Don't you think that the ppl deciding to hire like crazies just to fire a year later should be accountable for that? They're clearly making bad decisions. It's just that someone else is expected to pay for them.
Did you buy real-estate in 20/21 when the mortgate rates were 2%? If you didn't that's a terrible decision. Did you take responsibility and fire yourself as the primary bread-winner for your family? Why not?
Did you buy any high-growth tech stocks in 2021? If you did, that was a terrible decision.
Any idiot can arm-chair hindsight decisions
Meh. Securing financing in 20/21 was great but buying in 20/21 was kind of terrible.
Everyone I know who bought during that time period is now stuck for 30 years because over-extended and took a bath on property value, and a lot of them are already regretting that choice as life returns to normal and they realize life in the outer suburbs is kind of miserable (especially as they RTO).
Conversely, refinancing and leveraging cheap cash in 20/21, building a pile of powder, and then waiting until 2023-2024 to buy looks like a much better move. At least in my local market, either prices are down significantly or the seller can't afford a lower price and the inventory just sits on the market.
Again, securing financing in 20/21 was great but buying real estate at those prices wasn't great relative to alternatives.
If a mortgage was you only way to get leverage in 20/21 then you should've taken out a mortgage. But if you had other ways to get leverage at the lower rates -- eg taking out a line of credit on existing real estate or borrowing against assets -- other options have been performing better and especially over the next few years will continue performing much better.
Your rebuttal, is exactly my point. Leaders make strategic bets all the time, especially in the tech world where you have to constantly take risks. Not all of them will come off and leaders have to shut-down / layoff people when bets fail.
I'm admonishing OP for cherry-picking the time when leaders made the wrong bet.
You need to make a good decision and learn more about the fact that what you pay for an asset (which is fixed forever) is typically much more important than the loan rate (which can be refinanced at lower rates). Also, overpaying for a house is a trap that cannot be unloaded no matter what the interest rate without bringing cash to closing while underpaying allows for an easy sale no matter how high the interest rate.
I see no problems in their behavior. The insane rate of hiring was useful to give a good boost to my salary in a couple of years.
Here's to hoping they go back at hiring like crazy again.
Basically, scoop up talent while you can, then cut the lowest performers. It's basically the last step in a thorough interview process.
It's mind-boggling that we have raised a generation of people who are absolutely clueless about "Cost-of-Capital". It is worse than people not understanding democracy
Any company with competent management. That includes not cargo culting layoffs while turning a blind eye to the damage they cause to a company.
> It's mind-boggling that we have raised a generation of people who are absolutely clueless about "Cost-of-Capital". It is worse than people not understanding democracy
What's mind-boggling is that people think the cost savings from a layoff happens in a vacuum. There are definitely repercussions in terms of loss of productivity, increased employee churn, brand damage, increased difficulty hiring in the future, loss of operational knowledge...
Layoff are a sign of mismanagement. That has nothing to do with the "cost-of-capital".
Your statement is as naive as "A Production Bug / Latency is a sign of Incompetent Software Developer" Should we fire you as soon as you hit the first bug?
BTW, You have a fundamental misunderstanding of Cost of Capital
Tomorrow if your salary is cut by 50%, would you cut-down on extra expenses? Is that a sign of mismanagement from you?
if you knowingly and willfully put yourself into a situation which resulted in your salary being cut by 50% then yes
Similarly, if you gamble on a coin flip and lose, that doesn't mean it was a bad bet. It is only a bad bet if you calculate the odds and expected returns incorrectly. People seem to really struggle with this concept
My point is that over-hiring and layoffs aren't "good for the company" as the post I was responding to claimed. They're both a sign of bad management that incurs a cost on the company being poorly managed. One of those costs is that top performers leave as they are the first to recognize mismanagement.
It is one thing if the layoffs are at a startup running out of money, and another if layoffs are at a profitable company
But even if paying a celebrity $10 million for endorsements is a bad decision (and we don't know if it is or if it isn't -- it's probably a wash, as most marketing expenditures like this are), that decision is unrelated to why 8,000 people were laid off.