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  • Hacker News
  • Looks like Elastic has a lazy CEO

    https://www.entrepreneur.com/business-news/nvidias-jensen-hu...

    by moron4hire
  • So true! It was the same for Gitlab, Cisco, Oracle... every-time they used the AI excuse to explain their laid-off, instead of explaining why they have bad financials. Actually, in all the cases above, the real reason when digging in the financials was the leadership and bad work culture...
    by ygouzerh
  • Unfortunately Elastic lost -60.54% market value in the last 5 years. Negative net income every year since going public.

    The underlying message is a lot clear - they are a public company. They have to do this and more show to net positive income to keep the market value from falling further.

    Companies can keep the employees with market value drop but it gets hard with negative income. Salesforce also lost ~37% value in last 5 years but they still print billions in net income every year.

    The same story with companies like Gitlab. They lost 75% market value and negative income since going public.

    by chopete3
  • Am I misunderstanding their current finances? On yahoo finance, I don't see net negative income for ESTC.
    by slantedview
  • Ex-Elastic here. At Xata, we've built a company with many of the things we loved about Elastic's culture, and several former Elasticians are already on the team. We're currently hiring Backend Engineers, a Product Marketing Lead, and a Head of Product. If you're interested (or know someone who might be), send us a message!
    by monicasarbu
  • I recommended an elastic demo for a client that would be well served by Elasticsearch. The Elastic sales folks completely torpedoed the presentation by trying to focus on their AI “capabilities” and not on the recommended talking points. This was 2 years ago.
    by gortok
  • Here's my translation of this announcement: https://layofftranslator.com/layoffs/2026-06-24-elastic/
    by ronbenton
  • dude, this is the work of a genius
    by Kiryous
  • I wonder if some of these CEOs are anticipating a big crash and trying to lay people off now, so that (1) they can raise/hoard cash while the money-go-round is spinning and (2) their eng organization is already lean and used to it if/when the money-go-round stops.

    “Because of AI” indeed.

    by msteffen
  • Nah they are just following the herd. When everyone was hiring they hired, when everyone was firing they fired. Go along to get along.
    by confidantlake
  • I think it's just the relative cost of money. Credit, debt, raises, revenue all rely on it. The tech industry got used to zero interest rate and then Covid-era stimulus. Now, suddenly, cashflow matters, but the companies are still run by the same people that only know perception management. Eventually they too will get cycled out.
    by kev009
  • This just reaffirms my view is that big companies will lose headcount because of AI, but small and medium companies will (or at least have the potential to) leverage AI to do bigger and better things. This is because big companies could always spend big money on getting what they want made while small companies always have to tradeoff what they can realistically do with the resources they have.
    by keithnz
  • Is elastic a big company? I’d put them somewhere between small and medium…
    by Macha
  • Also big companies spend tons and tons of time and money on useless busy work.

    I work in IT and when we needed something new we'd just implement or build it.

    Now we have long certification processes for anything new, checking if it complies with hundreds of pages of policies. A lifecycle management program which we constantly have to keep updated. Governance teams that are constantly looking over our shoulders. All shit that has nothing to do with IT whatsoever.

    As a result we spend 90% of time doing busywork jumping through hoops these guys set up for us. Only 5% is real technical work and a lot is outsourced or consulted out to a friend of the vice president who spends all day chatting in his office for 1000 bucks a day. Or a Deloitte guy who looks great in a suit and has no idea what he's talking about. Because companies hate employing people who have actual knowledge.

    I really hate IT work now. Not sure about the rest of the industry but this change happened about 10 years ago. Until then we still were able to do actual useful work.

    I can only imagine how awful a place to work it will become when they will use AI to dream up even more inhibiting policies to keep us down with.

    Oh and meanwhile the CEO still goes around how innovative we are even though any innovation is absolutely killed by all this bureaucracy. Most of the time we come up with a great idea it doesn't move ahead because nobody wants to deal with years of pencil pushing to get it approved.

    I can totally see how startups can do actual work with little money and we can't do anything.

    by wolvoleo
  • Before the 1980s layoffs were seen as a massive failure of the company and almost never happened to tenured employees unless the company was collapsing. Before we are all made to think this is normal and unavoidable behavior.
    by tracerbulletx
  • When Elon fired 80% of the company, I remember a lot of celebration on HN. Some of it was the perceived political bias within the employees and some of it was “The app works fine what were all those employees doing? They probably deserved it.”

