It seems to me that almost all upper management, and even many working as a manager inside the technology or I.T. departments, simply treat their tech workers and departments as arms of the finance department proper. Over time, every management decision is eventually made to only support the prime finance goals which is HIGHLY RISK AVERSE so decisions are made to avoid all risk at all costs -- at the expense of more "human-based" decisions like employee satisfaction, process improvements, experimentation or innovation. When this happens to highly-technical people like doctors or engineers, it tends to impact overall job satisfaction because training, experimentation, and innovation goes away usually because management starts saying "No" way too much.
"Hey boss, can I try this new process? It might make our department happy."
"No that costs too much."
"Hey boss, can I learn this new programming language? It might making our jobs easier and faster to do."
"Nope, there is no budget."
The language spoken from the manager to the team member is "finance speak" which the subordinate employee usually has absolutely no idea how to communicate to the boss.
So when a member of the team asks the boss for something interesting to do, the boss just starts saying "no". Every. Single. Time. This effectively trains their teams to never ask to do interesting work. So they stop asking... and the job becomes mundane and boring. And when the job is boring you start losing meaning in the job. And when you don't have meaningful (or fun) work to do, you just don't care anymore and eventually hit apathy. Then the mistakes start happening, and the employee turnover comes.
I do think we need to figure out better ways to run our companies. Profits (while important) _cannot_ be the ONLY goal because it just isn't sustainable for the long-term at all. We all know that balance is needed. Food for thought.
From a purely financial and management perspective, this is an EXCELLENT decision. It really is a _lazy_ method to handle layoffs with excellent perception from stock holders' viewpoint. We all know how bad it looks when management executes on a situation similar to Gavin Belson firing the Nucleus team. Perception is all that most management and financiers care about anyways as long as the money keeps flowing. The people do not matter, only the money does. It is acceptable to sacrifice your people, as well as the welfare and good will of your employees, in favor of shareholder primacy anyways. So instead of doing layoffs, instead you can make business decisions that negatively impact employees to _make them want to quit on their own_. Hell... that saves a lot of money in the long run as well as a lot of time on management's end ( time = money ). Then when top or even mid talent is lost, it still doesn't matter because the "left overs" that remain still keep the business running at a "good enough" level.
And that, my friends, is the key phrase on what is prioritized in all business right now ... "good enough". All that matters nowadays is the answer to the question of "good enough". For example:
- Are the quality/quantity of FT employees we currently have on payroll good enough to keep the business running?
- Does our invoicing/contracts/income look good enough?
- Are we doing good enough to keep our competitors at bay?
- Is there anything we can cut to stay good enough?
- Are there good enough incentives for our employees to stay with us?
- Are there good enough incentives for our CUSTOMERS to keep doing business with us?
It is my opinion that the days of "expecting excellence" or striving to "be the best" is totally over for the current generation. For the most part in the tech business environment, management and market forces are only interested in keeping money flowing at a "good enough" level. On top of that, western culture seems to have forgotten what "the best" even means right now. And without even having a definition of "the best", how is it possible to be "excellent"?
We are in the middle of an extremely boring time in our lives. There is a massive drop off of real talent and creativity. Top and mid talent are deciding to hold back because the incentives are few, if any exist at all. Honest improvements and true innovation will be stagnant for at least 5 more years. Boredom will be the norm for a while. Until something actually _exciting_ happens or something incredible is discovered (I have NO idea what that could be), this will be the norm for a long time.
"Hey boss, can I try this new process? It might make our department happy." "No that costs too much."
"Hey boss, can I learn this new programming language? It might making our jobs easier and faster to do." "Nope, there is no budget."
The language spoken from the manager to the team member is "finance speak" which the subordinate employee usually has absolutely no idea how to communicate to the boss. So when a member of the team asks the boss for something interesting to do, the boss just starts saying "no". Every. Single. Time. This effectively trains their teams to never ask to do interesting work. So they stop asking... and the job becomes mundane and boring. And when the job is boring you start losing meaning in the job. And when you don't have meaningful (or fun) work to do, you just don't care anymore and eventually hit apathy. Then the mistakes start happening, and the employee turnover comes.
I do think we need to figure out better ways to run our companies. Profits (while important) _cannot_ be the ONLY goal because it just isn't sustainable for the long-term at all. We all know that balance is needed. Food for thought.