Cool observation. Fascinating to see how corporate speak spreads and builds off each other. These are like memes in their technical definition - "behavior that may be considered to be passed from one individual to another by nongenetic means, especially imitation"
Once a company or two uses these phrases it become politically acceptable to repeat them because they have now been "vetted". Contrarian or outsider views are not well received most of the time despite all of us wanting to believe we're different/unique/contrarian.
I think it's worse considering the inflation in food and gasoline. A 6 pack of beer at the grocery store is $10 now. 1 L of carrot juice is $6. It's unsustainable especially considering how wages barely moved for anyone. I don't see how people are getting by.
For them it is, I think they're one of those companies that buys property from you without listings, etc. then you can move and they clean it up and list it. My guess is the property is on their books and prices have been fluctuating a lot so they could be upside-down on a bunch of inventory with less home buyers because the interest rates rose.
For a home owner selling and a realtor, the realtor likely has to compete to earn business but they are a third party to the transaction.
I love how vague they all are. They might as well have said "We have a bad feeling about the world" or "We consulted an ouija board" as justifications. Do they really think a normal person reads these and accepts the reasoning?
I prefer this over everyone using the same excuse and or reason (contrast with Twitter talking points from pundits who use the same phraseology to push for or against something).
It's hard to understand if this is actually related to layoffs based on larger market forces, or just a once a year house cleaning.
I've worked at places that laid people off once a year. It's a common way to give managers a way to get rid of under performing employees without the hassle of going through a PIP. The manager gets rid of a bad fit, the employee gets some severance, so both sides get something.
But since this is happening at the same time as other companies doing layoffs it can seem like it's all occuring for the same reasons.
I feel it's more market psychology in many cases - having to demonstrate to the analysts that you're being fiscally prudent (hence the commonly resultant stock price increase) rather than any particular internal need. It's a shame that perfectly decent people are being let go so that some Wall Street Chad can make a check mark.
The thing with people getting laid off is I think many of them are in the position where the only place they would fit in is a mega tech corp. And since all the mega tech corps are doing layoffs, it really doesn't seem like it's going to be that easy for them to find a job.
For example, if you've been working on a database system for 8 years, there aren't that many companies that need to develop their own internal database system so the matches are slimmer. Or if you've been doing SRE on 1k k8s clusters, there aren't that many companies that are doing k8s at that scale and working at lower scales is completely different.
Another thing with going from a mega corp to a startup/smaller business is the expected performance. Mega corps are slower with low acceptance of errors while smaller businesses are faster with a higher acceptance of errors.
This doesn't even factor in that it also seems like smaller companies are also doing downsizing at the moment. I'm seeing smaller companies add in policies which are clearly designed to make people want to quit to companies getting rid of all of their remote devs because they're the easiest to fire. The job market doesn't look good right now.
You are correct that if you are unemployed and looking for a job it doesn't matter. All you see is increasing competition in the job seeker market and that sucks.
But it does matter for people who are employed and looking for jobs. If you are unhappy and/or underpaid at your current job, layoffs all caused by larger market forces might be interpreted as a hint that you should think about staying at a "safe" job unless you really hate it. However, if some significant portion of the the layoffs is due to recent over-hiring and that has now swung the other way into layoffs, changing jobs might be less risky.
I worked at Cisco for about 3 months as a contractor before not getting renewed a month ago. Most hilariously inept infrastrecture code base I have had the displeasure of working with so far, and this team was supposed to be the one paving the way forward for finally bringing them from on-prem to the cloud. Literally could only understand my manager about half the time as he had a thick accent and spoke quickly (did not have this problem with any other team members despite them having the same type of accent), and my laptop broke halfway through and it took them a week to send someone out to fix it. Making about $50k per year more full time in a new gig and get to work with an infra code base that I actually enjoy. AMAA.
The only shocking things about this layoff at Cisco, which happen about once a year, is that it didn't happen during their normal time in the summer and that the numbers are so modest.
