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Ask HN: What is the current driver of tech layoffs?

• SergeAx 3y ago
  All big companies are rusty and covered with cruft. Twitter showed that you may lay off 75% of the workforce and still run your business at scale relatively smoothly. It is a great temptation to follow the suite.
• ksjskskskkk 3y ago
  obviously a steve-jobs-like backroom deal like the one from 2005 having most companies agreeing on doing it at the same time "with no quick hires backsies".
  • ksjskskskkk 3y ago
    this comment jumped from 10 points to -10 points all over 5 day. why people get offended by this fact of the industry?
• anoxor 3y ago
  The majority of wall street has accepted that there will be a recession, and interest rates are triple what they were a few years ago.
  • vidro3 3y ago
    They've been saying "rescession soon" for 2 years. Wasn't gdp growth like 5% last quarter? Doesn't indicate a recession to me.
• dayeye2006 3y ago
  Little impact on the revenue side while cost can be cut significantly. Many companies have proved it to be useful and their stock prices soar. Why don't we try it
• rogerthis 3y ago
  I've seen these answers: - excess hiring during the pandemic; - interest rates raised; - salaries too high; - cut in remote work (to ease return to office later); - some weird thing coming; - AI; (I could replace all those semi-colons with question marks.) (Edit: formatting)
  • akmarinov 3y ago
    What’s the weird thing?
    • mooreds 3y ago
      The recession we've been expecting for the past year?
  • jdksmdbtbdnmsm 3y ago
    would love to hear more about the weird thing coming
  • Ancalagon 3y ago
    Add section 174
• howeyc 3y ago
  Even though the annual government deficit is almost 7% of GDP, essentially injecting stimulus into the economy, wall st analysts are convinced high interest rates will cause a recession. CEOs have responded by slashing forecasts and employees to appease wall st.
• cogman10 3y ago
  SVB bankruptcy is part of it. A lot of free money dried up. But also, it's an "everyone else is doing it" thing. Saturate the market with unemployed devs and you can reasonably tell your employees "Sorry, no budget for raises".
• GiorgioG 3y ago
  Everyone else is doin' it. Simple as that.
• fzzzy 3y ago
  I think you are referring to Section 174. Seems plausible to me.
• tolkienfanatic 3y ago
  Companies over hired (and remotely) when money was free, and now it isn't. The end.
• CharlieDigital 3y ago
  I think a lot of the revenue generating products for these companies are at a very stable, low-growth point. There's just not a ton of innovation happening outside of AI and LLMs at the moment, IMO. If a company foresees all of the future revenue being aligned in one direction -- whether it will work out that way or not -- then why not re-align and focus on that direction (AI, LLMs)?
• nine_zeros 3y ago
  Over hiring aka poor planning in the last few years. Riding interest rates causing investors to demand more stock returns or they will seek returns in treasuries. In free money era, companies created too many processes and incentive structures that are wasteful. These processes are too expensive when money is expensive. E.g. too many managers whose time is filled with calibration, stack ranking, agile processes instead of true engineering and product leadership. Ultimately, growth cannot be endless and current crop of companies are not set up for difficult times.
• asciimov 3y ago
  This is the bust side of the hiring frenzy of the past few years. Borrowing money isn't as cheap as it was, and investors get a better bang for their buck by letting it sit and earn interest. Many companies over-hired and now are trying to lean up to balance their books. With some betting if they over-fire they can hire new talent at a lower rate.
• Apreche 3y ago
  The same thing that always drives layoffs. You are a company. The system we have demands growth. Even very stable and reliable profits are seen as failure. There must be growth. The people who run a company can not press a magic button to increase revenues. They can't just pull a successful new project out of nowhere. Anything like that is going to be a risk, and will probably fail. It will also take time. The one thing they can always do is cut costs. Projects can be cancelled. Divisions can be sold off. The biggest cost at most companies is labor, and labor can be let go. When someone controls a company, they own a lot of shares in that company. Their bosses are all shareholders who only care that the stock price goes up. Nothing the company is doing is generating huge new revenue streams. Time for layoffs. And when some people do layoffs, everyone does them. They're all subject to the same market pressures in the same industry. One company doing them gives all the other companies in the sector permission to do likewise. If a company doesn't follow suit the market might even start to question why. You may have seen some news that Microsoft passed Apple briefly in terms of most valuable company on Earth. You may have also noticed that Apple is much more restrained in its layoffs than the others. Not doing as many layoffs, not doing as well in the market. These things are not unrelated.
