Since 2018-19 this topic of employee bloat kept coming up within my circle of friends (late 30s, early/mid 40s). Despite working in big/small orgs I always reacted with massive surprise whenever a team/company said they have X employees, X being an order of magnitude higher than what I expected. And it's not as if I'm not aware of products' complexities, I have had experience in working in and leading small teams that delivered high impact projects. My cohort entered the workforce in mid 2000s when efficiency was paramount.

Now looking back the impact of ZIRP is quite clear. The justification for last yaer's layoffs was rate hikes and macro conditions. This year it's AI. It's as if companies are still quite bloated and they are jumping at the first opportunity to lay them off. AI is just a reason I feel.

Elon demonstrated with Twitter that tech companies can work despite cutting down a good chunk of workforce; CFOs at other companies can now point finger at Twitter and say, look they are still up and running despite cutting down like 80%, what's stopping us from reducing headcount by 15%-20%?

Anyway, I feel middle managers will be the ones hardest hit by these layoffs. I've already begun hearing that line/middle managers are now expected to code; which is a good thing IMO. Will be interesting to see how this plays out this decade.