8 ms·

Where are we heading if every company drop 10-20% of their staff?

by jstx1 4y ago

seanmcdirmid 4y ago
2 years ago?
seibelj 4y ago
10-20% of their staff so far
mamonster 4y ago
Slowdown in inflation due to wage component of inflation falling. What, didn't you hear that the Fed was very interested in pulling on that lever? Just yesterday Powell complained about the labour market being tight, guess businesses heard him all right.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > Powell complained about the labour market being tight No, he didn’t [1]. He justified a rate rise in a faltering economy by pointing to the labor market’s strength. Were the labor market weaker we’d be in stagflation and monetary policy would have no room to manoeuvre. [1] https://www.federalreserve.gov/mediacenter/files/FOMCpresconf20221102.pdf https://www.federalreserve.gov/mediacenter/files/FOMCprescon...
  - im-a-baby 4y ago
    Powell has previously said that he wants higher unemployment. He believes this is the only way to decrease demand and bring down prices. > The labor market continues to be out of balance, with demand for workers substantially exceeding the supply of available workers. The labor force participation rate showed a welcome uptick in August but is little changed since the beginning of the year. FOMC participants expect supply and demand conditions in the labor market to come into better balance over time, easing the upward pressure on wages and prices. The median projection in the SEP for the unemployment rate rises to 4.4 percent at the end of next year, ½ percentage point higher than in the June projections > We’re never going to say that there are too many people working, but the real point is this: Inflation—what we hear from people when we meet with them is that they really are suffering from inflation. And if we want to set ourselves up, really light the way to another period of a very strong labor market, we have got to get inflation behind us. I wish there were a painless way to do that. There isn’t. That is why the market goes down when low unemployment numbers are released. Powell will continue to raise rates until the labor market cools. He's not using the labor market to determine whether or not the economy can handle more rate increases. He's absolutely determined to increase unemployment via rate hikes.
    - andrekandre 4y ago
      > He's absolutely determined to increase unemployment via rate hikes. either i'm deluded or there has to a better way to run an economy than this...
      - bombcar 4y ago
        It's literally the mandate of the Fed and the only levers they have are rate changes and threats of future rate changes. Something something the measure becomes the means or something.
      - stingrae 4y ago
        Their goal is to reduce inflation. Increasing unemployment, is a side effect of rate hikes but ultimately, reduces demand for consumer goods thus reducing inflation.
        seanmcdirmid 4y ago
        Their goal is to keep inflation steady at a manageable rate, and to prevent any deflation at all. Since inflation indicators haven't been too reliable in the last 20 years, they were caught horribly off guard. But ideally, they would make small changes one way or the other to maintain a nice equilibrium that would keep employment levels relatively stable.
        stingrae 4y ago
        True in the ideal case.
        hajile 4y ago
        Inflation in staple supplies and food are radically inflated too and they aren’t reducing when people go on unemployment.
      - baq 4y ago
        the economy runs itself, mostly. rates are one of the very few direct knobs anyone has that are sort of predictable. well you can also commit fiscal suicide like the recent has-been-a-PM of UK showed, but in that case the economy runs you quite explicitly.
  - mamonster 4y ago
    I don't see how what you posted contradicts what I said. I guess it all depends on how you interpret what Powell says, but him saying the labour market is overheated is a signal to the market that unless the labour market stops overheating the Fed pivot is not becoming more likely(which is all that market participants care about as of today with regards to the Fed meeting, i.e when is the pivot coming).
    - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
      > him saying the labour market is overheated is a signal to the market that unless the labour market stops overheating the Fed pivot is not becoming more likely The labor market isn’t being targeted. We have had tight labor markets with low inflation before. The Fed doesn’t spike them for the sake of it. What’s targeted for reduction is inflation. Labor market tightness permits the Fed to respond to it, which is why it’s constantly talked about. If you are on a road trip and decide you can take a detour because you have ample gas, it wouldn’t be correct to say you took the detour to burn gas.
