9 ms·

The strangest part to me about the current trends: why do all these business leaders all do the same things at the same time? E.g. Layoffs + micromanagement + c

The strangest part to me about the current trends: why do all these business leaders all do the same things at the same time? E.g. Layoffs + micromanagement + cost focus etc... Is this truly about macroeconomic forces that every business is responding to? Or is it just following the latest fad? There seems to be significant opportunity to zig as others zag. Imagine the Intel letter saying "we are going to take advantage of the current hiring environment to scoop up talent, and push forward on initiatives."

Lammy 1y ago
Same as it ever was except they learned not to write it down lol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...
ryandrake 1y ago
It's almost as if CEOs aren't really that smart or creative, got to their position through mostly politics, and look externally for clues about what to do.
- thbb123 1y ago
  CEOs like to brag about how AI is going to replace skilled workers. Yet, it should be obvious to anyone having experience in LLMs that top executives are the jobs that are most likely replaceable by AI. Just keep smooth talking everyone into cost reductions and make arbitrary decisions to make it feel like you're actually in charge.
  - dylan604 1y ago
    Wouldn't that be funny to see an AI bot replace the CEO of something like Boeing, and then see the company turn around in positive moves? Feed an LLM all of the business data that a CEO would have and then ask it to make the same decisions the CEO would be expected to make. Since layoffs would be the trend online for LLMs to train on, would they come up with slop that looks like they too follow the trends? If companies are willing to replace dev with AI, why are boards not looking at all of the C-suite offices with the same mindset?
    - DaveZale 1y ago
      Same with the Federal Reserve. Why not continuously adjust interest rates, instead of all of Wall Street agonizing over each decision made?
      - dylan604 1y ago
        How would not adjusting vs always adjusting be any different? Is it not a made decision to leave it alone and not change it?
      - 90s_dev 1y ago
        It seems to me that a large percentage of jobs exist just to exist, and that they use their continued existence to justify their continued existence. I wonder how much the world would keep spinning if 90% of people were laid off. Maybe we'll find out if AI is adopted widely enough...
      - mandevil 1y ago
        If data was reliable, instant, and comprehensive, this might work. Of course, under those circumstances socialism or communism would probably work out even better. It is precisely because data comes out murkily, with a lag - and the effects of changes have a lag as well- that managing the Federal Reserve can't by reduced to a simple process. It is an art done by humans- one where 'general trust in the institution' is the single most important variable of the last 40 years.
      - astrange 1y ago
        Because the agonizing is part of their job. That's called "animal spirits" / managing expectations. The expectation of future interest rates is nearly as important as what they actually are.
      - baq 1y ago
        Interest rates work with different lags in different parts of the economy. The current hiking cycle basically only just has taken its full effect (think when people refinance debt and when they delay this.)
      - 1y ago
  - andsoitis 1y ago
    > anyone having experience in LLMs that top executives are the jobs that are most likely replaceable by AI. That’s not my assessment. Why do you say that?
    - paulcole 1y ago
      because ceo bad/dumb and eng good/smart
      - nope577 1y ago
        [flagged]
        BalinKing 1y ago
        From the HN guidelines[0]: > Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - CBLT 1y ago
      They make that claim because what CEOs write down could easily be written by a Markov Model, nevermind an LLM. If that was the primary value a CEO brought to the company they'd be right. The most important thing a CEO brings is relationships. LLMs can't do that (yet). Post script: there's still a chance that LLMs replace CEOs due to LLMs being easier for the board to influence/control.
    - red-iron-pine 1y ago
      because 95% of the time it's "follow the herd" BS + always defer to the lowest cost. the rest is schmoozing, making people feel comfortable, sounding confident, and working the soft skills. chatGPT always sounds confident, and it's not hard for it to calculate the lowest possible option and take it.
  - 9cb14c1ec0 1y ago
    Seems to me like a couple of if-then-else statements could do a better job than some executives.
  - apwell23 1y ago
    > Yet, it should be obvious to anyone having experience in LLMs that top executives are the jobs that are most likely replaceable by AI. Yes given those are jobs where hallucination is a feature not a bug
- DaveZale 1y ago
  same with directors. BODs are incestuous, inbred. The letter seemed contradictory: be a factory, but innovate on AI. Is AI actually smart? Human brains use the power of a dim incandescent light bulb, why does AI require so much power, that the processing chips overheat? Sure, selected tasks can be done orders of magnitude faster, but do we, for example, really need that kind of output, like pi to a trillion digits? Or AI controlling stock market trading? How much liquidity is necessary for traders other than huge funds?
  - fijiaarone 1y ago
    It takes me an hour to write 100 lines of slop -- code or text. AI can do it in 1 or 2 minutes. That might have something to do power usage.
    - otabdeveloper4 1y ago
      > It takes me an hour to write 100 lines of slop Skill issue. I can outpace your LLM if I get the same tolerances.
      - DaveZale 1y ago
        it helps to be able to type at 70wpm. My high school typing class in the 70s actually did wonders for my career as keyboards and screens took over. As far as processors go- that's a subject best discussed offline with a beer in hand.
- supportengineer 1y ago
  "Please, speak as you might to a young child or a Golden Retriever. It wasn't brains that got me here, I can assure you that."
  - esafak 1y ago
    He was being modest; he seemed shrewd.
- zeroCalories 1y ago
  I don't think this is entirely fair. One analogy I like is boat racing. In boat races if you follow someone you're almost always going to do just as well as them. Take a dfferent path and you could get lucky, but just as likley you're going to hit a bad current and throw the whole race. So you follow the crowd and wait for oppritunities to take the lead instead of rolling dices. I don't think they're nessesarily doing anything wrong just because they don't want to do something super aggresive.
  - pixxel 1y ago
    [dead]
- codingwagie 1y ago
  It took me a long time to learn this
- jofla_net 1y ago
  Its merely a personality contest, a sociological phenomenon. Humans band around (and more easily listen to) individuals bearing certain personality traits. These traits have very little to do with actual problem solving, and finding the most ideal path forward for an organization. Alot of times they go hand and hand but I'd wager, from the CEOs ive personally met, there are alot of them with just the charismatic set.
- breppp 1y ago
  what would you do if you were the CEO of Intel?
- akra 1y ago
  That's what AI does. Makes power and politics have even more of a premium vs say learning, intelligence and hard work. Connections, wealth and power. It is almost ironic that our industry is inventing the thing that empowers the people that techies often find useless (as per the above comments) and dis-empowering themselves often shutting the door behind them. Yes an AI will come up with more insight than many management people as many people state in this thread that a LLM can do their job. Its a mistake to assume that's what they are paid for however.
jrk 1y ago
Intel’s situation in 2025 is not comparable to the rest of big tech. They have lost technical leadership, bled market share, and started losing a ton of money in a hugely capital-intensive business. They are actually in need of major triage to survive, not just hopping on a belt-tightening trend among still-massively-profitable software companies.
- mbac32768 1y ago
  Yes this. Intel is in deep shit. This is exactly the thing you'd expect their new CEO to say right now.
  - lotsofpulp 1y ago
    One would hope HN commenters would be able to comprehend a microchip seller not having compelling products to sell means it needs to shrink its business, rather than jump to childish “CEO bad guy” sentiments.
    - DangitBobby 1y ago
