[add-sub-mul-div]

> Management is really good at keeping themselves in a job, and don't care about sacrificing the bottom.

Engineers are also good at explaining why their system or feature needs to be three times more complex than it really needs to be. Or why last year's tool or framework needs to be replaced with a new one. As an engineer I've seen this bullshit my whole career.

[hot_gril]

With no incoming work, we SWEs will make ourselves "100% utilized" just rearranging things. We might be sincerely trying to clean up the software, but still, it'll never end until you give us a real task.

[candiodari]

And the alternative is to have managers who do nothing but rearrange the chairs in the company. Which doesn't even achieve good uptime or code cleanup, plus, in the case that your company does find something to do, those engineers CAN do it. The managers can't.

[hot_gril]

I've heard they're laying off managers too.

[ta1243]

Maybe there are no more tasks to be done. But layoffs aren't liked by either those being laid off, or by managers with shrinking headcounts.