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People bring up "overhiring" every single time. We've had like 3 years of these massive layoffs already. How many "corrections" do they need? I'm beginning to

by culi 6mo ago

People bring up "overhiring" every single time. We've had like 3 years of these massive layoffs already. How many "corrections" do they need? I'm beginning to feel like the "overhiring" line is a concerted campaign

bobmcnamara 6mo ago
Unemployment is an economic feature for wage modulation, not a bug.
wakawaka28 6mo ago
It is no doubt a campaign or at least a meme. It seems basically impossible for everyone to have overhired, for the simple reason that qualified workers do not appear and disappear from nowhere. There is a population of qualified workers in the software sector, and only new grads and retirement can move the needle significantly. So, if someone overhired then someone else must have done without, all things considered. The only ways out of the pool are basically retirement, career change, and death. I know there are complications with this argument. For example, unemployment could double by basically doubling the average time to find a job. That kind of thing could support an overhiring thesis if the unemployment rate in tech got very low. To really test the "everybody overhired" thesis, I think you need to do a full accounting of early careers people, unemployed, retired, etc. I'm not gonna attempt that...
- sureMan6 6mo ago
  Overhired has nothing to do with the talent pool and just means they hired more than they actually needed or wanted, if the talent pool is large enough then everyone can overhire
  - wakawaka28 6mo ago
    Of course the judgement about whether people overhired is subjective on a per-company basis. My point is, you can't hire people who don't exist, and the ways to get people into the industry are limited. All other things equal, we would expect massive overhiring to be matched with very low unemployment in the industry, and the correction should not go below some baseline.
- chabons 6mo ago
  “There is a population of qualified workers […]” In my experience, this is not true. Demand for software engineers has been so high, and pay so high as a result, that it’s pulling in workers from adjacent industries. The total software-qualified workforce is larger than the set currently working in software, and people with transferrable skills move in and out of software as incentives dictate. A number of my current and former coworkers are from math and physics backgrounds (CFD, energy, etc…). These are folks that before might have stayed in academia, or ended up in aerospace, defense, or other engineering fields. If everyone over hired, demand drops, and companies drop pay as a result, I’m sure we’ll see some folks in software with transferrable skills move to other industries.
  - wakawaka28 6mo ago
    You may be right but it's not high pay alone that draws in people from other industries. Standards must be relaxed to accept people from unconventional backgrounds. When conditions tighten, many of these people are simply not competitive enough to get another job. When it comes to aerospace, defense, academia, etc., opportunities are more scarce in those fields than in software the past few years also. It is this, not just the pay, that drives people to software. I'm not saying people with odd backgrounds can't ever make it. But let's be clear, these are not usually hot shots who can simply get any vaguely technical job they want. They get into software because it is traditionally very accepting of uncredentialled or non-mainstream individuals. The framing you put forward makes it sound like the people committed to software are chumps who have to take what they're given, and these interlopers are the real geniuses who leave for greener pastures with ease. That simply isn't true.
    - chabons 6mo ago
      > "[…] and these interlopers are the real geniuses […] This wasn’t the framing I was going for. My point was that industry boundaries are fluid and expand/contract as demand dictates. You’re correct that incentives are not all positive (pay, work life balance, perks), other industries contracting might force people to find work elsewhere. All that said, I don’t think these people have “odd backgrounds”. I work in a math-heavy domain, so these backgrounds make as much sense as a traditional CS background, and I think these folks are just as likely to be retained in a crunch.
- theshackleford 6mo ago