  • monero-xmr 3y ago
    There isn’t anything in life that’s “stable”. Not one single thing. Even rocks on the ground erode. Because of inflation, stable is actually shrinking. If you raise prices perfectly in lock step with inflation, trends and tastes of your customers still change, necessitating innovation if only to maintain the exact same level. In reality, you have to grow to ensure when the ground shifts from under you, there is still some buffer. Growth is insurance against an ever changing, unpredictable world. The people who think things never change are people without imagination. They want safety and security, but that is an illusion.
  • Solvency 3y ago
    "You are a company. The system we have demands growth. Even very stable and reliable profits are seen as failure. There must be growth." But take a software company like McNeel. They make a popular but extremely niche market product called https://www.rhino3d.com https://www.rhino3d.com. They've been around for decades. They have extremely low turnover. Many developers have worked there since the beginning. They are used around the globe by architects, product designers, industrial designers, etc. What are they doing right? Why/how do so many others get it wrong? Are humble software companies like this unicorns? Why?
• forward1 3y ago
  The past ten years of tech have been subsidized with low interest rates, i.e. free money. That is now gone and companies must tighten belts. There really is no greater mystery here.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • allturtles 3y ago
    AFAICT from recent quarterly reports, the big tech companies are still seeing double-digit YoY growth in profits and revenues. So from whence comes the pressure to tighten belts?
    • akmarinov 3y ago
      Those double digits are getting to be single digits
  • oceanplexian 3y ago
    It wasn’t free money, it was COVID. We had low rates and low inflation for years before 2020. Remember when the government used emergency powers and forced the economy to shut down over health mandates? Remember the thousands of dollars in checks the government mailed to every person or business with a pulse? That whole operation completely distorted and screwed up the economy. It boosted tech companies with unnatural growth. It boosted real estate prices. It increased the cost of grocery staples. The market reacted in the rebound, the Fed reacted to the market, and we are playing out the effects of the bad decisions made in 2020.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• megaserg 3y ago
  Gergely Orosz's theory[1]: > An IRS tax code change in Section 174. This change eliminates the ability for businesses to deduct R&D as an expense. > Hear of lots of layoffs directly because of this, as a start. [1] https://twitter.com/GergelyOrosz/status/1735030983173230944?lang=en https://twitter.com/GergelyOrosz/status/1735030983173230944?...
  • smiths1999 3y ago
    I don't follow. Aren't employee salaries a deductible expense? The above makes me think more along the lines of no longer being able to deduct GPU costs incurred from deep learning research.
    • fritzo 3y ago
      IIUC, whereas previously companies could deduct salaries in year Y from revenue in that same year Y, now section 174 allows deduction of only 1/5 of those salaries in each of the 5 years [Y,Y+1,Y+2,Y+3,Y+4].
      • adamzochowski 3y ago
        This is for specific R&D costs, like doing something patentable. Most developers are not doing R&D. Most developers are fixing bugs, helping sales, keeping systems online, keeping up to date on patches, performing security scans, complying to some internal policies.
        • intunderflow 3y ago
          No it's not. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26/174 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26/174 > (3)Software development For purposes of this section, any amount paid or incurred in connection with the development of any software shall be treated as a research or experimental expenditure.
      • idkyall 3y ago
        After 5 years of this law being in effect, will the numbers balance back out to pre section 174? That is, does that deduction from year Y carry over into year Y+1, Y+2, etc.? I mean, this probably still matters a lot for startups given their shorter lifetimes, but it seems any large company(I'm thinking of, e.g. Apple, who has plenty of cash on hand) that's been around for a while could just wait it out? I am not familiar with corporate tax law and how deals are structured, but could you also defer revenue in the same way to offset(e.g. customers with a 5 year contract paying progressively more but keeping the same total $ amount to sync with your deductions)?