      Shrinking the business is a hard decision to reverse, and one should definitely read into the word "needs" from "needs to shrink" before doing it. People tend to take any claim that a gigantic company "needs" to downsize with a gigantic grain of salt, because we were born with pattern recognition.
      - lotsofpulp 1y ago
        The business had already shrunk 10+ years ago when it was evident mobile devices were the future and Intel had no product offering for them. It was do or die a decade or two ago to catch up in that market, but they didn’t bother paying sufficient salaries and focusing on the growing markets, so here they are.
        sitkack 1y ago
        They had that product StrongArm from DEC which they sold to Marvell.
vchere 1y ago
The reason is always a secret coalition with a cool hand sign like the Illuminati. But speaking of combining forces, Microsoft will be more likely to pick them up in a fire sale now, which I think would be best for all involved. Then you’re a couple of M&As away with first Dell and then Oracle. Then they will select a champion to fight the Pentavirate at The Meadows!!
- slefsacrifice 1y ago
  > the Pentavirate at The Meadows!! Nice “So I Married an Axe Murderer” reference! It appears that Lip-Bu used an LLM to help write this memo. Also: 15% of staff with an arbitrary 50% management? Boy, he must have been up all night working on that one! Maybe everyone can have an ice cream social when they return- bring your own.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
cyberax 1y ago
> The strangest part to me about the current trends: why do all these business leaders all do the same things at the same time? Because they all studied the same MBA programs.
inetknght 1y ago
> why do all these business leaders all do the same things at the same time? E.g. Layoffs + micromanagement + cost focus etc... Is this truly about macroeconomic forces that every business is responding to? Or is it just following the latest fad? I thought about this a lot over the years. I saw something that piqued my interest last year though, and kind've helped connect the dots. I was on a cruise, and most of the ship was available to guests. One day, one room was cordoned off to an invite-only meeting. The windows weren't blocked, but on the screen was a presentation about AI investments, number of jobs saved (reduced), and etc. I found one of the attendants later during the voyage and chatted her up. She was head of HR in some big company, and the meeting was supposed to be private. But it contained a lot more than just spreadsheets about AI investments. There was homework and whatnot, but the attendees weren't all from a single company. It was "direction setting". I don't think it was Intel (topic under discussion) but certainly some loosely related tech industry. I'm convinced that it was nothing less than business collusion. So, back to your question: > why do all these business leaders all do the same things at the same time? Because they're told to.
- mathgeek 1y ago
  > I'm convinced that it was nothing less than business collusion. Wonder if it’s “not illegal” if it’s done in international waters.
  - inetknght 1y ago
    > Wonder if it’s “not illegal” if it’s done in international waters. I didn't ask. As I understand it, it's less about legality and more about plausible deniability; on a "party boat" with plenty of other public people to make it cheaper than renting a whole boat, plus the week for the cruise and time to relax -- seems plausible that these people "just happened" to book the same boat at the same time at peak tourist season and decide to throw a "private party". I should have asked more questions, but there were plenty of other people to chat up.
    - ghaff 1y ago
      It's very common for "million dollar clubs" (or whatever) to have a cruise or some other perk for top-performing sales reps.
Alupis 1y ago
Many times it's a "watershed" moment. Most of these businesses are feeling the same pressures and experiencing the same problems... in silence. Eventually one of their competitors breaks (because they are forced to due to economic realities, etc) and starts making necessary moves (layoffs, efficiency improvements, etc). The rest follow-suit, breathing a collective sigh of relief that they weren't the first to make all the headlines.
markus_zhang 1y ago
There are CEOs and there are CEOs. My hunch is, most of them are just managers pushed out by investors, who have interests in multiple companies, maybe even multiple industries. That’s why they coordinated so easily. But there are CEOs who define an industry. Those are not easily swayed by big capital.
- fijiaarone 1y ago
  Ah...but have you considered that there are also CEOs?
kindkang2024 1y ago
> why do all these business leaders all do the same Simple. These companies need enough 'fitness' in order to survive and thrive. No one has the power to fight against the Nature’s Wille—survival of the fittest. They have to obey, especially when faced with the ruthless, life-and-death competition of the commercial world. P.S. Hoping this comment doesn’t get downvoted too much and end up dead, not surviving.
- calculatte 1y ago
  These companies include the most valuable companies making record profits. They aren't struggling to survive. They are bowing to institutional investor demands to eek out another penny because the alternative is they get replaced by the board.
  - kindkang2024 1y ago
    Fitness is a relative thing, especially when competing for limited resources, like institutional investor money. Everyone has to be prepared before it’s too late. By the way, standing as workers, I wish they wouldn't resort to layoffs as the usual route when facing challenges, but sadly, excel competence is required to make it happen, and not many have it.
TylerE 1y ago
Because they're trying to make Number Go Up(TM) not run a business. Wall Street ruins everything.
- lotsofpulp 1y ago
  How did Wall Street prevent Intel from making a low power high performance chip?
  - TylerE 1y ago
    By tying compensation to short rather than long term performance.
    - lotsofpulp 1y ago
      The Board of Directors does that, not “Wall Street”. Many other companies “Wall Street” trades shares in did not have a problem with setting long term goals for compensation, why did Intel? Why would Wall St want Intel’s market cap graph to look like this: https://companiesmarketcap.com/intel/marketcap/ https://companiesmarketcap.com/intel/marketcap/ Rather than this: https://companiesmarketcap.com/tsmc/marketcap/ https://companiesmarketcap.com/tsmc/marketcap/ https://companiesmarketcap.com/nvidia/marketcap/ https://companiesmarketcap.com/nvidia/marketcap/ https://companiesmarketcap.com/apple/marketcap/ https://companiesmarketcap.com/apple/marketcap/ https://companiesmarketcap.com/qualcomm/marketcap/ https://companiesmarketcap.com/qualcomm/marketcap/ It makes no sense to scapegoat Wall Street, when the SP500 was a rocketship (does Wall Street not get the blame for that, if they are apparently responsible for Intel’s demise?)
      - Loudergood 1y ago
        Who elects the board?
        lotsofpulp 1y ago
        Various shareholders, or fund managers on behalf of shareholders. What difference does it make? It is still inconsistent to blame “Wall Street” for one company when the SP500 has plenty of examples of success.
kevmo 1y ago
It's not about fads. It's just collusion. American markets have largely consolidated into oligopolies, where just a handful of very large companies operate. It's extremely easy for them to wink at each other and then raise prices/layoff workers, etc. This is also being accelerated by the unregulated software market that lets the corporations hide behind algorithms, as we recently saw with realty. https://www.npr.org/2024/08/23/nx-s1-5087586/realpage-rent-lawsuit-doj-real-estate-software-landlords-justice-department-price-fixing https://www.npr.org/2024/08/23/nx-s1-5087586/realpage-rent-l... The end of ZIRP was the bat signal to corporate America to begin layoffs.
dayjah 1y ago
For counter argument sake, if a highly regarded company says: “we’re going in a hiring spree”, all of that available talent adds 50% to their comp ask. Broadly speaking though, I think you’re experiencing confirmation bias to some degree. If you only look at companies that are on the struggle bus, then you only see a limited number of levers that management has (RIF, delay CapEx, etc). Other struggling companies that don’t take evasive maneuvers go out of business and we don’t hear the story.
sokoloff 1y ago
> There seems to be significant opportunity to zig as others zag. Imagine the Intel letter saying "we are going to take advantage of the current hiring environment to scoop up talent, and push forward on initiatives." I've pitched that a couple times in my career. The difficulty is that, in a lot of cases, your future business prospects are genuinely correlated with the future prospects of other businesses. Intel is going to sell fewer CPUs in the next 3 years if other businesses aren't hiring and expanding as quickly as they did during COVID. And I think there's a pretty good reason to think that Intel's revenues will actually shrink as a result. That limits how much zig they can do while others zag.
