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Comment by marcyb5st | Hacker News Reader

Disclaimer: Googler here but opinions are my own.

I think what happened was a the perfect storm: remote working made people be more at home and so more time spent online. Additionally, stimulus checks were juicy targets for advertisers that tried to sell people stuff to spend time.

Now, we are having inflation due to all those stimulus checks that forced central banks to hike interest rates. Moreover, energy prices and supply chains disruptions exacerbated the situation by driving more inflation and the cost of doing business. Advertisers understandably prefer spending less money.

Under these circumstances such a drop in unsurprising IMHO. Similar to the drop in Q1/Q2 2020.

EDIT: I wrongly used stimulus checks as an umbrella term. I really meant all the actions that pumped a lot of money into the economies.

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Friendly advice: As a current googler, you should refrain from posts like this, even with the “opinions are my own” disclaimer. You have access to internal info that shapes your opinion, etc. Even an innocent post such as this is potentially a breach of your employment contract.

Thanks!

"Potentially" is doing a lot of work there. If the lawyers get involved, marcyb5st is going to have to explain themselves and their comment, but their lawyer is going to ask about what material information is in the comment. The social media policy requires the disclaimer, btw.

Current Googler, opinions are my own.

At Apple, you could get shown the door if a cranky VP catches you opining on why revenue is down.

All I’m saying is: best to avoid any post that is related to company internals in any way. The “New York Times” rule and all that.

It's probably slightly less risk, yes. But Google has a specific policy about this and they are following it to the letter. This is pretty low-risk as far as things go.

Apple has very, very different policies on this than Google. Google is getting more conservative, but it's still a long way from Apple.

Apple is also very famously way out on their own with these kind of policies. That’s not real life.

> You have access to internal info that shapes your opinion, etc. Even an innocent post such as this is potentially a breach of your employment contract.

As a Googler also, I question is this really true? The only thing I can think that you are referring to (internal info of something I'm not directly working on) is...memegen. Anything secret I'm exposed to is much more technical than business directions. When we are talking about the general economy, we really are just talking about the general economy.

It is. You also tend to tarnish your company's brand with the ad-hoc remarks. Let your Marketing, PR, and CFO handle the comms on this.

> Let your Marketing, PR, and CFO handle the comms on this.

Yes, Google doesn’t expect or allow SWEs to handle comms on anything. But we are also allowed to express are opinions on anything unrelated to our work. I can imagine that you work or live in a much more strict/stifling environment?

Don’t let your corporation muzzle you out of fear, especially one like Google which 1) has a specific policy about this and 2) is big enough that no post on HN is going to move the needle.

Disclaimer: I don’t work at Google and my pseudonymous internet opinions are all definitely correct.

> Now, we are having inflation due to all those stimulus checks that forced central banks to hike interest rates.

Stimulus checks are not causing inflation. Corporations raising prices to increase profits are causing inflation.

inflation is a giant beast with multiple causes, one of which is definitely stimulus. There are others too, including the cause you listed. Most things have multiple causes

Corporations raising prices that people are more willing to pay because they have more available spending money because of all of those stimulus checks...

What changed? Corporations who raise prices to increase profits isn’t exactly a revolutionary never before seen business strategy.

> Corporations raising prices to increase profits

Well, not Alphabet.

Stimulus checks did not cause high inflation. It's a relatively small factor. The major impact was supply chain issues, changes in how people chose to spend their money, and two major impacts to oil (people suddenly commuting much less and then starting to again, and Russia).

Interesting. I didn’t know this was settled. Have a good reference on the relative attributions? Mostly curious about methodology for doing so.

All of that money is long spent. FRED has data on it. Inflation continues unbaked.

"supply chain issues" -- I think there was a Dilbert about that. The all-purpose excuse for everything.

"Supply chain issues" don't just happen, like an earthquake. They're caused by government actions.

Supply chain issues like the workforce being sick, factories shutting down due to the pandemic, and a giant ship clogging up the ocean for a while.

Its not about the inflation rate, its whether it's controlled. The fed reacted slower than expected to inflation, and claimed it would be transitory for a long time.

Hiking is meant to take heat out of the economy, doing so while the government was still pouring covid stimulus money into the economy would've been counterproductive.

Covid stimulus went on too long (later stimulus checks, mortgage forbearance, eviction bans), well after people had returned to their lives. And we are only beginning to see just how much of that money had no productive impact on the economy (PPP fraud, theft of unemployment benefits, scams around fake tests and masks).

Billions of dollars have been spent without contributing to GDP, governments need to cut back fiscal policy to control inflation.

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/us-attorney-announces-federal...

If it was all supply side we would have seen a accompanying reduction in national income. It’s a combination of both a reduction in aggregate supply and an increase in aggregate demand.

Ah of course, the stimulus check story. Indeed, 1200$ one-off checks caused this recession. /s

It was like $5T in total stimulus.

You're correct! I used stimulus checks as an umbrella term, but it's not correct. But I meant all the measures that pumped a lot of money into the economy. Here in Italy loans were frozen for 2 years which equals to a much bigger injection.

1200$ x 320 million americans = 1 trillion dollars [1]. Meanwhile less work has been produced.

[1] It’s the official number, not a mistake or a ballpark. https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-22-106044

Where did the other $616 billion dollars go?

That’s the problem with the governments.

No but $500k PPP loans all over the place probably did affect the economy.

Didn’t those mostly just mean that people kept getting their same salaries?

When supply remains the same or declines at the same time demand goes through the roof through a combination of lockdowns and helicopter money (as the other commenter points out, government sources show nearly $1T in direct payments), big time inflation happens.

Said inflation is most likely the biggest culprit behind this (or upcoming, depending on how you define it) recession. Disposable income is evaporating and people are adjusting their purchasing behaviors. After all, who wants to buy anything they don't have to, when they feel that everything is so much more expensive than it should be?

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