• leetharris 3y ago
  This is going to be a controversial opinion. The quality of your average tech worker has completely nosedived in the last 10-15 years. All these huge companies wanted more products, more marketshare, more money, etc. They needed more people to pull this off. They started lowering hiring standards across the board because there just weren't enough people in tech. Simultaneously, a huge portion of the world saw tech salaries and wanted in on it so they started taking every quick certification, bootcamp, degree, etc to get into tech. It turns out that compared to the dedicated nerds of the previous generation, most new people just don't care that much about tech and don't want to go deeper than the bare minimum required by their job. So I think tech overhired by a LOT, then they realized all these new people are actually net negatives on the company, and we are slowly correcting. I think a solid 50% of people in tech are still on the chopping block. You can do much more with tools + really smart people in the year 2024 than you could before.
  • Freedom2 3y ago
    The proliferation of LeetCode for interviews means that we have an army of employed software engineers who are great at solving toy puzzles, but when it comes to actual business and / or customer problems, they stumble and falter. Management only have themselves to blame for spreading this kind of culture of interviewing around.
  • pi-e-sigma 3y ago
    Even if we assume that what you think is true then it is still solely the companies' fault. Because if the prospective employees are so shit why would you hire them in the first place?
    • srverma 3y ago
      I feel like assigning blame is neither here nor there. Leaders in these companies often look at what other companies are doing, and follow suite. There's an argument that Elon laying off 80% of twitter is another catalyst - so why companies not follow? Ultimately, if hiring managers offered these roles because work was needed but no longer is, would you blame them for adjusting their approach?
• anonymouse008 3y ago
  [Pulling from another thread, but this is my best guesstimate. With additional context] The rules of the game have changed. > We were allowed to expense all employee compensation tied to software or R&D in the year in which we paid it. Now we can only expense a small fraction of that because we have to capitalize the expense. That means if you paid and developer $100 to develop a piece of software then sold subscriptions totaling $100 you now have a profit. The old model you have zero dollars in profit the new model says you have something like $80 in profit that you know have to pay taxes on… with what cash? Additional "finger in the wind context": this change was brought about through the Trump Tax Cuts. My best guess is that Trump wanted the 174 change as a negotiation token to prod tech to make a deal. Mind you and me, this was all pre-pandemic. The financial world was pretty stable and this was going to be a 'great way' to make people work together, if desired. After the pandemic financial response, all bets were off. Soloprenuers are the only one's somewhat immune. I'm thankful my companies needed to downsize before this. Final context, there will be a whole new industry to define the useful life for a piece of software given the advancements in AI. This is going to be great fun. [edit] One more thing, this change was thought to be “repeal-able” with new legislation. Since it no longer looks to be the case, to avoid “everything is securities fraud” (Matt Levine term), everyone has to adjust their public statements and accounting for this new change. Sure many of the big players will still make profit, but analysts only care about “beats and misses.” And since the legislation hasn’t passed to put the old rules back in place, accounting has to make these forecasts more permanent with less wiggle room - aka misses and forecasts down. Now, there is a huge op to trade the rules changing back - which would be a huge tailwind (made headcount cuts and get favorable tax treatment)
  • opt1c 3y ago
    The section 174 changes were never intended to go into effect and are a byproduct of the bill review process by deficit hawks. A group in the House has called for changes but a bill hasn't made it out of committee yet.
  • rthkljlkrj 3y ago
    Counterpoint: This doesn't apply to Google, because Google has _always_ amortized their developer comp, but Google still layed off a thousand people. So, maybe this is just an excuse?
• kokoe 3y ago
  Greed
• username135 3y ago
  Capitalism bby! It probably a combination of interest rate risk, post covid sorting, greed.
• rickydroll 3y ago
  why? this is why (kinda). https://www.axios.com/2024/01/10/wealthy-own-record-share-stock-market https://www.axios.com/2024/01/10/wealthy-own-record-share-st... The financial beast demanding growth feeds on increasing gains in the value of stocks and other financial instruments. One of the easier ways to fake growth is layoffs. Your 401(k) is part of that beast, and your investments in stocks, etc., contribute to the system that drives layoffs.
