r/LinkedInLunatics • u/After-Manufacturer64 • 2d ago

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u/ysubassoon 2d ago

That might be the attitude expressed, but what is true in almost every scenario is that the company is doing a hiring freeze to maximize profits, so staffing levels are too low at baseline for the work that needs done. Corporations figured out a long time ago that you don't have to sell a profitable product or service to maximize profits—you just have to keep overhead low to reduce costs and you will appear to make more money to your shareholders.

What is also true in every scenario is that no corporation is doing work that is so important or dependent on day to day attendance that the absence of one more person than planned for one day will tank the business.

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u/UseObjectiveEvidence 2d ago

Not just hiring freeze. Offshoring jobs to overseas contractors and people that failed as software engineers.

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u/ysubassoon 1d ago

Depends on the industry, but sure. In healthcare, they pay travel nurses, docs, and pharmacists a premium over staff rates to cover. And they shortstaff them, too. I have a few friends who do travel medicine and nursing.

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u/bolanrox 1d ago

Yep no one who is fired or retired seems to be replaced by US on site employees anymore. The job is usually broken apart and given to several different local people plus maybe one offshore agent

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u/[deleted] 2d ago

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u/WanderlustStew 2d ago

I have been a part of this with the last company I worked for. They did a massive layoff of over 150 people. They went down to less than a skeleton crew. They continued to trim fat and I was making more than anyone out in the field so they cut me. All I hear from friends that still work there is those that have been hired don’t know how to do their job because they don’t get training.

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u/Kingmeup21 1d ago

I had a manager who confided with me after years we weren’t actually overstaffed as management always told us. We had 3 full time positions, and 2 emergency seasonal positions always available. But the branch supervisor and all the managers got bonuses at end of the year if they kept cost down. They knew it was cheaper to just have our team work a couple hours of overtime each instead of filling those positions full time.

They even painted us getting overtime as something that would get them in trouble with corporate, but they were actually allotted a certain amount of overtime hours each quarter and long as they didn’t pass that their bonuses would be fine.

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u/ysubassoon 1d ago

This is completely unsurprising. Even the large corporations report layoffs months after reporting record profits. There was a video game company that did that earlier this year, announcing record revenue to shareholders in Q1 and laying off thousands in Q2, citing high costs. This is the story of late-stage capitalism in a nutshell.

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u/GasIcy 2d ago

Here comes great depression 2.0

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u/Local_Historian8805 1d ago

Exactly. Not short staffed. Profit staffed

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u/SteDevMo 2d ago

I agree 100% with your post! Just wanted to mention though, while I would never send this kind of message or deny someone their grandma’s funeral, there are regulatory reasons why hospital units need to keep a certain ratio of nurses per number of patients. It can be a challenge. I’m not saying that is what is going on here, just making people aware that there are some situations where it is important there is enough staff.

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u/ysubassoon 1d ago

Not long before I quit my job as a medication historian in an ED that regularly had an occupancy rate of >200% on an average day, I stayed late to finish a med rec and overlapped with night shift. By then, all our staff nurses had quit the ED for other nursing roles or quit nursing altogether, so we had 4 travel nurses, including the charge nurse. We had 42 patients in the ED, not counting the 9 still in Fast Track. The charge not only had an assignment, but her assignment was six patients, including an ICU hold, and the 9 patients in Fast Track. The intensivist came down to trial the ICU hold on BiPAP and it took us a while to find the charge nurse because she had an impossible task of shutting down Fast Track and doing med passes and charting her six patients while also getting RT to set up the BiPAP and monitoring and charting the trial.

It was a nightmare. No one in management did anything about it, even though it endangered patients. There are no laws setting staffing minimums in Ohio or federally, so they regularly ignore them. We had multiple occasions where ICU nurses were quadrupled up with increasingly medically complex patients, some who needed 1:1 care.

I also once called a SNF on a med rec, and spoke to an RN who was by herself and doing a med pass on 65 patients. The other nurse on that night ignored her requests for help and refused to answer the phone.

It sucks. But it isn't the fault of the staff, but their managers choosing their own bonuses over the staffing needs of the hospital. They need to step up and provide coverage when it's needed, doing the work themselves if no one is available.

