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Considering the greatly inflated tech wages in top companies, aren't those layoffs alone likely to impact the US economy?

maccard 4y ago
FTA: > While we’re making reductions in every organization across both Family of Apps and Reality Labs, some teams will be affected more than others. Recruiting will be disproportionately affected since we’re planning to hire fewer people next year. We’re also restructuring our business teams more substantially. It's not all engineers let go.
- dopamean 4y ago
  Are engineers the only people in tech with high salaries?
  - PubliusMI 4y ago
curiousllama 4y ago
Volume scale is too different. US workers might churn at .5%/month - that’s maybe 500k job losses. Even if Facebook pays 10x average, that’d be equivalent $ to ~3 days of normal churn.
habinero 4y ago
No. The US GDP is 23 trillion USD.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
bell-cot 4y ago
Yes. Hopefully starting with housing prices & rents in certain areas. Though the US is ~3.3e8 people. Don't expect layoffs of ~1.1e4 to have a substantial national effect. [Edit - 's/1e3/1e4/' correction.]
aetherson 4y ago
11,000 people is around 0.003% of the US population. These layoffs alone will not meaningfully impact the US economy. Of course, these layoffs are not in isolation, and the economy is obviously cooling. But, alone, no, it is not a mechanically meaningful factor.
em500 4y ago
FB alone certainly not. Even if these 11k people would be earning on average 300k/year, their combined income would be only around 3B/year. The US national income is around 25.000B/year.
usrusr 4y ago
The good news is that there will be so much bigger profits to trickle down. (sorry for posting sarcasm on hn)
mupuff1234 4y ago
Might affect the housing prices in CA, which in turn might affect housing prices in other states as there will probably be a domino affect. (Assuming there's a few thousand laid off in CA)
TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
Corporations are like schools of fishes. They all swim in one direction until suddenly they swim in a different direction. So rationally - no. Practically, in terms of social signalling - very probably. Many c-suites will use this as an excuse to offer lower salaries. Even though the numbers are tiny in absolute terms, there will be chilling effect across tech in general, especially in the usual hot-spots - Bay Area, Seattle, maybe London, etc. I'm not sure I'd expect a Tech Recession yet, but there are omens of a much wider recession which may well include tech.
- pm90 4y ago
  My opinion here is that tech companies are generally a lot more data driven and quicker to move. So I see these layoffs as them taking the possibility of a recession seriously and being well prepared for it when it does happen. This kind of graceful termination is preferable to sudden, forced changes caused by external events, such as a stock market crash or a company going under (e.g. Lehman going under in 2008).

maccard 4y ago

FTA: > While we’re making reductions in every organization across both Family of Apps and Reality Labs, some teams will be affected more than others. Recruiting will be disproportionately affected since we’re planning to hire fewer people next year. We’re also restructuring our business teams more substantially. It's not all engineers let go.

dopamean 4y ago
Are engineers the only people in tech with high salaries?
- PubliusMI 4y ago

curiousllama 4y ago

Volume scale is too different. US workers might churn at .5%/month - that’s maybe 500k job losses. Even if Facebook pays 10x average, that’d be equivalent $ to ~3 days of normal churn.

habinero 4y ago

No. The US GDP is 23 trillion USD.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

bell-cot 4y ago

Yes. Hopefully starting with housing prices & rents in certain areas. Though the US is ~3.3e8 people. Don't expect layoffs of ~1.1e4 to have a substantial national effect. [Edit - 's/1e3/1e4/' correction.]

aetherson 4y ago

11,000 people is around 0.003% of the US population. These layoffs alone will not meaningfully impact the US economy. Of course, these layoffs are not in isolation, and the economy is obviously cooling. But, alone, no, it is not a mechanically meaningful factor.

em500 4y ago

FB alone certainly not. Even if these 11k people would be earning on average 300k/year, their combined income would be only around 3B/year. The US national income is around 25.000B/year.

usrusr 4y ago

The good news is that there will be so much bigger profits to trickle down. (sorry for posting sarcasm on hn)

mupuff1234 4y ago

Might affect the housing prices in CA, which in turn might affect housing prices in other states as there will probably be a domino affect. (Assuming there's a few thousand laid off in CA)

TheOtherHobbes 4y ago

Corporations are like schools of fishes. They all swim in one direction until suddenly they swim in a different direction. So rationally - no. Practically, in terms of social signalling - very probably. Many c-suites will use this as an excuse to offer lower salaries. Even though the numbers are tiny in absolute terms, there will be chilling effect across tech in general, especially in the usual hot-spots - Bay Area, Seattle, maybe London, etc. I'm not sure I'd expect a Tech Recession yet, but there are omens of a much wider recession which may well include tech.

pm90 4y ago
My opinion here is that tech companies are generally a lot more data driven and quicker to move. So I see these layoffs as them taking the possibility of a recession seriously and being well prepared for it when it does happen. This kind of graceful termination is preferable to sudden, forced changes caused by external events, such as a stock market crash or a company going under (e.g. Lehman going under in 2008).