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Comment by mathattack

9 hours ago

40% actually seems reasonable for a flip into maintenance mode. That’s what PE firms do when then buy cash cow businesses. Dramatically cut engineering on new functionality, cut back on sales and marketing, remove all redundancy in operations.

Anyone who has counted on a vendor that went private or was bought by a rollup firm has felt this pain.

Better to do it all at once than repeated declines.

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mathattack

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hellojesus  8 hours ago

I first entered the workforce at IBM and several months later they did layoffs (resource action). Every six months after that for my 6ish year tenure there were more resource actions.

To this day I walk into the office each morning thinking today may be the day I get laid off. My wife doesn't think it's a healthy mentality, but I'm not sure I know another path of life.

This is to say at least it's done in one fell swoop. Repeated layoffs are certainly demoralizing.

  • raw_anon_1111  7 hours ago

    It is a healthy mentality. After staying at my second job for too long - 9 years until 2008, I was uncompetitive in the job market and I didn’t have a network. I was 34 then. I said never again.

    I don’t get demoralized at all. I’ve had 10 jobs in 30 years. When a company decides or I decide that the deal of they give me money and I give them work doesn’t work for one of us - I move on.

    And I found a job quickly with multiple offers after being Amazoned in 2023 and again in 2024

    • hellojesus  5 hours ago

      I think part of my anxiety is this. I went to IBM, stayed until my subsidiary went under, and then started job 2 in 2019, and I've been there sense. I'm a bit terrified of my market competitiveness.

      But the good news is the mentality helps me keep costs under control. I'm nowhere near real earners in tech at only 200k, but I have two littles so haven't considered moving until they get a bit older because I'm fully remote and the flexibility with daycare sickness is helpful.

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  • MattGaiser  8 hours ago

    > To this day I walk into the office each morning thinking today may be the day I get laid off. My wife doesn't think it's a healthy mentality, but I'm not sure I know another path of life.

    Why? It lets you plan your actions accordingly.