>the recent wave of startup layoffs seems largely driven by companies bracing for a potential economic downturn and using their own customer data to anticipate

>the recent wave of startup layoffs seems largely driven by companies bracing for a potential economic downturn and using their own customer data to anticipate seriously bleak scenarios It's not just startups though. It's big tech. It's financial services. It's big and small non-tech non-financial companies as well. Everyone has been predicting a recession for well over a year now. We're living in a very unusual economic situation where some parts of the economy are getting crushed and others are doing fine. No one knows the answer to your question, but yes, one possible answer is that this is just the early phase of the downturn and it's just taking longer than usual to move to the next phase.