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Lyft to lay off about 700 employees in second round of job cuts

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Re: Lyft to lay off about 700 employees in second round of job cuts

#81

Post by im-a-baby »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #70
im-a-baby wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This quote says it: > The labor market continues to be out of balance, with demand for workers substantially exceeding the supply of available workers. The labor force participation rate showed a welcome uptick in August but is little changed since the beginning of the year. FOMC participants expect supply and demand conditions in the labor market to come into better balance over time, easing the upward pressure on w…

> He's expecting the act of raising interest rates to increase unemployment to 4.4% > He directly says he's waiting to see softening of the labor market before stopping the rate hikes Yes, because we don’t want to ruin the labor market. Right now, rates can be raised without spiking unemployment. The Fed is trying to estimate when that stops happening. A clear signal that the limit has been reached is the labor marke…

No, that's not what Powell is saying. Read this quote again:

> So I will answer—I will answer your question directly, but I want to start here today by saying that my main message has not changed at all since Jackson Hole. The FOMC is strongly resolved to bring inflation down to 2 percent, and we will keep at it until the job is done. So the way we’re thinking about this is, the overarching focus of the Committee is getting inflation back down to 2 percent. To accomplish that, we think we’ll need to do two things, in particular: to achieve a period of growth below trend; and also some softening in labor market conditions to foster a better balance between demand and supply in the labor market.

Powell says (paraphrasing slightly): "In order to get inflation under 2%, we need to do two things. 1. achieve a period of low growth, and 2. soften the labor market." Low growth and higher unemployment aren't simply side-effects of Powell's policy. These two things are explicitly stated goals.

Re: Lyft to lay off about 700 employees in second round of job cuts

#82

Post by bombcar »

BoorishBears wrote: post #71
datalopers wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> get 70% or more correct when guessing who will be laid off. What happens when it's the managers themselves who are useless, overpaid, and can't evaluate the team for actual efficacy?

One comment in the Stripe layoff thread was someone who's manager didn't get to put any input into the process. Honestly its funny reading threads like this with people beating their chest about useless coworkers. Instead of thinking of useless coworkers and colleagues, think about what percent of the entire industry that's working on things with no hard output, no interest in profitability, banking on free money tha…

Yeah, I should have clarified - useless doesn't necessarily mean the employee sucks at the job they're doing; it could also mean they're an expert at doing a useless job, even if the skillset could be utilized quite valuably.

I feel there's a lot of this in crypto, where you have absolutely amazing developers doing amazing code for no point.

Re: Lyft to lay off about 700 employees in second round of job cuts

#83

Post by ouid »

4gotunameagain wrote: post #11

Ask HN: Isn't recession just mass hysteria ? Layoffs leading to more layoffs leading to the entire economy slowing down ?

no? If paying employees has a return on investment that is lower than the interest rate on federally insured bonds, I will prefer the federally insured bonds. The biggest driver of inflation, and thus interest rate, is the supply/demand for labor.

What we're seeing are the natural consequences of the fed's mandate to prevent inflation. This is always at the cost of demand for labor, bu design.

The regulation supplied by the fed preserves the interests of capital at expense of the interests of labor. The dual mandate is essentially meaningless.

Re: Lyft to lay off about 700 employees in second round of job cuts

#84

Post by CamperBob2 »

ryandrake wrote: post #33
dougmwne wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes! Both the bubble and the crash are almost purely psychological. It's greed and fear coming in waves. There can be technical fundamentals, but to take the example of Bitcoin, you don't need any technical fundamentals. Humans can create and destroy value on top of a very complex random number generator.

It just feels like the psychology behind a bank run. 1. Convince people their bank is in trouble. 2. They withdraw all their money. 3. Now the bank really is in trouble. Or 1. Convince people stocks are going to go down. 2. Mass sell-off. 3. Now stocks really are going down. I think this is just a self-fulfilling prophecy where business leaders convinced themselves a slowdown is coming, causing them to take actions t…

1. Convince people stocks are going to go down. 2. Mass sell-off. 3. Now stocks really are going down.

Pet conspiracy theory: boom/bust cycles are not only inevitable, but desirable to some extent. If the housing and stock markets didn't undergo catharsis every so often, new/beginning investors wouldn't be able to buy in.