- fijiaarone 1y ago
  That logic probably applies to NVIDIA too.
- barchar 1y ago
  Plus there's some reality bending that can go on. Everyone piling capital into something can sometimes make it happen, even if "it" is dumb.
SlowTao 1y ago
It sounds cliche at this point. It is the focus on the next quarter, next year at best that drives a lot of this due to appeasing the great god of the shareholders. I think they should do what you say but shareholders are looking for the quickest, best returns now, not in a few years time.
barkingcat 1y ago
You only need to look at board membership overlap between all companies (all companies, not just tech) You'll find the same names appearing over and over again. The reason all companies seem to do the same thing at the same time is that their boards are all the same people giving the same order to all their companies' ceo's at the same time.
SL61 1y ago
Remember that executives answer to the board of directors. The board's job is to make sure execs do things that make the company money, or in practical terms, "things the board thinks will make the company money". A sensible, sober CEO would still need a lot of political capital to push back against a boardroom that's hounding them to jump on the latest hype train. You certainly won't get that from a CEO who just took that position a few months ago. A sensible, sober boardroom that doesn't push their execs to jump on the hype train would need to answer to angry shareholders. It's almost certain that >50% will support the latest fad and would vote out a board that they perceive as being behind the times. That's where startups and privately owned companies get their natural advantage of being able to go against the grain.
cyanydeez 1y ago
As far as I can tell, the flow of cheap money stopped when inflation started. This means all their portfolios of free stocks inflating the market stopped. These people all live in a world of 6 months to profit, and thus the market forces at work mean for them to demonstrate anything for their next fleecing of shareholder value, they need to trim budgets. Prior to this, they could just get low interest loans to do whatever financial engineering they wanted to demonstrate growth and get their bag. That is over, now the only way to get the bag is firing people. So, it's not just that they're all in a capitalist polycule, but is is that they all just live in the same bubble of irrational short term reasoning.
georgeecollins 1y ago
NVIDIA? ARM?
tonymet 1y ago
it's not a conspiracy. they go to the same parties, restaurants. the circle is pretty small. A few guys make a move and now you're the odd man out
karim79 1y ago
> Or is it just following the latest fad? I think there's a lot of "monkey see, monkey do" going on in the corporate world. Also, shareholders and all that. Intel doesn't have a meme-stock/vibe-stock thing going on at the moment (think Elon and getting to Mars by 2030, or robotaxis everywhere by the end of 2025 etc). So I guess downsizing seems to be the only potential appeal for them right now. Disclaimer: I know nothing
okaram 1y ago
It is some of both. Business conditions have changed, but also the bosses kinda collude to reduce power of the employees. Eventually some companies will start scooping talent up, and everybody will zig :)
roughly 1y ago
> There seems to be significant opportunity to zig as others zag. Historically Apple has done this - Steve Jobs noted at one point that the absolute last thing they were going to do during a recession was to cut R&D, because that was what was going to let them capitalize once the recession was over. Left as an exercise for the reader is assessing Apple’s financial performance as relates to the rest of the industry, with extra credit for comparing that to the ongoing guidance from the finance industry set.
- theflyinghorse 1y ago
  There are no Steve Jobs left in the American tech.
niccl 1y ago
I have a recollection that Intel used to do this when Andy Grove was in charge. There was a fair amount of noise about them 'spending through the recession': building FABs and other plant so that when the recession ended they'd be in a great place to take advantage of the increased demand. Sadly, I can't recall exactly which depression this was about. Looking at Andy Grove's wikpedia page it could be that the above reflects his focus on "strategic inflection points" So Intel used to do it once, but now, not so much
matt-p 1y ago
Because it's driven by investor/market sentiment. That's literally all. If your investors have ask you why you've not laid off 10% of your workforce due to AI efficiencies, when that's the prevailing sentiment, then you look incompetent. If in the middle of COVID the sentiment is remote work will drive more tech adoption/usage and money is very cheap then you have to start hiring as many engineers as possible otherwise you look like you're not a growth company or lack confidence. It doesn't matter if it doesn't increase your development cadence, that is not the point. The point is that "the market" is largely vibe based. Right now the vibe is AI companies are hot so as say the meta CEO you start burning a trillion dollars on GPUs, without anyone stopping to question why Facebook needs any more AI, or how it will make it ROI.
- teeray 1y ago
  > If your investors have ask you why you've not laid off 10% of your workforce due to AI efficiencies Ah, see? Prosperity has not come to your business because you have not made the proper offerings to the new AI gods.
tjwebbnorfolk 1y ago
Because they all have the same management consultants from McKinsey et al. whispering in their ear.
phendrenad2 1y ago
A video went viral a few years ago that showed that the majority of outstanding stock market shares are owned by big equity firms. And those firms, in turn, own large chunks of each other. And if you carry this recursion out a few iterations, the largest equity firm essentially owns everything.
nostrademons 1y ago
Competition. If all your competitors are doing something that you want to do but know will piss off your employees, you can safely do it too and know that they don't have anywhere else to go. Most of these big tech companies operate in markets with huge barriers to entry and very differentiated skillsets; a new competitor isn't going to spring up overnight without some form of warning. Most hired executives play not to lose rather than playing to win; the nature of their compensation packages incentivizes it, where big wins accrue largely to diffuse shareholders while big losses mean they lose their fat executive pay package. It takes a founder-CEO to play to win, but if the hired CEO had that skillset and that inclination, they'd be a founder rather than a CEO.
chrisgd 1y ago
Why does everyone hire McKinsey? So they keep their job. If you are CEO and go the board with a cost savings plan and layoffs you keep your job. You may not if you say we are going where the puck is. Lifestyle creep probably makes it very hard to envision taking this kind or risk.
burnt-resistor 1y ago
Cliché corporate leader herd mentality. In absence of leadership direction, do what everyone else is doing (and what the consultants recommend) including many rounds of layoffs and reorgs to simulate progress and achievement. The problem is that multiple layoffs are terrible for morale and basically obliterate the motivation and mood of the remaining workers. Reorgs are another common pattern of incompetent management that introduce chaos without bringing net positive value. This is similar shit that happened in the '80's, '90's, and '00s and was captured culturally by Dilbert and Office Space. Those who ignore the lessons of the past will make history rhyme once again.
UncleOxidant 1y ago
Mimesis?
hemloc_io 1y ago
eh it’s bc you’re never fired for making the same mistakes as everyone else imagine this approach fails and you have to go to your board? They’re going to flat you alive and call you an idiot who should’ve done what everyone else was doing since it was obvious but if you do what everyone else is doing? Well the macro changed obviously! EDIT: I’ve worked at big tech companies where this was a meme, where the execs would do whatever meta/google did but six months later
rippeltippel 1y ago
Here's one possible reason for layoffs: https://qz.com/tech-layoffs-tax-code-trump-section-174-research-development https://qz.com/tech-layoffs-tax-code-trump-section-174-resea...
beefnugs 1y ago
Its just capitalism, only 10 people are the top pyramid of owning everything. Now why all the countries start just warring and killing all at the same time... now that is weird. I guess the best bet is same people who own all the business, stop paying all the bribes at once or something and all the power people go nuts
