[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