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I don't know how this has gone over everyone's heads here, because what's happening is extremely obvious. If you're a big FAANG-like company, you've seen worke

I don't know how this has gone over everyone's heads here, because what's happening is extremely obvious. If you're a big FAANG-like company, you've seen workers make big gains in wages over the past year, and turnover rates have been increasing significantly during the great resignation. This isn't enough to sink you, but you don't like it, because it does eat into your margins a little. Of course you're still making massive profits, but workers getting any measure of power scares you. Imagine if this trend continues? Workers are only getting harder to find! So what do you do? You can't walk up to all your CEO friends and say "Hey how can we go about paying everyone less? What if we all agree to lay off our expensive people at the same time? That way, we'll have a massive pool of workers to hire from that are all looking for jobs, and since they'll all be scared from having been laid off they'll happily take pay cuts. Additionally, it'll scare the hell out of the rest of the employees to see all their friends get blown up with no warning right in front of them. They'll want desperately to keep the jobs they have and won't leave!" You can't say that because coordinated wage suppression is highly illegal (remember Apple and Google?). But wink/nod based wage suppression? Totally fine! If everyone just happens to fire their expensive workers at the same time but leaves no record of getting anyone to agree to it, it's perfectly allowed. This is not "copycat" behavior. This is all the CEOs recognizing what the game is and cashing in on it. And better yet, there's nothing the tech workers can do about it! There are no real tech worker unions to speak of, and these companies know their workers have a highly libertarian bent who believe in the meritocracy myth, so there's no real risk of unionization no matter how bad things get. It's a pure win for them, with no real downsides, and the general consensus is that if they're smart they'll do this every so often to bring workers to heel. And given the pervasive attitudes about labor that I see among tech workers I don't see any reason to think that's wrong.

aerotwelve 4y ago
Indeed. I remain shocked at how many people who work in this industry are still making excuses for the companies that are performing these completely unnecessary layoffs. (They'll never be laid off of course, of course – only the other people who are old and bad at their jobs.)
charcircuit 4y ago
These companies overhired and now they are realizing that the positive cash flow to justify all of these new employees isn't existing. None of these layoffs are focused on laying off their most expensive people. The severance packages have been very good meaning that the laid off employees have a long time to find another well paying job.
- hashmap 4y ago
  > These companies overhired and now they are realizing that the positive cash flow to justify all of these new employees isn't existing. This is false in a broad sense - the majority of CEOs plan to increase headcount this year in spite of layoffs. You can find examples here and there where it is true, but in general it is not. There's tons of literature of this readily available, but here is an example from as recently as yesterday: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ceo-outlook-report-optimism-returns-130000730.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ceo-outlook-report-optimism-r... > None of these layoffs are focused on laying off their most expensive people. The people you see laid off tend to be newly hired at higher recent market rates or people who have been there a very long time, both of whom are either expensive in a relative sense or an absolute one. But even that is besides the point. Even if you fire randomly you still see this benefit if you're a CEO.
  - charcircuit 4y ago
    >the majority of CEOs plan to increase headcount this year in spite of layoffs. This just means that companies are continuing to hirer. It doesn't mean that they plan on increasing headcount to above where it was before the layoff.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - hashmap 4y ago
      It's so weird to post the first thing that feels like a thought, just to carry water for CEOs who are never going to see you write this, and will never like you, without getting paid for it. 1300s feudal serfdom mindset. And it's everywhere. If you're continuing to hire past these layoffs, and expanding plans to do so, it's to take advantage of the environment created by the layoffs. If there really was a fiscal crisis you'd also see mass hiring freezes, but we're not seeing that. > “We expect to end 2023 as either roughly the same size or even a slightly smaller organization than we are today,” said Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/41-of-companies-plan-to-increase-their-hiring-work-tech-spend-47-in-2023-301718572.html https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/41-of-companies-pla...
PoignardAzur 4y ago
I don't really see it. Gitlab isn't a Google-style megacorporation; its CEO is co-founder, and it still has a reputation for having fairly horizontal management. The idea that its execs just decided to lay off a bunch of people for no reason just to wage some plausibly deniable class warfare doesn't really make sense to me.
- hashmap 4y ago
  I dunno, maybe look at more than one company doing layoffs and think about whether the group as a whole is in dire fiscal straits, whether they're continuing to hire through the layoffs, and who the winners and losers will be through the whole ordeal. Those details are elsewhere on the thread and are easily googleable if you have a real interest. If you have a hard time believing capitalists wouldn't literally do capitalism when they see a chance for it, I don't know what I can tell you really. "I don't really see it" is a pretty... well it's something, that's for sure.

aerotwelve 4y ago

Indeed. I remain shocked at how many people who work in this industry are still making excuses for the companies that are performing these completely unnecessary layoffs. (They'll never be laid off of course, of course – only the other people who are old and bad at their jobs.)

charcircuit 4y ago

These companies overhired and now they are realizing that the positive cash flow to justify all of these new employees isn't existing. None of these layoffs are focused on laying off their most expensive people. The severance packages have been very good meaning that the laid off employees have a long time to find another well paying job.

hashmap 4y ago
> These companies overhired and now they are realizing that the positive cash flow to justify all of these new employees isn't existing. This is false in a broad sense - the majority of CEOs plan to increase headcount this year in spite of layoffs. You can find examples here and there where it is true, but in general it is not. There's tons of literature of this readily available, but here is an example from as recently as yesterday: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ceo-outlook-report-optimism-returns-130000730.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ceo-outlook-report-optimism-r... > None of these layoffs are focused on laying off their most expensive people. The people you see laid off tend to be newly hired at higher recent market rates or people who have been there a very long time, both of whom are either expensive in a relative sense or an absolute one. But even that is besides the point. Even if you fire randomly you still see this benefit if you're a CEO.
- charcircuit 4y ago
  >the majority of CEOs plan to increase headcount this year in spite of layoffs. This just means that companies are continuing to hirer. It doesn't mean that they plan on increasing headcount to above where it was before the layoff.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - hashmap 4y ago
    It's so weird to post the first thing that feels like a thought, just to carry water for CEOs who are never going to see you write this, and will never like you, without getting paid for it. 1300s feudal serfdom mindset. And it's everywhere. If you're continuing to hire past these layoffs, and expanding plans to do so, it's to take advantage of the environment created by the layoffs. If there really was a fiscal crisis you'd also see mass hiring freezes, but we're not seeing that. > “We expect to end 2023 as either roughly the same size or even a slightly smaller organization than we are today,” said Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/41-of-companies-plan-to-increase-their-hiring-work-tech-spend-47-in-2023-301718572.html https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/41-of-companies-pla...

PoignardAzur 4y ago

I don't really see it. Gitlab isn't a Google-style megacorporation; its CEO is co-founder, and it still has a reputation for having fairly horizontal management. The idea that its execs just decided to lay off a bunch of people for no reason just to wage some plausibly deniable class warfare doesn't really make sense to me.

hashmap 4y ago
I dunno, maybe look at more than one company doing layoffs and think about whether the group as a whole is in dire fiscal straits, whether they're continuing to hire through the layoffs, and who the winners and losers will be through the whole ordeal. Those details are elsewhere on the thread and are easily googleable if you have a real interest. If you have a hard time believing capitalists wouldn't literally do capitalism when they see a chance for it, I don't know what I can tell you really. "I don't really see it" is a pretty... well it's something, that's for sure.