Will be very interesting to see if Google or Microsoft do any substantial layoff. Both are making enough to weather the storm. If they cut more than 10% Iâd be surprised.
Looks like itâs just starting.
Read somewhere usually three rounds of layoffs. Second round has started by Coinbase.
Bullish for employment. Weâre firing the people who are building the robots 
What explains why so many companies are laying large numbers of their workforce off? The answer is simple: copycat behavior, according to Jeffrey Pfeffer, a professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Ditto for mindlessly over-hire.
Could there be a tech recession? Yes. Was there a bubble in valuations? Absolutely. Did Meta overhire? Probably. But is that why they are laying people off? Of course not. Meta has plenty of money. These companies are all making money. They are doing it because other companies are doing it.
??
If layoffs donât work, what is a better solution for companies that want to mitigate the problems they believe layoffs will address?
One thing that Lincoln Electric, which is a famous manufacturer of arc welding equipment, did well is instead of laying off 10% of their workforce, they had everybody take a 10% wage cut except for senior management, which took a larger cut. So instead of giving 100% of the pain to 10% of the people, they give 100% of the people 10% of the pain.
Donât think it works for knowledge economy.
Wage cuts are a horrible response to slow economic times. All the talent jumps ship and all the deadwood stays.
Seems to be just the beginning. The question is what happens when/if the real recession happens.
We technically had a recession in the 1H of last year. They just didnât call it one.
Itâs always difficult to reduce team size or rebalance the workforce across teams. Budgets almost always start with existing headcount then add to it for areas that are growing. The bloat on specific teams can get huge. This is a chance for CEOs to establish a new baseline size for teams. Everyone is doing very targeted cuts vs. everyone must cut x%.
Now that stock prices are down 50% for certain tech companies theyâre all feeling the pressure to show improved returns soon. If things donât improve stock prices+demand/economy/profits more should follow.
So, weâve undertaken a rigorous review across product areas and functions to ensure that our people and roles are aligned with our highest priorities as a company. The roles weâre eliminating reflect the outcome of that review. They cut across Alphabet, product areas, functions, levels and regions.
https://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/news/2023/01/19/amazon-seattle-west-eighth-tower-lease.html
In the article, it says 2,300 of Amazonâs layoffs are local to Seattle area. That seems low when there are 18,000 total.
Not doom and gloom peddled by media. 2% is probably as low as it gets. People changing jobs are temporarily counted as âunemployedâ.
The only recession is in Wall Street, tech stocks meme stocks and crapto. Joe six pack doesnât care
Apparently, managers no longer communicate layoffs to employees. People receive an email or their access is cutoff in a mass move. Thatâs classless. They arenât the only one doing it the ânew wayâ.
Apparently many top performers also got canned at Google. WTF is the logic there? Just randomly fire people to meet quota?