canyonwalker: Uh-oh, physics (Wile E. Coyote)
Lately I've been driving past gas stations more often. Without stopping. That fact struck me today as I engaged in a little habit of taking a slight detour on the way home from lunch to swing past a few gas stations and observe what their prices are.

"Wait, why do I care what the prices are?" I asked myself. Of course I like to know so I can buy the cheapest gas... but neither of our cars need gas right now, and likely neither will for upwards of two weeks. We just aren't burning that much gas anymore.

What's the change? No, we didn't buy a more fuel efficient vehicle. The change is that we're driving our current vehicles a lot fewer miles. And the big change there is Hawk being out of work.

Dropping a commute means a lot fewer miles traveled each week. Along with me working remotely (as I have for the past many years) it means our two cars are used mostly just for quick trips around town during the week. So now, unless we happen to drive somewhere further away on the weekend, one of our cars can go weeks between fill-ups. And it just feels... weird... not to fill a gas tank (or battery) for 2-3 weeks at a time. It's, like, un-American or something! 🤣
canyonwalker: Sullivan, a male golden eagle at UC Davis Raptor Center (Golden Eagle)
Hawk (my spouse) is now officially unemployed. I could have posted this yesterday, as yesterday was her last day of work and her boss told her she could leave at lunchtime. She was home around 1:30pm.

No, this didn't happen suddenly. Hawk learned two months ago that her company was eliminating her position. They offered her a new, lower role. It took her all of 1.5 seconds to think before responding, "Thank you, but I am declining your offer." Cue surprised Pikachu faces. 😂 They came back in a few days with a retention offer to keep her on an extra 5 weeks. Thus her last day was delayed from March 1 to April 5.

What's next? Well, first, this isn't retirement. We're not there yet. We're close!— but not there. So Hawk is already looking for a new job. Unfortunately the job market seems to have cooled a lot from a year ago.

While we don't have enough money to call ourselves done with working for a living, we do have enough not to sweat time in between jobs. Thus Hawk's unemployment is also a bit of funemployment. We planned our trip to New Zealand only after finding out about her job evaporating. And yes, we planned it so that we'd leave pretty much right after her last day. Her last day was yesterday, and today we're packing our bags because we leave tonight!

canyonwalker: wiseguy (Default)
Friday midday I walked out on a meeting with my boss and a colleague. The colleague was being disrespectful toward me, even after I told him I found his behavior disrespectful and asked him to stop. My boss had acknowledged the problem beforehand (it's part of a widening pattern) and offered to help address it. But in the meeting he did nothing as it happened again. I told both of them, "I'm done with this [disrespect] for today. Find someone else for this task if you have to," and then walked out. I took a few minutes to convince myself I'd done the right thing with some help from my spouse then circled back around to talk to my boss 1:1 to tell him I need to see significant improvement soon. I didn't explicitly say "Or I will quit" but IMO only a fool would fail to see that was clearly implied.

After that I left for the airport. I had been in Austin for a day and a half of technical training. I was glad I had a built-in excuse not to have to be around my offending colleague or my boss... though I did see my boss briefly outside while we were both waiting for Ubers. I remarked on something he said among a group of us who were waiting there that was unrelated to personnel issues. He didn't engage with me. That made it seem more awkward. Thus I was glad I would have some alone time for the next few hours to process things.

It turned out I had more processing time than I expected. The wifi on my flight back to SJC was busted. With little entertainment to occupy my mind I found myself mulling the situation over again and again. Like I wrote in my previous blog, it was a case of "shots fired". A shot, once fired, can't be taken back. And the shots I fired basically put me on a path of having to leave this company soon. As I considered the prospect of leaving this job in a messy breakup after almost 7 years together I found myself... surprisingly at peace with the situation.

I've written for years now that I've been planning an early retirement. The goal line to cross to get there hasn't been a date but rather a target amount of money in my portfolio. I'm not at my target yet— among other reasons, I've moved the goalposts twice due to inflation— but I'm getting close. And while leaving my job on a sour note isn't how I envisioned starting retirement, neither is having a totally upbeat going-away party with cake and streamers and everybody clapping. Walking out the door by myself while singing the chorus to "Take This Job and Shove It" (Wikipedia link) is perfectly adequate.

Realizing that I already have a post-job (or at least post-this-job) mentality was striking. And it was striking how refreshed I felt. Suddenly none of the things that have been bothering me about the job for... frankly, years... bothered me anymore. Even the most recent problems suddenly stopped bothering me.

  • I won't be prepared to deliver an in-person seminar on Wednesday because it was scheduled too soon against my recommendation and the material isn't ready? Fuck it, I don't care if I stand up there and look like an idiot as things fall apart around me. Soon it won't be my problem.

