[NewJazz]

As an investor, it sounds fucking stupid. They aren't dogfooding, they're eating all the dogs' food.

They fired some talented folks. Folks who could be retrained. Folks whose experience snd expertise is valuable. Don't kid yourself.

[throwaway2037]

    > They fired some talented folks. Folks who could be retrained.

I see this sentiment a lot on HN. To be clear, I am responding from the perspective of US labor law and general business practices. Employment is not a sacred right in the US. The US system is (larely) hire and fire easily. As a result, the US economy is mildly unstable for the middle class normies (much, much less stable that most other highly developed nations with strong labor laws -- most of G7/G20), but overall wildly dynamic for a large economy.

"They fired some talented folks."

Sure. That is guaranteed with large layoffs. I work in an insanely competitive industry, and there are annual culls each autumn of the bottom 5%. Few are surprised by who gets cut. What is harder to forsee is a business downturn and they need to layoff X% of staff. You see good people let go. That's just life in that kind of system.

"Folks who could be retrained."

Again, in the US, for white-collar office workers, this almost never happens, and surely not for very highly skilled software developers (probably most of the layoffs at Cloudflare). It is not required by law, and it is not a common business practice in the US.

[NewJazz]

I don't care if it is or is not a common business practice. It is much cheaper than the severance package.

[mschuster91]

Unfortunately, "holistic" investors able (and willing) to look at the bigger picture and recognize that things like "institutional knowledge" cannot be expressed on a balance sheet are not the norm.

The norm - outside of outliers like Warren Buffett - is "when numbers go up then buy when numbers go down then sell".

The financialization / stonkmarketization of everything is slowly destroying our economies like a cancer.

[simianwords]

this is a low quality comment that doesn't address the simple explanation: more productivity means fewer people are required.

[weakfish]

Disagreement != low quality, and that explanation is incredibly naive and simplistic

[throwaway2037]

I would say the GP's phrase: "more productivity means fewer people are required" is perfect summary of my opinion (and post). Sure, you can flesh if out, but that is crux of my argument.