Don't think of it as 2000 job cuts, think of it as 2000 prisoners set free.

Inertia can be a difficult force to combat when working for a large company. From personal experience, being layer off, or having a project cancelled, is the ultimate incentive to find something better.

Of course this is stressful, and no severance package makes much difference to the stress of a real human being with responsibilities and bills to pay, but I do believe that the upside is significantly bigger than the downside

It's only stressful if you let it be. When I was lay'ed off from a previous position (with 6 months severance) it was the best thing that had happened to me in a long time. I even turned down the first job offer I had, cause I didn't really like how that company wasn't investing in upgrading their infrastructure.

Now, my wife's stress level, well that is another discussion.

I don't think that is a fair assessment of the situation. While some people may be in a position where getting laid off from their job is a welcomed incentive to pursue bigger and better things, there are also those people that rely on that steady income to pay their bills and keep their families clothed, fed, educated, and healthy.

I also want to say, although I don't mean to imply that this was your personal assumption, that not every person working for a technical company in the valley is a risk taking entrepreneur. Some people just like to program.

I expect they're also targeting a lot of senior (read: high-salary) employees who are more likely to be the family bread-winner types. (Although for legal reasons Yahoo! will go to great pains to point out that they are not in any way targeting older employees.)

I agree, each of the 2000 is an individual human with their own narrative. The worst mistake management can make is to forget that humanity.

I am under the impression that laid off employees are going out with a good severance package. If it is true that there is no severance for laid off employees, then it is brutal

are you saying Y! is not paying severance or just speaking about "no severance" situations in general?

Don't feel weird, an up-vote is just saying "I find this interesting". Bad news can be interesting, but that doesn't mean you like bad news.

Look at it more as "I recommend this story" than "I like this story".

layoffs for programmers are usually good news. It means a dying company is freeing up those resources to go towards better uses. E.g., more start-ups etc.

With a company like Yahoo, you can bet their programmers learned a lot about coding, maintaining, user/management expectations, and internal politics. While losing your job sucks, those skills transition very well anywhere you go. If you're a bad programmer and you didn't learn how to be a better programmer at Yahoo, you're going to be in a world of hurt. If you were at least decent and learned what you could, you might be in a better position to negotiate with a new company, or, like you said, start your own project.

Out-of-work programmers are only at a disadvantage (respective to other industries) if their true title would be more like "COBOL coder". A semi truck driver only struggles to find work if he drove nothing but an automatic for his whole life.

I get that feeling too on Facebook (I don't "like" bad news). But this is HN.

actually, facebook changes the "like" text for shared news (I forgot what it depends on, maybe the url not being a fb one) to something like "recommend".

I remember being really surprised until I was pointed out that you don't want to "like" some of the news.

It still feels weird, even with "Recommend."

"Tornadoes destroy trailer parks, strip malls in Texas" - Recommended by 241 people

"A++ Tornado, Would destroy again!"

I believe that is set in the metadata of the original article. I may be wrong, though.

Yes, it's an option when installing the like button. Along with "show faces", color scheme, etc.

https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/like/

It's not about whether or not you like the news, or if you agree with it. It's about adding value as a story relevant to HN, with the possibility of insightful conversation. I say upvote away!

You're line of thinking is why too many people's insightful comments are downvoted. Purely out of disagreement, or "I don't like that idea". Really that's the biggest problem I find on HN.

You show the problem with these voting systems. One is inclined to up-/downvote things based on if one likes what is there, not if it is worthy being discussed/shared/read.

Well, upvoting a story isn't the same as "like"ing an article.