  • Getting pushed into starting an evaluation project with a customer prematurely, with expected delivery dates I've advised are almost impossible to meet but have been ignored repeatedly on? Fuck it, I don't care either if the sale slips and people yell at me.

  • Another (really weak) deal slips further out because coworkers keep trying to go around me instead of listening to me and believing me when I say what technical things we need to do? Fuck that, too. Their success is no longer my concern.


It's amazing how many problems just roll off like water on a duck's back when you just don't fucking care anymore.


canyonwalker: wiseguy (Default)
"Nobody wants to work anymore." That's become a common refrain in the US, especially from people on the political right. It's a catch-all complaint to denote any of an umbrella of socio-political grievances from one's dislike of minimum wage laws, to snide beliefs about public assistance benefits and who uses them, disregard for satisfactory working conditions, frustration with the competitive hiring market, to the presumed notion that younger adults today have no work ethic. But is it a real thing, or just a political canard?

The underlying reality is definitely real: businesses in many sectors are having trouble hiring. I see that in the software/IT industry where I work, where hiring qualified new staff in some disciplines can take months. I also see it in service industry jobs, where workplaces like restaurants are reducing their hours of operation or level of service because they don't have enough staff. For example, I visited a fast food restaurant at lunch today where the cash registers were closed and all customers were directed to order their food from a digital kiosk instead. But is the reason for this labor shortage that "nobody wants to work anymore"... or is it something else?

Five Things:

  • Working is fundamentally an economic transaction: employees provide their labor in exchange for pay. If the pay's not good enough, employees won't work there. It's not that they're unwilling to work. They're unwilling to work for poor pay. They'll work somewhere else.

  • Especially in a market where wages are going up— and they've been rising noticeably for, like, 2 years now; just look at the news— employers need to adjust their expectations of what they need to pay to attract workers. Plus, with inflation rising over the past 14+ months (again, just look at the news) the approximately 40% of workers who live paycheck-to-paycheck have stronger incentive to quit underpaying jobs and work for better wages elsewhere.

  • The coronavirus pandemic of the last few years created a new form of hazardous working condition: the general public. Workers realized jobs that require working closely, face-to-face with the general public, especially unmasked, are riskier. Pay for such jobs needs to be increased to compensate for the higher risk.

  • In a competitive labor market workers consider more than just a job's compensation in determining where to work. The work environment becomes an important consideration more take into account. Managers/owners who are always carping, "Nobody wants to work anymore," are not pleasant to work for. Nobody wants to work for a jackass boss.

  • Some workers have withdrawn from the labor force because it doesn't pay to work. What do I mean? Childcare sucks in the US. It's unaffordable to many. If you have kids and don't earn enough at a job to pay for their care and have enough left over to pay rent, utilities, groceries, etc., you've got to consider staying home to care for them instead. Update: this challenge got way worse with the pandemic because kids were home way more often due to schools switching to remote instruction and having way less tolerance for kids coming in sick for in-person instruction. Nobody wants to work if it's a money-losing arrangement.

So, back to my original question: is it real, or is it a canard? The underlying fact of businesses having trouble hiring is real, but the notion that it's because "nobody wants to work anymore" is a political canard. It's an excuse that transfers responsibility from intransigent business owners and managers to a made-up ethical shortcoming on the part of workers.

Layoffs

Oct. 3rd, 2022 09:27 pm
canyonwalker: wiseguy (Default)
There was a small round of layoffs at my company today. No, I was not impacted. But ironically I was thinking about the prospect of layoffs over the weekend. While many stories in the news the past several months have been about record employment and rare leverage in hiring favoring job seekers, articles in just that past few days have begun talking about layoffs. Meta, for example, which has apparently never had a layoff, just announced one.

The fact the tide of the business cycle is turning to layoffs now is unsurprising. Just over two months ago it was announced the technical definition of a recession, two consecutive quarters of economic contraction, had started earlier this year. (One of the problems with this definition is it only recognizes a recession ~8 months after it starts.) Perhaps even more important than that is the practical definition: most people believe we are in a recession. Since I wrote that two months ago the stock market has dropped further. Friday it closed down 25% YTD. Furthermore, bears are in the majority. Investor sentiment is that it will get worse before it gets better.

Fortunately for my company and those remaining with it, this was a small layoff. Company-wide, fewer than 10% of the staff were let go. Within my department of ~30 people, only 2 were dismissed. Both were people who've been with the company about 6 months.

Updatewith more perspective a day later the layoff decision looks worse. 😨

canyonwalker: Sullivan, a male golden eagle at UC Davis Raptor Center (Golden Eagle)
Is the US in a recession?