kunley 1y ago
> Or is it just following the latest fad? Conspiracy theory: business leaders don't do as much as they should, so they imitate each others moves to justify their existence on the position. With a side effect of cluelessly influencing lives of thousands, but that's a repeated scheme in the overall history of civilization
chairmansteve 1y ago
Nvidia are hiring.... It's the companies with no ideas who have to cut costs.
FirmwareBurner 1y ago
>why do all these business leaders all do the same things at the same time? E.g. Layoffs + micromanagement + cost focus What would you do when you're bleeding money?
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
oytis 1y ago
I think if it's not a collusion then it's concentration of wealth. CEOs are basically employees to the board, and the board is or is representing pretty much the same people in most major companies.
spicyusername 1y ago
My personal theory is that it is ultimately the same reason you see things like software engineers blindly using the same tech stacks, because most people, most of the time, aren't working off first principles. They're just trying to get the job done and copying your partner's homework can save time, even if your partner didn't get the right answer or also just copied their partner. CEOs, on average, don't know what they're doing any more than anyone in most other professions. They just happen to be born part of the ruling class.
drcongo 1y ago
I tend to think all these business leaders are actually business larpers. They dress up as what they see other business people dressing up in, they lay off loads of people because they see other companies doing that, they send stupid letters like this out because they think that's what they're supposed to do while dressed up as a business leader. You get business larpers at every company, sometimes they happen to be good enough at the larping that people put them into actual leadership roles and then this sort of thing happens.
varispeed 1y ago
These companies are members of WEF and owned by major investment funds. That's the likely source of these shenanigans. The rich just want to be richer and to hell with normal folks.
_shadi 1y ago
One theory that I saw earlier was that the industry is bloated, big tech companies executives knew that but they continued to hire anyway to make sure that the people they don't hire don't start competitors when there was funding, there is less funding now so that risk is no longer there so companies can reduce their size to their actual needs, but maybe that does not apply to intel since they seem to be really in a bad situation now.
trentnix 1y ago
It’s not just the same things - they do the same things to similar degrees. They are reading from the same playbook (and have, mostly, the same investors).
fred_is_fred 1y ago
Most CEOs follow trends so as to not get criticized and fired. It’s the same in American football. The “book” says you do certain things under certain circumstances- 4th down and 5, you punt. Everyone drafting linemen, you do too. If you zig and others zag you get criticized on ESPN (CNBC For CEOs) and if it doesn’t work you get fired. Better to have a few years of 8-8 performance than risk it for a 14-2 season.
tom_m 1y ago
All the layoffs and such have been going on for a bit and there's been more and more leading up to the end of the R&D tax credit. Their headcount has been planned for years. AI was a wonderful scapegoat. If it wasn't AI it'd be the economy or some other excuse. No one wants to admit mismanagement and overspending, but of course a business is going to take advantage of a discount. It's just a shame that wasn't a discount on property or hardware, it was on people. Some other smaller companies are swept up in this because they follow moves from the larger companies. Everyone is trying to copy the leader, right? Everyone is asking "what's that big successful company do? That's what we need to do." So you have this absolutely horrible job hiring process in tech too as a result of that. You have excess and toxicity because people are trying to make something work that doesn't make sense for their business. What do you think the whole $100 million bonuses for these AI people (which so far have been rumors) is going to do? It'll cause idiots elsewhere to go overpay and over hire because of FOMO...and once again more layoffs in the future. And on and on we have these cycles.
theGnuMe 1y ago
It's a herd mentality for both. AI may be the next big thing. And the old things need realignment. So the "market" demands sacrifice basically and there is cover when everyone else is doing it. You can be contrarian but your stock may get punished. Intel may not have a good plan anyway. The reason the market demands sacrifice is likely because of predicted unfavorable economic headwinds (etc... so signs of recession or what not). These predictions could be wrong though. Companies do constantly realign though, product initiatives fail etc...
const_cast 1y ago
While we often praise leadership for their decision making ability, the reality is most leaders aren't leaders, they're followers. Particularly in tech and tech adjacent, there's a belief that doing what everyone else is doing is safe. It's the "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" approach but for corporate decision making. If other companies return to office, you return to office. They're successful, so they must have good reasons - no need to investigate or come up with your own reasons. If other companies eliminate QA, you eliminate QA. Most tech companies are just following what the big dogs are doing, but worse and stupider. When it backfires, nobody cares.
dlcarrier 1y ago
Is this truly about macroeconomic forces that every business is responding to? Or is it just following the latest fad? Look at it like an economist, who sees everything as market, and the answer to both is: Yes. Fads are just market bubbles. Excess employees are sometimes an asset, regardless of their effectiveness. It gives value to the team manager and sometimes the company itself, and it prevents other companies from having access to those employees. It's not a very efficient tactic, so even a small amount of overemployment can be a bubble that quickly turns from an asset to a liability. What you end up with is employment bubbles at the trailing end of economic rises. They can collapse while the economy is still growing, just because the growth slowed down. Just like any bubble bursting, that is the best time for any well-positioned company to invest in that market. The problem with Intel is that they are far from well positioned. AMD and nVidia each have about a quarter of the employees that Intel has and TSMC has about half. Intel over-invested in employment so the over-employment bubble bursting will hit them hard. Their best bet is to refocus their current employees, but they might not be the right mix, so they may need to have even larger layoffs, while simultaneously highering new employees in pertinent fields.
didibus 1y ago
> why do all these business leaders all do the same things at the same time It's like fashion, humans follow trends, almost always, and in the case of big companies, the CEOs are quite wealthy and that means the people they hangout with, the parties they attend, and the general circles they are part of, is pretty small (not that many people at that level of wealth), and so they're all mostly part of the same "clicks" that talk about and share the same ideas.
slowmovintarget 1y ago
"If everyone is doing {unpopular thing} then we can do {unpopular thing} and not get bad PR from it." Layoffs and cost focus are two of those. There's also additional pressure from major shareholders (institutional) to reduce opex, even if the better strategy would sometimes be to stretch for some strategic goal when everyone else is contracting. Your stock is going to take a hit in the short term. Lastly, some is just the "yell harder" mentality kicking in for management that doesn't actually know what to do.
pdl27xl1c3 1y ago
Maybe it’s just “what you see is all there is”? When the economy slows down, people and companies spend less. Less spending means fewer sales, which means less work and less money to pay staff. Since salaries are a big cost, companies cut jobs. Before the downturn, spending was up, sales were up, and companies hired more people. Now they see they hired too many or inefficiently, so they cut headcount not only because demand is down, but also to fix those inefficiencies. And about the argument of investing now to scoop up talent and push initiatives forward: downturns often come with higher interest rates. That makes it more expensive to raise money to invest. So why would companies do that now?

