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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

#141

Post by 3pt14159 »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #107
3pt14159 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I agree that there are similarities, but many of the web businesses these days are legit with happy customers. The challenge seems to be more widespread across the economy and there are a few not-so-black-swan-anymore looking things on the horizon (e.g., a Sino war) that could dramatically change the picture for the whole industry.

My take away is that we may have a mild recession, but the likelihood of a massive recession is a lot higher than it has been in decades.

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

#142

Post by freshfunk »

tqi wrote: post #126
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…

Oh awesome, would love to ask a few questions about your experience: 1. What did it feel like day to day as a person working in the industry during that time, and did it differ from the "bubble" period prior or more "normal" period immediately following? 2. How long after the bottom before the recovery felt "real" to you, and did you see companies / people change their behavior?

Not OP but first off I'd say that while some things feel similar, I don't think we're close to how bad it was back then if you look at the magnitude of the fall out. So take these answers understanding that things were worse back then.

1. It felt like a nuclear winter for tech jobs between 2000/2001 and 2004/2005. Jobs were available but it was way more competitive to get them and you were a lot less likely to get that dream job. You either settled for a crappier job or you changed directions. Many younger people just went back to school (get the master, law degree, etc.) as an alternative.

It felt like the party was over. All the great company perks disappeared. Traffic on freeways disappeared. The mood was very flat. It wasn't sexy being in tech like it is today. Nowadays people just talk about TC or stock. That kind of talk disappears.

2. Like I mentioned above, it was about a 3-5 year period. Again, not all situations are the same. But whenever you have large macroeconomic problems, they take time to sort out. It also depends on how quickly the downside factors resolve themselves. The longer it takes to solve those, the longer a recovery is dragged out.

It also depends on what the growth engine is for pulling things back up. Back then, there was a resurgence in internet business starting around 2005 when "web 2.0" got popular and many new businesses came on the scene. This includes social networking, ecommerce, web publishing.

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

#143

Post by ethbr0 »

frontiersummit wrote: post #129
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…

This puts it mildly. Paul Volcker has been (perhaps unfairly) called the Father of the Rustbelt, due to how rising interest rates broke the back of manufacturing in the American Midwest during the late 1970s and early 1980s. "Cooling" the economy means layoffs and plant closures, often concentrated in specific geographic regions. The only question is: what firms and employees get sacrificed to placate the inflation G…

Rising interest rates & a strong dollar

Ironically, you can generally have your financial house in order as a country or be globally manufacturing-competitive, but not both*.

* Exceptions Germany, Japan, et al., but as you go up the value chain you gain enough profit leeway to paper over the general rule.

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

#144

Post by somenameforme »

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.

I would argue that this is not because it was difficult to see coming, but because most people have a bias that makes it difficult for them to imagine something that's "normal" abruptly coming to an end. This was the era of "I got a loan for this house in 10 minutes. I added granite counter tops, mopped the floor, and sold it for a $20k profit in 9 days." type shows.

TV is TV, but that was genuinely happening. The market was just completely broken.

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

#145

Post by hindsightbias »

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...

The .com eventually became obvious in the last year or so, but before that is was 4 years of lunches with ex-coworkers in some .com telling me "you just don't get it."

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

#146

Post by matwood »

ssteel wrote: post #91
superfrank wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 b…

Keep in mind when the fed talks about lower demand, that includes lower labor demand. They are likely to be forced to push demand to recession levels if they want it to match supply across the board. More lockdowns in China is certainly not helping on the supply side, and the latest jobs report showed the labor market not loosening.

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

#147

Post by im-a-baby »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #135
im-a-baby wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we're arguing over the definition of goal and side-effect. Let's say I have a goal of running a marathon, so I decide to start jogging every day. Is my daily jogging a side-effect of my goal to run a marathon? I wouldn't say so. Rather, jogging every day is an explicit course I've set out on with the hopes of achieving my main goal. Daily jogging is a sub-goal of the main goal, if you will. This logic can be…

> Let's say I have a goal of running a marathon, so I decide to start jogging every day. Is my daily jogging a side-effect of my goal to run a marathon? You can't run a marathon without your daily jogs. Inflation can be lowered without spiking unemployment. It's unlikely. Hence the Fed's messaging. But until recently the Fed forecasted a soft landing, i.e. growth and low unemployment amidst rising rates and falling i…

Using analogies is always dangerous because they're never going to be a perfect fit. But the difference between your engine analogy and the federal reserve's actions is that anemic economic growth and high unemployment is not a side effect. In your engine analogy, adding more gas and air into the engine increases the amount combustion. It's the combustion that increases speed, so in a sense increase combustion is a goal. Released heat is just a by product of the reaction. In the economy, the amount of economic activity and the amount of available labor are what drive prices, so these things are the combustion in the piston, not a byproduct.

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

#148

Post by nine_zeros »

DocTomoe wrote: post #127
4gotunameagain wrote: post #11

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

Worse: Money is an illusion. We mistake a unit of measurement (like grams, or gallons) for wealth. In a recession, workers come to a construction site - material is still there, so is electricity and power tools ... but work can't continue and they will be fired because the boss has run out of inches. (Thought stolen from Alan Watts)

> Worse: Money is an illusion. We mistake a unit of measurement (like grams, or gallons) for wealth. In a recession, workers come to a construction site - material is still there, so is electricity and power tools ... but work can't continue and they will be fired because the boss has run out of inches.

This is because the boss imagined getting more inches in future and made a leveraged bet. A downturn is a great opportunity for someone enterprising to become a boss and take everything in the construction site, hire people and build it themselves.

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

#149

Post by eclipticplane »

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?

I suspect we'll see more of these in the coming weeks as companies go through planning for next year.
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