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Tech lay-offs teach us a lesson about the ‘war for talent’ 很多科技公司是极其独断专行的，仁慈的独裁者平时看起来可能很不错，直到他们不再仁慈。
Benevolent workplace dictatorships can seem fine until they’re not so benevolent any more. 6park.com
过去，刚走出校门的年轻人会认为他们必须做一个选择：赚大钱，但要在投行或律所累死累活；或者虽然没有高薪可拿，却可以从事有趣的职业。后来出现了大型科技公司。于是，具备一些特定技能的人突然之间就可以一边做着有趣的工作，一边拿着高薪。 6park.com
Once upon a time, young graduates thought they had a choice to make: they could become rich but miserable in an investment bank or law firm, or they could live without a huge salary but do something more fun. Then the big technology companies came along. Suddenly, it was possible for someone with a certain set of skills to have fun and get rich at the same time. 6park.com
The tech firms seemed to represent a less hierarchical world of work where everyone wore jeans and T-shirts and merit was what mattered most. The salaries were high and the stock options plentiful. If you were lucky, your employer would also take care of the boring parts of life, doing your laundry for you, cooking you meals and taking you home at night. This year, tech companies accounted for five of the top 10 places to work in the US based on employee reviews on Glassdoor. 6park.com科技公司似乎代表着职场中一个不那么等级分明的世界，大家都穿着牛仔裤和T恤衫，一个人最重要的是他的长处。薪水高，还有丰厚的股票期权。幸运的话，雇主会包揽你生活中的各种琐事：洗衣、做饭，晚上让你打车回家。根据Glassdoor开展的员工意见调查，美国今年十佳工作场所中，科技公司足足占了五家。 6park.com 6park.comPolicymakers and economists soon came to see tech workers as the archetypal winners of the 21st century economy: firmly at the “lovely” end of the growing gap between “lovely” and “lousy” jobs. 6park.com政策制定者和经济学家很快就开始把科技从业者看作是21世纪经济中的典型赢家：“愉快”的工作和“讨厌”的工作有着越来越大的差距，而科技公司的饭碗绝对属于“愉快”的工作。 6park.com 6park.comWhen some employees in the sector tried to unionise, the response from companies and investors was often to argue these were already dream jobs, so what was the point? As one investor put it, tech workers trying to unionise were “appropriating the language of exploited coal miners while enjoying the most privileged, white collar work experience in human history”. 6park.com当一些科技从业者试图组建工会时，企业和投资者常常回应道：这种工作已经是梦寐以求了，成立工会又有什么意义？有一位投资者是这样形容的，试图组建工会的科技从业者“盗用受剥削的煤矿工人的语言，同时享受着人类历史上最优越的白领的工作体验”。 6park.com 6park.comThat story has been punctured by a series of mass lay-offs by tech companies in recent weeks. Meta has sacked 11,000 workers or 13 per cent of its workforce. Elon Musk, Twitter’s new owner, has reduced the group’s headcount by half. Amazon plans to cut about 10,000 jobs, while Stripe, a private payments company, culled 14 per cent of workers. It has been a brutal experience for staff. 6park.com科技公司近几周的大规模裁员无疑戳破了这种说法。Meta裁掉了1.1万名员工，占员工总人数的13%。推特(Twitter)新老板埃隆•马斯克(Elon Musk)把员工裁减了一半。亚马逊(Amazon)计划削减约1万个岗位，私人所有的支付公司Stripe裁员14%。裁员对员工来说是残酷的经历。 6park.com 6park.comIn most cases (Twitter is a somewhat different story) the job cuts are the reversal of a recent hiring binge. Tech companies had bet on the continuation of an unusual macroeconomic environment that was in fact about to end. Consumers are no longer confined to their homes with only ecommerce to spend their money on. Interest rates are no longer at rock bottom. 6park.com大多数公司（推特的情况略有不同）是在近年拼命招人之后转向裁员的。科技公司原本指望不同寻常的宏观经济环境会持续下去，实际上这种环境即将结束。消费者不再整天呆在家里，只能把钱花在网购上。利率不再处于极低水平。 6park.com 6park.comIt’s hardly the end of these companies. Meta still has more staff than it did last year. But the mass lay-offs do offer a couple of lessons. 6park.com这些公司裁员的戏估计还没唱完，比如说Meta的员工人数仍然多于去年。然而，大裁员带来了一些教训。 6park.com 6park.comThe first is that, whether or not everyone is wearing jeans, many tech companies are highly autocratic. It was striking — and refreshing — to see chief executives take personal responsibility for the lay-offs. But it was also a reminder of how much power they have. 6park.com第一条是，不管大家是不是都穿着牛仔裤，很多科技公司是极其独断专行的。首席执行官为裁员负个人责任是引人注目、也令人耳目一新的举动，但这也提醒了人们这些首席执行官握着多么大的权力。 