Layoffs - A complete mess made by the companies
From the last few days there were talks going on about layoffs in Morgan Stanley. Some 7% of the global staff will be handed over the pink slip in this week. Well... It started happening from today ... Few colleagues from my department were laid, and the reason being "company is trying to survive in the market, company is planning the road ahead by taking such bold steps". When this was announced, my anxiety shot up the next level and I couldn't wait for the meeting to finish. The past few years have not been great for the business worldwide due to which many companies are forced to take such steps. These companies just have been doing a hiring spree from the last 1-2 years that now they are regretting their decisions and letting off their employees. My question is - "If a company hires excessively during the bull market and is forced to lay off few of the employees during the downturn, has the company made an error by not evaluating the headcount or it was just simply the need of the hour" Please note - I know many people out there who have faced job cuts due to many factors, sincerely requesting people to take this matter very seriously
Really sorry to hear this!
If I can ask, can you share which teams are being laid off?
I interned at MS in the operations team back in college, hope the layoffs haven’t been extra hard on India offices?
Number of layoffs has been relatively smaller compared to global volumes .. mostly IS and Operations have been affected
Ah damn. I completely echo the purpose of your post though. Ultimately my career ended up in the startup world, here I still understand layoffs because future growth is much higher and a lot of planning happens with a mostly tough to achieve positive future in mind
With companies like Morgan Stanley, growth is usually not as outside of control. Sure, the weak global markets affect their business, but from reports it’s evident that laying off employees has become one of the simplest ways to show that you’re a strong “leader” and focused on “better profitability”
It’s too casual, and lacks any empathy because everyone is doing it
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I agree, this is a serious problem. Rather, what i see is lot of teams are also hiring and have open positions, even these teams have fired people, how does it makes sense to have new open positions and interns while you are expressing hard time retaining current people.
This is not clear at all on what basis are they making decision of whom to keep and whom to fire.
Scrooge_McDuck
Stealth
a year ago
@sanyasi99 : This was told to me directly by the Founder of a series B fintech. He was firing slowly at a time basis performance so as not to make news, and hiring people slowly in same roles with less experience sometimes but mostly at far lesser salaries. This is the reason you see openings at companies who have fired. Some companies were forced to pay over the top due to market conditions and to improve their balance sheet they are firing. Even for listed companies the esop costs and employee costs are a huge negative which does not correlate to the revenue the company makes. It is basic cost cutting
What even tech people do in banks? Tech roles in Indian offices of US/Europe banks are really the worst kind of roles you can get into, just in a few years at such a place, you will most likely lose all transferrable skills and continue doing mundane daily work tasks..
Nowadays everything revolves around tech but agreed to your point that some day everyone will be doing daily work tasks like never before
I meant in a tech role at a bank, you're not really working towards building something of value. The whole point of existence of the role is to support actual money making front office.
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From a business perspective, 2020 - 2022 was the time when a lot of people relied heavily on online tools or services. This would have opened up a ton of new opportunities for the businesses, while assuming that it was a behavioral shift (like how it was previously). This led to a lot of people getting hired for those tasks.
But by early 2022, everything was almost normal, and the new exciting opportunity identified earlier, didn't turn out to be of much relevance. On top of that, there were other factors as well.
In most of the cases, we can notice that people were removed from those areas which were not monetarily benefitial for the businesses. Or, the remuneration would be super high for those folks (compared to the revenue driven in by them)
Eren
Student
a year ago
+1
Paaji
Stealth
a year ago
It's moments like these when you realise the absolute ridiculous way companies are run. And a blatant use of an excel sheet.
Basic study on 'real work' etc. Is never done by HR. It is better to have Industrial engineers instead of HR.
HR here. Sadly we have no power or say or a seat on the table. We are just executing tools of the business. Throughout 2021 recruiters and HRBPs alike kept advising for sustainable ways of business and not to overhire, think of ways to move people
Horizontally but leaders don’t really listen to HRs. But HRs are the villains face when doing layoffs for people we batted for and hired ourselves. Most Tech bros/managers don’t know business management they just know task management and push people stuff to HRs when they don’t know how to handle their team. People I hired, when laid off didn’t even get a message or call from their direct managers but heard from me instead.
SpiceBits
Stealth
a year ago
I would say it's kind of both, in 2020-22 the need for online services was higher so some tech. Companies felt the need of onboarding people to cope with the demand. But they should have handled it more carefully, everyone knew that some day things are going to get normal.
I have seen many of the companies/managers hiring just because others are hiring. So to some part it was need of an hour but how the management handled the need was messed up.
Completely agreeing to what you said ... Also adding that laying off tenured staff who have been the most loyal ones and hiring new joiners who mostly just want 6-12 months of experience and move out of the company in search for higher package does not make any sense
SpiceBits
Stealth
a year ago
Also new hire is preferred over retention which I guess is band company culture. Unfortunately this is being followed everywhere.
Also people play offer letter game to inflate their salary, In most of the cases this hurts the company and the person.
I have come to a conclusion that most of the tech. Is running on bullshit culture. Which needs to be tackled. Otherwise AI is there to take most of the jobs 😂😂😂
Echo this. They keep repeating how have they grown by more than 60% in the last 2 years in every single townhall and then they do this...
IT has been worst affected ... hope this ends soo er rather than later...as of now, this phase has ended.
Frustrating to see this, but feels like most of these companies hired due to FOMO. So many of my friends are collecting their paychecks while not providing anything meaningful because they don't have any clear objectives.
I just want russia Ukrain war to end for peace ✌️. Projections based on upcoming projects due to this war in America recession and artificial intelligence there is huge gaps that's leads scarcity in the markets and making them to revalue the estimates the company expenses.
ED (Enterprise Director), VP, Associates - i have seen MS firing just like that. An engineering team who built a web farm that the company uses for more than 10k servers was fired few years ago citing "non performance". Firing is common there. Less profits, fire. ED doesn't like you, fire. Fire fire fire. This company doesn't even have Sodexo or other tax benefits. Good thing about this company is, they drop fired employees in office cabs with empty hands. They don't even allow fired employees to open the cupboard and take out their items. They courier them. A VP who was sitting behind me was no where to be seen the next day. Upon enquiring he was fired because the unit did less profits. I know many such cases. Unethical company when it comes to firing.
Bakwasmaal
Stealth
a year ago
I mean this is a normal cycle, why itna rona dhona. This is corp. world, all of us are working to a clock!
Adding another point over here ---
Why are always the entry level or mid senior level roles that are being laid off ... When it comes to daily tasks it is these roles that perform their duties and keep the company up and running and it's such an irony that it is always these roles that are fired in the namesake of profitability
Cynx
Stealth
a year ago
In which department those are impacted ?
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I just want to say thank you to all MS employees who shared their valuable insights. I am learning everyday
It didn't start this week. Consultants were laid off a couple of weeks ago and few Bankers in Asia. IG this week was for FTEs. Apparently they are expecting a bearish year and so they laid off more aggressively than expected. The morale has been pretty down across our floor.
Very stressful and something that could still happen in Dec if we have poor earnings next few Qs. They can do a lot of other things to cut costs but they'll affect their brand image
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