CEO Just Fired 500 People Because He Says Zillow Is More Efficient Without Them
galratner.substack.comThis piece would have been better if it had just been the prompts used to generate it. The entire underlying story is just "company does discretionary RIF".
Some of these generated stories pay their freight on HN, because they develop genuinely interesting technical[†] ideas (I'd still like to see the prompts, if I can't get the story in the author's own words). But when the story contains essentially no interesting content, it starts to make sense to consider them off-topic.
† usually! I'm equally into genuinely interesting LLM-generated explanations of thoughts on modernist poetry, I guess.
Amusing this LLM text recommends Realtor.com -- who had its own similar layoff round last week
I got too distracted by the AI generated image at the top to read the AI generated article.
Maybe they were constrained on token budget and so the image model got the shaft. I did like that apparently you walk in off the street directly into a conference room. And that one guy carrying a picture of himself.
From sources, its not surprising cause lot of people within the company knew about it already:
1. Managers were asked to provide mid year rating for their reports, this is not something that happens otherwise
2. Managers were asked to mark the reports which are not regrettable attrition
3. The biggest downside of all this is that it makes people to invest a lot more efforts on being in managers good list instead of focusing on doing a good job
There a lots of downsides to layoffs, and I don't think your #3 is the biggest at all. The morale hit across the company is huge. Furthermore, it will have negative effects on recruiting and retention well into the future.
Layoffs are an incredibly bad idea for most companies. There are almost always better alternatives.
But the fine article said that it was a surprise! The author was appalled that no one was warned beforehand privately...
May be surprise for Author and the people that the Author reached out.
I think Zillow would be more efficient without a certain CEO. He earns 14M per year. https://www.erieri.com/executive/salary/jeremy-wacksman-apxd Meaning the company would probably reduce more expense just getting rid of him.
This is one of the meandering arguments in the post. The whole executive team, in fact. But it doesn't compare how much other executives are making, etc.
I made a single, coherent argument. If you're seeking cost savings, he's a 14M liability, and easily replaced at lower cost.
The article says it's around 7% of their workforce. It seems that it could be realistic that this is a performance-based cut?
7% is an easy, healthy layoff.
10% of the workforce is in the wrong job (and thus not cost effective), burnt out and with an attitude problem, looking for another job full time, or hating the company for some slight (real or perceived).
If you are a manager, it is easy to drop 2 of your 20. And it will probably improve the rest.
The only problem is you can't keep chopping 10% off.... maybe every 5 years is OK.
For additional context, the CEO's blog post can be found at the following address:
https://www.zillow.com/news/the-housing-market-has-stood-sti...
I have a friend that worked there and got laid off. I's not a great situation, but hope he lands on his feet. That CEO seems way overpaid.
I feel there's something in this article, but the meandering really ruins it. Either way, it's obvious that no earnings call would explain the metrics or decisions behind a layoff. But at 7% this is well within "Eh, we want to try a performance layoff and hope we get a better 7% of new hires".
It is too bad that people aren't more direct about this. But if folks remember Meta/FB's attempt at saying they did performance-based cuts, people ripped into them for labeling all the fired personnel as un-hireable. Earnings calls are heavy lawyered and regulated, so there's no reason to say anything.
Such a hard hitting article title with AI image slop that is a bit comical for something a bit serious. I get a tinge of AI writing in the article too. I use LLMs to proofread and look at my work but this feels like AI slop.
It’s just 7% of the workforce.
TL;DR : if they are they are, if they aren't they will find out
What would 'find out' look like?
Companies don't function in a vacuum, pulling the consequences any particular good or bad executive decision from the background noise is an exercise in divination by chicken entrails.
find out could look like a multitude of things most definitely. But that is my point, there will be a thread here of all kinds of hours wasted people typing up what a divination might look like. I've seen layoffs work out great and work out terrible, who's to know? Where I work we can easily see an 80% reduction without flinching. Their CEO says they are more efficient, he'd know more than me.. but we will see, time is always the ultimate truth teller