[pwinnski]

Recruiters have reached out to you from two different companies. Company A and Company B are both offering compensation greater than you're currently making (which is almost always true for most workers), and you ask questions about the viability of the company (hugely profitable) and the job (very much needed).

On what basis are you to know that despite being hugely profitable, Company A is going to get rid of 28,000 employees, while Company B is instead going to cut CEO compensation by 40%? How can you be sure whether you're joining Alphabet or Apple?

There is nobody to blame for any of this but the leadership making poor decisions for which they won't face any consequences.

[vineyardmike]

> Company A is going to get rid of 28,000 employees, while Company B is instead going to cut CEO compensation by 40%? How can you be sure whether you're joining Alphabet or Apple?

As a recently ex-alphabet employee: apple never went on a hiring spree.

They had restraint the last few years, with a significantly smaller workforce, and the result is (hopefully) no layoffs.

Fast money moves quickly and it might move away from you.

We should also be talking about Yelp at the start of the pandemic, who was predictably in a precarious situation. They offered to employ people part time (and still do) instead of mass layoffs. You can work as an SDE at 80% time instead, which gives you a stable (but smaller) income in a scary time, and it gives the employer a discount to save without layoffs.

Personally, I would take 80% or maybe even 60% time at my old Google job over a layoff. Everyone comments about “rest and vest” anyways, so 75% may be perceived as appropriate anyways.

[pwinnski]

I'm sorry for you losing your job, since it sounds like it wasn't voluntary.

I understand why Apple hasn't done mass layoffs, but I'm still stuck on how you know that during the recruiting process. If Apple tries to hire you in January 2020, how do you know they are going to be more circumspect about hiring over the next three years? Apple hired a large number of people during the last three years, just as Google did. NOW we know it was a MUCH SMALLER "large number of people," but it was still quite a few. If you're talking to recruiters from each, how do you know?

I don't blame anyone for taking a job with Amazon, Google, or Facebook. I mean, I wouldn't personally work for any of the three for my own reasons, but I don't think it's fair to blame people taking jobs there for their own layoffs.

[vineyardmike]

> I understand why Apple hasn't done mass layoffs, but I'm still stuck on how you know that during the recruiting process.

You can't truly know. But you can vaguely see how many employees there are from news/earnings reports/etc. There's a lot of data in the moment, but you can never know how to process it until after-the-fact.

That said, it may not matter. Like you said, you can't blame anyone for taking a job, and they pay well, and part of that money is "boom/bust" cycles. Its part of the industry IMO.