The Economist says that the layed-off workers were bloat: "So far techies themselves have been mostly spared, observes Tim Herbert of the Computing Technology

The Economist says that the layed-off workers were bloat: "So far techies themselves have been mostly spared, observes Tim Herbert of the Computing Technology Industry Association, a trade body. Instead, the axe has fallen mainly on business functions such as sales and recruitment. These had grown steadily as a share of technology-industry employment in recent years, a telltale sign of bloat." https://www.economist.com/business/2023/03/27/where-have-all-the-laid-off-tech-workers-gone https://www.economist.com/business/2023/03/27/where-have-all... The reality is that noone knows whether there's going to be normal growth, stagnation, or a recession, but one thing is for sure: The tech boom of the pandemic has ended along with the pandemic. So these companies don't have proprietary magic insights and can reliably forecast a recession (as was your question), they're simply responding to the end of the boom and rising interest rates.