adam_arthur 4y ago
Rising discount rate hits companies with higher valuation multiples first, so tech will be hit worse than other sectors. A bit different than the GFC Lower wages in tech, higher unemployment.
findthewords 4y ago
Narrower "operating leverage".
datalopers 4y ago
All these companies have vastly overhired. Think of your own peers and colleagues. How many are a) utterly useless or b) competent but don't have anything to do so they spend time working on mostly pointless projects to improve their CV?
- SkyPuncher 4y ago
  I literally cannot name a single person like this in my entire career. Yes, less than ideal performs, but nobody that's utterly useless or spending all day on side projects.
  - boredtofears 4y ago
    Same here until my most recent job that I took just this year. The amount of brain waste is staggering.
  - watwut 4y ago
    I knew an utterly useless guy. He was good at making impression of a good programmer - read right blogs and had correct opinions. Probably reads HN and definitely knows all the fads. It is just that, he never produced anything. I worked with him twice. They moved him between teams and both times he got absurd amount of benefit of doubt (one of the companies was firing people quickly, but not him). Anyway based on what I heard, he did nothing whole his career. But like, he was definitely not a norm.
    - acdha 4y ago
      In 3 decades I think I’ve met a couple of programmers like that, but about a dozen managers and at least half of the consultants. It’s pretty hard to pull off in a position which usually has some kind of directly-measurable product.
- onion2k 4y ago
  How many are a) utterly useless or b) competent but don't have anything to do so they spend time working on mostly pointless projects to improve their CV? I hope my colleagues aren't reading this and looking at me.
lovich 4y ago
Might get absorbed by other companies but at lower rates. The faangs, and especially meta and google, have been starving a lot of startups and less efficient companies of talent. If your business model wasn’t profitable enough to handle all your engineers having over 250k tc it’s been a bit of a difficult market to hire and retain people in the past few years
smileysteve 4y ago
To completely reasonable 6% unemployment levels that will slightly shift the scales of worker supply and demand?
mabbo 4y ago
An interesting time, imho. The costs to explore a startup are pretty low these days. You can live anywhere (move somewhere with relative low COL), you can develop just about anything cheaply (open source, plus easy frameworks). You can work with like-minded people all over the world easily (remote work for '20-'21 made big inroads in that department). And we may suddenly have a few tens of thousands of talented developers looking for work- maybe they'll make a startup, or maybe they'll join one where they get paid mostly in equity. Interest rates are high, which means that investors into startups will want a bigger cut, but still have their money that they want to invest. Overall, it sounds to me like a great time to be investing in startups.
- dmitrygr 4y ago
  > or maybe they'll join one where they get paid mostly in equity. Yup, most people who lost their jobs and are wondering how to feed their families will definitely pick to to not be paid for even longer...
- aprdm 4y ago
  Wow people can really live in a bubble huh. Delusional stuff that I have to read
pcurve 4y ago
slowly returning to normal salary, along with stagnation of pays for those who were brought on high. I suspect a lot of underqualified people were able to get jobs at high salary in the past 1 year. I know this has caused grief and concerns for more tenured employees doing the same job (and better)
ren_engineer 4y ago
the TikTok "day in the life of a project manager" ecosystem will be devastated. People who actually get work done will be fine
- malfist 4y ago
  Tell me you've never been laid off without telling me you've never been laid off.
dv_dt 4y ago
The conventional wisdom floating around financial news is that a recessionary period is/was expected lasting around a year. This is a way to smooth out gross revenues over that year as well as knock out some expectations on salary growth. That it all happens to be coordinated is an interesting thing to contemplate about self-fulfilling prophecy, or natural market reactions, or maybe spin wild conspiracy stories about.
- dv_dt 4y ago
  *net not gross fyi
onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
Tech meme stocks != every company. If the Department of Defense & Amazon & Walmart start laying off 10-20% of staff - that would mean something. All of these tech layoffs don't even represent 1% of tech jobs so far. Let alone anything meaningful for the overall US economy.

