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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

#91

Post by ssteel »

superfrank wrote: post #58
hammock wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What recession? We are not in a recession. Unemployment data and the broader economy are still strong. Saying otherwise is dangerous, to be honest

Agree we're not in a recession, but I'm not sure I'd say we're in a strong place. The impression I've got from the articles I've read is that no one knows what the fuck is going on. Some indicators look great (like unemployment), but others look bad (like inflation).

Low employment combined with high inflation is forcing the fed to raise interest rates to induce lower demand with the side affect being higher unemployment. This is how they killed inflation in the 80's. They are trying to thread the needle of inflation and recession. The likely outcome is eventually a recession.

Conversely, the government could raise taxes across the board to control demand and trickle that money back to individuals over time, but it is political suicide.

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

#92

Post by 3pt14159 »

dougmwne wrote: post #19
4gotunameagain wrote: post #11

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

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.

I was there during the dot com bubble bursting. Psychology factored into it, but it wasn't the primary reason the bubble bursted. The main two reasons were:

1. Hype around new technologies is sometimes warranted. Electrification, for example. It wasn't clear how long it would take for these weird new internet companies to really start turning a buck, but after a few years spreadsheet parameters were updated and the whole financial industry saw the writing on the wall for most web companies.

2. Many profitable and completely unfunded web companies primarily received their funding from other web companies that were. This set off a cascading reaction of bankruptcies and massive layoffs. Advertisers, publishers, tool makers, and many others were in this second category of legit business that lost the vast majority of their customers.

One of the downsides of an inflating currency is that there is a general feeling of "well I have to invest my money somewhere!" that is hard to overcome and leads to bubbles until the sky starts falling, so I agree with you that psychology is a factor; but the fundamentals still dominate in the medium to long term.

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

#93

Post by VBprogrammer »

stingrae wrote: post #53
hammock wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What recession? We are not in a recession. Unemployment data and the broader economy are still strong. Saying otherwise is dangerous, to be honest

Tech or SAAS has definitely had a major correction/downturn. This is not evident in the unemployment data because it is such a small contingent vs the US population

It might be overdue. Tech came out of the 2008 recession pretty well in the mean (of course some people suffered badly). A lot of companies came out of it saying to cut costs they had to invest big in their technology.

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

#94

Post by suzzer99 »

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...

In 2000 it was a lot more obvious that dotcom prices were completely untethered from reality. Same for home prices and handing out loans like candy in 2006.

This one is more of a general "Hey this market is too high", but nothing as concrete that's completely out of whack imo.

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

#95

Post by bcrosby95 »

kerbs wrote: post #79
granshaw wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

I was young too, but I think the .com bust was far more obvious than the housing crash which snuck up on a lot of people.

The housing crash was obvious - talk to anyone trying to buy a house in 2004 or even 2003. By 2005 or so I had friends that were getting cold called with offers of nodoc nodown interest only loans.

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

#96

Post by stingrae »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #78
stingrae wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their goal is to reduce inflation. Increasing unemployment, is a side effect of rate hikes but ultimately, reduces demand for consumer goods thus reducing inflation.

Their goal is to keep inflation steady at a manageable rate, and to prevent any deflation at all. Since inflation indicators haven't been too reliable in the last 20 years, they were caught horribly off guard. But ideally, they would make small changes one way or the other to maintain a nice equilibrium that would keep employment levels relatively stable.

True in the ideal case.

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

#97

Post by jasonlotito »

datalopers wrote: post #18
jstx1 wrote: post #3

Where are we heading if every company drop 10-20% of their staff?

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?

> 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 bet the people who hired them get to keep their jobs despite failing to a) hire useful people or b) competent people that can work on useful projects and c) burning cash while d) not turning a profit because e) they are just a gambling mechanism for investors.

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

#98

Post by andreilys »

hammock wrote: post #38
4gotunameagain wrote: post #11

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

What recession? We are not in a recession. Unemployment data and the broader economy are still strong. Saying otherwise is dangerous, to be honest

The definition of a recession is two consecutive quarters of negative growth, which we've had.

We're waking up from a a long night of heavy drinking (free money via zero interest rate, unrestrained QE, etc.), the bill is due and you're plugging your ears and yelling that the party must go on.

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

#99

Post by nunez »

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…

Adding context: the US Fed raised the interest rate benchmark this week to 4%, with the expectation that it will be raised higher. Credit's getting a lot more expensive.
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