• bmitc 3y ago
  Venture capitalism, late stage capitalism, and just gross incompetence and lack of empathy. The U.S. is all about me, myself, and I, and these layoffs are just one result of those at the top keeping it the way they like it. Another driver is that workers' rights suck in the U.S. So now employees are just back to the first industrial revolution: they are just bodies and line items on spreadsheets. They are not people or assets.
• dgeiser13 3y ago
  Goosing the stock price and/or value of the company.
• houseatrielah 3y ago
  If interest rates are 5%; entrepeneurs must shoot for 20% annual returns to compensate for risk and get funding. If interest rates are 0% the bar is far lower.
• wolverine876 3y ago
  I suspect there is something political going on, concentrating power, and disdaining the value of individuals, compassion, and responsibility to build a better world (obviously, not any company's only considerations, but a balance -and now those considerations seem at an all-time low IMHO). In other contexts, the same movement disdains the rights, freedom, and lives of other people generally. Or that could be a bunch of BS; it's hard to establish objectively. It seems so important, that cultural change, that I think it's worth talking about (and maybe someone else has a more objective, factual way to talk abou it).
• xnx 3y ago
  Programmer productivity is really hard to measure, so managers will act in their own interest and push for larger teams. The shift to digital due to COVID provided the excuse. Low interest rates provided the means. Eventually external factors force a reevaluation/correction.
• htss2013 3y ago
  Interest rates went up and now profitability matters. Tech companies' biggest expense is employees, so it's the lowest hanging fruit to generate higher profits. It's really that simple.
• Shish2k 3y ago
  A lawyer commenting on the game industry (which is largely copying the Silicon Valley business model) has an excellent explanation of these cycles, and why it is that the industry is simultaneously reporting record profits and mass layoffs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-653Z1val8s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-653Z1val8s tl;dw (in my own words): investors like it when you have extreme hiring during the good times, and they like it when you have extreme cutbacks during the bad times. Investors don’t like slow and steady growth. Interestingly, Nintendo quite firmly rejects the Silicon Valley approach, sticking firmly with the slow & steady - and while the rest of the games industry was doing layoffs, Nintendo gave all their employees 10% raises.
  • ilrwbwrkhv 3y ago
    Even valve is similar. Most of the original counter strike team is still there. But again valve is more efficient than maybe all of FAANG combined.
• lulznews 3y ago
  Gotta juice those mid mgmt salaries somehow - fire the damn code monkeys!
• blurbleblurble 3y ago
  The US Fed monetary policy has everything to do with it. Money is especially valuable right now. As well as the proliferation of new "AI" tools that increase worker productivity by 10x-1000x. Between the Fed tightening demand and the AI tools simultaneously heating up supply (productive output), it's no surprise these layoffs are happening.
  • jacknews 3y ago
    I don't think AI has much to do with it. The fear/expectation of AI, perhaps. But the rest is definitely Fed policy; they specifically said they wanted to cool wages, and I think maybe in cahoots with shareholders - remember that guy bleating about google employees earning $200k+, and that it 'should' be more like $100k if they're lucky and BTW, give the resulting increased profits to us shareholders.
  • gumballindie 3y ago
    > increase worker productivity by 10x-1000x. Huh?
  • climatekid 3y ago
    > increase worker productivity by 10x-1000x. Tell me you're not an engineer without telling me you're not an engineer
    • blurbleblurble 3y ago
      Tell me you're not using LLMs to code without telling me you're not using LLMs to code ¯ \ _ ( ツ ) _ / ¯
      • nsxwolf 3y ago
        No way is anyone getting things delivered 10x faster because of ChatGPT. Software engineering isn't like folding bedsheets in the prison laundry.
        • 3y ago
• SirensOfTitan 3y ago
  Outside of the obvious mentions, including section 174 changes, I think that layoffs have caught on like a contagion and a bunch of mediocre managers and executives are borrowing from an outdated 80s layoff playbook. The reality is that layoffs disconnected from a larger strategy (like discontinuation of a product line) are typically disastrous and highly predictive of underperformance relative to companies that didn’t perform layoffs. What typically happens is companies hire back the folks they let go very quickly with a huge dent in morale long term. The concerning thing at this point is that general layoffs are so in vogue that they’re depressing tech wages. Few executives actually take any real responsibility for their overhiring either, the best you usually get is some generic I’m sorry followed by fat bonuses.
