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Comment by incrudible | Hacker News Reader

If the evidence suggested that periodic layoffs are good for company longevity and profit margins, you can bet that none of these academics would shout it from the rooftops.

Moreover, none of the evidence was collected under the current economic environment, where a decade of cheap money and growth fantasies have fueled an unsustainable hiring frenzy.

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> If the evidence suggested that periodic layoffs are good for company longevity and profit margins, you can bet that none of these academics would shout it from the rooftops.

Have you ever taken an economics class? Plenty of economists take a perverse glee in claiming that things like the minimum wage and child labor laws are detrimental, I don’t think that “sometimes layoffs are good” is a taboo point.

And that’s before we get into discussing business school professors…

I'm not saying it's taboo to the point of not being discussed at all, but when have you last seen anyone come out strongly against child labor laws in some news outlet? It may well be true that child labor laws can effectively worsen the situation of children in third world countries, regardless of how good the intentions of the lawmakers are. Minimum wage laws do price out the lowest-value workers from the job market - whether that's a net detriment to society or any individual is debatable, of course. As for the "perverse glee" that you see, it's probably the satisfaction you may get from disabusing others of their foolish idealism.

It's a social exercise at companies like Microsoft. You lay people off because you are expected to lay people off, hell you'll look irresponsible for not laying people off.

We're gonna sit here and pretend that Microsoft, a company that printed $72B in net income last fiscal year somehow needs to lay off 10k workers to survive?

Survive, no. Blackberry is still surviving.

Thrive, yes. It is one of the factors that allowed them over time to get to $72B in net income.

Microsoft is not a welfare agency. Of course they don't need to lay off people, but they are obligated to improve the bottom line. If they have excess workers, they shouldn't have hired them in the first place. The question now is merely whether laying them off is worth it. From a societal standpoint, the layoffs may well be advantageous, because that labor is now free to join leaner companies that struggle to find workers.

If only these academics would listen to random HN posters!

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