[kypro]

I don't want to sound unsympathetic, but a lot of these companies massively over hired over the last couple of years. While others were losing their jobs during the pandemic tech employees were in higher demand than ever. In fact, I'd argue the demand for tech workers has been so high over the last couple of years that a lot of people who really shouldn't have got a job based on their experience were able to do so.

I'd also note that the severance packages most tech companies have been offering their employees have been very fair, and with tech skills being almost universally valuable across industries it's not hard for good tech workers to quickly find tech jobs if they're happy to work outside of the tech sector.

If people want to form a union then fine, but I'm not sure what you expect. Spotify isn't profitable. With the cost of capital rising and a potential recession looming they obviously need to be financially cautious otherwise everyone at the company will eventually lose their job.

[jlarocco]

There's another way to look at it, though.

Without unions, employees are disposable. Companies hire them when money is plentiful and throw them away when it's convenient. It clearly benefits the employers and investors to operate that way.

With a union, employees aren't so dispensable, and companies have to take a longer term view when hiring because they can't get rid of employees on a whim. Despite being more stable for everybody, it's extra difficulty for the company and it balances out their power over employees.

[gedaxiang]

> companies have to take a longer term view when hiring because they can't get rid of employees on a whim

that would make it harder to find a new job, right? tradeoffs to consider

[nayuki]

Yup. Hard to fire = hard to hire. Why should an employer take a chance on hiring you, if in case it doesn't work out, they need to spend considerable time and money to fire you?

[f6v]

You don’t need a union. It’s enough to have a long notice period required by law.

[matwood]

It's a meme at this point that Google is probably developing 5 new chat apps to replace the 10 they recently killed. But then everyone gets up in arms when Google trims it's workforce by 6%, one which as grown by 100+% since 2016. If everyone wasn't looking for anything to signal 'recession!', no one would bat an eye at these big tech companies doing small staffing course corrections.