[nlpnerd]

OP here, and I agree it's probably not AI directly and more of dealing with the post Covid overhiring, and CAPEX for AI investments.

Enterprise adoption is definitely not happening as fast as the AI proponents (startups, frontier labs, big tech) would like people to believe (probably the reason why frontier labs are going the FDE/consulting path). So it's unlikely that the impact on productivity is enough to produce the alleged impact.

[aurareturn]

It's a combination of Covid over hiring, CapEx for AI hardware, AND you don't need as many software developers anymore per product.

[adrian_b]

I doubt very much that COVID over-hiring has any relevance today.

COVID is now ancient history and there have already been several years of big layoffs when every time I hear the attempt of explaining them through COVID over-hiring.

That may have been right a couple of years ago, but since then every company that had over-hired must have already disposed of the surplus.

[nlpnerd]

The mad rush and overhiring didn't stop immediately after Covid. I know of cases where experienced software engineers were getting picked up by big tech with huge increments as late as end of 2023.

My impression is that the current trend for layoffs only really began around early 2025. For reference, the layoffs during the dotcom bubble I was told took around 2 years to plateau

[lux-lux-lux]

We’re going to be well into the Diamond Age before people stop attributing layoffs to ‘Covid overhiring.’

[aurareturn]

Big tech employee counts are still nearly 2x higher now than 2019.

[lux-lux-lux]

And big tech market cap is 5x what it was in 2019, yes. I’m not hearing wild overhiring in these numbers, quite the opposite.

[strken]

In 2019 I bet they were more than 2x what they were in 2012.

[pir8life4me]

So then why aren't bad decision making execs being let go?

If they can't forecast demand or headcount they should be replaced by confident sounding AI.