The infrastructure isn't that much is the problem, because labor costs are the largest single expense. When you take that off the table as something that can be cut, you're then stuck needing to make up the difference from the things that never cost that much to begin with, which means the cuts you have to make to them to make up the same amount of shortfall are deep.

> If they were paying each employee 10x as much

They're presumably paying the market rate either way. The issue is, what happens if they need to reduce the number of employees? Or they have too many front end developers and not enough back end administrators or vice versa, and then need to let some people go and hire others with a different skill set?

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Dylan16807 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Labor expenses can still be cut. Just not by screwing up wages. A union doesn't force you to keep the same number of employees forever.

And if there's any meaningful shortfall it's literally impossible to get there with infrastructure cuts. Nobody sane would try it, since the target would be negative one thousand percent costs.

	▲	AnthonyMouse an hour ago \| parent [-]
		They have the inherent incentive to inhibit you from doing layoffs, and the same incentive to stop you from replacing existing workers with different ones since the existing ones get a vote and the prospective replacements don't. > And if there's any meaningful shortfall it's literally impossible to get there with infrastructure cuts. Nobody sane would try it, since the target would be negative one thousand percent costs. You can't make up a $35M shortfall exclusively from cutting infrastructure when you're only spending $3.5M on infrastructure, but you also can't make up a $35M shortfall by not cutting anything. And you can make up some of it from cutting infrastructure, so where does the money come from that didn't come from reducing headcount?