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I'll give you my diagnosis, which is derived from this: https://www.semafor.com/article/04/27/2025/the-group-chats-that-changed-america https://www.semafor.com/

I'll give you my diagnosis, which is derived from this: https://www.semafor.com/article/04/27/2025/the-group-chats-that-changed-america https://www.semafor.com/article/04/27/2025/the-group-chats-t... The thing to realize about the SV executive class is that they have constructed a closed ecosystem around them where they only talk amongst themselves and a small number of supporting actors who say what the execs need to hear. A CEO will talk to other CEOs he will not talk to his skip reports. Alternative viewpoints or dissent are not part of this social circle, and despite their 'conterarian' self-image, there's an immense amount of social pressure to conform. You can can see hints of this outside - for example this site used to see YC folks as regular commenters, but no more. Twitter was changed so that only views favoured by Musk show up prominently in replies. These people certainly do not encounter normal people in their day-to-day lives. In this information environment you see extremely rapid horizontal spread of weird, stupid and esoteric ideas - one CEO does a layoff, all of them will do layoffs. One turns MAGA, they all turn MAGA, etc. One guy starts yapping about some snake oil, they all yap about snake oil. There no negative feedback loop there.

mschuster91 25d ago
> In this information environment you see extremely rapid horizontal spread of weird, stupid and esoteric ideas - one CEO does a layoff, all of them will do layoffs. One turns MAGA, they all turn MAGA As for the layoffs, that one was to be expected, a correction after the insane hiring sprees during the ZIRP phase. As for MAGA... well, Trump made it clear. Either you walk the line with him, or you get screwed.
- simonuv 25d ago
  [dead]
- martythemaniak 25d ago
  Well, we don't see a slight trimming of workforces, we see 20-80% layoffs in most cases with good financial performance. You see breathless claims of AI doing all the work one year, tokenmaxxing, then less than a year later everybody says don't spend so much on AI, progress wasn't as far as we expected. You see this in what people say about AI as well - one year everybody will be jobless in 5 years, next year "actually jobs are gonna be ok". My point is that its hard to ignore just how in-tune and well-coordinated all these people are, and I don't think it's a coincidence. If CEOs were responding to actual political, economic and company developments, you'd see far more diversity of opinion. Some you see their companies are growing and profitable and wouldn't jump on the layoff bandwagon. Others may ask "Don't we need rule of law? What happens when the other party gets in power?" and fight the administration in courts etc.
  - mschuster91 25d ago
    > Well, we don't see a slight trimming of workforces, we see 20-80% layoffs in most cases with good financial performance. The overhire during ZIRP was insane though - in total it was a good nine years of zero interest rates, and between the first period (2008-2015) and the second period (2020-2022) interest rates weren't that high either. Companies battled each other hard even for people who just went through a few weeks worth of bootcamp, just to make sure the competition didn't have access to them, even if there was not much productive work that could be assigned. And that group is where the layoffs really hit hard: people with basic training, relatively little investment both of the company into the workers and from the workers to the company and, most importantly, a skillset / allocation that just lends itself heavily to being replaced or at the very least heavily augmented by AI. On top of that... "good financial performance" doesn't mean the balance sheets can't look even better. With C-level boni being tied to stock performance or "efficiency gains" KPIs, it's no surprise that many just look at their paycheck first, the long-term health of the company second. > You see this in what people say about AI as well - one year everybody will be jobless in 5 years, next year "actually jobs are gonna be ok". I don't have much hope left for anything in the field of "knowledge work" and for most of "creative work" either. Let's be real, the wide masses don't care they're being force fed with AI slop, as long as they have some brainrot to doomscroll in the evening. The only jobs relatively secure for now IMHO are the trades and wiping the arses of dying boomers in care homes. For the former, robots lack the required dexterity and force feedback, and for the latter, maybe the Japanese are willing to accept arse-wiping robots, but I heavily doubt this will be the case in Western countries any time soon. > Some you see their companies are growing and profitable and wouldn't jump on the layoff bandwagon. There are companies left that are actively growing and not making shovels for the AI gold diggers? Huh? > Others may ask "Don't we need rule of law? What happens when the other party gets in power?" and fight the administration in courts etc. A rare few, yes. But most have given up and went for appeasement instead after the first ones got mergers disrupted or otherwise punished.
    - martythemaniak 25d ago
      I'm not disagreeing with you exactly - there are obviously reasons for doing all those things and on the surface they may seem sensible as well. But there are also good reasons why you'd do the exact opposite and my point is that in a group of independent thinkers you'd see greater diversity of opinions and outcomes. I was a middle manager involved in some of those layoffs (on both sides!) and saw the sausage made up close. Thing is, yes it's a shitty thing to do to someone personally, but nothing of what I saw could be justified in objective terms.
astrange 25d ago
> Twitter was changed so that only views favoured by Musk show up prominently in replies. This doesn't happen anymore, it's actually relatively good at sorting bad comments to the bottom now. The current problem is it's full of wannabe LinkedIn influencers with "Building for AI agents in business in public" in their profile using LLMs to reply to everything.
- vablings 25d ago
  Twitter only shows you what you want to see
  - astrange 25d ago
    Eh. They recently changed the algorithm quite a lot, and the guy who was in charge of it (Nikita Bier) made it a lot less evil when Elon wasn't looking. But now he's gone so who knows what will happen.
dalyons 25d ago
I find this a correct and astute observation, and I don’t think you’re getting enough credit for it. I started noticing this SV C level groupthink a few years ago too. It’s just so _weird_ how lockstep everyone is, it’s like there isn’t a single original thought amongst today’s leaders. Just copy, mimic, converge, repeat. Same ideas, same moves (layoffs of exactly 10-20%) same org structures (flattening!) same team structures (smaller teams with AI!) same same . It’s almost creepy, and if I was more of a conspiracy theorist it would be easy to believe in shadowy leadership cabals orchestrating everything. It didn’t used to be this way - say circa 2006-2015 you had so much more diversity in the style and ideas of leadership. Eg early Dorsey, early zuck, all these other ceos at that time trying all kinds of wild and whacky ideas of how to run their companies. I’m not sure why this convergence happened, but now everyone’s singing from the same hymn sheet, it’s anti-innovation, and I hate it.
tstrimple 25d ago
And thus microservices were spread across the unsuspecting world.

