I am absolutely certain this is to suppress wages and employee rights. It is a coordinated effort across the industry and should be immediately investigated.
In general I think the true leadership of many of these companies is overstated. Layoffs are way to appear to save money so they are doing just that. And the pandemic seem to have been growth in remote products, so they had to grow for that. Even if most of the new workforce might not have been needed.
These companies are either setting all-time profit and revenue numbers or just missing last year's all-time records. Wall Street wasn't happy that they just missed their growth targets, but keep in mind that all growth is compounded. So they have never been more profitable, and yet here we are.
I was a young kid during the dotcom bubble and in highschool during the '08 downturn so I wasn't really aware of the macroenomocic trends in the industry then, but now that I am older and deeply invested in the tech economy it's so obvious.
After getting into a couple very well funded startups, and seeing how the sausage is made, you realize that no one knows what they are doing. It's not that they're stupid, just that business is hard and the environment is always changing. Sure there might be some "master of the universe" types, but you can create a good business solving the most immediate and pressing problems.
Whataboutism is a word that has been abused badly a lot in the last year but it seems like it fits here.
This has happened many times before and will continue to happen cyclically as long as people are free to spend their money how they see fit. Why would this particular time be the result of some vast conspiracy?
-Jared Vennett, The Big Short
I'm more interested in building explanations on reality than supporting my positions with comedic fiction. I'll share some small part of my explanation. I apologize for my lack of brevity.
In game playing we have the ability to calculate the time to calculate and store perfect play in various games. After around the complexity of chess we get to the point where it is physically impossible to store perfect play because the combinatorial explosion generates more states than we have atoms to work with in our universe. This forces approximation, which forces error, which means that for almost every task in this universe error is not only present but absolutely demanded. In multi-agent settings these issues only get worse, because not only is the state space very high due to the combinatorics, but in addition the optimal policy is a function of other policies. The connecting point here is that since our problems are a superset of things we know to be physically unrealizable it follows that error is inevitable and therefore the observance of stupidity relative to theoretical ideals is inevitable.
Founder culture is completely at odds with sophisticated cynicism.
- Paul GrahamThis razor does suck, and it's overused.
Conversely: “the greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist”.
Once is an accident, twice is a coïncidence, three times it's a pattern.
My conspiracy (let me put the tinfoil hat on) is that corporates and mega rich people wanted the recession badly because they can benefit from it. But it didn't happen so they're doing the layoffs and increasing prices to manufacture the recession despite their all-time high profits.
Seems easier to capture a bigger piece of the pie when the pie is growing for everybody no and nobody complains?
Not to mention the social and political unrest which might be triggered by a recession. Recent and old history has shown times and times again that it is when people go hungry or desperate that they challenge the established social order.
It may not be a conspiracy but that is what's happening.
History taught me that the rich benefit from piece and from unrest.
Knowing human greed and that it's always greener on the other side.
But as I said, it's just a conspiracy theory that the recession is being manufactured.
The irony is that many of them are actually part of this layoff reading this and still they don't agree with what is really happening.
The inevitable periodic 'crash' that is part of the capitalist system is a feature, not a bug. It helps suppress wages, keeps workers in their place. So I think you are right on the money.
So many more layoffs will be announced in the coming weeks. But remember: all companies will show (record) healthy profits none the less.
Even the hacker news crowd that lives lavishly and is mostly unharmed by all of this should not feel save at all, you are just as expendable as the anonymous warehouse worker or fast food person.
Speaking of which, the 100K+ tech worker has more in common with the average fast food or retail worker than the owning class: you are worker slaves that fear for their well-being if without work.
Unfortunately I'm afraid the HN crowd is just too comfortable to realise that capitalism is destroying everything, from freedom and autonomy to democracy to the environment.
65%+ Americans don't have 500 bucks to their name. They are one car breakdown from deep shit.
They call it the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it. -- George Carlin
This is of course not true.
https://www.cbs19news.com/story/34248451/6-in-10-americans-d...
In reality, even most people in the bottom 20% of income have more than $500 in savings: https://www.valuepenguin.com/banking/average-savings-account...
Bye!
But I have it good so the system works! Yea sure, it’s really anout you. The selfishness, the lack of care for others is so ingrained.
If the majority of your country is dirt poor and has to work multiple jobs the system clearly doesn’t work.
Congratulations, Comrade. By your own logic, your original post must then be dismissed. Glory to the Soviet Science!
Like a sibling comment said, its overwhelmingly more likely that we’re seeing just how bad leadership really is at Tech.
Private companies have shareholders & related interests/pressure as well.
Would you call the previous few decades of tech employers bidding comp insanely high as they competed for talent "a coordinated effort to boost wages?" Why not?