Hacker News Reader

Comment by nayuki | Hacker News Reader

Redfin cuts 13% of staff, Stripe cuts 14%, Meta cuts 13%. Is this proportion a coincidence?

https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/03/stripe-cuts-14-of-its-work... , https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/09/meta-to-lay-off-more-than-11...

View on HN

> Is this proportion a coincidence?

No. It's similar to how IPO commission is always 7%. It's a number between "so small it's not enough" and "so large the org can't function".

Most of these layoffs are mimetic: Meta is insanely profitable and does not need to lay anyone off, this is just an excuse to get rid of some people. So they try to copy everyone else in most of the details.

You can't just view Meta profits in their income statement in isolation. Profitability from the owners' perspective is very largely impacted by the stock price, which has plummeted. From an owner's perspective it makes sense to shore up losses when you're "losing" money (even if unrealized) in other ways.

That said I'm not defending Meta and wish they became employee owned or that capitalism in general would go away.

Redfin's decision is not similar to the others. They are in real estate business and try to take over the market like zillow. Real estate game is more difficult than social media.

Wells Fargo has had mortgage inquiries drop 90%.

Lots of realtors and small office lenders who partner with bigger lenders could be about to go out of business.

Redfin and Zillow will no doubt try again if they survive and rate changes does indeed tank local employers.

Same loop that played out with local banks in 2008. Policy sure seems to prefer centralization.

They're targeting 20% reductions right now. ~14% via layoffs and the remainder via attritiion.

note that this is the second round in the last few months, so Redfin is really at more like 30% down.

seems on par with actual inflation?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com