In 2022 we are witnessing tech layoffs at both startups and large companies, working at Sololearn which is considered a startup, it’s still not clear to me why I was chosen to be laid off only 7 months (🤯) after they approached me. We’ve seen such layoffs happen even at larger companies such as Netflix and Spotify. (btw, go check the Sololearn app if you want to learn programming, it’s perfect for beginners!)
Today I decided to write my first Medium article, and it’s about the Ringelmann effect which I think might be one of the reasons for the layoffs happening in 2022. If you don’t like reading articles, you can check the references section for a YouTube link.
The Ringelmann effect experiment was conducted using tug-of-war in 1913 by Max Ringelmann who was a French agricultural engineer. He gathered people to pull a rope individually then started adding more people. The results were that when people were pulling individually they used 100% of their strength and were more focused, as he kept adding more people the focus and efforts everyone was putting kept decreasing.
And this is known as the Ringelmann effect or social loafing. We understand from this that people’s productivity and efforts decrease when working in teams as the number of the team gets bigger or as the number of the people grow in a group there’s more process loss.
I believe it’s because people feel less pressured and have less responsibilities. For example when they fail, they will fail as a team and not individually and other people will also share the blame.
Ringelmann offered two main explanations for that, first is lack of coordination and it’s when the team is too big and people are not aware of other people’s tasks and in what state they are and the second reason is lack of motivation which is closer to the reasons I personally thought when a person thinks their opinion in a large team is not relevant and they don’t have to do any critical thinking or work hard because there’s a big team for them to rely on.
So my advice is for startups or large companies. Don’t use a sledgehammer to crack a nut 🔨🌰. Next time when you get your funding think twice before you start your aggressive hiring or giving promises to people you can’t afford, you don’t always necessarily need a big team. Having new experienced people can be good to solve problems that others can’t, but keep in mind that 9 women can’t give birth to a baby in one month and looking at the Ringelmann effect we understand that sometimes when there are more people involved, things might take even more time.
“The Ringelmann effect does not happen only in the workplace. It is all around us.
It is the reason why people don’t fill in feedback surveys, because they think it won’t make any difference.
It is also the reason why people tend to not speak up against an incident of injustice because they think their opinion won’t matter.
The Ringelmann effect shows up clearly when people decide not to donate a small part of their income to an important cause because they think others will already do that.” (Saddik, 2021)
References:
D. Kravitz. (1986). Ringelmann Rediscovered: The Original Article
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/209410111_Ringelmann_Rediscovered_The_Original_Article
HumberEDU. (2017). Sport Psychology | The Ringelmann Effect
https://youtu.be/TzMp6e8gCGA?t=66
W. Saddik MA. (2021). How the Ringelmann Effect Can Cripple the Performance of Your Big Team
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#layoff #ringelmannEffect #costreduction #socialloafing #netflix #spotify #sololearn