6park.com 6park.comAt Meta, for example, investors have been increasingly frustrated by how much money chief executive Mark Zuckerberg was sinking into the “metaverse”. But Meta’s dual share structure allows him, with 13 per cent of the equity, to control more than half the votes. 6park.com比如说Meta这家公司，首席执行官马克•扎克伯格(Mark Zuckerberg)为打造“元宇宙”砸了大把的钱，让投资者越来越感到泄气。但由于是双重股权结构，持13%股权的扎克伯格控制着过半数的表决权。 6park.com 6park.com“I made the decision to significantly increase our investments,” Zuckerberg wrote in a memo to staff last week. “I got this wrong, and I take responsibility for that.” 6park.com“我做出了大量增加投资的决定，”扎克伯格在上周发给员工的信函中写道，“我犯了这个错误，我为此负责。” 6park.com 6park.comThe speed of the lay-offs by these global companies has also crashed into the spirit of employment law in the UK and Europe. 6park.com这些跨国公司的快速裁员也有悖英国和欧洲的劳动法精神。 6park.com 6park.com“In many countries around Europe, you need to give warnings to public administrations or works councils or trade unions, even if the company is not unionised, you have to have a plan that mitigates the social impact of your choices,” says Valerio De Stefano, a professor at Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto. The idea of these laws is not to prevent companies from making lay-offs, he says, but to make sure they happen fairly and with due warning. “We have a very rude awakening now, it is happening without any control or consultation, just someone who says: ‘Sorry, it’s my fault’.” 6park.com“在许多欧洲国家，你必须预先通知公共管理部门或劳工委员会或工会，即使一家公司没有工会，你也必须先有一个计划，以减轻你所做的选择的社会影响，”多伦多奥斯古德霍尔法学院(Osgoode Hall Law School)的瓦莱里奥•德斯特凡诺(Valerio De Stefano)教授说道。他表示，这些法律的用意不是不让企业裁员，而是确保裁员要公正并要预先通知。“我们现在是猛然醒悟发生了什么，他们恣意而为也没有征询过任何意见，就是有个人告诉你：‘对不起，我的错’就完事了。” 6park.com 6park.comFor employees, the experience underlines the fact that benevolent dictatorships can seem fine until they’re not so benevolent any more. Even people who have kept their jobs are seeing some benefits change. At Twitter, Musk has announced that everyone must work at least 40 hours in the office, upending life for people who had planned on remote work. 6park.com对员工们来说，这件事凸显了一个事实：仁慈的独裁者看起来可能很不错，直到他们不再仁慈。没有丢工作的人，福利也有了变化。在推特，马斯克宣布每个人每周必须在办公室工作至少40小时。那些原本计划远程工作的员工被彻底打乱了生活。 6park.com 6park.comTrade unions hope the lay-offs will help them to make the argument that unions are not just about trying to improve poor working conditions, but also about having a real voice and a seat at the table. Mike Clancy, the general secretary of UK union Prospect, says the union has some members at Twitter and hopes to recruit more in the tech sector. “There’s often a progressive veneer — we’re all techies together,” he says. “[The] whole ambience is one of ‘we offer a different employment proposition’ — no, you don’t when it comes to jettisoning labour, do you?” 6park.com工会希望这些裁员事件有助于他们宣传这种主张：工会的使命不只是试图改善恶劣的劳动条件，也要切切实实地发声，并能够坐到谈判桌前。英国工会Prospect的秘书长迈克•克兰西(Mike Clancy)表示，该工会有一些成员是推特员工，并希望科技行业有更多人加入该工会。“经常有一种进步的假象——我们都是搞技术的。整体的氛围就像是在说‘在雇用这件事上，我们有着不同的观念’——然而在抛弃劳动者这方面，其实你并没有什么不同，对吧？” 6park.com 6park.comThe other lesson is not to get too carried away with self-regarding language about the “war for talent”, which was ubiquitous in the tech sector until recently. There are talented people in all walks of life. What matters for pay is supply and demand. Low-paid workers in the US have been getting big pay rises in nominal terms this year. No one is calling that a “war for talent”; they are calling it a “labour shortage”. 6park.com另一个教训是，千万别被“人才争夺战”这种自高自大的话语冲昏了头脑，不久前，这种话语在科技行业还很普遍。实际上各行各业都有人才。决定薪酬的关键是供需因素。以名义值计算，今年美国低收入劳动者的工资一再大幅上调。没有人把这叫做“人才争夺战”，而是称之为“劳动力短缺”。 6park.com 6park.comTech companies might have offered amazing perks, but people don’t need dream jobs as much as they need jobs that treat them decently. The thing about dreams is that they disappear when you wake up. 6park.com科技公司或许曾经提供了令人艳羡的津贴，但比起所谓的梦寐以求的工作，人们更需要的是公司能把他们当回事的工作。梦想这种东西，当你醒的时候它们就消失了。 6park.com
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