[RC_ITR]

It's a weird game theory thing.

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.