Many people are asking that question since the Commerce Department reported yesterday that US GDP contracted in the 2nd quarter at an annualized rate of 0.9%. That comes on the heels of a 1.6% annualized contraction in the first quarter this year. The commonly understood technical definition of a recession is "two consecutive quarters of negative growth", so it would appear we're there. But it's not that simple.

Officially, recessions are determined by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), a nonprofit organization. And within the NBER the Business Cycle Dating Committee, a group of 8 economists, decide when recessions happen. Generally the Dating Committee only determines that a recession began months after the two-consecutive-quarters definition was met. Largely that's because GDP numbers get revised all the time. Think of the figure announced yesterday as the preliminary number. It could be revised higher or lower as more data from Q2 becomes available.

In addition, the simple definition "two consecutive quarters of negative growth" is not just simple, it's simplistic. Many other factors determine whether the country is in a recession— a label that is fraught with social and political meaning.

A common ingredient of recession— and a key part of that social and political meaning— is unemployment. A recession is a time when unemployment rises, job growth is flat, and wages are stagnant. Right now none of these are the case. Unemployment is 3.6%, still low by historical standards. New jobs are still being added to the economy at a healthy pace, and wages are up a lot this year. Just look at all the stories in the news about how people are leaving jobs because they're being offered more money somewhere else, and employers are struggling to hire. Numerous government officials, from the Treasury secretary to the Federal Reserve chair, have pointed to labor data as a reason why we're not actually in a recession right now.

Keep readingBut most people think we're in a recession....

canyonwalker: wiseguy (Default)
Last week Better.com CEO Vishal Garg fired 900 employees over Zoom. "If you're on this call, you are part of the unlucky group that is being laid off," he said. "Your employment here is terminated effective immediately." Employees found their access to company software systems shut off shortly thereafter. Example news coverage: Better.com CEO fires 900 employees over Zoom, CNN.com article updated 6 Dec 2021.

Much of the media coverage I've read about this in the past few days has had a breathless nature to it. Breathless, as in reporters not understanding which parts of the story are actually unusual so they emphasize everything. Like, "A CEO fired people over Zoom! 900 people! Fired! Over Zoom!" That failure to understand happens, BTW, because most business articles are written by young 20-something writers. They lack the professional experience, and even the life experience, to put things in perspective.

From my perspective getting fired over Zoom would be nothing new. I've had remote managers, and thus remote employment reviews, for 10 years. I resigned from a job by telephone (we weren't really doing Zoom back then) 8 years ago. I was fired from a job (laid off) by phone 6 years ago. 4½ years ago I had a contentious performance review via phone. I tendered a resignation with 2 weeks notice, then the company dismissing me summarily. This was all via phone, not even Zoom. But the point is, getting fired (or quitting) without walking into the boss's office is hardly news.

What is news is how poorly Better.com CEO Garg handled this. A better approach would've been to convene a company all-hands meeting to announce there would be layoffs, followed by 1:1 conversations between employees and managers to confirm their status. That's basically a remote-working adaptation of the process I've gone through twice in major corporate layoffs that booted 30% of the companies. Better.com's layoff was 9% of its workforce.

Why didn't they do this? Almost certainly the answer is because it's expensive. It takes time. And Garg has a history of being a total jerkwad when it comes to cheaping out with employees. He's hounded them as "stealing" from their colleagues by only working "2 hours a day".

Another question is why nobody at the company, particularly nobody from HR, averted this disaster. There's 2 parts to the answer to that one, and basically both of them boil down to, because HR protects the company, not the employees. The first part is that a CEO like Garg with strong (stupid) beliefs is not going to hire/retain an HR exec who challenges him. He'll hire a toadie. And second, there are plenty of toadies out there. In Corporate America it's referred to as "Aligning with the business". That's a euphemism for supporting whatever the boss wants, whether it's fair, just, ethical, etc., or not. In HR that means things like sweeping sexual harassment allegations against key executives under the rug, as documenting and reporting them would be bad for the business. That's why sexual harassment is still such a problem in Corporate America even 30 years after HR started lecturing the rest of us on why it's wrong!

In the past few days a few Better.com executives have resigned. It looks like 2 PR heads and the VP Communication. Example news coverage: 3 Better.com executives resign after CEO lays off 900 over Zoom, CNN.com article 8 Dec 2021. Notably these are not HR leaders. They're external-facing PR people— people who, presumably, who don't want their PR careers tarnished as being the tools who defended Garg's ass-hat behavior. The tools in HR who approved it, supported it coordinated it, or at the very least enabled it, are still there.

canyonwalker: Mr. Moneybags enjoys his wealth (money)
Are we still in a recession? That question occurred to me recently. It's kind of surprising there hasn't been much about it either way in the news lately. On the one hand, parts of the economy have been doing quite well. Others... maybe not so much? It's unclear.