  > It seems basically impossible for everyone to have overhired, for the simple reason that qualified workers do not appear and disappear from nowhere. Not everyone, but it go through the roof, or at least it did in my country. I know a lot of people who doubled or even tripled their salary during that time as these companies went absolutely ape shit. They were getting 50k increases with each position change. I've not seen anything like it before, and I honestly wonder if i'll ever see anything like it again. Kinda wish i'd been in the job market at the time, but I was off with health issues sadly so missed that boom. > So, if someone overhired then someone else must have done without, all things considered. They did? Again, at least in my country. Smaller shops felt the pain, as tons of people left for the pastures of big tech. > Small businesses have been identified as the biggest losers of the 2020–2022 explosion in big tech hiring. While demand for digital transformation grew to previously unseen levels, smaller firms and businesses were severely disadvantaged by intense competition from large companies for talent, resulting in a multi-year skills shortage where less than 50% of small business vacancies were filled, compared to 65% for large firms
- computably 6mo ago
  > It seems basically impossible for everyone to have overhired, for the simple reason that qualified workers do not appear and disappear from nowhere. There is a population of qualified workers in the software sector, and only new grads and retirement can move the needle significantly. SWEs (and most any role for that matter) definitely can be minted in ways besides graduating with a relevant major. On top of that there's also H1Bs and contractors. Plus "overhiring" doesn't necessarily just mean absolute headcount, it could be compensation, scope, middle managers, etc. The definition of "qualified" is also malleable depending on the incentives. > So, if someone overhired then someone else must have done without, all things considered. Beyond the previous points, this also assumes the supply of labor is independent of the demand, and it's clearly not. As the demand increases, so does compensation, outreach, advertising/propaganda, etc. Everybody can overhire simultaneously as a result of pushing for growth of the supply of labor.
  - wakawaka28 6mo ago
    We can both "yeah, but" this to death. You make some valid points but I think my observation generally holds. The supply of workers is not so elastic, at least if you have real standards for the workers such as college degrees and so on.
- sokoloff 6mo ago
  > There is a population of qualified workers in the software sector, and only new grads and retirement can move the needle significantly. “Qualified” is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. Just like the first dotcom boom and crash, there were people in other fields who got into software during the boom time and went back to whatever other field after the crash.
  - eloisant 6mo ago
    Also there isn't one profile of software developers. At least 3 tiers: the FAANG level, the mid-size tech companies, then all the developers working for non-tech companies/administration or in IT service companies. Even in those categories, workers aren't swappables.
    - wakawaka28 6mo ago
      If they're not swappable, that supports my claim about scarcity even more. But I also have people here saying that you can swap in anybody vaguely technical, sometimes without credentials at all, to fill these roles even at FAANG. I happen to think workers with minimum qualifications like a CS degree can be fairly swappable, at least more than FAANG types would have us believe. But they're very elitist when it comes to hiring. I have practically given up on being hired at FAANG companies, and these days I think their jobs are overrated too. Sign up to bust your ass 50 hours per week with backstabbing snobs, till you get laid off unceremoniously. I'd rather not.
  - wakawaka28 6mo ago
    That might be true but how many of these people are there, really? I'm not convinced that many companies are hiring these barely-qualified people.
ryandrake 6mo ago
In the year 2040, they’ll still be using the same excuse. “BigTech lays off another 10,000 from all the overhiring done 20 years ago during COVID!”
- edmundsauto 6mo ago
  It’s almost as if a group of 80,000 dynamic humans in a wild uncharted environment might mean decisions are made that have to be re-evaluated in a year!
  - reverius42 6mo ago
    And then how many years in a row after that can you keep blaming the single re-evaluated decision?
    - mh- 6mo ago
      Overhiring wasn't a single decision.
    - edmundsauto 6mo ago
      4. Or we could acknowledge that everyone is pathfinding.
hn_throwaway_99 6mo ago
