6 ms·

Have you not seen the coordinated layoffs in tech the last 1.5 years? How is that not collective bargaining against tech talent? They all used every excuse the

by ath3nd 3y ago

Have you not seen the coordinated layoffs in tech the last 1.5 years? How is that not collective bargaining against tech talent? They all used every excuse they have: overhiring, wars, inflation (which they partially helped create) to flood the market TOGETHER, thereby reducing the price of our labor. All while racking in record profits. All that perfectly legal, all that a form of them collectively bargaining to lower our labor value.

pc86 3y ago
Seeing layoffs as a coordinated effort by companies to reduce labor value across the entire industry is so incredibly disconnected from reality I'm not even sure it's worth responding to.
- taurath 3y ago
  It doesn’t have to be coordinated. It’s often people’s livelihoods being crushed for the benefit of a few investors.
- ath3nd 3y ago
  I am not sure if it's worth explaining it either if you don't get it straight up, but I will try. I am not hinting at a conspiracy here. I am merely pointing to the fact that when the megacorps saw an opportunity to: - reduce spending by cutting off positions - boost their stagnating stock values - lower the bargaining power of their workers and have an excuse to keep their wages low they immediately, did it, in a uniform fashion, in 3 big waves in the last 1.5 years. That tanked the developer market and boosted their stock. We can only speculate how much it was coordinated, and how much they all saw the same opportunity after the unstable right-wing man-child that is Elon Musk burned Twitter to the ground. While probably nothing that they did was provably illegal, nevertheless, it was at least amoral and had the effect of dramatically cooling the market and stagnating our wages. > reduce labor value across the entire industry is so incredibly disconnected from reality YOU have to be very disconnected from reality to not acknowledge that there are 1000s of things that companies agree behind closed doors that we are just hearing about: - Google having a shady deal with Spotify where Spotify doesn't pay the Google Play store fee: https://www.pcmag.com/news/spotify-doesnt-pay-google-play-store-fees https://www.pcmag.com/news/spotify-doesnt-pay-google-play-st... - Or that Google is paying Apple 36% search revenue to stay the default search engine in Safari so it can keep (and exploit) its dominant position in search: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/14/google-pays-apple-36percent-of-safari-search-revenue-sundar-pichai.html https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/14/google-pays-apple-36percent-... - Or Apple's deal with Amazon to get cleaner Amazon listing pages: https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/10/23955934/apple-amazon-deal-search-product-pages-ads https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/10/23955934/apple-amazon-de... So what makes you think that they didn't have some friendly chats over the pesky tech workers, or "laptop class" as Elon so lovingly calls us. Somebody gotta put those ingrates back to their place, no? While you might be happy to accept being downtrodden by your corporate overlords, and worship the psychotic man-children that Musk, Bezos, Branson and Zuck are, in other countries we don't want to become like the US. A country where capitalism rages unchecked and throws workers rights, nature, and eventually the world under the bus in a never ending chase for growth is not how we want for us.
stale2002 3y ago
> How is that not collective bargaining against tech talent? Well you see, there are these things called interest rates which effect the cost of borrowing. And when those interest rates go up massively, like they did, this causes a completely predictable effect of it being more expensive to borrow and spend money. And this has economy wide effects, that are what bog standard macro economics predicts.
- ath3nd 3y ago
  You know who caused raised the raised interest rates? The same megacorps that borrowed and overhired like insane during the pandemic to boost their stock price, now scream bloody hell and cut major portion of the people they just hired during the pandemic. That also boosted their stock price.Oh, and it allowed them to crank up their pricing models to the max, again boosting their stock price. I'd argue that it's the megacorps and their greed that are the major cause of the inflation that we experience recently worldwide. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/sep/25/inflation-price-controls-robert-reich https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/sep/25/inflat... And please, stop using "macroeconomic factors" as an excuse for bad management (who made them overhire during the pandemic), greed, and lack of vision. When a CEO makes 300 times the salary of their median employee (https://www.wsj.com/business/auto-ceos-make-about-300-times-what-their-median-worker-is-paid-heres-how-that-stacks-up-cefc9a5 https://www.wsj.com/business/auto-ceos-make-about-300-times-...), the best way for the company to save money is to fire their C-suite for the "leadership" that brought it to be influenced by "bad economic headwinds" in the first place. Stop defending corporations, what they do is inexcusable, amoral, and probably, some day, and with some scrutiny, illegal.
  - stale2002 3y ago
    > You know who caused raised the raised interest rates? Oh yeah. That would be the organization that is in charge of deciding what the rates are. Which would be the federal reserve. They quite literally decide what the rate is. > "macroeconomic factors" Do you not know how interest rates and borrowing costs work? It's pretty standard econ 101 stuff, about how interest rates effect the economy and effect hiring and firing rates. You can read it in an economics textbook. Here, it is pretty standard stuff: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillips_curve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillips_curve Its called the Phillips curve.