Lammy 1y ago

Same as it ever was except they learned not to write it down lol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...

ryandrake 1y ago

It's almost as if CEOs aren't really that smart or creative, got to their position through mostly politics, and look externally for clues about what to do.

thbb123 1y ago
CEOs like to brag about how AI is going to replace skilled workers. Yet, it should be obvious to anyone having experience in LLMs that top executives are the jobs that are most likely replaceable by AI. Just keep smooth talking everyone into cost reductions and make arbitrary decisions to make it feel like you're actually in charge.
- dylan604 1y ago
  Wouldn't that be funny to see an AI bot replace the CEO of something like Boeing, and then see the company turn around in positive moves? Feed an LLM all of the business data that a CEO would have and then ask it to make the same decisions the CEO would be expected to make. Since layoffs would be the trend online for LLMs to train on, would they come up with slop that looks like they too follow the trends? If companies are willing to replace dev with AI, why are boards not looking at all of the C-suite offices with the same mindset?
  - DaveZale 1y ago
    Same with the Federal Reserve. Why not continuously adjust interest rates, instead of all of Wall Street agonizing over each decision made?
    - dylan604 1y ago
      How would not adjusting vs always adjusting be any different? Is it not a made decision to leave it alone and not change it?
    - 90s_dev 1y ago
      It seems to me that a large percentage of jobs exist just to exist, and that they use their continued existence to justify their continued existence. I wonder how much the world would keep spinning if 90% of people were laid off. Maybe we'll find out if AI is adopted widely enough...
    - mandevil 1y ago
      If data was reliable, instant, and comprehensive, this might work. Of course, under those circumstances socialism or communism would probably work out even better. It is precisely because data comes out murkily, with a lag - and the effects of changes have a lag as well- that managing the Federal Reserve can't by reduced to a simple process. It is an art done by humans- one where 'general trust in the institution' is the single most important variable of the last 40 years.
    - astrange 1y ago
      Because the agonizing is part of their job. That's called "animal spirits" / managing expectations. The expectation of future interest rates is nearly as important as what they actually are.
    - baq 1y ago
      Interest rates work with different lags in different parts of the economy. The current hiking cycle basically only just has taken its full effect (think when people refinance debt and when they delay this.)
    - 1y ago
- andsoitis 1y ago
  > anyone having experience in LLMs that top executives are the jobs that are most likely replaceable by AI. That’s not my assessment. Why do you say that?
  - paulcole 1y ago
    because ceo bad/dumb and eng good/smart
    - nope577 1y ago
      [flagged]
      - BalinKing 1y ago
        From the HN guidelines[0]: > Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - CBLT 1y ago
    They make that claim because what CEOs write down could easily be written by a Markov Model, nevermind an LLM. If that was the primary value a CEO brought to the company they'd be right. The most important thing a CEO brings is relationships. LLMs can't do that (yet). Post script: there's still a chance that LLMs replace CEOs due to LLMs being easier for the board to influence/control.
  - red-iron-pine 1y ago
    because 95% of the time it's "follow the herd" BS + always defer to the lowest cost. the rest is schmoozing, making people feel comfortable, sounding confident, and working the soft skills. chatGPT always sounds confident, and it's not hard for it to calculate the lowest possible option and take it.
- 9cb14c1ec0 1y ago
  Seems to me like a couple of if-then-else statements could do a better job than some executives.
- apwell23 1y ago
  > Yet, it should be obvious to anyone having experience in LLMs that top executives are the jobs that are most likely replaceable by AI. Yes given those are jobs where hallucination is a feature not a bug
DaveZale 1y ago
same with directors. BODs are incestuous, inbred. The letter seemed contradictory: be a factory, but innovate on AI. Is AI actually smart? Human brains use the power of a dim incandescent light bulb, why does AI require so much power, that the processing chips overheat? Sure, selected tasks can be done orders of magnitude faster, but do we, for example, really need that kind of output, like pi to a trillion digits? Or AI controlling stock market trading? How much liquidity is necessary for traders other than huge funds?
- fijiaarone 1y ago
  It takes me an hour to write 100 lines of slop -- code or text. AI can do it in 1 or 2 minutes. That might have something to do power usage.
  - otabdeveloper4 1y ago
    > It takes me an hour to write 100 lines of slop Skill issue. I can outpace your LLM if I get the same tolerances.
    - DaveZale 1y ago
      it helps to be able to type at 70wpm. My high school typing class in the 70s actually did wonders for my career as keyboards and screens took over. As far as processors go- that's a subject best discussed offline with a beer in hand.
supportengineer 1y ago
"Please, speak as you might to a young child or a Golden Retriever. It wasn't brains that got me here, I can assure you that."
- esafak 1y ago
  He was being modest; he seemed shrewd.
zeroCalories 1y ago
I don't think this is entirely fair. One analogy I like is boat racing. In boat races if you follow someone you're almost always going to do just as well as them. Take a dfferent path and you could get lucky, but just as likley you're going to hit a bad current and throw the whole race. So you follow the crowd and wait for oppritunities to take the lead instead of rolling dices. I don't think they're nessesarily doing anything wrong just because they don't want to do something super aggresive.
- pixxel 1y ago
  [dead]
codingwagie 1y ago
It took me a long time to learn this
jofla_net 1y ago
Its merely a personality contest, a sociological phenomenon. Humans band around (and more easily listen to) individuals bearing certain personality traits. These traits have very little to do with actual problem solving, and finding the most ideal path forward for an organization. Alot of times they go hand and hand but I'd wager, from the CEOs ive personally met, there are alot of them with just the charismatic set.
breppp 1y ago
what would you do if you were the CEO of Intel?
akra 1y ago
That's what AI does. Makes power and politics have even more of a premium vs say learning, intelligence and hard work. Connections, wealth and power. It is almost ironic that our industry is inventing the thing that empowers the people that techies often find useless (as per the above comments) and dis-empowering themselves often shutting the door behind them. Yes an AI will come up with more insight than many management people as many people state in this thread that a LLM can do their job. Its a mistake to assume that's what they are paid for however.

jrk 1y ago

Intel’s situation in 2025 is not comparable to the rest of big tech. They have lost technical leadership, bled market share, and started losing a ton of money in a hugely capital-intensive business. They are actually in need of major triage to survive, not just hopping on a belt-tightening trend among still-massively-profitable software companies.

mbac32768 1y ago
Yes this. Intel is in deep shit. This is exactly the thing you'd expect their new CEO to say right now.
- lotsofpulp 1y ago
  One would hope HN commenters would be able to comprehend a microchip seller not having compelling products to sell means it needs to shrink its business, rather than jump to childish “CEO bad guy” sentiments.
  - DangitBobby 1y ago
    Shrinking the business is a hard decision to reverse, and one should definitely read into the word "needs" from "needs to shrink" before doing it. People tend to take any claim that a gigantic company "needs" to downsize with a gigantic grain of salt, because we were born with pattern recognition.
    - lotsofpulp 1y ago
      The business had already shrunk 10+ years ago when it was evident mobile devices were the future and Intel had no product offering for them. It was do or die a decade or two ago to catch up in that market, but they didn’t bother paying sufficient salaries and focusing on the growing markets, so here they are.
      - sitkack 1y ago
        They had that product StrongArm from DEC which they sold to Marvell.

