Super interesting seeing companies grow like wildfire and overspend as returns for investors skyrocket, and then as the market swings downward, they buoy their stock prices a bit by just as quickly cutting heads.
The inverted accountability scheme for leaders doing this is another perverse enabling factor; I've complained about this before, but that tends to lead to flames about why founders etc. can't have ownership of headcount and the fate of their companies etc.
I'm not seeing a clear solution for this culture of toying with thousands of peoples' lives for a quick buck... well, aside from the (sadly) politically loaded move to unionize more white collar work and thus provide actual accountability. Why unions are a political matter is beyond me; IATSE uses their strength to ensure excellent benefits for their members in media/entertainment.
Unionization is the correct response here. The incentives of company leaders simply don't account for workers' desire to not lose their jobs. The only way to change this is for workers to change said incentives--by organizing. Of course, easy for me to say as a freelancer. I'm definitely not trying to say unionizing tech would be easy. But it certainly is simple, at least conceptually.
Do you think these people would have been better off if tech had carried net fewer heads the past couple of years? Having an extra 100k employed for two years is worse than those jobs just never existing?
>I'm not seeing a clear solution for this culture of toying with thousands of peoples' lives for a quick buck
A bit over-dramatic, no? Nothing to say about the employees who left their companies for Google to "make a quick buck"?
Business expand and contract. Should Google be considered a retirement home? The people who took these jobs are smart men and women who will go on to work at other companies. This isn't new.
I know it's much more difficult to fire people in the EU, but is there an exception if it's done as part of a layoff?
The only real solution I can think of is regulatory in nature (e.g. requiring paying out 6 months pay during a layoff, which might make companies think twice before "hiring ahead of growth")
Because let's face it, "hiring ahead of growth" is the real problem. These companies aren't firing people because they are making less money. They're firing people because they hired people before they actually needed them, in anticipation of future growth that didn't materialize.
My take is because unions facilitate less profit for C-levels, who then buy/rent lobbyists to bribe, errr, "persuade" politicians to enact laws or regulations or whatever to keep unions out.
Your comment made me wonder something i don’t remember being discussed in these terms, but what about our markets and laws makes liquidity in employers and employees work poorly?
There's no solution because, from society's perspective, there's no problem.
The whole idea of capitalism involves competition and consistent growth, right? In any human society, that leads inevitably to war and conquest. It also means exploiting whatever resources are available, including human resources. Back in the day it was using colonial slaves to cheaply mine resources, deforesting for fuel/ships/etc, or hunting animals to extinction (food, oil, pelts, etc). Today it's using cheap labor in 3rd world countries, dumping chemicals in rivers, deforesting rainforest for cattle pasture. And when a competitor (foreign empire or corporation) threatens you, you basically work to either destroy or own the competition and their citizens/customers (although you might also simply make a backroom deal for peace). All for the wealth and glory of a corporation/CEO/board/Emperor/nation.
Our companies are just acting as the new empires of global society. Have been for nearly a century, when the old empires began to crumble. Same humans, different maps & hats.
Nobody can convince me that big corps are not taking part this "trend" of firing people with the purpose of rehiring them later and keep the compensation of the workforce in check.
As many comments have already pointed out, all these companies are sitting on a huge cushion of money, and if you have money the best moment to invest is during a crisis. Companies realized a long time ago that they should find ways of lowering salaries, now the big moment finally came it seems.
It's always been a big game of follow the leader, one tech company lays off 5000 workers then a next company lays off 5000 workers because if it's good for company A it must be good for company B. It's no different than when Yahoo told all their workers they had to come into the office and all the tech companies tried to drag their workers back into the office, they just didn't want to miss the trend. In a year everyone will be hiring again and companies will be screaming about needing more skilled (and cheaper) workers but for now it's just the semi-annual culling of the herd.
That's an interesting point of view. It would make economical sense for big corps to act as a labor market cartel, and the fact that they are all laying off together is a suspicious coincidence.
This is the real take away, imo. It seems like a controlled, insider effort to combat wage growth.