• mixdup 3y ago
  I'm convinced that it's because the recession that has been predicted for the past 3 years has not happened, and now we're in the election year and it must happen. The layoffs will continue until we get the macro outcome we're looking for It's the only explanation for companies that are at all time highs in revenue, profit, and stock value to be laying off double digit percentages of their employees
  • vidro3 3y ago
    Why does an election year indicate a recession? Rather, who precisely wants a recession now, in your opinion?
    • grepfru_it 3y ago
      Jerome Powell
    • mixdup 3y ago
      >Why does an election year indicate a recession? Alone, it doesn't >Rather, who precisely wants a recession now, in your opinion? I don't think you need more than one guess to figure out the average political leaning of most CEOs and Chairs of corporate boards and then combine that with who is the incumbent
• mikewarot 3y ago
  The "free money" is going away, now that the Boomers are all retiring and taking their money out of the stock market. Interest rates are about to rise to 8-10% and stay there for a few decades, if all goes well. This will mark the beginning of an immense era of innovation as all of that talent floods the market and is put to far more productive use.
  • badpun 3y ago
    Innovation, at least in our sector, requires capital investment. Hardly any startup can bootstrap. At high interest rates, and with people retiring and moving their money into safe assets, there will be little appetite to fund startups in the coming years. At least that's the theory that Peter Zeihan is presenting on his youtube channel.
    • mikewarot 3y ago
      Innovation happens in personal projects that eventually get commercialized.
      • badpun 3y ago
        And without commercialization, i.e. without millions to pay people to code and flesh out the actual product, there is little more that a cool PoC.
• iancmceachern 3y ago
  Debt is more expensive. Startups are by definition financed by debt. The barriers to entry, and risk apatite are different now.
  • playcache 3y ago
    Its not startups doing the biggest layoffs, its IPO companies like Google etc.
    • iancmceachern 3y ago
      But those companies still have to "finance" their projects
• curiousbat 3y ago
  [flagged]
• kromem 3y ago
  A multitude of factors. One thing to keep in mind though is that even if AI can't do your job, if it can translate conversations with humans who can buy have a different primary language, and companies have moved to work from home, that's a recipe for jobs going to qualified people elsewhere. So on top of a pendulum swing backwards from overhiring we're seeing accessibility and virtual commuting open the door for many more candidates for a smaller pool of jobs which compounds the effects.
• Uptrenda 3y ago
  I think it all comes down to the fears of investors. At larger companies they have to answer to share holders who are moody, pessimistic, and very bipolar. They will look at a companies revenue, see that its doing well, but still lose sleep over every negative piece of financial news they hear. Then they'll demand costs to be cut. 'd-dont you see the economy...' Next thing you know executives have to do the same thing as every other company to be perceived as competent. Investors love their group think so if you're doing something different during a time like this they're going to lose their shit (even more.) For smaller companies the explanation is probably much simpler: there's less spending on new companies and therefore maximizing 'runaway' is critical. So if its not absolutely essential it needs to be cut. People who don't do that might not survive until things turn around, unfortunately. It's not a great situation to be in.
• tracker1 3y ago
  I think it's a combination of things and will vary by company. For the largest companies, it's likely to some extent to put downward pressure on salaries in the market. For others it can be like the Twitter case were they hired way too many devs for what was needed and that simply makes a bigger communications mess not more productivity. For others still it's outside pressure to become financially stable or income positive with a reduction in investment capital over time. The larger economy, the potential for a more widespread military conflict and a number of other factors taking their toll in different ways. When belts need to tighten, late and expensive projects get cut. There are still jobs out there, but with remote roles in particular, which I'm personally experiencing. Pay scales are all over the map and there are hundreds of applicants to many jobs out there. It sucks to be looking and I imagine it sucks to be hiring as well. The latter because of the shear volumes of applicants to sift through. I will say, I'd rather receive no contact at this point than the boilerplate rejection emails. If there's no substance or advice, it's just a net negative IMO. Used to hate getting dropped. But having to fill out a few dozen applications a day competing against hundreds and seeing the ones where you're less than ideal sucks. I took 4 months off because I needed to get past the burnout. Now it's just hard getting back in.