vchere 1y ago

The reason is always a secret coalition with a cool hand sign like the Illuminati. But speaking of combining forces, Microsoft will be more likely to pick them up in a fire sale now, which I think would be best for all involved. Then you’re a couple of M&As away with first Dell and then Oracle. Then they will select a champion to fight the Pentavirate at The Meadows!!

slefsacrifice 1y ago
> the Pentavirate at The Meadows!! Nice “So I Married an Axe Murderer” reference! It appears that Lip-Bu used an LLM to help write this memo. Also: 15% of staff with an arbitrary 50% management? Boy, he must have been up all night working on that one! Maybe everyone can have an ice cream social when they return- bring your own.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

cyberax 1y ago

> The strangest part to me about the current trends: why do all these business leaders all do the same things at the same time? Because they all studied the same MBA programs.

inetknght 1y ago

> why do all these business leaders all do the same things at the same time? E.g. Layoffs + micromanagement + cost focus etc... Is this truly about macroeconomic forces that every business is responding to? Or is it just following the latest fad? I thought about this a lot over the years. I saw something that piqued my interest last year though, and kind've helped connect the dots. I was on a cruise, and most of the ship was available to guests. One day, one room was cordoned off to an invite-only meeting. The windows weren't blocked, but on the screen was a presentation about AI investments, number of jobs saved (reduced), and etc. I found one of the attendants later during the voyage and chatted her up. She was head of HR in some big company, and the meeting was supposed to be private. But it contained a lot more than just spreadsheets about AI investments. There was homework and whatnot, but the attendees weren't all from a single company. It was "direction setting". I don't think it was Intel (topic under discussion) but certainly some loosely related tech industry. I'm convinced that it was nothing less than business collusion. So, back to your question: > why do all these business leaders all do the same things at the same time? Because they're told to.

mathgeek 1y ago
> I'm convinced that it was nothing less than business collusion. Wonder if it’s “not illegal” if it’s done in international waters.
- inetknght 1y ago
  > Wonder if it’s “not illegal” if it’s done in international waters. I didn't ask. As I understand it, it's less about legality and more about plausible deniability; on a "party boat" with plenty of other public people to make it cheaper than renting a whole boat, plus the week for the cruise and time to relax -- seems plausible that these people "just happened" to book the same boat at the same time at peak tourist season and decide to throw a "private party". I should have asked more questions, but there were plenty of other people to chat up.
  - ghaff 1y ago
    It's very common for "million dollar clubs" (or whatever) to have a cruise or some other perk for top-performing sales reps.

Alupis 1y ago

Many times it's a "watershed" moment. Most of these businesses are feeling the same pressures and experiencing the same problems... in silence. Eventually one of their competitors breaks (because they are forced to due to economic realities, etc) and starts making necessary moves (layoffs, efficiency improvements, etc). The rest follow-suit, breathing a collective sigh of relief that they weren't the first to make all the headlines.

markus_zhang 1y ago

There are CEOs and there are CEOs. My hunch is, most of them are just managers pushed out by investors, who have interests in multiple companies, maybe even multiple industries. That’s why they coordinated so easily. But there are CEOs who define an industry. Those are not easily swayed by big capital.

fijiaarone 1y ago
Ah...but have you considered that there are also CEOs?

kindkang2024 1y ago

> why do all these business leaders all do the same Simple. These companies need enough 'fitness' in order to survive and thrive. No one has the power to fight against the Nature’s Wille—survival of the fittest. They have to obey, especially when faced with the ruthless, life-and-death competition of the commercial world. P.S. Hoping this comment doesn’t get downvoted too much and end up dead, not surviving.

calculatte 1y ago
These companies include the most valuable companies making record profits. They aren't struggling to survive. They are bowing to institutional investor demands to eek out another penny because the alternative is they get replaced by the board.
- kindkang2024 1y ago
  Fitness is a relative thing, especially when competing for limited resources, like institutional investor money. Everyone has to be prepared before it’s too late. By the way, standing as workers, I wish they wouldn't resort to layoffs as the usual route when facing challenges, but sadly, excel competence is required to make it happen, and not many have it.

TylerE 1y ago

Because they're trying to make Number Go Up(TM) not run a business. Wall Street ruins everything.

lotsofpulp 1y ago
How did Wall Street prevent Intel from making a low power high performance chip?
- TylerE 1y ago
  By tying compensation to short rather than long term performance.
  - lotsofpulp 1y ago
    The Board of Directors does that, not “Wall Street”. Many other companies “Wall Street” trades shares in did not have a problem with setting long term goals for compensation, why did Intel? Why would Wall St want Intel’s market cap graph to look like this: https://companiesmarketcap.com/intel/marketcap/ https://companiesmarketcap.com/intel/marketcap/ Rather than this: https://companiesmarketcap.com/tsmc/marketcap/ https://companiesmarketcap.com/tsmc/marketcap/ https://companiesmarketcap.com/nvidia/marketcap/ https://companiesmarketcap.com/nvidia/marketcap/ https://companiesmarketcap.com/apple/marketcap/ https://companiesmarketcap.com/apple/marketcap/ https://companiesmarketcap.com/qualcomm/marketcap/ https://companiesmarketcap.com/qualcomm/marketcap/ It makes no sense to scapegoat Wall Street, when the SP500 was a rocketship (does Wall Street not get the blame for that, if they are apparently responsible for Intel’s demise?)
    - Loudergood 1y ago
      Who elects the board?
      - lotsofpulp 1y ago
        Various shareholders, or fund managers on behalf of shareholders. What difference does it make? It is still inconsistent to blame “Wall Street” for one company when the SP500 has plenty of examples of success.

kevmo 1y ago

It's not about fads. It's just collusion. American markets have largely consolidated into oligopolies, where just a handful of very large companies operate. It's extremely easy for them to wink at each other and then raise prices/layoff workers, etc. This is also being accelerated by the unregulated software market that lets the corporations hide behind algorithms, as we recently saw with realty. https://www.npr.org/2024/08/23/nx-s1-5087586/realpage-rent-lawsuit-doj-real-estate-software-landlords-justice-department-price-fixing https://www.npr.org/2024/08/23/nx-s1-5087586/realpage-rent-l... The end of ZIRP was the bat signal to corporate America to begin layoffs.

dayjah 1y ago

For counter argument sake, if a highly regarded company says: “we’re going in a hiring spree”, all of that available talent adds 50% to their comp ask. Broadly speaking though, I think you’re experiencing confirmation bias to some degree. If you only look at companies that are on the struggle bus, then you only see a limited number of levers that management has (RIF, delay CapEx, etc). Other struggling companies that don’t take evasive maneuvers go out of business and we don’t hear the story.

sokoloff 1y ago

> There seems to be significant opportunity to zig as others zag. Imagine the Intel letter saying "we are going to take advantage of the current hiring environment to scoop up talent, and push forward on initiatives." I've pitched that a couple times in my career. The difficulty is that, in a lot of cases, your future business prospects are genuinely correlated with the future prospects of other businesses. Intel is going to sell fewer CPUs in the next 3 years if other businesses aren't hiring and expanding as quickly as they did during COVID. And I think there's a pretty good reason to think that Intel's revenues will actually shrink as a result. That limits how much zig they can do while others zag.

fijiaarone 1y ago
That logic probably applies to NVIDIA too.
barchar 1y ago
Plus there's some reality bending that can go on. Everyone piling capital into something can sometimes make it happen, even if "it" is dumb.