Clearly things were bad last year in the spring. The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) determined that the recession started in February 2020. They haven't said anything about when it has ended. I know; I checked.

While checking I found this Reuters article, "Is it over yet?" from a month ago (4 May 2021) stating, among other things, that yeah, the NBER is very cautious in declaring a beginning or end to things. Indeed, they only concluded in June that the recession had started in February. Even that four-month lag was quick compared to their past calls. It took them a year to determine that the Great Recession had started!

Okay, so if officials are only going to tell us officially when something is over when it's "No shit, Sherlock!" obvious, what can we figure for ourselves? Well, let's look at the stock market.

S&P 500 from Nov 2019 through May 2021 (Yahoo! Finance)

I obtained this chart from Yahoo! Finance showing the S&P 500 Index from November, 2019 to present. You can see the precipitous drop following a market high on Feb. 19. That's a key indicator, possibly the only key indicator, the NBER used to determine the beginning of the recession. Of course, by the time they figured that out in June, 2020, the market was already well on its way to a recovery. By August the market had already eclipsed its previous high (trace across the dotted line I provided) and has gone on to grow 20% beyond a full recovery.

So, by stock market indicators, the pandemic recession ended 10 months ago. For the rich the pain was short lived, and the rich are now richer than ever. As I've noted before, though, the market is not the economy. While the rich have done well, others may still suffer.

What's another indicator? How about unemployment. I looked up unemployment statistics and found this bare-bones but effective chart from the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

US Unemployment rate, Nov 2019 - Apr 2021 (Bureau of Labor Statistics)

Unemployment hit a high of almost 15% in April, 2020. Since then it has recovered... but not to its pre-pandemic levels. In late 2019 unemployment stood at about 3.6%. Today it remains just above 6%. That's still a lot of people who aren't back to work yet. ...And coming out of recessions these figures are generally considered an under-count. That's because people who've been out of work long term and have given up looking for work are not counted in the statistic.

So, for the investor class, the recession ended months ago. For the working class, especially those working in sectors hard hit by shutdowns, we're not over it yet.


Take-home essay question: Why, when these charts took me less than a minute each to find, has there been so little coverage in the news?



canyonwalker: wiseguy (Default)
Whew. This story about my first experience with a corporate layoff has grown to 6 entries. Well, that's really not surprising as it was an eventful and formative time for me. Really the biggest surprise is that I didn't set down in writing, except for a few emails to friends at the time, my thoughts about it until now, so many years later!

At the end of The Day of Truth, after The Aftermath, my colleagues and I went our separate ways. We did plan a lunch date to get back together a week or two later.

Our spirits were still high when we met back up for lunch. As I cast my memory back upon that time from my perspective today I still marvel at how optimistic we all were, at how optimistic I was. Of course, it wasn't just optimism. The job market was good, and our particular sector was hot. I'd interviewed with at least 5 companies and had verbal or written offers from two already.

Where to Go Next— or Not 

My former manager, a former colleagues, and I all had written offers from the same company. It's another major, name-brand tech company you'd recognize the name of today... though back then it was not yet a household name. The three of us met to discuss the prospect of working there. We agreed, "No." 

Why no? For me it was a stonewalling answer from the VP Engineering I'd be working under. "How do you manage a project that falls behind schedule?" I asked during our interview. He gave a blanket denial that projects ever run late. "That doesn't happen," he repeated as he refused to answer the question. That struck me as a) gross incompetence, b) outright dishonesty, or c) both.

My colleagues had observed an interaction between the CEO and his executive assistant... she flinched when he seemed upset, like she expected him to scream at her... or worse. FWIW I saw that interaction, too. I didn't realize, "OMG, she's afraid he's going to hit her!" until my colleagues challenged me to think about it again.

"Bert", the manager in our department who quit in protest on The Day of Truth, already had a job offer from a company in Chicago. They Fed-Exed him a deep dish pizza packed in dry ice with his offer letter to say, "Welcome to the team."

Bert also had one of our former colleagues practically sitting on his lap at lunch. They were dating. They had actually been dating several months but keeping it quiet since he was her manager and it was against company policy. Now they were "out" publicly and moving in together. She was still working at the company but planning to quit. The new department was in chaos.

Most of us took a bit of time to ourselves between jobs... except Bert, whose new employer wanted him to start right away. That was just as well for him, as he didn't get a severance package. Those of us laid off were given reasonably generous severance. I'd worked there less than a year, and my payout totaled to nearly 4 months salary.

I used that money to take two weeks to choose the right job offer (I chose wrong anyway— but that's another story!) and then relax two weeks before starting my new position. The rest I used, with a bit of existing savings once I got situated in my new job, to buy a new car.

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