those expectations have been shattered, rank-and-file tech workers are bearing the brunt of these bad decisions, while the executives most responsible for the messes face little to no meaningful consequences. (View Highlight)
Any executive who participates in decision-making that leads to hundreds or thousands of people losing their jobs should be the one leading them out the door (View Highlight)
cutting workers won’t suddenly make the companies more productive or improve their products. (View Highlight)
When one company chose to lay off thousands of people, it became optically justifiable for other companies to follow suit — a natural way for the CEO to seem “disciplined” or “responsible” despite the brutal cost to employees. (View Highlight)
While they may protect the CEO’s reputation or placate investors, (View Highlight)
Not to mention that layoffs are of dubious value to the company; studies have found that layoffs are a net negative for productivity, that they suppress innovation, and that they can lead to a long-term decline in profits. Studies have also suggested that layoffs make life harder for the employees who weren’t let go, especially since many of these companies cut back on benefits and other services that could help remaining workers (View Highlight)