Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for July 03, 2021

Is having sleepovers getting close?

How is Mike, in marketing, supposed to decide which 50 coders to cut?

That’s OK she can move in with him and the kid.

It’s the same old story, cut the folks making your product so the CEO can maintain his excessive salary.

My old company did exactly that, and re-labeled the job descriptions of the remaining ones!!

Only his new gf.

Speaking as someone who has lived thru several layoffs in Silicon Valley I can say – marketing and sales are the first to go, after outsourcing support, etc. It’s pretty rare for coders (engineers) to be let go unless it’s really drastic.

How did Mike’s glasses end up on his cheeks in panels two & four?

So she’s going to be unemployed just at the start of the dot-com boom? I think she’s going to be fine.

Let’s watch Mike be professional and ruthless about this…! :D

What’s the time frame? From some of the references I assumed this was a flashback to the 90s or early 2000s.

Am i crazy? Why cut the staff who creates, repairs and improves the product? If it’s a marketing problem, then the current marketing staff isn’t doing their work correctly. Shouldn’t the cuts start there? Not that i want Mike to be out of work again, but where is the logic?

It’s not like coders can’t find another job.

There you go Mike, your opportunity to be a hero and a fool. Refuse to fire your girl friend, quit instead and be poor together.

If your problem is marketing…you let them go and hire someone else to do a better job, not cut the people doing the work…

Great Strip.

well, we know one who won’t be cut

Just wondering. Does Bernie’s company morph into Activision/Blizzard or Electronic Arts later on?

Fifty+ coders and he doesn’t have an HR department? I was a coder once and was assigned to HR (by choice) for a year to improve their recruitment and retention. Interesting place to visit but I wouldn’t want to live there. Was kind of fun knowing which senior manager’s days were numbered. Sworn to secrecy, of course.

He has just realized that somebody must have actually being doing work at the company all this time, while he was out on business lunches, trying to sign people up for seminars.

Worked for a small company that protected marketing while laying off almost all of their technical staff… even tried adding more sales and marketing staff to try to save themselves… it didn’t work out well – they found that they had a hard time winning and executing contracts without adequate technical staff, and they found that the staff they’d laid off were not interested in coming back. They did not last long after their “stable genius” decision…

Look at it this way, Mike. If I recall correctly Bernie doesn’t like workplace romances. Now that won’t be a problem.

Cutting the Vietnamese Jewish female would be grounds for triple discrimination.

Mike is now seeing his sexless future. Get on your knees and beg Bernie for one coder to be spared!

Saw that coming

But the coders maintain the software that does the accounting. What happens if Bernie’s name disappears from the list of paid employees?

“Since our problem is a marketing one, we won’t be cutting anyone from your department”

Sounds like what I experienced: “Since our Administration is top-heavy we won’t be cutting any administrators…”

A software company shedding Coders seems counter productive. Kinda like a ditch digging company shedding the diggers.