[kinkora]

Not sure if a bit of confirmation bias on my side but seems like there is a recent big uptick of layoffs at Silicon Valley companies? Popular ones like Quora, TripAvisor, Ebay, Mozilla, Uber, 23andMe, etc we hear about but among my own network, i am even hearing it from smaller startups & businesses.

Just wondering if it is just me but I am surmising that it seems to indicate a wider systematic.. issue? Maybe issue is not the word for it. Symptom is probably a better description and it feels we are at the precipitous of an incoming storm/crunch/etc.

Please tell me I am imagining things.

Edit: I guess my question is more are all these layoffs an indicator of an incoming recession or is it something more nefarious like the big tech (FAANG) are taking steps to widen their positions while they are still in a "strong" position to do so (e.g. google).

[onlyrealcuzzo]

I mean, there's barely been 2k layoffs that I've heard of in a year. Google's hired more than that in The Bay alone. I'm sure Facebook and Apple have hired just as many.

I really doubt we're at a net negative.

[dehrmann]

This might just be a post-holiday rush. It's a dick move to lay people off between ~Nov 15 and Jan 1, and if you can afford to avoid it, it's best to avoid burning people affected and making the remaining employees a little more bitter and anxious.

[pm90]

Modern recessions are caused by 2 things: 1) Some very inflated assest class being spread out among a large number of folks suddenly failing or 2) the fear of 1) happening, which can lead to a self fulfilling prophecy. Since we’ve always seen recessions in the past, nobody believes we can achieve sustained economic growth... and they are mostly right. If enough people believe there is a recession they will start behaving in ways that ironically contribute to the recession.

What’s really protecting us from recession today, in my humble opinion, is that all of humanity is so interconnected and so hates recession that we’re willing to help out others who are on the brink of disaster of limit their failures to a small region rather than let it blow up in everybody’s face.

Also... small layoffs are not necessarily an indicator of recession, they can also be course corrections by overly optimistic companies whose wildly grandiose plans didn’t pan out as planned. While these well known businesses lay-off folks, my inbox is flooded by recruiters looking to fill multiple positions in a bevy of startups. In other words, business as usual.

[sillysaurusx]

For what it’s worth, I came to say the same thing, then saw you already did.

It’s hard to disentangle the effect HN has on our thinking, though. Just because layoffs have popped up on HN, are we both imagining that it’s part of a global trend? Or do global tech trends inherently appear on HN? Hard to say.

[thrwaway69]

I doubt on the later part. You might wanna check this thread out: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025681

[dehrmann]

I keep waiting for someone to realize Bay Area rents have gone up 100%-200% since 2008, but the max unemployment in CA is still $450 per week. I was laid off in 2009, and between that and severance, I could manage. It's going to be a lot harder in the next recession.

[echelon]

You realize jobs are abundant and rents are affordable outside the Bay Area?

My mortgage on a huge historic cotton mill loft with brick walls, 23'' ceilings, and city views in Atlanta is less than your rent.

You could consider getting out.

[Mathnerd314]

The Fed is pumping money, the yield curve inverted, job openings are flat/declining, people have been predicting recession for 2 years... the precise date of an actual recession is not declared until long after the fact, but I certainly wouldn't bet on the recession not having started already. And there are strong political reasons to avoid any mention of recession, so we might see economic indicators getting distorted in the coming months.

[codyb]

Alternatively

The fed is ensuring liquidity in the overnight markets via short term loans which are paid back the next day (no one seems to know why there’s less liquidity there, could be higher asset values require greater liquid reserves, or some form of capital outflow tightening usd liquidity due to the strength of the dollar, or something else?)

Unemployment is exceeding low, which means more jobs are filled, which means there are less job postings.

People have been predicting doom since the dawn of mankind and sometimes they’re right.

Not sure about the yield curve enough to offer any explanation or even what it means when you say it’s inverted.

Not sure who’s right or what signs are meaningful. Dimension reduction of a search space is a difficult problem. Lots of times people see what they want to see.

I can’t help but just throw my hands up these days and go back to ViM, if it was Vegas I’d split my money fifty fifty on doom and gloom and outstanding success.

[NeverFade]

> the yield curve inverted

The yield curve is no longer inverted.

[wtvanhest]

Tripadvisor is boston right?

[gsich]

GMAFIA, not FAANG.

[samantohermes]

These are signs of the upcoming global economic crisis. Companies funded by the FED are simply not sustainable.

[thrower123]

In general, these seem to be Softbank companies, more than anything else, and ultimately, those are funded by Saudi petrodollars.

[unlinked_dll]

What does FED stand for in this context?