Where are we heading if every company drop 10-20% of their staff?

by jstx1 4y ago

Where are we heading if every company drop 10-20% of their staff?

seanmcdirmid 4y ago

2 years ago?

seibelj 4y ago

10-20% of their staff so far

mamonster 4y ago

Slowdown in inflation due to wage component of inflation falling. What, didn't you hear that the Fed was very interested in pulling on that lever? Just yesterday Powell complained about the labour market being tight, guess businesses heard him all right.

JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> Powell complained about the labour market being tight No, he didn’t [1]. He justified a rate rise in a faltering economy by pointing to the labor market’s strength. Were the labor market weaker we’d be in stagflation and monetary policy would have no room to manoeuvre. [1] https://www.federalreserve.gov/mediacenter/files/FOMCpresconf20221102.pdf https://www.federalreserve.gov/mediacenter/files/FOMCprescon...
- im-a-baby 4y ago
  Powell has previously said that he wants higher unemployment. He believes this is the only way to decrease demand and bring down prices. > The labor market continues to be out of balance, with demand for workers substantially exceeding the supply of available workers. The labor force participation rate showed a welcome uptick in August but is little changed since the beginning of the year. FOMC participants expect supply and demand conditions in the labor market to come into better balance over time, easing the upward pressure on wages and prices. The median projection in the SEP for the unemployment rate rises to 4.4 percent at the end of next year, ½ percentage point higher than in the June projections > We’re never going to say that there are too many people working, but the real point is this: Inflation—what we hear from people when we meet with them is that they really are suffering from inflation. And if we want to set ourselves up, really light the way to another period of a very strong labor market, we have got to get inflation behind us. I wish there were a painless way to do that. There isn’t. That is why the market goes down when low unemployment numbers are released. Powell will continue to raise rates until the labor market cools. He's not using the labor market to determine whether or not the economy can handle more rate increases. He's absolutely determined to increase unemployment via rate hikes.
  - andrekandre 4y ago
    > He's absolutely determined to increase unemployment via rate hikes. either i'm deluded or there has to a better way to run an economy than this...
    - bombcar 4y ago
      It's literally the mandate of the Fed and the only levers they have are rate changes and threats of future rate changes. Something something the measure becomes the means or something.
    - stingrae 4y ago
      Their goal is to reduce inflation. Increasing unemployment, is a side effect of rate hikes but ultimately, reduces demand for consumer goods thus reducing inflation.
      - seanmcdirmid 4y ago
        Their goal is to keep inflation steady at a manageable rate, and to prevent any deflation at all. Since inflation indicators haven't been too reliable in the last 20 years, they were caught horribly off guard. But ideally, they would make small changes one way or the other to maintain a nice equilibrium that would keep employment levels relatively stable.
        stingrae 4y ago
        True in the ideal case.
      - hajile 4y ago
        Inflation in staple supplies and food are radically inflated too and they aren’t reducing when people go on unemployment.
    - baq 4y ago
      the economy runs itself, mostly. rates are one of the very few direct knobs anyone has that are sort of predictable. well you can also commit fiscal suicide like the recent has-been-a-PM of UK showed, but in that case the economy runs you quite explicitly.
- mamonster 4y ago
  I don't see how what you posted contradicts what I said. I guess it all depends on how you interpret what Powell says, but him saying the labour market is overheated is a signal to the market that unless the labour market stops overheating the Fed pivot is not becoming more likely(which is all that market participants care about as of today with regards to the Fed meeting, i.e when is the pivot coming).
  - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
    > him saying the labour market is overheated is a signal to the market that unless the labour market stops overheating the Fed pivot is not becoming more likely The labor market isn’t being targeted. We have had tight labor markets with low inflation before. The Fed doesn’t spike them for the sake of it. What’s targeted for reduction is inflation. Labor market tightness permits the Fed to respond to it, which is why it’s constantly talked about. If you are on a road trip and decide you can take a detour because you have ample gas, it wouldn’t be correct to say you took the detour to burn gas.

adam_arthur 4y ago

Rising discount rate hits companies with higher valuation multiples first, so tech will be hit worse than other sectors. A bit different than the GFC Lower wages in tech, higher unemployment.

findthewords 4y ago

Narrower "operating leverage".

datalopers 4y ago

All these companies have vastly overhired. Think of your own peers and colleagues. How many are a) utterly useless or b) competent but don't have anything to do so they spend time working on mostly pointless projects to improve their CV?

