It's both. Profitable companies mostly did performative layoffs (they sacrificed some of their employees to appease the gods of wall street), whereas for lots o

It's both. Profitable companies mostly did performative layoffs (they sacrificed some of their employees to appease the gods of wall street), whereas for lots of money losing startups, they should never have hired as many people in the first place. Unless the startup has incredible PMF (and sometimes even then), they won't be hiring at least till mid next year, as lots of them need time to grow into their valuations. Also, the ridiculous AI stock price boom of this year has left the profitable companies (MAGMA) with no need to reduce headcount to juice their income statements.