241
The U.S. economy is booming. So why are tech companies laying off workers?
(www.washingtonpost.com)
this post was submitted on 04 Feb 2024
241 points (92.6% liked)
Technology
59143 readers
2744 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I asked an executive this very question, and he said that the board was getting pressure from stock-holders to reduce headcounts, and justifying that pressure by pointing to other large companies who had already undertaken massive layoffs, and the resulting rise in their stock prices. In this way layoffs become a game of follow the leader -- or like a contagion. "Google just fired a third of their workforce, why are we doing that? We should do what they did, look how successful they are."
Ugh well hopefully there will come a point when there's not actually enough people to layoff anymore. Then maybe the game of follow the leader will stop. Or maybe another one starts up where they start over hiring again, who knows