I posted another comment about this, but I think that "overhiring" is actually the true answer, but it actually encompasses 2 separate phenomena: 1. Companies overhired during the pandemic because they thought we'd all want to be online only forever or something. I agree with you that a lot of that "hangover" has already been wrung out of the system. 2. The other issue, though, is that the ZIRP era lasted over a decade and ended in 2022. Companies pushed a ton of money into speculative projects that never went anywhere. Even when they were successful in terms of usage data, a lot of them never made any money (think Amazon's Alexa devices division - tons of people use Alexa, but they use it for like the same 5 or 6 basic tasks, as hardly anyone is doing lots of shopping over a voice interface, which is how Amazon thought they'd make money). The ZIRP era is over, so not only do these companies need to unwind these structural misallocations, but unless it's AI or AI-adjacent, there is 0 appetite for this kind of "let's just throw a lot of stuff at the wall and see what sticks" mentality. Heck, Meta spent many billions on the Metaverse, and that went nowhere. Yes, they've had previous rounds of layoffs, but I don't think it's that surprising that it's taken multiple years for them to unwind that bet.
dbgrman 6mo ago
its not a 'concerted campaign'. meta laid off 4300 in 2025, but by the end of the year was actaully ~4800 higher than before. If that is not 'over hiring', i dont know what is. The headcount went from 74K in dec2024 to 78K in dec2025, even WITH the layoffs. There is no "workforce reduction". its just "we need new faces around here". Hire-to-fire.
- cheschire 6mo ago
  More like “we need to lower median salary”
- margorczynski 6mo ago
  I think it is also a matter on how the Meta stock comp works - and that people hired during the slump in stock price became very expensive once it came back up.
- deleted 6mo ago
  [deleted]
tshaddox 6mo ago
Well, one could start by looking at how their total employee counts have changed between now and the beginning of the pandemic. I’d be surprised if the multiple rounds of layoffs has left them with fewer total employees than January 2020.
thrawa8387336 6mo ago
They overhired, made a mess with people who are not very passionate. Then they fired but they fired all kinds, including some very good ones. Then they are still stuck in that loop and thinking AI is a solution to that
CamouflagedKiwi 6mo ago
It could easily be several more, if they are 50% bigger than they need to be, and they're firing 10% at a time.
- sokoloff 6mo ago
  And for even longer if they’re hiring 8-10% per year through normal processes.
postexitus 6mo ago
Name one product that Meta created over the last 10 years that mattered - beyond adtech. They can fire everyone in every team and just retain ads (tech and sales) - and some minimal setup for instagram and whatsapp and facebook and their revenue will not take a dent. So, yes, they overhired.
- muragekibicho 6mo ago
  This comment put everything into perspective. I can't name anything beyond Facebook, Instagram or Whatsapp that Meta's created and I've used in the past 10 years. I've never even (knowingly) used the LLama models tbh.
  - subpixel 6mo ago
    If you consider Marketplace its own product it’s a massive win but they haven’t monetized it beyond some very ineffective post boosting and advertising. I honestly think they could charge 10% of list price for items over $50, plus membership levels that reduce or remove listing fees. and make a significant amount of money.
    - bluecheese452 6mo ago
      Nah if that happens we all go back to craigslist or wherever.
    - b_t_s 6mo ago
      true. It's like the the only reason I open FB anymore....craigslist that isn't a PITA.
      - postexitus 6mo ago
        Oddly enough - facebook groups are not terrible for very niche hobbies. Not sure what makes them attractive, but the groups are there. Thinking about it - there is really no alternative. My Retro Computing group is there, car owners group is there, very niche metal bands' posters group is there.
bux93 6mo ago
Firing 10% every year is just good old Jack Welsh-style workforce intimidation.
- TJTorola 6mo ago
  Eerily close to Roman decimation.
  - bilbo0s 6mo ago
    Where do you think Jack Welch got the idea from?
burnte 6mo ago
I can understand that, but when you have a dozen friends in these companies talking about how overstaffed they are and the whole "FAANG companies keep devs on payroll just so they can file 5k people to make investors happy" thing makes sense. None of these companies actually pause hiring when these layoffs happen, which is a major indicator of what's driving the layoffs. It's all artificial.

