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I think you're arguing against a strawman. Nobody says layoffs are stupid because they're not a very "nice" thing to do. They say so because the statement "it's

I think you're arguing against a strawman. Nobody says layoffs are stupid because they're not a very "nice" thing to do. They say so because the statement "it's a company trying to maximize value" is contentious. The long term objective of a company is not to save as much money as possible. It's to spend money toward endeavors that generate more money. If the layoff is because of an efficiency improvement, that's justified - like a factory replacing labor with newer cheaper robots. However, that's not what the tech layoffs were about. Tech companies are basically saying we want to do less work. It's not an efficiency improvement, it's a downsizing of their business activities, and it's not clear-cut whether that's a good business strategy for companies that are wildly profitable and growing.

anthonypasq 3y ago
a company can have multiple products that are at different stages in the business cycle. If Microsoft never did layoffs in their entire history they would still have a dev team working on Zunes, and 95% of the company would be working on desktop windows
- rezistik 3y ago
  Could they have moved the Zune team to the Xbox team or Surface team, the windows teams to azure or Xbox, etc?
- MathMonkeyMan 3y ago
  I would buy a Zune if they were still developing them. Zune and Windows Phone were excellent products.
jeffreyrogers 3y ago
Most of the tech companies generate their revenue from their core businesses. For Google it's ~80% from ads, and probably even more of their profit comes from Ads. The history of companies being able to generate abnormal profits in other business lines is not favorable overall. I think experimenting and trying to find new sources of revenue makes sense, but the flip side of that is you have to kill those projects if they aren't going to pan out. It makes sense to shutdown even profitable businesses (or sell them) if you can make more by reinvesting in your core business.
- roncesvalles 3y ago
  It's naïve to think that frequent layoffs at the periphery of their business (itself not true - there were layoffs in Ads, Search and other similar "core businesses") won't affect their core business. Google loses a bit of its brand value every time it does a big public layoff. At some point, the Google brand will be most associated with the word layoff and nothing else. It affects morale for existing employees and makes the whole company culture just a little more selfish and paranoid. Associating your company with unhappiness and strife does not come without a cost.

anthonypasq 3y ago

a company can have multiple products that are at different stages in the business cycle. If Microsoft never did layoffs in their entire history they would still have a dev team working on Zunes, and 95% of the company would be working on desktop windows

rezistik 3y ago
Could they have moved the Zune team to the Xbox team or Surface team, the windows teams to azure or Xbox, etc?
MathMonkeyMan 3y ago
I would buy a Zune if they were still developing them. Zune and Windows Phone were excellent products.

jeffreyrogers 3y ago

Most of the tech companies generate their revenue from their core businesses. For Google it's ~80% from ads, and probably even more of their profit comes from Ads. The history of companies being able to generate abnormal profits in other business lines is not favorable overall. I think experimenting and trying to find new sources of revenue makes sense, but the flip side of that is you have to kill those projects if they aren't going to pan out. It makes sense to shutdown even profitable businesses (or sell them) if you can make more by reinvesting in your core business.

roncesvalles 3y ago
It's naïve to think that frequent layoffs at the periphery of their business (itself not true - there were layoffs in Ads, Search and other similar "core businesses") won't affect their core business. Google loses a bit of its brand value every time it does a big public layoff. At some point, the Google brand will be most associated with the word layoff and nothing else. It affects morale for existing employees and makes the whole company culture just a little more selfish and paranoid. Associating your company with unhappiness and strife does not come without a cost.