Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by charcircuit 1248 days ago
One miscalculation can result in them over hiring. Are you suggesting they should have instead every month lay off a few people depending on how the current environment looks instead of 28% at once?
2 comments

Natural attrition can cut headcount. Large layoffs are a sign of incompetence.
FANGM all did layoffs. And many other companies as well. That they are all incompetent can't be the explanation.
Sure it is. Google for example increased headcount by 24% in a year and cut it 6% in the next year, a clear sign they made a bad decision.

Further in Google’s case they have plenty of money to pay these people until headcount naturally shrinks, but they don’t have anything useful enough for them to do that waiting and avoiding a large severance package is cheaper.

> avoiding a large severance package is cheaper.

it sounds like greed, not incompetence.

I just do not believe in a worldview where almost all CEOs of large tech companies are incompetent. Whatever the explanation for layoffs is, incompetence ain't it.

Greed would still try and avoid the need for a layoff because they are quite expensive. Google’s 6+ weeks salary + 6 months health insurance isn’t cheap.
No I am suggesting that they clearly over hired over a long period of time. Surely they recalculated over that period of time...if not then that sums the incompetence up