I essentially didn’t get a pay raise after a year of stellar performance reviews because of inflation, and with these layoffs I’m no longer in a position of bargaining power to ask for more.
Headline is confusing. It makes it sound like there will be 18k new layoffs, but this is information that has been public since November and the cuts happened two days ago. (Or at least the bulk of them did)
This article was late to the game therefore headline is garbage. Amazon laid off 18k ppl in the most clusterfuck way. They had an article leaked about the wave 1 in November that impacted some 8k to 11k and then this weds the total was brought up to 18k. The emails from the article were sent to Amazon employees on weds the 18th after Amazon employees spent all of the holidays and January stressed wondering "am I going to be laid off?"
No new layoffs, but the 18k is the collective total and it's being spread out so long because of Amazon leadership incompetence and world wide labor laws differing.
Interesting. I cannot separate what the Feds said regarding inflation tbh. On one side, the government was gloating over the fact of low unemployment numbers, on the other side, you have the Feds saying with no shame whatsoever they need to low inflation numbers by raising interest rates and orquestrate moves to layoff people with the objective to lower the demand for goods and services.
This looks like a coordinated "attack" where companies and government colluded against the common folk. There's a win-win for them. Companies will start reducing salaries since there'll be more supply of workers, and the government will say "we promise to lower inflation" as campaign slogan.
Inflation hurts the common folk as well though (people who own assets have their assets stay the same in real value, people who don't have the spending power of their bank accounts eroded).
What you're theorizing might still be happening (inflation looks like it's been controlled for the last few months, but layoffs continue), but lowering inflation is more than PR.
To be fair, inflation numbers are going back down in the US, while countries that aren't raising their interest rates (or at least not as aggressively as the US is) still have much higher inflation, double digits in some cases. So it does seem to be working, as shitty as it is.
I don't think all these companies really need to lay people off though, they're just using 'everyone else is doing it' as an excuse to get away with it and juice up their stock price.
There is an excellent interview with Clara Mattei on The Majority Report, about her book The Capital Order. She has a similar point, historically supported.
There's rarely any talk about how many of these (if any!) are actually contractors / vendors. All the big companies have outsourced a huge number of staff to agencies (presumably to be more flexible in short-term budgeting and "turning the resource off", when needed, so they don't have to worry about the legal intricacies, as that is by-design conveniently also outsourced to the vendor in most cases). Curious if the 18k here is on top of shutting down external contracts.
OTOH, not all full time roles have an actual human assigned. They could also be budgeted for, but not filled yet. Post 2008, managers usually kept a couple of unfilled roles for events like this.
Interesting take. Can we consider contract labor a “layoff”? Wouldn’t they try to “look better” (like they are not laying off) by not considering “closed contract” not the same as “layoff”?
Wouldn’t the contracted firm be doing the layoff not the tech comp?
For the company that spent decades putting mom and pop shops out of business it is very hard to feel sad for layoffs. It's just their own bed these folks now have to sleep in. As an investor I am also happy. For the workers, it's sad maybe unfair but such is life.
Is there a good tracker of layoffs in tech with a breakdown of how many were software vs marketing vs service/warehouse/ancillary workers? I'm curious what the software engineer availability glut scale might be at the moment...
neogodless|3 years ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34427277 (203 comments, 2 days ago)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34253478 (462 comments, 15 days ago)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33626896 (279 comments, 1 month ago)
eganist|3 years ago
The inverted accountability scheme for leaders doing this is another perverse enabling factor; I've complained about this before, but that tends to lead to flames about why founders etc. can't have ownership of headcount and the fate of their companies etc.
I'm not seeing a clear solution for this culture of toying with thousands of peoples' lives for a quick buck... well, aside from the (sadly) politically loaded move to unionize more white collar work and thus provide actual accountability. Why unions are a political matter is beyond me; IATSE uses their strength to ensure excellent benefits for their members in media/entertainment.
jaqalopes|3 years ago
brookst|3 years ago
itsoktocry|3 years ago
A bit over-dramatic, no? Nothing to say about the employees who left their companies for Google to "make a quick buck"?
