You'd think somewhere, in at least one of these larger tech companies, there would be a leader boldly proclaiming "this is our time to increase our investments and beat our competitors!" But it turns out there is even less diversity of thought in tech leadership than there is racial and gender diversity.
That said, Gitlab may be making a very prudent decision given their circumstance. I don’t know enough to conclude one way or the other. But considering what they are doing so closely mirrors what nearly everyone else is doing, skepticism is warranted.
It certainly isn’t the fault of those being hired, but it might have given them a chance to find employment somewhere that truly needed their skills and didn’t see them as “headcount”.
I’m a highly paid tech employee and idk it’s different feeling bad for someone who lost their $10/hr job vs someone making 400k tc
If you do what everybody else does, you can blame outside factors if it goes wrong.
If you decide to be the one that _doesn't_ follow the trend, if it goes wrong, the blame falls on you.
Not saying it’s good management of a company, but that’s the mechanism driving this.