I am annoyed at how much coverage of these recurring "Big Gorilla lays off around 10.000 people" is basically just a rehash of the company press release, with not a single journalist asking how it's possible that all of these big tech companies made the same exact mistake of hiring too many people, while simultaneously showing record profits.
Like, if a 'rigorous review' finds 12.000 redundancies, why does nobody question leadership about how this was allowed to happen?
Not one critical note.
Amazon: 18.000
Alphabet/Google: 12.000
Meta/Facebook: 11.000
Microsoft: 10.000
Salesforce: 8.000
And there's probably more that I am forgetting right now. All very similar percentages of the total workforce, clearly the kind of "you must cut this many" move that's been passed down from on high, and yet pretty much all reporters are nodding along with "post-pandemic spending shift, and weakening global economy" 🙄
I know I saw a thing on here about how it's essentially a viral thing, with one company starting it, and others then following suit, simply because it's a thing now, but I don't remember where.
It's not my job, though, while it is for these journalists and reporters. Do your fucking job, make them afraid of the coverage that might follow these sorts of vaguely-worded press releases.
@pinsk @sindarina the article is probably https://news.stanford.edu/2022/12/05/explains-recent-tech-layoffs-worried/
Also Google literally hired 12k people in the last couple of months. "Oops we over hired" in the last few months? And you can't just ... slow down hiring? Ridiculous. Stock buybacks from last year alone could have paid for all the laid off employees for the next 7 years, assuming that each employee cost $1M to retain.
As layoffs in the tech sector mount, Stanford Graduate School of Business Professor Jeffrey Pfeffer is worried. Research – by him, and others – has shown that the stress layoffs create takes a devastating toll on behavioral and physical health and increases mortality and morbidity substantially. Layoffs literally kill people, he said.
Sindarina, Edge Case Detective
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