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Why did so much tech go on a pandemic hiring spree? Did they think it was going to last forever? I don't understand all everyone ( in tech ) made the same mistake. "oh let's increase our headcount by 25% in response to a pandemic that is mutating and gradually lessoning in severity while vaccines and other medicines are dramatically increasing in efficacy... but it's going to last forever." what am i missing? How did…
Why did so much tech go on a pandemic hiring spree? Did they think it was going to last forever? I don't understand all everyone ( in tech ) made the same mistake. "oh let's increase our headcount by 25% in response to a pandemic that is mutating and gradually lessoning in severity while vaccines and other medicines are dramatically increasing in efficacy... but it's going to last forever." what am i missing? How did…
What makes you think it was a mistake? Could very well have been planned. "Lets hire like crazy in order to meet demand, and when the demand disappears again, do layoffs". Probably someone calculated something somewhere saying "If we hire 25% more people to take advantage of the increased demand, we'll earn more profits even with layoffs with heavy severances for everyone after X months".
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What makes you think it was a mistake? Could very well have been planned. "Lets hire like crazy in order to meet demand, and when the demand disappears again, do layoffs". Probably someone calculated something somewhere saying "If we hire 25% more people to take advantage of the increased demand, we'll earn more profits even with layoffs with heavy severances for everyone after X months".
well... I guess.tiff, i mean that could very well have been it. idk it just seems like a terribly bad business decision by the whole industry. If it was a capacity thing then adding headcount would decrease capacity for at least a year or so as you have to integrate all those people into culture and work to get things productive. On the other hand, I can see a "turn the knob up, then turn the knob down" strategy maki…
Especially when the company culture basically boils down to "The individual employee is worth nothing" and "People should be able to be fired as easily as they are hired", which Amazon seems to be, at least judging by the people I've been close to who worked at Amazon.
Why did so much tech go on a pandemic hiring spree? Did they think it was going to last forever? I don't understand all everyone ( in tech ) made the same mistake. "oh let's increase our headcount by 25% in response to a pandemic that is mutating and gradually lessoning in severity while vaccines and other medicines are dramatically increasing in efficacy... but it's going to last forever." what am i missing? How did…
What makes you think it was a mistake? Could very well have been planned. "Lets hire like crazy in order to meet demand, and when the demand disappears again, do layoffs". Probably someone calculated something somewhere saying "If we hire 25% more people to take advantage of the increased demand, we'll earn more profits even with layoffs with heavy severances for everyone after X months".
Why did so much tech go on a pandemic hiring spree? Did they think it was going to last forever? I don't understand all everyone ( in tech ) made the same mistake. "oh let's increase our headcount by 25% in response to a pandemic that is mutating and gradually lessoning in severity while vaccines and other medicines are dramatically increasing in efficacy... but it's going to last forever." what am i missing? How did…
They cant say "we are making record profits" and in the same breath say "we need to fire people to survive" that's not how that works. Pick one.
Why did so much tech go on a pandemic hiring spree? Did they think it was going to last forever? I don't understand all everyone ( in tech ) made the same mistake. "oh let's increase our headcount by 25% in response to a pandemic that is mutating and gradually lessoning in severity while vaccines and other medicines are dramatically increasing in efficacy... but it's going to last forever." what am i missing? How did…
The gamble was once people went digital only, they won't go back. The bet was wrong. People are back to their 2019 digital habits
Plus, with all the record breaking profits, there is pressure from shareholders to re-invest in the company (and create even bigger record breaking profits)
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-10-11/amazon-am...
Why did so much tech go on a pandemic hiring spree? Did they think it was going to last forever? I don't understand all everyone ( in tech ) made the same mistake. "oh let's increase our headcount by 25% in response to a pandemic that is mutating and gradually lessoning in severity while vaccines and other medicines are dramatically increasing in efficacy... but it's going to last forever." what am i missing? How did…
- Industry wide layoffs != Mistake. By analogy, think about naturally occurring forest fires. Vast majority of ecologists would agree that such fires are healthy and necessary for the long term health of forest biomes. It's not a "mistake" for the trees or brush to become dense when energy or water is plentiful, and it's not wrong for a fire to destroy much of existing forest (allowing new and different growth in the future). So it is with business cycles and investment hypotheses.
- There are many accidental products or inventions, that proved more popular and durable than anyone could reasonably expect. Have you heard the story of how champagne was invented? Dom Perignon (yes the actual historical figure) was a French monk in the 17th century, tasked by the Catholic Church to solve the problem of wine fermentation that resulted in too much carbonation in the Champagne region, since the local climate was such that winter was too cold and the fermentation process was naturally interrupted by winter there in such a way as to introduce unwanted carbon dioxide. Wine with carbonation was considered undesirable, but Dom Perignon tweaked the process (inventing the "French method") in such a way as to invent a drink that consumers surprisingly found preferable (remember, nobody originally wanted carbonated wine at the time). The point of this story is that, there's no way to truly know what becomes a lasting trend or a change in consumer tastes; maybe people really would continue to shop and consume media online at higher rates even post-pandemic because they truly changed their tastes and liked it more, after being forced to do it by pandemic? How could anyone know that carbonated wine would stick around, when nobody had ever shown any interest in it before?
Why did so much tech go on a pandemic hiring spree? Did they think it was going to last forever? I don't understand all everyone ( in tech ) made the same mistake. "oh let's increase our headcount by 25% in response to a pandemic that is mutating and gradually lessoning in severity while vaccines and other medicines are dramatically increasing in efficacy... but it's going to last forever." what am i missing? How did…
What makes you think it was a mistake? Could very well have been planned. "Lets hire like crazy in order to meet demand, and when the demand disappears again, do layoffs". Probably someone calculated something somewhere saying "If we hire 25% more people to take advantage of the increased demand, we'll earn more profits even with layoffs with heavy severances for everyone after X months".
So, approximately 1% of its workforce.
So in line with the amount of turnover each year anyways due to "rank and yank" policies, be it official or just the implicit result of management's actions. The news industry is incredibly desperate for stories about layoffs it seems.
It's important to name-and-shame companies that can't be bothered to let go of people through legitimate channels of performance reviews, PIPs, allowing transfers, etc. Legitimizing overhire overfire is a dangerous road.