The Real Reasons for Big Tech Layoffs at Google, Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon

> The data collected by 365 Data Science also shows that a narrow majority of the staff who were let go (56 percent) were female. This is worrying, given that the tech industry has spent much of the last decade attempting to address the gender imbalance already present within the field – particularly within technical and engineering roles. It doesn’t exactly send out a great message to potential new female hires that, as well as a pay gap and a lower likelihood of progressing into senior roles, they will have to content with a greater chance of being let go.

Just a few paragraphs earlier, the article mentioned that HR was most affected:

> However, it is interesting to note that the roles and job functions most affected were within HR, which accounted for 28 percent of all layoffs.

If they're going to mention the gender breakdown of people laid off they have to make note of gender representation of the roles going through layoffs in order to make an honest comparison.

This is a very non-scientific analysis that concludes with a big rhetorical shrug. It delivers not one bit on the promise in its title.

> More surprising though, was the fact that the median level of experience held by those who were let go is 11.5 years. So, it's not necessarily true that these are all junior workers with little experience who could be quickly replaced or possibly even have their roles automated. One possible reason for this statistic could be that longer-serving employees tend to receive higher salaries, and cutting them could help businesses meet their financial targets.

Exactly and quite frankly unsurprising.

There is a complete delusion and a myth going around on HN that ‘seniors’ are not affected by these layoffs and proponents of that could not have been more wrong.

It is perfectly reasonable to fire them as they are totally expensive and a giant cost center to the business and to keep some extra cash would be to just reduce or remove the deadwood. Some juniors can be kept and paid less but most of them can also be let go as well if they are not quick to learn.

It was unsustainable anyway. A well deserved reset of the tech bubble that finally corrected and burst.

I had to dig for the article: https://jacobin.com/2018/06/bullshit-jobs-david-graeber-work...

But mostly this ^ Companies are not using "return to office" policies to further shave down.

The actual truth is these companies were running in the regime of "we can afford to just throw manpower at projects". Everyone was just trying to gather up people to fill roles. Playing conservative in this regard was looked down upon - "you can't predict what the economy is going to do, and what if the competition just ends up hiring more people and they end up winning big?" .

Now its the exact opposite - "other companies are downsizing to conserve costs. If we keep people, this could come to bite us in the ass because those companies can be ahead financially".

"Real reasons" suggests a conspiracy. Macroeconomic times changed and some companies were operating grossly inefficiently in terms of spend (Meta). Other companies emulated to take advantage of the times and to appease stockholders. This is what a contraction cycle looks like.

It would behoove companies to run more like Apple in the one aspect of not overhiring and avoiding hiring freezes.

my pet conspiracy theory is that they have realized the productivity gains they can get by using chatgpt/llama/bard like ai's and upcoming recession have given them apt reason to reduce workforce without loss of productivity.