Why Companies Are No Longer Hanging on to Employees | Hacker News Reader

Why Companies Are No Longer Hanging on to Employees

wsj.com

36 pointsfortran7713 comments

Tech has been a bloodbath for past 2 years - and this is how WSJ frames layoffs, lol:

“The job market has softened in recent months, however, marking a safer environment for companies to start streamlining their workforces. “

Last 3 years, it started in late 2022.

The era of cheap money led to a lot of mergers and acquisitions, which incentivized companies large and small to bloat to increase their value to prospective buyers.

I really don’t think this is AI causing all these layoffs. It’s just a return to business fundamentals, but we’re in a period of massive inflation and it’s getting harder to be profitable.

Its not the AI that causing it, but the AI race. Companies need to pay for the large capex.

But where are they racing? If AGI happens, capitalism is over. If AGI won't happen, they just wasted massive amount of resource in chasing of a white elephant and these companies are over.

They're racing to get the ceos and investors rich enough to build survival bunkers on their private islands in time for the societal crash they caused

You can’t survive in survival bunkers or islands, and thinking otherwise is a pipe dream. We don’t have a true model of what this might look like, but if there’s extreme instability then wealth doesn’t serve as a safety measure—it will be a target. You need backing by governed armies to protect status and wealth, but in some proto-civilization model, there will just be warring factions with bunker busters and maybe nukes going at each other. They’ll eventually form treaties and merge into city states, repeating the same trend towards nation states and democracy. Just skip the dumb bloodshed in the middle, and settle on Nordic socialism from the get go.

Nowhere they are stuck in the prisoner's dilemma.

https://archive.ph/InaW5

At least the article is honest in stating why this is happening. I feel like I've seen lots of articles where the gist is "Are they laying people off because of tariffs? Maybe because of AI? We may never know!", so it's refreshing to see an article plainly state that this is for profitability.

And wanna know what? I'm not hanging to employers either. It works both ways sweetheart.

After working 17 years at a good company (but wanting new challenges and career advancement) I serious problems with the last two jobs. I stood on principle .. and let the chips fall accordingly.

> Labor is a major cost, and cutting it is one way to bolster profit margins.

This also shows that big corporations do not expect growth. Investing for growth is the best strategy unless the company is sure that there is no more growth. Then cutting expenses makes sense, short term at least.

> In an environment where employment growth is already low, any increase in layoffs could lead the economy to start shedding jobs.

Stagflation is a very likely outcome of current policy. Job loss, increase in prices, shrinking economy, etc.

> While there is evidence that AI is cutting into demand for certain jobs, such as software development

* citation needed.

> “Labor hoarding was especially pronounced in higher-wage jobs, where employees are harder to find and therefore more costly to lose,”

This is one problem with having increasing monopolies in the sector. When most developers will be hired by the same dozen companies there is no job market, but just a cartel in line with the 2010 no-poaching agreements.

- These agreements, which can take various forms, aim to reduce competition in labour markets. They also carry the risk of suppressing wages and limiting job opportunities for employees. While such agreements may be pursuant to ancillary legitimate restrictions, they are often viewed as horizontal cartel agreements necessitating a per se approach (https://www.legal500.com/developments/thought-leadership/no-...)

So, nothing new. Big tech screwing software developers like they always do.

there was a clear timeline, each one enabled by the previous

...covid

...remote work

...moving away from HCOL areas

...quiet quitters

...layoffs

...RTO

...no jobs

workers got too much leverage and it had to be taken back.

"Major investor calls on Google owner to ‘aggressively’ cut staff and pay" https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/nov/15/major-inv... (2 years old)

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