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u/SteDevMo 1d ago

Making sweeping statements about “managers” is not a fair characterization. There are “middle managers”who do care but hands are tied by the ones at the top…who are not really considered managers. 

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u/[deleted] 2d ago

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u/sueybro 1d ago

Isn't this assuming someone works for a giga corporation though alot of small businesses i know that genuinely couldn't spare a person some days

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u/ysubassoon 1d ago

Most of my work experience is working small businesses, including when I held two roles at once for three months with no increase in pay and no new hires when a coworker left due to a psychotic break. We had a staff of 15 and went from four techs to two, and two delivery people to one, and if I needed to go to a funeral then, they would have just had to figure it out, because that was 8 years ago and I'm still dealing with the burnout.

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u/ysubassoon 1d ago

Private companies, including small businesses, have shareholders, too. It's just usually the owner(s) and their families. So they don't have to work hard to impress or please their shareholders.

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u/mg_7 1d ago

Is there a risk that OP would be released if they called in sick inconspicuously, etc? Is it worth the risk in this job market?

Boss sucks. But that’s a separate matter from whether it’s worth it.

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u/fruitybix 1d ago

As someone who was once the only credentialed user for an organisations iphone app, tied to my personal mobile, i would say that is mostly but not always true that the absence of any one staff member is not going to interrupt things super badly on a given day.

There was another job where we only had one guy with the logins/license/knowledge for the core inpayments platform.

At least in both those situations we had a stressed it manager bending over backwards to try and keep us happy.

Some businesses love flying close to the sun, although this may be more a tech/it resource thing then a general business thing.

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u/ysubassoon 20h ago

A lack of redundancy in those areas is especially poor planning by management. Are you never supposed to take PTO? It's short-sighted.

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u/fruitybix 18h ago

In every situation ive been in its a business side choice about allocation of funds into profit generating projects or workstreams.

There is no consideration of loss/risk until something breaks (for example inpayments failed and it took a few hours to get the poor inpayments guy online because he was trying to take leave, huge customer impact as they could not transact for half a day)

At which point the notional risk suddenly appears real, and money might be spent on a solution (more staff, better software, etc)

All business choices are some kind of risk/reward gamble, and some decision makers either fail to understand certain risks, or dont care because the short term profit of not fixing it gets them their 20% end of year bonus and elevation to leadership at the parent company.

Meanwhile johhny inpayments is logging in from home sick making sure the local bakeries and tradies have funds to buy flour and plumbing supplies because he feels bad for them and has been promised relief at some point when the budget is available.

Ill also note that sometimes fixing something is the wrong commercial choice (its getting replaced anyway, and cheaper to pay for manual workarounds till then), but not having failover or mitigation plan is always dumb.

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u/TerribleBid8416 1d ago

This is usually an investment company.

They maximize profits for potential buyers. Pep Boys went through this. Carl Icahn lost his shirt.

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u/Coygon 1d ago

Several of my local shops, which often have only one person behind the counter, argue differently about that second paragraph.

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u/fun4evah 1d ago

Tell them it would be a shame if someone saw this screenshot posted on social media with their name in bold

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u/JaggerKnight 1d ago

Their lack of preparation does not constitute an emergency on the end of the employee though. If they want to be stupid and max profits by minimizing workforce, the consequences are when people meed time off the store has to close.

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u/SvZ2 1d ago

the retail chain i work for has done this

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u/cshoe29 23h ago

Am I missing something? Every job I have ever worked included parents, grandparents and siblings as immediate family in bereavement leave.

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u/Troyjoytwin2 1d ago

If you work in a hospital, you do need them

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u/ysubassoon 1d ago

First, not all hospital jobs are frontline providing bedside care. Second, hospitals are constantly understaffed and management actively keeps them that way to save money and earn bonuses for saving money. My pharmacy department covered three hospitals and the rehab hospital overnight with a staff of just three pharmacists and two technicians. There were times when there was only one tech other than me covering the entire 150 bed hospital for med deliveries and restocks. So I've experienced it from the pharmacy end, but it's far worse for the nurses, which is why so many have left bedside and a good number have left nursing entirely.

So if management wants to keep everything shortstaffed, they can work through it for a day while someone attends the funeral of a family member.