| Market cap bubble popped. See also: SPACs imploded. It'll take a while for a consensus narrative to emerge explaining the widespread tech layoffs. Usual suspects are: post-pandemic hangover (over hiring), C-level & boards are feckless lemmings (copycats, groupthink), another round of revanchist Capital sticking it to Labor, profit taking by institutional investors, and macroeconomic stuff (end of cheap capital, blah blah blah consumer confidence, and so forth). My personal theory: The MBAs couldn't think of anything else to do. They're admitting their growth has ended. Cost cutting, including layoffs, happens in the absence of strategery [sic], plans for the future. So there's nothing to invest in. So they "return monies to their investors". What's Meta's plans? Social networking and digital advertising have entered the top plateau of the S-curve. And it's not yet clear they can monetize their pivot to 3D porn (the Zuck's "megaverse"). What's Amazon's plans? It's now "Day 2". AWS is on autopilot and will continue to print money. If the rest of the conglomerate disappeared tomorrow, the share price would increase. There's nothing left in the B2C space to do. As a counter point, Apple definitely has plans. IIRC They keep increasing their R&D. (And they didn't over staff.) So no layoffs. |
All of this is downstream of that.