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Comment by meritt | Hacker News Reader

Laying people off isn't necessarily a sign of distress. It may also be aptly observing the marketplace (e.g. the article suggests the layoffs were mostly in recruiting roles), and taking preemptive action. There are many of us who think this recession is going to last a hell of a lot longer than a single quarter, and if we're going to make cuts, earlier the better.

"Management teams that cut expenses first are advantaged as it is an area under the curve problem. The earlier the cuts, the less deep they have to be and the better positioned the company is for the recovery. Bad management teams cut late and deep, which leads to them really suffering in the upturn." [1]

[1] https://medium.com/@gavin_baker/thoughts-on-navigating-a-bea...

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I mean, I think that is a sign of fragility. If I carefully make sure my laptop is far from the edge of the table every time I put it down, it's a smart, rational, well-advised response to knowing just how fragile my laptop is.

The interesting point to me is that we have an economy which, when the going gets tough, can afford to employ some 75-85% of the people it ordinarily does, and that when we've been close to 0% unemployment, it's been because of unstable luck and not underlying robustness. It's somewhat surprising to me that we don't live in a time where we can comfortably afford to employ >>100% of the people in the system.

(Well, either that, or we do live in such a time but our economy doesn't know how to allocate resources in a way to make it work.)

Unless, the definition of fragility for a laptop is different than that of say a basketball. The former is expected to not be dropped, while the latter requires it.

I agree. I'd think that salaries could keep fluctuating up and down, like in the oil market, rather than the number of people employed in the economy as a whole. After all, better to make 60% of your earlier salary than zero, for most people.

I'd also think that a job may not be worth doing at a given salary but worth doing at a lower salary. Isn't hiring just an ROI decision, which should theoretically make sense at a lower salary?

This is easily pointed out, almost to the point where it's a lazy counter-point. In this case layoffs are a clear sign of distress and all those who have been laid off will have a hard time getting new jobs, which is something we should also feel bad about.

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