  • AtlasBarfed 3y ago
    IMO, what has happened is that big tech has realized they are monopolies or cartels, and the ethos of these companies as innovators has fundamentally died. Because Facebook's Metaverse, Google's multiple ventures in self-driving and other alphabet things, etc, have all failed miserably, particularly from the investment payoff. Facebook and Google in the last 10 years went from usable worthwhile sites to ad-dominated monstrosities, and their revenue exploded. Likely the beancounters have taken total control, and recognized that worker salaries for all the worker bee tasks in the big tech companies are vastly overpriced. This executive management decision is the underpinning of Musk's takeover and destruction of Twitter. It probably would have succeeded if he wasn't insane.
• 5350-uiop-1130 3y ago
  simple: outsourcing to cheaper remote locations.
• PeterStuer 3y ago
  Massive overhiring in the sector, especially for non-tech positions or soft tech-adjacent roles. Unfortunately when it comes to layoffs, many of the factors that lead to this overexpansion will also ensure that the parts that ballooned are not axed more than the actual tech positions.
• lubujackson 3y ago
  One reason I think not given enough weight is that it is now acceptable to do layoffs. These huge companies accrue a ton of dead weight and dead-end projects that they would love to flush routinely, but 5 years ago their stock prices would halve if they suddenly laid off 10% of their work force because of bad optics. Now it has become acceptable for all the various reasons so any company that wants to clean house is going to clean house.
  • yangcheng 3y ago
    Agree, twitter layoff set an example that it's ok to layoff. Then all FAANG followed
    • starbugs 3y ago
      I must say I have no idea if this is actually true, but sure as hell it feels like exactly that's what has happened. Twitter basically made an example that made layoffs a valid option in the heads of many people I guess.
    • AtlasBarfed 3y ago
      Musk's bet, that every executive watched like a hawk, was to fire a whole bunch of "spoiled expensive developers" who would flap their wings about the sky falling (their perspective). If Musk simply wanted to cut costs and get Twitter to the core of its profitability because the company had pretty much peaked, then it was a valid business plan in the Gordon Gecko realm. But Elon talked out of all parts of his mouth nonstop, said he wanted vision and features but fired and hired for maintenance. It's weird that all the other companies too that as direction for their layoffs. Executives were appalled at their lack of power in COVID too. I think the layoffs are an attempt to gain authority, I don't even think it is about the dollars and cents. Elites don't actually care about how rich they are after a certain point, what they care about is the gap between them and the "plebes", and the developer plebes were far too uppity in their view.
    • VirusNewbie 3y ago
      Except Twitter is trying to hire a ton of people right now... I think they need more engineers pretty bad and Elon knows it.
• n_ary 3y ago
  My speculative pure non-analytic layman take is, these behemoths have reached such a scale and domination by hoarding all talents long enough to build the perpetual revenue machine in the era of free money. All low hanging fruits were picked, regulation shut all doors slowly as majority of market dominators were built on fringe of the law, so any new player will have to fight in impossible odds of both regulation and lack of funding, so chance of competition is very low. Anything that is barely threatening will be acquired and extinguished. So, now that the money printing machines will continue to print, competition landscape is muddied by regulation hammer, so layoffs left and right. Besides, any bad decision now will bear consequences far ahead in future that by the time most people making the decisions will be retired or moved on to something else. The saying goes, death by a thousand cuts, but for behemoths, bleeding takes a long time before severe disability takes place. — end of rant/opinion —
• austin-cheney 3y ago
  I don’t know about in general, but I can describe why I was laid off last year. I was hired by a small consultancy on a software team supporting a dedicated software product for a small but powerful industry. Software was/is an emerging side business for that employer. This team completely lacked discipline and vision from a software execution perspective. The software was horribly organized, 80% of the logic was in SQL stored procedures, there was no test automation, and everything was copy/paste between environments. So, this was extremely high risk. The product side of the team, on the other hand, had extremely good discipline with a solid vision and extremely good documentation. I was the only senior developer on the team with any advanced experience outside of SQL. It became super clear this employer was a mistake when they didn’t want me to fix anything and my junior peers back-stabbed me during 360s as salvation for their inability to communicate in writing. I just rode out the last several months until they eventually fired me when billable hours evaporated. After a few months of looking for a new job I made a promise to myself to never EVER return to employment that feels immature. I would never take a job too reliant on frameworks and tools, such that the job/industry are compensating for talent with gimmicks. I abandoned my career writing JavaScript and eventually gained work in data science.