    At the time I remember talking about this becoming a norm as CEOs follow the lead and getting downvoted heavily. Its unfortunate that we are here, but also not surprising, given how limited empathy people have for each other at times here on HN. Unless we stand for each other, this won’t change.

    by darth_avocado
  • The worst part about the current situation is that the company is then just turning around and hiring people.

    It is almost like the company really is just doing it to arbitrage or get rid of expensive (aka old) employees.

    by outside1234
  • The tech industry spawned a new type of Wall Street investor who thinks a stock is a high-interest savings account. There's no room for risk, you need to grow at exactly 3.141593% per quarter or you face the pitchforks-and-patagonia-vests threatening to take their money down the street to the next bank.
    by phendrenad2
  • I don't know how the social contract between employees/employers gets rebuilt..feels like it needs to though
    by Avicebron
  • the business people took over tech and somehow convinced us Jack Welch’s management philosophy (targeted attrition, layoffs for financial engineering) was a best practice even though he and his proteges drove numerous old guard tech companies into the ground
    by 33MHz-i486
  • In the 80s you didn't have the majority of your employees being white collar and making six figures.

    The U.S. is suffering from office worker bloat. They have an increasing growing population of people who know very little about physical labor and most likely won't be able to adapt to upcoming AI induced mass unemployment. I only see the pain getting worse for them.

    Not sure what the solution is for them here.

    by cramer4next
  • I know HN is mostly against regulation, but I'm very glad my country restricts mass firings, and particular stricter rules apply for companies that turn a profit.

    If you're generating benefits, there should be very few reasons you need to let go people massively.

    by torben-friis
  • I wouldn't have nearly as many complaints about this mindset change if ones life (e.g. insurance) weren't still so deeply tied to who your current employer is.
    by zamadatix
  • It's interesting to contrast this announcement with a similar post from the CEO in 2022 [1]: those past layoffs had much more of a victim-of-circumstances tone as ZIRP was beginning to dry up, but apparently those "bad times" versus "good times" during AI mania just accounts for a delta of +6% additional layoffs.

    Another commenter questioned what size bucket Elastic falls into these days; in April 2025 their SEC filing [2] cited about 3,500 employees. So not a startup any more but definitely not fully-fledged FAANG-sized.

    (not sure whether it even applies here; but full disclosure, I left Elastic in 2022.)

    [1]: https://www.elastic.co/blog/ceo-ash-kulkarni-email-to-elasti... [2]: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1707753/000170775325...

    by tylerjl
  • Funny, so many words used but my brain only hears, “I am currently mismanaging this company,” every time one of these layoffs occurs.
    by SaucyWrong
  • This announcement spends remarkably few words talking about the what (7% of the company's workforce was laid off), and a great deal of words talking about how bright the future of the company is and how they're going to hire more people.
    by nozzlegear
  • which is why most corporations should be classified as sociopaths, at a minimum.
    by cyanydeez
  • Layoff announcements are this kinda tricky class of corporate comms where you need to speak to at least 3 different constituents, with 3 different messages, which are often in conflict.

    It's something like:

    (A) To the public (e.g. prospects, customers, investors): "This is a good thing and we're going to be an even better bet!"

    (B) To the remaining team: "This is tough and I feel your pain and will do better."

    (C) To the laid off: "It's not you, it's me, thank you and good luck."

    It's hard if not impossible to handle all three of these authentically, concisely, and in the same message. Which is why you can almost immediately find something not to like..

    by mik3y
  • If you were realigning your SaaS company to ignore your technology short-comings and technical debt, and isntead focus on selling as much "AI-enabled <whatever>" while the rush still looks like gold, this would be a great strategy & announcement.
    by skeeter2020
  • Makes me sad to read it as an ex-Elastic employee.

    AI is used to justify the redundancies, and the company still expects to grow in this fiscal year. In the SEC filling the specifically mention more “head count” in “go-to-market” roles [1].

    > a reduction of approximately 7% of our workforce

    > Advances in AI, automation, and technology are reshaping how work gets done, and we're changing with them. (…) That's what this reorganization is for: a simpler structure, with fewer layers, less complexity, and less friction.

    > The changes we announced today are a sign of confidence in the business, not a retreat from it. We continue to invest in key growth areas and expect total headcount to grow year-over-year this fiscal year [the SEC filling says “ The Company plans to continue hiring in key strategic areas and locations, including continuing to grow headcount in customer-facing go-to-market functions, and expects total headcount to grow this fiscal year compared to last fiscal year, as it continues to invest in future growth opportunities”]

    [1]: https://ir.elastic.co/financials/sec-filings/sec-filings-det...

    by puszczyk