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Comment by pyrrhotech | Hacker News Reader

The tech bubble is bursting, did you miss the memo? Even after the recent dead cat bounce, FAANG stocks are down 30%+ with their revenue growth collapsing and they are laying off workers, and it's a whole lot worse for all the non-profitable zombie companies that have been surviving solely on ZIRP and Quantitative Easing absurdly loose financial conditions that have come to an abrupt halt.

Naive investors in the tech bubble forgot the hotdog stand problem: https://seekingalpha.com/article/4558508-what-hotdog-vendors... so many got burned and they aren't coming back any time soon.

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Let's face facts most of the FAANG were/are overstaffed. If Twitter can reduce its staff by nearly 50% and still function then the other tech companies can reduce their staff too. They are just resizing. This is a good time, while there's a threat of a recession, to reduce the number while not scaring the stockholders too much. It's not a burst similar to 2000. It's a correction. Tech is too vital for the economy for it to just fall apart. I expect tech stocks to be booming within the next 2 years. But yes, it's sucking right now.

Also, don't expect working from home to be your choice anymore. Now companies will gain the upper hand on the working from home debate since there's going to be many people looking to fill the same position. It was nice while it lasted.

>If Twitter can reduce its staff by nearly 50% and still function then the other tech companies can reduce their staff too.

I'm not sure why this is such a common take. Many functions in a typical business, overstaffed or lean, could be greatly pared back without an immediate impact. UX, UR, product, legal, HR, design, recruiting, infosec, analytics, marketing, sales, facilities, etc. The question is will it have a negative impact 6 or 12 or 24 months down the road.

I have no personal knowledge on whether Twitter was overstaffed but the "we got rid of X, Y, Z and the business hasn't collapsed yet so must not be needed!" is a bad take.

The thing is that if the position is vital then they rehire. But at least you know that that person is needed. One thing I've learned, for the most part, is that no one person is vital to a company's success or failure. I worked for a project manager that thought everything he did was very important. So he had files and files to document what was happening. He got fired and the "important documentation" ended up in the trash. A department in the same company was confident they were as lean as possible. They worked long hours and output as much work they thought was needed. The company decided to close the department and every one got fired. 2 years later the company was fine and they were not missed. Turns out they were doing work no one really needed.

People quit all the time and they get replaced. It's the same thing with layoffs. Another thing is that a lot of positions are filled by people that are over educated or experience for the job they hold. They do it simply because that person wants to work for a FAANG and are open to getting any position they can. My suspicion is that a lot of people are going to move jobs as jobs become available and some positions will be merged from say 2 to 1. I'm sure it's crazy now but they will be fine.

This maybe only my personal experience but for me Twitter on Andorid works much worse than before Twitter mass stuff reductions.

"Bursting" feels like an overstatement. It's a correction, sure, but tech is still an insanely valuable sector.

> dead cat bounce

I’m not following the analogy here. What is a dead cat bounce - does it describe the stock curve?

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/deadcatbounce.asp

> A dead cat bounce is a temporary, short-lived recovery of asset prices from a prolonged decline or a bear market that is followed by the continuation of the downtrend. Frequently, downtrends are interrupted by brief periods of recovery—or small rallies—during which prices temporarily rise.

> The name "dead cat bounce" is based on the notion that even a dead cat will bounce if it falls far enough and fast enough. It is an example of a sucker's rally.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/deadcatbounce.asp

"if you throw it out the top floor window, even a dead cat would bounce". I shouldn't use the phrase though, as I'm actually very fond of cats. I think it's an example of society's bias against cats. If it were called "dead dog bounce" it would likely be taboo

Oh well; you can't teach an old cat new tricks. It would make a cat's breakfast out of the old metaphors. Let sleeping cats lie. It's a cat's life. Say, this bloated browser runs like an absolute cat. Those catgone web devs, you know?

Oh, about last night's date: she looked nothing like her profile picture. Total cat!

"The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy cats."

> "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy cats."

The trouble here is that the sentence no longer fulfills its cat-given goal of representing every English alphabet letter.

Non finance related, but in politics there’s also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_cat_strategy

“There is one thing that is absolutely certain about throwing a dead cat on the dining room table […] they will be talking about the dead cat – the thing you want them to talk about – and they will not be talking about the issue that has been causing you so much grief.”

To create an image, you have to use something. You can't just say 'dead thing bounce'. Maybe it's unfair to cats since I would agree that not all choices for 'thing' are equally acceptable. No 'dead baby bounce'. But still it must be something actual and not purely abstract, else it's not an image and does not do the job an image does.

Cats always land on their feet, they say. I think this idiom is the correlation to the bounce — you think the car has landed like it ALWAYS does, but in fact it’s a dead cat and was a bounce not a sticked landing.

Well cat owners openly acknowledge that some cats are quite evil

People closing short positions causing causing a small bounce in an otherwise dead asset

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