Interest rates are lower than they have been for most of my life, and close to the average interest rate over the last 700 years.
https://bankunderground.co.uk/2017/11/06/guest-post-global-r...
People have simply gotten used to governments in the last twenty years trying to juice their economies by dropping interest rates more and more.
But many tech companies hired aggressively when interest rates were super low.
Now that rates are higher than in these last 5 years it does makes sense they want to cut costs, and layoffs are one way to do that. It reflects well on EBITDA.
You know, even if they say it's because of AI you can't ignore this change in the last 10 years despite interest rates still being lower than they were your entire life.
It was a significant change in the landscape and especially how investments were made in tech companies.
I hope this helped you understand the previous comment.
1) all FANGs are effectively dropping in profits, and it's because of "net-revenue": if revenue is up, it's because of new loans, new future financial obligations.
2) One exception is Facebook BUT profit growth certainly isn't what it used to be. And they certainly weren't shy about new loans either.
3) Another different exception is Apple BUT it's "very Apple" financial results: all Apple revenue sources are dropping, some fast, except for one: "services". And, yes, that one new revenue source is making up, for now, for the losses everywhere else. Does anybody seriously believe this can last more than a few quarters though?
I get that apple wants the "big new thing" every decade or so. But I find it very hard to believe that service revenue increase can be the big new thing for even 2-3 years without angering every last customer Apple has. The iPhone was a total homerun, and I just refuse to believe that "service" can be even the palest of shadows compared to that.
(just so we're clear: I applaud Apple for continuing to innovate, even on product lines dropping in revenue for years, that every MBA on the planet would mass-layoff the shit out of and suck the customers dry in an attempt to extract every last dollar they can)
(P.S. Apple is an exception because they haven't done layoffs, which is what's supposed to make the difference. It certainly made SOME difference, but is it big enough? Time will tell)
In that sense it reminds me of spreadsheets and short python scripts. We've had those for a while and they have not displaced so the entire workforce.
Although looked at another way, it will give you more for the same money, so maybe it will make some projects more worth to work on than they were previously so you'd rather hire even more people, because more projects would cross the threshold of "being worth for the investment".
So there's multiple forces acting on this, it's unclear how exactly it would play out.
In addition just standards and competition for existing things may rise, and the productivity gains will just go there, because you have to build 1.25x better products to compete.
However writing the code is just such a minor component of developers' time, if an 25% improvement in efficiency is desired, I'd think no time at all can be spent anymore on writing the code.
https://bipartisanpolicy.org/blog/congress-is-running-out-of...
Ex. https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/google-layoffs-2024-sundar-...
This is not suggesting that companies are pivoting from employees to AI, it is suggesting that companies are pivoting to development of AI products, and in that process, "re-skilling" and laying off teams that will be unnecessary for that trend.