Were most Big Tech companies overstaffed?

If I think about this ignoring my feelings/friends it doesn’t seem to bad.

Money has been basically free to borrow for an extended period of time. Expansion was a lower cost than any point in my lifetime.

COVID drove demand, and expansion looked necessary. Sure maybe everyone should have been more conservative, but ignoring the human element it cost nothing to get money and you were fulfilling a business need. Why would you not expand to meet the demand?

Demand has dropped, money is getting more expensive to borrow by the day, and projections for the economy look horrid. Worse than TV tells people for sure.

The shitty part of all of this, is really these companies reinforcing they don’t care about humans, and we all see their profit numbers. They had the means to do this better.

I’ve heard very few stories where the separations were handled with the tact and care we deserve. The employers that did this correctly deserve some credit, but it’s few and far between.

So yes, overstuffed; but by their own decisions. Good leaders would have owned that, valued their staff, and handled the transition better. We are just a number to most.

A lot of empire building when the times are good.

Painful as layoffs have been, will it lead to greater hiring discipline?