by culi 6mo ago

bobmcnamara 6mo ago

Unemployment is an economic feature for wage modulation, not a bug.

wakawaka28 6mo ago

It is no doubt a campaign or at least a meme. It seems basically impossible for everyone to have overhired, for the simple reason that qualified workers do not appear and disappear from nowhere. There is a population of qualified workers in the software sector, and only new grads and retirement can move the needle significantly. So, if someone overhired then someone else must have done without, all things considered. The only ways out of the pool are basically retirement, career change, and death. I know there are complications with this argument. For example, unemployment could double by basically doubling the average time to find a job. That kind of thing could support an overhiring thesis if the unemployment rate in tech got very low. To really test the "everybody overhired" thesis, I think you need to do a full accounting of early careers people, unemployed, retired, etc. I'm not gonna attempt that...

sureMan6 6mo ago
Overhired has nothing to do with the talent pool and just means they hired more than they actually needed or wanted, if the talent pool is large enough then everyone can overhire
- wakawaka28 6mo ago
  Of course the judgement about whether people overhired is subjective on a per-company basis. My point is, you can't hire people who don't exist, and the ways to get people into the industry are limited. All other things equal, we would expect massive overhiring to be matched with very low unemployment in the industry, and the correction should not go below some baseline.
chabons 6mo ago
“There is a population of qualified workers […]” In my experience, this is not true. Demand for software engineers has been so high, and pay so high as a result, that it’s pulling in workers from adjacent industries. The total software-qualified workforce is larger than the set currently working in software, and people with transferrable skills move in and out of software as incentives dictate. A number of my current and former coworkers are from math and physics backgrounds (CFD, energy, etc…). These are folks that before might have stayed in academia, or ended up in aerospace, defense, or other engineering fields. If everyone over hired, demand drops, and companies drop pay as a result, I’m sure we’ll see some folks in software with transferrable skills move to other industries.
- wakawaka28 6mo ago
  You may be right but it's not high pay alone that draws in people from other industries. Standards must be relaxed to accept people from unconventional backgrounds. When conditions tighten, many of these people are simply not competitive enough to get another job. When it comes to aerospace, defense, academia, etc., opportunities are more scarce in those fields than in software the past few years also. It is this, not just the pay, that drives people to software. I'm not saying people with odd backgrounds can't ever make it. But let's be clear, these are not usually hot shots who can simply get any vaguely technical job they want. They get into software because it is traditionally very accepting of uncredentialled or non-mainstream individuals. The framing you put forward makes it sound like the people committed to software are chumps who have to take what they're given, and these interlopers are the real geniuses who leave for greener pastures with ease. That simply isn't true.
  - chabons 6mo ago
    > "[…] and these interlopers are the real geniuses […] This wasn’t the framing I was going for. My point was that industry boundaries are fluid and expand/contract as demand dictates. You’re correct that incentives are not all positive (pay, work life balance, perks), other industries contracting might force people to find work elsewhere. All that said, I don’t think these people have “odd backgrounds”. I work in a math-heavy domain, so these backgrounds make as much sense as a traditional CS background, and I think these folks are just as likely to be retained in a crunch.
theshackleford 6mo ago
> It seems basically impossible for everyone to have overhired, for the simple reason that qualified workers do not appear and disappear from nowhere. Not everyone, but it go through the roof, or at least it did in my country. I know a lot of people who doubled or even tripled their salary during that time as these companies went absolutely ape shit. They were getting 50k increases with each position change. I've not seen anything like it before, and I honestly wonder if i'll ever see anything like it again. Kinda wish i'd been in the job market at the time, but I was off with health issues sadly so missed that boom. > So, if someone overhired then someone else must have done without, all things considered. They did? Again, at least in my country. Smaller shops felt the pain, as tons of people left for the pastures of big tech. > Small businesses have been identified as the biggest losers of the 2020–2022 explosion in big tech hiring. While demand for digital transformation grew to previously unseen levels, smaller firms and businesses were severely disadvantaged by intense competition from large companies for talent, resulting in a multi-year skills shortage where less than 50% of small business vacancies were filled, compared to 65% for large firms
computably 6mo ago
> It seems basically impossible for everyone to have overhired, for the simple reason that qualified workers do not appear and disappear from nowhere. There is a population of qualified workers in the software sector, and only new grads and retirement can move the needle significantly. SWEs (and most any role for that matter) definitely can be minted in ways besides graduating with a relevant major. On top of that there's also H1Bs and contractors. Plus "overhiring" doesn't necessarily just mean absolute headcount, it could be compensation, scope, middle managers, etc. The definition of "qualified" is also malleable depending on the incentives. > So, if someone overhired then someone else must have done without, all things considered. Beyond the previous points, this also assumes the supply of labor is independent of the demand, and it's clearly not. As the demand increases, so does compensation, outreach, advertising/propaganda, etc. Everybody can overhire simultaneously as a result of pushing for growth of the supply of labor.
- wakawaka28 6mo ago
  We can both "yeah, but" this to death. You make some valid points but I think my observation generally holds. The supply of workers is not so elastic, at least if you have real standards for the workers such as college degrees and so on.
sokoloff 6mo ago
> There is a population of qualified workers in the software sector, and only new grads and retirement can move the needle significantly. “Qualified” is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. Just like the first dotcom boom and crash, there were people in other fields who got into software during the boom time and went back to whatever other field after the crash.
- eloisant 6mo ago
  Also there isn't one profile of software developers. At least 3 tiers: the FAANG level, the mid-size tech companies, then all the developers working for non-tech companies/administration or in IT service companies. Even in those categories, workers aren't swappables.
  - wakawaka28 6mo ago
    If they're not swappable, that supports my claim about scarcity even more. But I also have people here saying that you can swap in anybody vaguely technical, sometimes without credentials at all, to fill these roles even at FAANG. I happen to think workers with minimum qualifications like a CS degree can be fairly swappable, at least more than FAANG types would have us believe. But they're very elitist when it comes to hiring. I have practically given up on being hired at FAANG companies, and these days I think their jobs are overrated too. Sign up to bust your ass 50 hours per week with backstabbing snobs, till you get laid off unceremoniously. I'd rather not.
- wakawaka28 6mo ago
  That might be true but how many of these people are there, really? I'm not convinced that many companies are hiring these barely-qualified people.

ryandrake 6mo ago

In the year 2040, they’ll still be using the same excuse. “BigTech lays off another 10,000 from all the overhiring done 20 years ago during COVID!”

