~$14B profit in one quarter. I now totally understand why they have to lay off people. /s
And HN has been saying for years that these companies are extremely bloated (insert generic "how does Company X need Y engineers?").
Why would any company hire more employees than it needs? Do you really think the amount of work at Google has declined?
If Google didn't need them they shouldn't have hired them in the first place.
Same applies to all the big tech companies that hire boatloads of people and then have major layoffs. Exceptions apply to companies that are actually still fighting to survive or who have massive _declines_ in profits but a lot of the time the layoffs are just a "protect profits" measure, not a "we didn't need them" measure.
There is, of course, a separate discussion to be had around "do big companies really need _thousands_ of employees?" but by their own thinking the answer is yes, so they did need to hire them, and thus the question to them is "Why was protecting literal billions in profits more important than protecting the people who you employed? Why do you think you'd be worse off with those people you claimed to need, but 1 billion less 'profit' ? "
Yes I do. The pandemic changed everything for tech companies. Now it's over. It's not that there are less things to do, but there is less urgency, so there's less to do right now.
I don't have a clue, but I would guess that Google does.
> If Google didn't need them they shouldn't have hired them in the first place.
If only the future was knowable with the type of certainty you seem to imply.
To have a talent pool at hand, and to deny that talent pool to competitors.
Well I have an answer to this but it's not related to the conversation.
Employers keep people employed as a bargaining chip with the government.
Employee X may be under-performing relative to their peers, but if they're still going to perform 1.2X the average of your closest competition were they to change companies, you pay them to keep their ass out of the other guy's seat.
I said this in a comment above, but the question was rhetorical.
If you are using employees as a bargaining chip with the government, then by definition these are employees that you need (not sure I fully understand this hypothetical though).
What bill, exactly, and how?
How do you figure? Are the investors not making a profit? Or are you saying that the employees are basically stealing investor profits?
I'm not suggesting they are stealing profit, I'm saying they have earned a share of the profits. That's literally the point of share awards: to align management with shareholders.
So while I do think it is reasonable for a company to lay off people if they aren’t needed (product cancellation, etc), I don’t think that makes overhiring is reasonable, if that is your plan. Especially given you’re planning to do this at the same that their options for alternative employment are going to be reduced.
Because layoffs severely damage morale and make hiring significantly more difficult. Sometimes it's cheaper to just slow down hiring and let people leave naturally.
They are considerably less profitable this quarter than last year same quarter ($19B)
Who cares if there’s a consumer staple company with 5% margins out there? Companies are evaluated against their own results and valuation.
Which is still insanely good.
Everything is relative