For big tech it's 100% about managing cashflows to keep investors happy. While big tech companies can technically afford to over hire they are seeing slowing g

For big tech it's 100% about managing cashflows to keep investors happy. While big tech companies can technically afford to over hire they are seeing slowing growth and a hit to their margins which investors have not and will not view favourably if unaddressed - just take a look at Facebook (META)'s stock. With the exception of Apple the big tech companies make most of their money from ads and cloud services. A lot of those ad dollars come from smaller business who are now struggling with higher rates and higher costs. Equally cloud services is taking a hit with many of the smaller tech companies who use their services cutting back in light of higher costs of capital and declining market valuations. While they might all have the cash to weather the storm, why would they when they can just cut some of the fat? I don't like seeing these layoff announcements, but I think if we're honest companies like Facebook and Google have been over hiring for years and have accumulated teams and employees who aren't adding much productive value. Twitter probably isn't the exception in tech. I'd guess most tech companies could cut 50% of their workforce without much of an impact. And even in the average software development team I'd guess that 20% of the workers are contributing 50% of the value. If there's no incentive to keep these people around anymore, why would they?