Every day there’s more big job cuts at tech and games companies. I’ve not seen anything explaining why they all seam to be at once like this. Is it coincidence or is there something driving all the job cuts?
this post was submitted on 25 Jan 2024
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I actually think it’s just bandwagoning by a bunch of cowards.
We saw this same phenomenon early last year too: Facebook laid off a bunch of employees, then Apple announced the same, then Microsoft, then Google, then Salesforce, then the infamous Twitter layoffs.
I think big tech is so sensitive to negative press that they all just wait and lay off folks at the same time so no single company takes all the bad press.
It doesn’t even have to be Illuminati-level coordination, either. All it takes is for some exec at Tech Company B to see that Tech Company A is firing people. Then Tech Company B decides to clean house too. The cascade is just a bunch of morons deciding to hop on the “let’s fuck over our employees to help our balance sheet” train.
Apple did not announce any layoffs last year. It's been news worthy because some many of the other tech companies have had multiple rounds
It's more devious than that. If company A lays off 1000 people due to "legitimate" reasons (e.g. twitter generally doing poorly), that's 1000 people looking for new jobs. Company B, C, and D can then take that as an opportunity to lay off 1000 people each that aren't immediately vital to the success of the company. Company A might not have the funds or desire to rehire right away, but the other three will slowly start building back up. You end up with 4000 people competing for 100 open positions. Many may not be willing to accept a pay cut, but some percentage will, and gradually the rest will be slowly starved down to accepting less pay.
Software engineering is notoriously a high paid career path, and executives at these companies hate that, so any opportunity they get to suppress wages, they'll jump on. Especially if you know every other big company is doing it to, so they won't be able to turn that into an advantage against you