A pundit pointed out that in several cases, the tech firms laying off have returned to their employee size of 1 year ago and that there are still many jobs available in the industry. Have you seen articles on how long people are taking to find their next job and if they are better off?
This is something I'm interested in as well. It feels like last year, I saw every tech company fighting tooth and nail to scrape up every last engineer. We even had trouble making modest pickups at my own megacorp because candidates were getting multiple offers during our accelerated interview process.
This seems weird though because I have no doubt that every financial analyst at each of these companies saw the incoming downturn a mile away. If it was just a few of the companies making recent questionable decisions (Twitter, meta) it would make more sense to me, but the list of companies laying people off keeps growing.
Been there done that. Part of a cisco layoff due to department moving ... 15 years ago I think. Caused me to sell my shares, which turned out to be an excellent decision.
Readit News
Roku: “Current economic conditions”
Cisco: "rebalance across the board"
Amazon: "unusual and uncertain macroeconomic environment”
Disney: “a targeted hiring freeze”
Meta: “macroeconomic downturn”
Salesforce: "performance issues”
Stripe: “stubborn inflation, energy shocks, higher interest rates, reduced investment budgets and sparser startup funding,”
Opendoor: "the most challenging real estate market in 40 years”
Once a company or two uses these phrases it become politically acceptable to repeat them because they have now been "vetted". Contrarian or outsider views are not well received most of the time despite all of us wanting to believe we're different/unique/contrarian.
Humans are such an interesting species.
Didn't the subprime mortgage crisis happen in 2007? The current situation is worse than that???
I think it's worse considering the inflation in food and gasoline. A 6 pack of beer at the grocery store is $10 now. 1 L of carrot juice is $6. It's unsustainable especially considering how wages barely moved for anyone. I don't see how people are getting by.
For a home owner selling and a realtor, the realtor likely has to compete to earn business but they are a third party to the transaction.
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Seagate technologies: "global economic uncertainties"
Philips: "worsening macroeconomic environment"
Microsoft: "valuate our business priorities on a regular basis and make structural adjustments accordingly"
Intel: "sudden and rapid" economic decline
Twilio: workforce grew “too fast” and “without enough focus”
> "An increasingly competitive world"
I've worked at places that laid people off once a year. It's a common way to give managers a way to get rid of under performing employees without the hassle of going through a PIP. The manager gets rid of a bad fit, the employee gets some severance, so both sides get something.
But since this is happening at the same time as other companies doing layoffs it can seem like it's all occuring for the same reasons.
For example, if you've been working on a database system for 8 years, there aren't that many companies that need to develop their own internal database system so the matches are slimmer. Or if you've been doing SRE on 1k k8s clusters, there aren't that many companies that are doing k8s at that scale and working at lower scales is completely different.
Another thing with going from a mega corp to a startup/smaller business is the expected performance. Mega corps are slower with low acceptance of errors while smaller businesses are faster with a higher acceptance of errors.
This doesn't even factor in that it also seems like smaller companies are also doing downsizing at the moment. I'm seeing smaller companies add in policies which are clearly designed to make people want to quit to companies getting rid of all of their remote devs because they're the easiest to fire. The job market doesn't look good right now.
But it does matter for people who are employed and looking for jobs. If you are unhappy and/or underpaid at your current job, layoffs all caused by larger market forces might be interpreted as a hint that you should think about staying at a "safe" job unless you really hate it. However, if some significant portion of the the layoffs is due to recent over-hiring and that has now swung the other way into layoffs, changing jobs might be less risky.
Another reason to favor worker-owned co-ops rather than publicly-traded companies.
This seems weird though because I have no doubt that every financial analyst at each of these companies saw the incoming downturn a mile away. If it was just a few of the companies making recent questionable decisions (Twitter, meta) it would make more sense to me, but the list of companies laying people off keeps growing.
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