Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 308 posts

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

#101

Post by UncleOxidant »

echelon wrote: post #86
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And this is more likely what's impacting companies like Lyft. Their business model worked in an easy-money environment, but doesn't work in an environment with more normal interest rates where it's harder to borrow money and costs more.

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

#102

Post by vecter »

tqi wrote: post #48

Did these companies accelerate planned layoffs because they figure Twitter layoffs on Friday would help take the spotlight off of them?

There's no way that they planned a layoff within a week. They take much longer to plan and execute.

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

#103

Post by vkou »

gryBrd1987 wrote: post #87
ryandrake wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 maintain…

Somehow, I doubt that Marxism-Leninism and a destruction of social class in America is going to be achieved on the backs of... Comfortable, gruntled white collar employees making 200k-500k/year from selling ads.

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

#104

Post by curiousgal »

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…

> avoid overspending relative to revenues.

Most companies are already making a shit ton of money. Firing people won't keep their stock prices from going down if a recession actually hits. It's moot.

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

#105

Post by jhickok »

andreilys wrote: post #98
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

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.

But we had growth last quarter now, right?

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

#106

Post by paganel »

4gotunameagain wrote: post #11

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

I don’t know about “mass hysteria” but this inflation has certainly made me purchase less physical stuff and especially less services, I guess I’m not the only one. Generally speaking a sudden decrease in buying is cause for a recession, unless you go the Keynesian way and make the Government make up for the lost demand, but I have a feeling that most of the governments are out of “good” money to throw at that.

I do live in Europe and not in the States, though, maybe things are different there.

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

#107

Post by UncleOxidant »

3pt14159 wrote: post #92
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.

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 w…

The current environment has a similar feeling to the early part of the dot com bubble-burst. In that early part of the burst we had the feeling that it could get bad, but we also were sort of deluding ourselves into thinking that it wouldn't be that bad.

...also HN today kind of looking like fuckedcompany[1] back in those days.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fucked_Company

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

#108

Post by Aunche »

im-a-baby wrote: post #30
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Powell complained about the labour market being tight No, he didn’t [1]. He justified a rate rise in a faltering economy by pointing to the labor market’s strength. Were the labor market weaker we’d be in stagflation and monetary policy would have no room to manoeuvre. [1] https://www.federalreserve.gov/mediacenter/files/FOMCprescon...

Powell has previously said that he wants higher unemployment. He believes this is the only way to decrease demand and bring down prices. > 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 su…

> Powell will continue to raise rates until the labor market cools.

This is entirely different from "complaining that the labor market is too tight." The Fed has nothing against a tight labor market so long as we don't have high inflation. Imagine you're a doctor and you're telling your patient that you're going to administer chemotherapy to a child until either the cancer goes away or they get too sick. Then you see protestors trying to convince laymen that you're complaining that a child is experiencing too much cell growth. That's exactly what GP is doing.

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

#109

Post by AnimalMuppet »

im-a-baby wrote: post #81
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

No. That quote still doesn't support your assertion. It clearly says that the actual goal is to control inflation.

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

#110

Post by itsoktocry »

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 1. Convince people stocks are going to go down

Stocks are not the economy.

We literally have a cold war with China escalating, a hot war in Europe (which we aren't directly involved in..yet), all after years of loose monetary and fiscal policy, inflation is at generation highs, with rates rising and housing relating prices crashing, and on and on...

Maybe HN needs some more serious economic analyses posted if people think all of this is caused by a 15% fall in SPX.

Post reply on HN