SkyPuncher 4y ago
I literally cannot name a single person like this in my entire career. Yes, less than ideal performs, but nobody that's utterly useless or spending all day on side projects.
- boredtofears 4y ago
  Same here until my most recent job that I took just this year. The amount of brain waste is staggering.
- watwut 4y ago
  I knew an utterly useless guy. He was good at making impression of a good programmer - read right blogs and had correct opinions. Probably reads HN and definitely knows all the fads. It is just that, he never produced anything. I worked with him twice. They moved him between teams and both times he got absurd amount of benefit of doubt (one of the companies was firing people quickly, but not him). Anyway based on what I heard, he did nothing whole his career. But like, he was definitely not a norm.
  - acdha 4y ago
    In 3 decades I think I’ve met a couple of programmers like that, but about a dozen managers and at least half of the consultants. It’s pretty hard to pull off in a position which usually has some kind of directly-measurable product.
onion2k 4y ago
How many are a) utterly useless or b) competent but don't have anything to do so they spend time working on mostly pointless projects to improve their CV? I hope my colleagues aren't reading this and looking at me.

lovich 4y ago

Might get absorbed by other companies but at lower rates. The faangs, and especially meta and google, have been starving a lot of startups and less efficient companies of talent. If your business model wasn’t profitable enough to handle all your engineers having over 250k tc it’s been a bit of a difficult market to hire and retain people in the past few years

smileysteve 4y ago

To completely reasonable 6% unemployment levels that will slightly shift the scales of worker supply and demand?

mabbo 4y ago

An interesting time, imho. The costs to explore a startup are pretty low these days. You can live anywhere (move somewhere with relative low COL), you can develop just about anything cheaply (open source, plus easy frameworks). You can work with like-minded people all over the world easily (remote work for '20-'21 made big inroads in that department). And we may suddenly have a few tens of thousands of talented developers looking for work- maybe they'll make a startup, or maybe they'll join one where they get paid mostly in equity. Interest rates are high, which means that investors into startups will want a bigger cut, but still have their money that they want to invest. Overall, it sounds to me like a great time to be investing in startups.

dmitrygr 4y ago
> or maybe they'll join one where they get paid mostly in equity. Yup, most people who lost their jobs and are wondering how to feed their families will definitely pick to to not be paid for even longer...
aprdm 4y ago
Wow people can really live in a bubble huh. Delusional stuff that I have to read

pcurve 4y ago

slowly returning to normal salary, along with stagnation of pays for those who were brought on high. I suspect a lot of underqualified people were able to get jobs at high salary in the past 1 year. I know this has caused grief and concerns for more tenured employees doing the same job (and better)

ren_engineer 4y ago

the TikTok "day in the life of a project manager" ecosystem will be devastated. People who actually get work done will be fine

malfist 4y ago
Tell me you've never been laid off without telling me you've never been laid off.

dv_dt 4y ago

The conventional wisdom floating around financial news is that a recessionary period is/was expected lasting around a year. This is a way to smooth out gross revenues over that year as well as knock out some expectations on salary growth. That it all happens to be coordinated is an interesting thing to contemplate about self-fulfilling prophecy, or natural market reactions, or maybe spin wild conspiracy stories about.

dv_dt 4y ago
*net not gross fyi

onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago

Tech meme stocks != every company. If the Department of Defense & Amazon & Walmart start laying off 10-20% of staff - that would mean something. All of these tech layoffs don't even represent 1% of tech jobs so far. Let alone anything meaningful for the overall US economy.