mschuster91 25d ago

> In this information environment you see extremely rapid horizontal spread of weird, stupid and esoteric ideas - one CEO does a layoff, all of them will do layoffs. One turns MAGA, they all turn MAGA As for the layoffs, that one was to be expected, a correction after the insane hiring sprees during the ZIRP phase. As for MAGA... well, Trump made it clear. Either you walk the line with him, or you get screwed.

simonuv 25d ago
[dead]
martythemaniak 25d ago
Well, we don't see a slight trimming of workforces, we see 20-80% layoffs in most cases with good financial performance. You see breathless claims of AI doing all the work one year, tokenmaxxing, then less than a year later everybody says don't spend so much on AI, progress wasn't as far as we expected. You see this in what people say about AI as well - one year everybody will be jobless in 5 years, next year "actually jobs are gonna be ok". My point is that its hard to ignore just how in-tune and well-coordinated all these people are, and I don't think it's a coincidence. If CEOs were responding to actual political, economic and company developments, you'd see far more diversity of opinion. Some you see their companies are growing and profitable and wouldn't jump on the layoff bandwagon. Others may ask "Don't we need rule of law? What happens when the other party gets in power?" and fight the administration in courts etc.
- mschuster91 25d ago
  > Well, we don't see a slight trimming of workforces, we see 20-80% layoffs in most cases with good financial performance. The overhire during ZIRP was insane though - in total it was a good nine years of zero interest rates, and between the first period (2008-2015) and the second period (2020-2022) interest rates weren't that high either. Companies battled each other hard even for people who just went through a few weeks worth of bootcamp, just to make sure the competition didn't have access to them, even if there was not much productive work that could be assigned. And that group is where the layoffs really hit hard: people with basic training, relatively little investment both of the company into the workers and from the workers to the company and, most importantly, a skillset / allocation that just lends itself heavily to being replaced or at the very least heavily augmented by AI. On top of that... "good financial performance" doesn't mean the balance sheets can't look even better. With C-level boni being tied to stock performance or "efficiency gains" KPIs, it's no surprise that many just look at their paycheck first, the long-term health of the company second. > You see this in what people say about AI as well - one year everybody will be jobless in 5 years, next year "actually jobs are gonna be ok". I don't have much hope left for anything in the field of "knowledge work" and for most of "creative work" either. Let's be real, the wide masses don't care they're being force fed with AI slop, as long as they have some brainrot to doomscroll in the evening. The only jobs relatively secure for now IMHO are the trades and wiping the arses of dying boomers in care homes. For the former, robots lack the required dexterity and force feedback, and for the latter, maybe the Japanese are willing to accept arse-wiping robots, but I heavily doubt this will be the case in Western countries any time soon. > Some you see their companies are growing and profitable and wouldn't jump on the layoff bandwagon. There are companies left that are actively growing and not making shovels for the AI gold diggers? Huh? > Others may ask "Don't we need rule of law? What happens when the other party gets in power?" and fight the administration in courts etc. A rare few, yes. But most have given up and went for appeasement instead after the first ones got mergers disrupted or otherwise punished.
  - martythemaniak 25d ago
    I'm not disagreeing with you exactly - there are obviously reasons for doing all those things and on the surface they may seem sensible as well. But there are also good reasons why you'd do the exact opposite and my point is that in a group of independent thinkers you'd see greater diversity of opinions and outcomes. I was a middle manager involved in some of those layoffs (on both sides!) and saw the sausage made up close. Thing is, yes it's a shitty thing to do to someone personally, but nothing of what I saw could be justified in objective terms.

astrange 25d ago

> Twitter was changed so that only views favoured by Musk show up prominently in replies. This doesn't happen anymore, it's actually relatively good at sorting bad comments to the bottom now. The current problem is it's full of wannabe LinkedIn influencers with "Building for AI agents in business in public" in their profile using LLMs to reply to everything.

vablings 25d ago
Twitter only shows you what you want to see
- astrange 25d ago
  Eh. They recently changed the algorithm quite a lot, and the guy who was in charge of it (Nikita Bier) made it a lot less evil when Elon wasn't looking. But now he's gone so who knows what will happen.

dalyons 25d ago

I find this a correct and astute observation, and I don’t think you’re getting enough credit for it. I started noticing this SV C level groupthink a few years ago too. It’s just so _weird_ how lockstep everyone is, it’s like there isn’t a single original thought amongst today’s leaders. Just copy, mimic, converge, repeat. Same ideas, same moves (layoffs of exactly 10-20%) same org structures (flattening!) same team structures (smaller teams with AI!) same same . It’s almost creepy, and if I was more of a conspiracy theorist it would be easy to believe in shadowy leadership cabals orchestrating everything. It didn’t used to be this way - say circa 2006-2015 you had so much more diversity in the style and ideas of leadership. Eg early Dorsey, early zuck, all these other ceos at that time trying all kinds of wild and whacky ideas of how to run their companies. I’m not sure why this convergence happened, but now everyone’s singing from the same hymn sheet, it’s anti-innovation, and I hate it.

tstrimple 25d ago

And thus microservices were spread across the unsuspecting world.