[ra120271]

Discussing this with some friends last night there was some consensus that sometimes this may be to force a significant cut in the workforce that is cheaper to do by firing due for cause, as compared to making roles redundant and dealing with redundancy packages. Probably not true in all cases, but maybe in some.

[jmyeet]

It's absolutely true.

Companies are now in a cycle where they want to lay off ~5% of their employees every year. Why? To suppress wages. And to get people to do more work for the same money. People in fear of losing their jobs aren't going to demand raises or say no to extra work.

RTO mandates are cheaper and easier than severance.

This has been the case in Corporate America for decades at this point. The rude shock for many on HN is that the veneer of Big Tech being rogue disruptors is gone. Working for Big Tech is getting increasingly indistinguishable from working for Boeing, Lockheed Martin or Northrop Grumman.

And it's only going to get worse.

[wbl]

The difference is the customer for some of those companies demands cutting edge tech and is willing to pay handsomely for it. Because if they don't have the best, the adversary will and that is unacceptable.

[makestuff]

Yeah Big tech is running out of ways to grow profits YoY. So the next solution is the consulting approach of just laying people off. Eventually it will catch up to them and they will become the next IBM/Boeing/etc. where people ask what happened to these companies they used to be great.

Bezos said in an all hands one time amazon would go out of business in 50-60 years and that is happens to every company eventually. I think you get too big and too bureaucratic where everyone is just looking out for themselves because you are more worried about getting laid off or fired than you are building great products.

[relaxing]

> Bezos said in an all hands one time amazon would go out of business in 50-60 years and that is happens to every company eventually.

That’s a weird thing for him to say because a) it’s patently false and b) he might still be alive at that point and would need to liquidate his AMZ holdings before everyone else who believes his prediction does.

[teeray]

> you are more worried about getting laid off or fired than you are building great products

Just like the government: you are more worried about your re-election campaign than serving your constituents. Where those two align, great, but the priority is remaining in office.