  • gtirloni 3y ago
    I can totally relate. This is painfully close to my experience (including the junior backstabbing to save their jobs and management not wanting to fix anything). I can't say if this is common in the industry but it's certainly the most depressing situation to be in. I didn't see a way out of this that wasn't quitting. Changing the culture when people below and above you can't even realize they are drowning in their own mistakes seems like an impossible situation.
• guilhas 3y ago
  I think it happens every year by this time, more or less severe, to show "savings", good financials, by the end of the financial year in April. And then start hiring again to show it is booming. Also maybe to rotate the lower rated workforce
• frays 3y ago
  I think that tech companies know they can get away with this now and are not scared to do it again (see Google, Amazon, etc). Previously employees at tech companies were put on a pedestal with unbelievable perks and treatment. Now companies like Google can start to become more like conventional companies when all the other companies around them are becoming like that too.
• xtiansimon 3y ago
  > “Are these continuing due to recent changes in the way software expenses are accounted for?” What is being referred to here?
  • nathan-wailes 3y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38120388 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38120388
• democracy 3y ago
  Clueless manager's idol named Elon said it's time for "fat trimming".
• picklejuice132 3y ago
  Has anyone here left tech because of the layoffs? What are you doing now?
• Proven 3y ago
  [dead]
• Giorgi 3y ago
  I say it is still fall-out after Chinese hid Corona virus breakout and pandemic has started. Some of them are just doing catch-up.
• aristofun 3y ago
  Overhiring in good times and getting fat. Diet in hard times and losing weight. It’s that simple. Why do people want to find more sophisticated explanation? There is no great conspiracy. Except maybe conspiracy of corrupted governments and terrorists profiting from the war. But even that is a less likely explanation than people stupidity
• emmender2 3y ago
  these workers met your hiring bar. why lay them off when there is hiring in other teams ? why not move workers from unproductive projects to more promising ones ?
• Zelphyr 3y ago
  A reason that I can think of is it's a result of the hiring that happened during COVID. First you had Amazon saying they were going on a massive hiring spree. The other tech companies (except for Apple it seems) said to themselves, "Oh no! They're going to snap up all the talent!" so they ramped up their hiring too. Interest rates were at record lows so there was a lot of available money and nobody (except for the scientists) knew how long this COVID thing would last. These companies are used to short-term thinking because they're public companies and the public markets won't think further than six months from now. Now that interest rates are back up to where they were 20 years ago, and Amazon has gone through a few rounds of layoffs, the rest of the industry is doing some belt tightening as well. I predict several of these companies will be a shell of themselves in 10-15 years for this and many other reasons.
• ddano 3y ago
  Unproductive workforce and employees being too much in the comfort zone. People just got lazier as more stuff were thrown at them - from chia puddings to remote work and most of us humans have lazy self-control features built-in.
• Havoc 3y ago
  End of ZIRP. But also sizable in-flood of bootcamp crowd
• Dianescott55 3y ago
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• kotnkotn 3y ago
  +1
• kotnkotn 3y ago
  This thread is simply interesting and fun
• deleted 3y ago
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• StreetChief 3y ago
  The federal reserve raised interest rates to put people out of work and it was successful. Rising wages were a threat to corporate profitablity in the form of "inflation." The quality of workers has not dropped, but the quality of work products has, mainly due to cost cutting and short sightedness.
• lucysienna 3y ago
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• lucysienna 3y ago
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• yeagel2 3y ago
  My 2c: companies lay people off to please shareholders in the short run, and the laid off employees continue to work in the industry, developing the ecosystem and provide opportunities for more profit in the long run
• billconan 3y ago
  new fiscal year? new budget
• kenm47 3y ago
  Lack of vc investment at the bottom means lack of seed through series c companies suddenly flush with money willing to buy B2b software so they can grow and sell their software to B2b businesses who sell software to B2b businesses who sell their software to end users. Cut the bottom out, it trickles.
• deleted 3y ago
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