[mrsuprawsm]

it would be nicer if they made economically optimal decisions in the first place, instead of making a bad decision in 2022, firing a shitload of people in 2023, and going "ah whoops our bad".

competent operators wouldn't get into this problem in the first place

(or, alternatively, these layoffs are also an incompetent decision and the C-levels are simply following the herd)

[Shish2k]

I have a feeling the current actions are economically optimal, and so, they’ll keep happening

- if they optimisitcally hire a ton of people, then fire most of them, that’s expensive in the bad years

- if they only hire as many people as they need, then they’ll be eaten by the bigger-risk-taking competition in the good years

[acdha]

You also have to look at productivity: if you lay people off you will have disruption and lower productivity with the remaining workers unless it’s something like a fairly isolated subsidiary being cut loose. It can also make people hesitate to take a job with you in the future.

In general, it’s better to keep people if you’re profitable even if you want the margin to be higher. Google’s problem is more their management – in a less rudderless environment you could come up with things for people to work on but when you’re mostly sitting around hoping the ad words money fountain keeps running it probably is true that you can’t figure out what to have them do.