> companies apparently overhired. We hired more than we meant to. How does that happen?
Everyone here is replying with various explanations of why these companies made the "mistake" of over-hiring but no-one is stopping to ask if it was a mistake. Sure the announcements are full of apologies and stories of taking responsibility for mistakes made, they need to be: they're marketing. But cui bono, or more pertinently, the inverse: who is negatively affected by layoffs? It isn't shareholders. Meta just did massive buybacks after layoffs.
Over-hiring isn't a mistake because the only real downside is the subsequent layoffs, and layoffs don't negatively effect anyone that "matters".
Sure there's institutional knowledge loss but that only matters for product quality which, let's be honest, isn't any indicator of revenue.
IMO BigTech had the notion that for the most part you wouldn’t be laid off unless you “underperformed”. The fact that people with long tenures and good perf were still let go definitely has an impact on how these companies will be perceived by future employees.
> IMO BigTech had the notion that for the most part
I'm not sure this is "for the most part"
Sure, FAANG may have had this notion (or at least FNG; not sure if the As ever had), along with the sort of religious/dogmatic "drinking the koolaid" type culture they were trying to instill within their employee-base (helped to no end by outsourcing large portions of their sales operations so they'd have a smaller core to "spoil").
Thinking of BigTech more broadly though, & especially big old enterprise-y tech like the IBMs, Oracles, SAPs & telcos, layoffs being arbitrary & indiscriminate seems like nothing new.
That sounds reasonable but will it change anything? Pretty much every major tech company did layoffs, and they're all going to keep paying same relative to each other. I'm a guy who wants a big paycheck, so I'll still be working for FAANGs.
Sure, now I know my job isn't 100% secure and maybe I'm less inclined to go above and beyond, but I'm sure they'll address that by having bigger "differentiation" in pay between top and average performers.
Everyone here is replying with various explanations of why these companies made the "mistake" of over-hiring but no-one is stopping to ask if it was a mistake. Sure the announcements are full of apologies and stories of taking responsibility for mistakes made, they need to be: they're marketing. But cui bono, or more pertinently, the inverse: who is negatively affected by layoffs? It isn't shareholders. Meta just did massive buybacks after layoffs.
Over-hiring isn't a mistake because the only real downside is the subsequent layoffs, and layoffs don't negatively effect anyone that "matters".
Sure there's institutional knowledge loss but that only matters for product quality which, let's be honest, isn't any indicator of revenue.