by ath3nd 3y ago

pc86 3y ago

Seeing layoffs as a coordinated effort by companies to reduce labor value across the entire industry is so incredibly disconnected from reality I'm not even sure it's worth responding to.

taurath 3y ago
It doesn’t have to be coordinated. It’s often people’s livelihoods being crushed for the benefit of a few investors.
ath3nd 3y ago
I am not sure if it's worth explaining it either if you don't get it straight up, but I will try. I am not hinting at a conspiracy here. I am merely pointing to the fact that when the megacorps saw an opportunity to: - reduce spending by cutting off positions - boost their stagnating stock values - lower the bargaining power of their workers and have an excuse to keep their wages low they immediately, did it, in a uniform fashion, in 3 big waves in the last 1.5 years. That tanked the developer market and boosted their stock. We can only speculate how much it was coordinated, and how much they all saw the same opportunity after the unstable right-wing man-child that is Elon Musk burned Twitter to the ground. While probably nothing that they did was provably illegal, nevertheless, it was at least amoral and had the effect of dramatically cooling the market and stagnating our wages. > reduce labor value across the entire industry is so incredibly disconnected from reality YOU have to be very disconnected from reality to not acknowledge that there are 1000s of things that companies agree behind closed doors that we are just hearing about: - Google having a shady deal with Spotify where Spotify doesn't pay the Google Play store fee: https://www.pcmag.com/news/spotify-doesnt-pay-google-play-store-fees https://www.pcmag.com/news/spotify-doesnt-pay-google-play-st... - Or that Google is paying Apple 36% search revenue to stay the default search engine in Safari so it can keep (and exploit) its dominant position in search: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/14/google-pays-apple-36percent-of-safari-search-revenue-sundar-pichai.html https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/14/google-pays-apple-36percent-... - Or Apple's deal with Amazon to get cleaner Amazon listing pages: https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/10/23955934/apple-amazon-deal-search-product-pages-ads https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/10/23955934/apple-amazon-de... So what makes you think that they didn't have some friendly chats over the pesky tech workers, or "laptop class" as Elon so lovingly calls us. Somebody gotta put those ingrates back to their place, no? While you might be happy to accept being downtrodden by your corporate overlords, and worship the psychotic man-children that Musk, Bezos, Branson and Zuck are, in other countries we don't want to become like the US. A country where capitalism rages unchecked and throws workers rights, nature, and eventually the world under the bus in a never ending chase for growth is not how we want for us.

stale2002 3y ago

> How is that not collective bargaining against tech talent? Well you see, there are these things called interest rates which effect the cost of borrowing. And when those interest rates go up massively, like they did, this causes a completely predictable effect of it being more expensive to borrow and spend money. And this has economy wide effects, that are what bog standard macro economics predicts.

ath3nd 3y ago
You know who caused raised the raised interest rates? The same megacorps that borrowed and overhired like insane during the pandemic to boost their stock price, now scream bloody hell and cut major portion of the people they just hired during the pandemic. That also boosted their stock price.Oh, and it allowed them to crank up their pricing models to the max, again boosting their stock price. I'd argue that it's the megacorps and their greed that are the major cause of the inflation that we experience recently worldwide. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/sep/25/inflation-price-controls-robert-reich https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/sep/25/inflat... And please, stop using "macroeconomic factors" as an excuse for bad management (who made them overhire during the pandemic), greed, and lack of vision. When a CEO makes 300 times the salary of their median employee (https://www.wsj.com/business/auto-ceos-make-about-300-times-what-their-median-worker-is-paid-heres-how-that-stacks-up-cefc9a5 https://www.wsj.com/business/auto-ceos-make-about-300-times-...), the best way for the company to save money is to fire their C-suite for the "leadership" that brought it to be influenced by "bad economic headwinds" in the first place. Stop defending corporations, what they do is inexcusable, amoral, and probably, some day, and with some scrutiny, illegal.
- stale2002 3y ago
  > You know who caused raised the raised interest rates? Oh yeah. That would be the organization that is in charge of deciding what the rates are. Which would be the federal reserve. They quite literally decide what the rate is. > "macroeconomic factors" Do you not know how interest rates and borrowing costs work? It's pretty standard econ 101 stuff, about how interest rates effect the economy and effect hiring and firing rates. You can read it in an economics textbook. Here, it is pretty standard stuff: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillips_curve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillips_curve Its called the Phillips curve.