Business expand and contract. Should Google be considered a retirement home? The people who took these jobs are smart men and women who will go on to work at other companies. This isn't new.
cj|3 years ago
I know it's much more difficult to fire people in the EU, but is there an exception if it's done as part of a layoff?
The only real solution I can think of is regulatory in nature (e.g. requiring paying out 6 months pay during a layoff, which might make companies think twice before "hiring ahead of growth")
Because let's face it, "hiring ahead of growth" is the real problem. These companies aren't firing people because they are making less money. They're firing people because they hired people before they actually needed them, in anticipation of future growth that didn't materialize.
jackmott42|3 years ago
michaelcampbell|3 years ago
My take is because unions facilitate less profit for C-levels, who then buy/rent lobbyists to bribe, errr, "persuade" politicians to enact laws or regulations or whatever to keep unions out.
jjtheblunt|3 years ago
eunos|3 years ago
jrwoodruff|3 years ago
0xbadcafebee|3 years ago
The whole idea of capitalism involves competition and consistent growth, right? In any human society, that leads inevitably to war and conquest. It also means exploiting whatever resources are available, including human resources. Back in the day it was using colonial slaves to cheaply mine resources, deforesting for fuel/ships/etc, or hunting animals to extinction (food, oil, pelts, etc). Today it's using cheap labor in 3rd world countries, dumping chemicals in rivers, deforesting rainforest for cattle pasture. And when a competitor (foreign empire or corporation) threatens you, you basically work to either destroy or own the competition and their citizens/customers (although you might also simply make a backroom deal for peace). All for the wealth and glory of a corporation/CEO/board/Emperor/nation.
Our companies are just acting as the new empires of global society. Have been for nearly a century, when the old empires began to crumble. Same humans, different maps & hats.
lp4vn|3 years ago
As many comments have already pointed out, all these companies are sitting on a huge cushion of money, and if you have money the best moment to invest is during a crisis. Companies realized a long time ago that they should find ways of lowering salaries, now the big moment finally came it seems.
screwturner68|3 years ago
pastacacioepepe|3 years ago
ballenf|3 years ago
Are we at the beginning, middle or end of it? Investing broadly at the beginning of a crisis that has the signs of being deep is less advised.
ecf|3 years ago
This is the real take away, imo. It seems like a controlled, insider effort to combat wage growth.
I essentially didn’t get a pay raise after a year of stellar performance reviews because of inflation, and with these layoffs I’m no longer in a position of bargaining power to ask for more.
MrOwnPut|3 years ago
theRealMe|3 years ago
sairahul82|3 years ago
revlolz|3 years ago
No new layoffs, but the 18k is the collective total and it's being spread out so long because of Amazon leadership incompetence and world wide labor laws differing.
elforce002|3 years ago
This looks like a coordinated "attack" where companies and government colluded against the common folk. There's a win-win for them. Companies will start reducing salaries since there'll be more supply of workers, and the government will say "we promise to lower inflation" as campaign slogan.
Centigonal|3 years ago
What you're theorizing might still be happening (inflation looks like it's been controlled for the last few months, but layoffs continue), but lowering inflation is more than PR.
cableshaft|3 years ago
I don't think all these companies really need to lay people off though, they're just using 'everyone else is doing it' as an excuse to get away with it and juice up their stock price.
js8|3 years ago
mittermayr|3 years ago
sriram_sun|3 years ago
OTOH, not all full time roles have an actual human assigned. They could also be budgeted for, but not filled yet. Post 2008, managers usually kept a couple of unfilled roles for events like this.
flandish|3 years ago
Wouldn’t the contracted firm be doing the layoff not the tech comp?
Interesting take!
black_13|3 years ago
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aliljet|3 years ago
ketanmaheshwari|3 years ago
travisgriggs|3 years ago
ProAm|3 years ago
wcunning|3 years ago
jpeter|3 years ago
manishsharan|3 years ago
coffeebeqn|3 years ago
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3327|3 years ago
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revskill|3 years ago