SlowTao 1y ago

It sounds cliche at this point. It is the focus on the next quarter, next year at best that drives a lot of this due to appeasing the great god of the shareholders. I think they should do what you say but shareholders are looking for the quickest, best returns now, not in a few years time.

barkingcat 1y ago

You only need to look at board membership overlap between all companies (all companies, not just tech) You'll find the same names appearing over and over again. The reason all companies seem to do the same thing at the same time is that their boards are all the same people giving the same order to all their companies' ceo's at the same time.

SL61 1y ago

Remember that executives answer to the board of directors. The board's job is to make sure execs do things that make the company money, or in practical terms, "things the board thinks will make the company money". A sensible, sober CEO would still need a lot of political capital to push back against a boardroom that's hounding them to jump on the latest hype train. You certainly won't get that from a CEO who just took that position a few months ago. A sensible, sober boardroom that doesn't push their execs to jump on the hype train would need to answer to angry shareholders. It's almost certain that >50% will support the latest fad and would vote out a board that they perceive as being behind the times. That's where startups and privately owned companies get their natural advantage of being able to go against the grain.

cyanydeez 1y ago

As far as I can tell, the flow of cheap money stopped when inflation started. This means all their portfolios of free stocks inflating the market stopped. These people all live in a world of 6 months to profit, and thus the market forces at work mean for them to demonstrate anything for their next fleecing of shareholder value, they need to trim budgets. Prior to this, they could just get low interest loans to do whatever financial engineering they wanted to demonstrate growth and get their bag. That is over, now the only way to get the bag is firing people. So, it's not just that they're all in a capitalist polycule, but is is that they all just live in the same bubble of irrational short term reasoning.

georgeecollins 1y ago

NVIDIA? ARM?

tonymet 1y ago

it's not a conspiracy. they go to the same parties, restaurants. the circle is pretty small. A few guys make a move and now you're the odd man out

karim79 1y ago

> Or is it just following the latest fad? I think there's a lot of "monkey see, monkey do" going on in the corporate world. Also, shareholders and all that. Intel doesn't have a meme-stock/vibe-stock thing going on at the moment (think Elon and getting to Mars by 2030, or robotaxis everywhere by the end of 2025 etc). So I guess downsizing seems to be the only potential appeal for them right now. Disclaimer: I know nothing

okaram 1y ago

It is some of both. Business conditions have changed, but also the bosses kinda collude to reduce power of the employees. Eventually some companies will start scooping talent up, and everybody will zig :)

roughly 1y ago

> There seems to be significant opportunity to zig as others zag. Historically Apple has done this - Steve Jobs noted at one point that the absolute last thing they were going to do during a recession was to cut R&D, because that was what was going to let them capitalize once the recession was over. Left as an exercise for the reader is assessing Apple’s financial performance as relates to the rest of the industry, with extra credit for comparing that to the ongoing guidance from the finance industry set.

theflyinghorse 1y ago
There are no Steve Jobs left in the American tech.

niccl 1y ago

I have a recollection that Intel used to do this when Andy Grove was in charge. There was a fair amount of noise about them 'spending through the recession': building FABs and other plant so that when the recession ended they'd be in a great place to take advantage of the increased demand. Sadly, I can't recall exactly which depression this was about. Looking at Andy Grove's wikpedia page it could be that the above reflects his focus on "strategic inflection points" So Intel used to do it once, but now, not so much

matt-p 1y ago

Because it's driven by investor/market sentiment. That's literally all. If your investors have ask you why you've not laid off 10% of your workforce due to AI efficiencies, when that's the prevailing sentiment, then you look incompetent. If in the middle of COVID the sentiment is remote work will drive more tech adoption/usage and money is very cheap then you have to start hiring as many engineers as possible otherwise you look like you're not a growth company or lack confidence. It doesn't matter if it doesn't increase your development cadence, that is not the point. The point is that "the market" is largely vibe based. Right now the vibe is AI companies are hot so as say the meta CEO you start burning a trillion dollars on GPUs, without anyone stopping to question why Facebook needs any more AI, or how it will make it ROI.

teeray 1y ago
> If your investors have ask you why you've not laid off 10% of your workforce due to AI efficiencies Ah, see? Prosperity has not come to your business because you have not made the proper offerings to the new AI gods.

tjwebbnorfolk 1y ago

Because they all have the same management consultants from McKinsey et al. whispering in their ear.

phendrenad2 1y ago

A video went viral a few years ago that showed that the majority of outstanding stock market shares are owned by big equity firms. And those firms, in turn, own large chunks of each other. And if you carry this recursion out a few iterations, the largest equity firm essentially owns everything.

nostrademons 1y ago

Competition. If all your competitors are doing something that you want to do but know will piss off your employees, you can safely do it too and know that they don't have anywhere else to go. Most of these big tech companies operate in markets with huge barriers to entry and very differentiated skillsets; a new competitor isn't going to spring up overnight without some form of warning. Most hired executives play not to lose rather than playing to win; the nature of their compensation packages incentivizes it, where big wins accrue largely to diffuse shareholders while big losses mean they lose their fat executive pay package. It takes a founder-CEO to play to win, but if the hired CEO had that skillset and that inclination, they'd be a founder rather than a CEO.

chrisgd 1y ago

Why does everyone hire McKinsey? So they keep their job. If you are CEO and go the board with a cost savings plan and layoffs you keep your job. You may not if you say we are going where the puck is. Lifestyle creep probably makes it very hard to envision taking this kind or risk.

burnt-resistor 1y ago

Cliché corporate leader herd mentality. In absence of leadership direction, do what everyone else is doing (and what the consultants recommend) including many rounds of layoffs and reorgs to simulate progress and achievement. The problem is that multiple layoffs are terrible for morale and basically obliterate the motivation and mood of the remaining workers. Reorgs are another common pattern of incompetent management that introduce chaos without bringing net positive value. This is similar shit that happened in the '80's, '90's, and '00s and was captured culturally by Dilbert and Office Space. Those who ignore the lessons of the past will make history rhyme once again.

