I am actually surprised at how correlated layoffs have been across the industry. Is there a decaunicorn that went against the grain and did not accelerate hiring in the prior 2 years?
You're only hearing about layoffs from the companies doing layoffs. Companies like Apple haven't done layoffs.
But the answer is mostly no. You don't become a worth $10Bn+ by being slow and steady. You grow fast when money is cheap and you hibernate when money is tight. (I don't agree with this way of building a company, but that's not the point.)
In a market with any amount of stickiness (arguable most tech markets), losing share is a permanent problem. Every customer your competitor acquires is theirs for as long as the stickiness holds, and if you want to woo them, not only do you have to convince them you're worth trying, but that you're worth switching for.
So under the all my competitors big and small are being aggressive and fighting for share framework, most companies bit the bullet and decided to accelerate hiring (especially since, as we are seeing now, it's so easy to reverse that decision for top management).
It's an argument for why the overall economy has become less volatile as growth has slowed, but the high growth pockets (like tech) are more volatile than ever.
Sundar Pichai went on a big media tour saying it was time for tech layoffs. Investors on wall street think he knows what he's talking about so they went around to all the board meetings and VCs saying "Google is cutting costs, we need to be doing the same at our companies". You won't be able to raise money or look good on wall street if you don't look "fiscally responsible" right now and that means "making the hard choice to let people go". Nevermind that it's actually easier to let people go than to fight with the board who's been listing to Pichai quotes on MSNBC for the last few months.
Interest rates rose above effectively-0% for everyone at the same time.
Whether these companies can only survive in a 0% environment is a matter for debate I won't get into; my main point here is more along the line that there had to be consequences to that somewhere. The rate of resources flying around reduces, the rate of resource consumption must reduce.
When layoffs are common, a new one isn't news. It's a great time for companies to offload unproductive employees. If they did layoffs during a bull market it'd draw a lot of attention and negative PR.
> I am actually surprised at how correlated layoffs have been across the industry.
Given one a16z VC gloating about it and praising Musk's "sack everyone and work the rest to death", I wouldn't be surprised if it's the billionaires co-ordinating.
It's not as though suppressing workers is new, and SV got co-ordinating their efforts to crush salaries.
To be fair, everyone I know at a16z is devoted to free speech and they're excited about the opportunity to expand the user base by opening up the echo chamber.
And it's important to put the "work the rest to death" thing in context. In the past, Twitter workers were secretly video taped bragging about only working four hours per week.
But the answer is mostly no. You don't become a worth $10Bn+ by being slow and steady. You grow fast when money is cheap and you hibernate when money is tight. (I don't agree with this way of building a company, but that's not the point.)