“Copycat” layoffs won’t help tech companies or their employees

How do you define productivity in this context? Musk style LOC? How many features you shipped? Let's pick one of the more sensible ones - features you shipped. Who defines those features - is top level management responsible for the product vision, overall strategy that then middle management turns into features?

For companies like MAANG that are already hugely successful and have hit a wall so to speak, they don't need low level productivity before they need top level strategy and vision. Apple is a good example of their management priorities being clear - they seem to know what works and where to go next quarter and their middle management also seems capable enough to turn that into products/features and make their Engineers' lives simpler so they can be productive delivering on it.

For every 10k+ layoff assuming that it's the lackey low level guys the aren't productive that needed to be laid off is not only inaccurate (lots of greatly productive Googlers have been let go for example) but also unfairly cuts a whole lot of slack for the greater financial burden on the company folks up top that are in charge of strategy and vision. After all they are also the same people that hired the people who are laid of - directly or indirectly.

> instead of laying off 10% of their workforce, they had everybody take a 10% wage cut except for senior management, which took a larger cut. So instead of giving 100% of the pain to 10% of the people, they give 100% of the people 10% of the pain.

This doesn't seem like a good strategy for tech. Cutting everyone's salary will dislodge your top performers who can get a better position even in poor market conditions.

Maybe do some research or read the literature?

This really depends on the percentage of the workforce your laying off. A small %2-%6 one is really getting rid of people you don't want, but it's too much of a pain in the ass to do the entire PIP & political process to do so, or they're toxic / unproductive but well positioned that firing them is hard. A streamlined 'just pick people' layoff process helps with all of those issues. The bottom %5 percentile people that get dropped in a %5 lay off were already near the chopping block. While larger %10-%50 layoffs are really economically motivated.

The thing is although, you can't do %5 layoffs when your doing well, or the economy is doing well, so you use such times as now as an opportunity to do so. You'll know the layoffs are more economically motivated when there are multiple waves or they become larger in percentage of employees.

Like why did the google layoff %6? I definitely think it was a trim the fat operation, and the opportunity to get rid of some well positioned, unproductive long term rest-and-vesters, which is why a bunch of very long tenure people got laid off at google now.

> I always wondered if high profile CEOs and shareholders know something substantial of the upcoming future that us leaf nodes are just clueless about.

If they knew the future, then why did they overhire in the first place?