The signs are usually telegraphed well in advance, but not by collusion or intent. A self-organizing conspiracy of sorts. It could be interpreted as "herd mentality" but I think that oversimplifies what's really going on, and why.

Re: Lyft to lay off about 700 employees in second round of job cuts

#85

Post by suzzer99 »

ryandrake wrote: post #33
dougmwne wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes! Both the bubble and the crash are almost purely psychological. It's greed and fear coming in waves. There can be technical fundamentals, but to take the example of Bitcoin, you don't need any technical fundamentals. Humans can create and destroy value on top of a very complex random number generator.

It just feels like the psychology behind a bank run. 1. Convince people their bank is in trouble. 2. They withdraw all their money. 3. Now the bank really is in trouble. Or 1. Convince people stocks are going to go down. 2. Mass sell-off. 3. Now stocks really are going down. I think this is just a self-fulfilling prophecy where business leaders convinced themselves a slowdown is coming, causing them to take actions t…

Or - stocks have been ridiculously overvalued for a while now and are just coming back to earth somewhat. https://www.longtermtrends.net/market-cap-to-gdp-the-buffett...

I'm not saying I know that's what's happening. But I wouldn't be surprised.

Re: Lyft to lay off about 700 employees in second round of job cuts

#86

Post by echelon »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #68
4gotunameagain wrote: post #11

Ask HN: Isn't recession just mass hysteria ? Layoffs leading to more layoffs leading to the entire economy slowing down ?

In this case, rising interest rates have a very direct negative impact on new investments. As new investments contract, demand shrinks for services across the industry. As demand shrinks, fewer employees are needed and companies need to reduce headcount to avoid overspending relative to revenues. There is a cascading effect, but it would be a mistake to attribute it all to a big psychological mistake. When demand goe…

It also impacts the loans that companies frequently take out and the interest-inflated payments they need to service their debt.

Re: Lyft to lay off about 700 employees in second round of job cuts

#87

Post by gryBrd1987 »

ryandrake wrote: post #33
dougmwne wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes! Both the bubble and the crash are almost purely psychological. It's greed and fear coming in waves. There can be technical fundamentals, but to take the example of Bitcoin, you don't need any technical fundamentals. Humans can create and destroy value on top of a very complex random number generator.

It just feels like the psychology behind a bank run. 1. Convince people their bank is in trouble. 2. They withdraw all their money. 3. Now the bank really is in trouble. Or 1. Convince people stocks are going to go down. 2. Mass sell-off. 3. Now stocks really are going down. I think this is just a self-fulfilling prophecy where business leaders convinced themselves a slowdown is coming, causing them to take actions t…

Yup.

Powell has been saying for months he wants people to save and pull cash out of the economy.

This is intentional because DC decided tech workers were undermining Washingtons of course most correct and immutable control over agency.

Why if all these people kept earning and could acquire more assets and live comfortable, politicians and uber rich would have no place in our society.

The fundamentals must be maintained. Fundamentals being we serve their goals, not the other way around.

Re: Lyft to lay off about 700 employees in second round of job cuts

#88

Post by [deleted] »

djur wrote: post #57
datalopers wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All these companies have vastly overhired. Think of your own peers and colleagues. How many are a) utterly useless or b) competent but don't have anything to do so they spend time working on mostly pointless projects to improve their CV?

I can't think of a single person I work with or have worked with recently who meets this description.

[deleted]

Re: Lyft to lay off about 700 employees in second round of job cuts

#90

Post by yardie »

granshaw wrote: post #39
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #32

Anyone that was around for the "Turn of the Century Crash" may find this familiar. With all the massive scaleups, companies were becoming bloated as hell. They also became fairly sloppy with their money. Time to pay the piper. But unlike some bubbles, there's a real industry, here (like in the 'oughts). It's a return to a [still pretty decent] baseline, as opposed to an implosion to nothing. In the early Web days, th…

I was too young then, but did that crash have the same "everyone and their mother sees it coming and have been talking about it months before" feeling? Cause this "crash" is surely like that – it has to be the most "expected and talked about" one in modern times...

2001 crash primarily affected tech and finance. Everyone else that worked in physical atoms just got on with it and did their job.

2008 crash was different. Literally everyone was over-leveraged and swimming debt.

This feels more like the 2001 crash coming than the 2008 crash. Most of the economy will trundle along while those running on VC money will fade away.

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