edmundsauto 6mo ago
It’s almost as if a group of 80,000 dynamic humans in a wild uncharted environment might mean decisions are made that have to be re-evaluated in a year!
- reverius42 6mo ago
  And then how many years in a row after that can you keep blaming the single re-evaluated decision?
  - mh- 6mo ago
    Overhiring wasn't a single decision.
  - edmundsauto 6mo ago
    4. Or we could acknowledge that everyone is pathfinding.

hn_throwaway_99 6mo ago

I posted another comment about this, but I think that "overhiring" is actually the true answer, but it actually encompasses 2 separate phenomena: 1. Companies overhired during the pandemic because they thought we'd all want to be online only forever or something. I agree with you that a lot of that "hangover" has already been wrung out of the system. 2. The other issue, though, is that the ZIRP era lasted over a decade and ended in 2022. Companies pushed a ton of money into speculative projects that never went anywhere. Even when they were successful in terms of usage data, a lot of them never made any money (think Amazon's Alexa devices division - tons of people use Alexa, but they use it for like the same 5 or 6 basic tasks, as hardly anyone is doing lots of shopping over a voice interface, which is how Amazon thought they'd make money). The ZIRP era is over, so not only do these companies need to unwind these structural misallocations, but unless it's AI or AI-adjacent, there is 0 appetite for this kind of "let's just throw a lot of stuff at the wall and see what sticks" mentality. Heck, Meta spent many billions on the Metaverse, and that went nowhere. Yes, they've had previous rounds of layoffs, but I don't think it's that surprising that it's taken multiple years for them to unwind that bet.

dbgrman 6mo ago

its not a 'concerted campaign'. meta laid off 4300 in 2025, but by the end of the year was actaully ~4800 higher than before. If that is not 'over hiring', i dont know what is. The headcount went from 74K in dec2024 to 78K in dec2025, even WITH the layoffs. There is no "workforce reduction". its just "we need new faces around here". Hire-to-fire.

cheschire 6mo ago
More like “we need to lower median salary”
margorczynski 6mo ago
I think it is also a matter on how the Meta stock comp works - and that people hired during the slump in stock price became very expensive once it came back up.
deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]

tshaddox 6mo ago

Well, one could start by looking at how their total employee counts have changed between now and the beginning of the pandemic. I’d be surprised if the multiple rounds of layoffs has left them with fewer total employees than January 2020.

thrawa8387336 6mo ago

They overhired, made a mess with people who are not very passionate. Then they fired but they fired all kinds, including some very good ones. Then they are still stuck in that loop and thinking AI is a solution to that

CamouflagedKiwi 6mo ago

It could easily be several more, if they are 50% bigger than they need to be, and they're firing 10% at a time.

sokoloff 6mo ago
And for even longer if they’re hiring 8-10% per year through normal processes.

postexitus 6mo ago

Name one product that Meta created over the last 10 years that mattered - beyond adtech. They can fire everyone in every team and just retain ads (tech and sales) - and some minimal setup for instagram and whatsapp and facebook and their revenue will not take a dent. So, yes, they overhired.

muragekibicho 6mo ago
This comment put everything into perspective. I can't name anything beyond Facebook, Instagram or Whatsapp that Meta's created and I've used in the past 10 years. I've never even (knowingly) used the LLama models tbh.
- subpixel 6mo ago
  If you consider Marketplace its own product it’s a massive win but they haven’t monetized it beyond some very ineffective post boosting and advertising. I honestly think they could charge 10% of list price for items over $50, plus membership levels that reduce or remove listing fees. and make a significant amount of money.
  - bluecheese452 6mo ago
    Nah if that happens we all go back to craigslist or wherever.
  - b_t_s 6mo ago
    true. It's like the the only reason I open FB anymore....craigslist that isn't a PITA.
    - postexitus 6mo ago
      Oddly enough - facebook groups are not terrible for very niche hobbies. Not sure what makes them attractive, but the groups are there. Thinking about it - there is really no alternative. My Retro Computing group is there, car owners group is there, very niche metal bands' posters group is there.

bux93 6mo ago

Firing 10% every year is just good old Jack Welsh-style workforce intimidation.

TJTorola 6mo ago
Eerily close to Roman decimation.
- bilbo0s 6mo ago
  Where do you think Jack Welch got the idea from?

burnte 6mo ago

I can understand that, but when you have a dozen friends in these companies talking about how overstaffed they are and the whole "FAANG companies keep devs on payroll just so they can file 5k people to make investors happy" thing makes sense. None of these companies actually pause hiring when these layoffs happen, which is a major indicator of what's driving the layoffs. It's all artificial.