UncleOxidant 1y ago

Mimesis?

hemloc_io 1y ago

eh it’s bc you’re never fired for making the same mistakes as everyone else imagine this approach fails and you have to go to your board? They’re going to flat you alive and call you an idiot who should’ve done what everyone else was doing since it was obvious but if you do what everyone else is doing? Well the macro changed obviously! EDIT: I’ve worked at big tech companies where this was a meme, where the execs would do whatever meta/google did but six months later

rippeltippel 1y ago

Here's one possible reason for layoffs: https://qz.com/tech-layoffs-tax-code-trump-section-174-research-development https://qz.com/tech-layoffs-tax-code-trump-section-174-resea...

beefnugs 1y ago

Its just capitalism, only 10 people are the top pyramid of owning everything. Now why all the countries start just warring and killing all at the same time... now that is weird. I guess the best bet is same people who own all the business, stop paying all the bribes at once or something and all the power people go nuts

kunley 1y ago

> Or is it just following the latest fad? Conspiracy theory: business leaders don't do as much as they should, so they imitate each others moves to justify their existence on the position. With a side effect of cluelessly influencing lives of thousands, but that's a repeated scheme in the overall history of civilization

chairmansteve 1y ago

Nvidia are hiring.... It's the companies with no ideas who have to cut costs.

FirmwareBurner 1y ago

>why do all these business leaders all do the same things at the same time? E.g. Layoffs + micromanagement + cost focus What would you do when you're bleeding money?

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

oytis 1y ago

I think if it's not a collusion then it's concentration of wealth. CEOs are basically employees to the board, and the board is or is representing pretty much the same people in most major companies.

spicyusername 1y ago

My personal theory is that it is ultimately the same reason you see things like software engineers blindly using the same tech stacks, because most people, most of the time, aren't working off first principles. They're just trying to get the job done and copying your partner's homework can save time, even if your partner didn't get the right answer or also just copied their partner. CEOs, on average, don't know what they're doing any more than anyone in most other professions. They just happen to be born part of the ruling class.

drcongo 1y ago

I tend to think all these business leaders are actually business larpers. They dress up as what they see other business people dressing up in, they lay off loads of people because they see other companies doing that, they send stupid letters like this out because they think that's what they're supposed to do while dressed up as a business leader. You get business larpers at every company, sometimes they happen to be good enough at the larping that people put them into actual leadership roles and then this sort of thing happens.

varispeed 1y ago

These companies are members of WEF and owned by major investment funds. That's the likely source of these shenanigans. The rich just want to be richer and to hell with normal folks.

_shadi 1y ago

One theory that I saw earlier was that the industry is bloated, big tech companies executives knew that but they continued to hire anyway to make sure that the people they don't hire don't start competitors when there was funding, there is less funding now so that risk is no longer there so companies can reduce their size to their actual needs, but maybe that does not apply to intel since they seem to be really in a bad situation now.

trentnix 1y ago

It’s not just the same things - they do the same things to similar degrees. They are reading from the same playbook (and have, mostly, the same investors).

fred_is_fred 1y ago

Most CEOs follow trends so as to not get criticized and fired. It’s the same in American football. The “book” says you do certain things under certain circumstances- 4th down and 5, you punt. Everyone drafting linemen, you do too. If you zig and others zag you get criticized on ESPN (CNBC For CEOs) and if it doesn’t work you get fired. Better to have a few years of 8-8 performance than risk it for a 14-2 season.

tom_m 1y ago

All the layoffs and such have been going on for a bit and there's been more and more leading up to the end of the R&D tax credit. Their headcount has been planned for years. AI was a wonderful scapegoat. If it wasn't AI it'd be the economy or some other excuse. No one wants to admit mismanagement and overspending, but of course a business is going to take advantage of a discount. It's just a shame that wasn't a discount on property or hardware, it was on people. Some other smaller companies are swept up in this because they follow moves from the larger companies. Everyone is trying to copy the leader, right? Everyone is asking "what's that big successful company do? That's what we need to do." So you have this absolutely horrible job hiring process in tech too as a result of that. You have excess and toxicity because people are trying to make something work that doesn't make sense for their business. What do you think the whole $100 million bonuses for these AI people (which so far have been rumors) is going to do? It'll cause idiots elsewhere to go overpay and over hire because of FOMO...and once again more layoffs in the future. And on and on we have these cycles.

theGnuMe 1y ago

It's a herd mentality for both. AI may be the next big thing. And the old things need realignment. So the "market" demands sacrifice basically and there is cover when everyone else is doing it. You can be contrarian but your stock may get punished. Intel may not have a good plan anyway. The reason the market demands sacrifice is likely because of predicted unfavorable economic headwinds (etc... so signs of recession or what not). These predictions could be wrong though. Companies do constantly realign though, product initiatives fail etc...

const_cast 1y ago

While we often praise leadership for their decision making ability, the reality is most leaders aren't leaders, they're followers. Particularly in tech and tech adjacent, there's a belief that doing what everyone else is doing is safe. It's the "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" approach but for corporate decision making. If other companies return to office, you return to office. They're successful, so they must have good reasons - no need to investigate or come up with your own reasons. If other companies eliminate QA, you eliminate QA. Most tech companies are just following what the big dogs are doing, but worse and stupider. When it backfires, nobody cares.

dlcarrier 1y ago

Is this truly about macroeconomic forces that every business is responding to? Or is it just following the latest fad? Look at it like an economist, who sees everything as market, and the answer to both is: Yes. Fads are just market bubbles. Excess employees are sometimes an asset, regardless of their effectiveness. It gives value to the team manager and sometimes the company itself, and it prevents other companies from having access to those employees. It's not a very efficient tactic, so even a small amount of overemployment can be a bubble that quickly turns from an asset to a liability. What you end up with is employment bubbles at the trailing end of economic rises. They can collapse while the economy is still growing, just because the growth slowed down. Just like any bubble bursting, that is the best time for any well-positioned company to invest in that market. The problem with Intel is that they are far from well positioned. AMD and nVidia each have about a quarter of the employees that Intel has and TSMC has about half. Intel over-invested in employment so the over-employment bubble bursting will hit them hard. Their best bet is to refocus their current employees, but they might not be the right mix, so they may need to have even larger layoffs, while simultaneously highering new employees in pertinent fields.

didibus 1y ago

> why do all these business leaders all do the same things at the same time It's like fashion, humans follow trends, almost always, and in the case of big companies, the CEOs are quite wealthy and that means the people they hangout with, the parties they attend, and the general circles they are part of, is pretty small (not that many people at that level of wealth), and so they're all mostly part of the same "clicks" that talk about and share the same ideas.

slowmovintarget 1y ago

"If everyone is doing {unpopular thing} then we can do {unpopular thing} and not get bad PR from it." Layoffs and cost focus are two of those. There's also additional pressure from major shareholders (institutional) to reduce opex, even if the better strategy would sometimes be to stretch for some strategic goal when everyone else is contracting. Your stock is going to take a hit in the short term. Lastly, some is just the "yell harder" mentality kicking in for management that doesn't actually know what to do.

pdl27xl1c3 1y ago

Maybe it’s just “what you see is all there is”? When the economy slows down, people and companies spend less. Less spending means fewer sales, which means less work and less money to pay staff. Since salaries are a big cost, companies cut jobs. Before the downturn, spending was up, sales were up, and companies hired more people. Now they see they hired too many or inefficiently, so they cut headcount not only because demand is down, but also to fix those inefficiencies. And about the argument of investing now to scoop up talent and push initiatives forward: downturns often come with higher interest rates. That makes it more expensive to raise money to invest. So why would companies do that now?