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I’m with you, though with a fraction less pessimism. I’m not buying into the collusion to compress wages or unchecked hiring that is becoming exposed theories.

I’m with you, though with a fraction less pessimism. I’m not buying into the collusion to compress wages or unchecked hiring that is becoming exposed theories. These a companies with globe spanning businesses the touch much of the world every single day (I’d put Stripe in this bucket too). They’ve got much greater and earlier visibility into the state of the broader economy long before governments do. Why don’t we assume they’re a leading indicator of things to come? Why do these moves apparently only make sense when everyone else has finally come to the same conclusion? The silver linings for me so far has been that a) for many of the bigger companies the reduction is only bringing them back to their pre-pandemic levels of still very huge companies and b) the open lists of laid off people some of these companies have produced at first glance seem to skew very heavy towards recruiters/HR and marketing. Which makes sense if you’re not expecting much growth over the next year.

hhlevnjak2 4y ago
Even if you don't know the economy will slow down, the uncertainty alone will still make companies extra careful. Where a lot of IT budgets were only guidelines, they are becoming rules now. Layoffs send a message internally and externally about it. Any reasonably sized company will have people who aren't really contributing anything, this is just an opportune moment to cut some of them and avoid the backlash since "everyone else is doing it".
tryagainynot 4y ago
> I’m not buying into the collusion to compress wages or unchecked hiring that is becoming exposed theories. Why not? Every FAANG company has been accused of colluding with each other to suppress (not compress) wages. https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/apple-google-others-settle-anti-poaching-lawsuit-for-415-million/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/apple-google-others-... They have literally been tried, and admitted guilt, for doing exactly this.
md_ 4y ago
> These a companies with globe spanning businesses the touch much of the world every single day (I’d put Stripe in this bucket too). They’ve got much greater and earlier visibility into the state of the broader economy long before governments do. If that were true, I'd expect them to have hugely profitable proprietary trading desks, which does not seem to be the case?

hhlevnjak2 4y ago

Even if you don't know the economy will slow down, the uncertainty alone will still make companies extra careful. Where a lot of IT budgets were only guidelines, they are becoming rules now. Layoffs send a message internally and externally about it. Any reasonably sized company will have people who aren't really contributing anything, this is just an opportune moment to cut some of them and avoid the backlash since "everyone else is doing it".

tryagainynot 4y ago

> I’m not buying into the collusion to compress wages or unchecked hiring that is becoming exposed theories. Why not? Every FAANG company has been accused of colluding with each other to suppress (not compress) wages. https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/apple-google-others-settle-anti-poaching-lawsuit-for-415-million/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/apple-google-others-... They have literally been tried, and admitted guilt, for doing exactly this.

md_ 4y ago

> These a companies with globe spanning businesses the touch much of the world every single day (I’d put Stripe in this bucket too). They’ve got much greater and earlier visibility into the state of the broader economy long before governments do. If that were true, I'd expect them to have hugely profitable proprietary trading desks, which does not seem to be the case?