I am actually surprised at how correlated layoffs have been across the industry. Is there a decaunicorn that went against the grain and did not accelerate hiring in the prior 2 years?
But the answer is mostly no. You don't become a worth $10Bn+ by being slow and steady. You grow fast when money is cheap and you hibernate when money is tight. (I don't agree with this way of building a company, but that's not the point.)
In a market with any amount of stickiness (arguable most tech markets), losing share is a permanent problem. Every customer your competitor acquires is theirs for as long as the stickiness holds, and if you want to woo them, not only do you have to convince them you're worth trying, but that you're worth switching for.
So under the all my competitors big and small are being aggressive and fighting for share framework, most companies bit the bullet and decided to accelerate hiring (especially since, as we are seeing now, it's so easy to reverse that decision for top management).
It's an argument for why the overall economy has become less volatile as growth has slowed, but the high growth pockets (like tech) are more volatile than ever.
Whether these companies can only survive in a 0% environment is a matter for debate I won't get into; my main point here is more along the line that there had to be consequences to that somewhere. The rate of resources flying around reduces, the rate of resource consumption must reduce.
Given one a16z VC gloating about it and praising Musk's "sack everyone and work the rest to death", I wouldn't be surprised if it's the billionaires co-ordinating.
It's not as though suppressing workers is new, and SV got co-ordinating their efforts to crush salaries.
And it's important to put the "work the rest to death" thing in context. In the past, Twitter workers were secretly video taped bragging about only working four hours per week.
https://www.tellmebest.com/twitter-communists-employee-leake...
Or maybe “mature” is an uncalled for judgement. Company correctly forecasts hiring needs and business environment is maybe more correct.
Subject: How and why to contemplate layoffs in Q4 2022