Tech lay-offs teach us a lesson about the ‘war for talent’
ft.com
ft.com
It is relatively easy to become entrenched when you buy off everyone who even becomes/registers as a threat, especially when capital is cheap and plentiful.
This strategy is only reinforced by the quick dumping of workforce when capital gets more expensive. Those "threats" shrink when in direct proportion to the degree of difficulty in acquiring startup capital.
If there actually were a pressing need for the best of the best, they wouldn't have frozen hiring, as they'd be continuing to keep an eye out for the new cream of the crop. No one'll admit it, of course, but I have heard it several times in various forms, generally boiling down to what I'd call the adage of "if they are working for you, that's one less worker for your competitor," in my career.
When problems start to mount the expensive stuff gets jettisoned. It could be very promising and it would still be cut. Now some programs that they see as crucial to their future development/survival might still be kept, but that doesn't mean that because people / projects that are cut necessarily lack promise (though this is often the case).
It could just as easily be that they just don't have the same high likelihood of success, or the payoff could be not worth the risk.
I'd add that the adage "if they are working for you, that's one less worker for your competitor," is a little bit of an unnecessarily negative portrait. At a high level, would you rather your team have a "C+ teammate while your competitor has an A+ teammate", or would you like the opposite? The answer is obvious and you do everything you can to put the balance in your favor... but I see this as different from paying to keep them off the market. This repeats for every team member so you have to try to do this every time to keep that balance.
On the other hand, from the perspective of a smaller company, they have an A+ person that's not available at all, and will go to another high paying big company before you anyway. So that I see as more of the talent hording people refer to. I guess I don't see a small hypothetical company as "competition", but maybe that's a bad idea.
EDIT/PS: I know in the second to last paragraph I do a poor job of describing why it's different from "keeping them off the market".
I see it more like picking players before a game... of course you pick the best players for yourself, and do so to some extent to prevent them from going to the other team, but I don't think the adage fits.
To me, it's the opposite. As soon as i still have ability to learn more things everyday, it's the dream to me already.
It's the greed that kills them, not waking up.