alt Hacker NewsExcuse is only half the story. I don't fully understand why they are doing it though. Companies hire people to make money, not as an act of social conformance.
Global economy doesn't look that terrible. Nor is the AI story that believable. Is it just the CEO Zeitgeist? All the guys at Aspen talking about what fraction they cut, just as 5 years ago they bragged how bloated their org chart is?
TBH the "ZIRP overhiring" seems like the most likely real reason. I could never understand how all these companies could hire so many people for so much money, only to have them work on later-to-be-canned open source projects.
But if that's really it, no idea.
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> I could never understand how all these companies could hire so many people for so much money, only to have them work on later-to-be-cannes open source projects.
Given how much of these companies runs on such projects, it really shouldn't be surprising. It's a numbers game for them; Facebook doesn't mind if 300 little OSS initiatives fail if it gets them React.
> Companies hire people to make money, not as an act of social conformance.
I think you also underestimate how much hiring gives these large companies political leverage. A town can be completely destroyed when one of these companies threatens to move a factory or office
It is an open secret among the ownership class that the labor market got too good for the workers around 2021-2022 especially for tech. What you are seeing now is a possibly colluded squeeze on tech employment to keep the workers on their toes and stay docile and servile.
Why isn't the AI story believable? It seems to me that AI is getting more and more productive
The reason is the same as always - they want to cut costs and increase profits. And there are no laws in America that prevent them from indiscriminate firing.
The US economy is struggling heavily. Population shrank for the first time in a long time that will reduce economic demand. The USD has gotten a lot weaker in the past few years. The regulatory environment is unpredictable and so risk being priced in is high. Every company is chasing scarcer and scarcer energy and chip resources. And then add on top irrational and constantly changing tariffs.
This causes companies to constantly review costs and look for ways to trim, which they're doing.
> TBH the "ZIRP overhiring" seems like the most likely real reason. I could never understand how all these companies could hire so many people for so much money, only to have them work on later-to-be-cannes open source projects.
The same way they hire so many people for so much money to work on AI projects and build datacenter which haven't produced actual revenue for any customers (corporate or otherwise). I'd rather light money on fire to employ people tbh.
I say this as someone who has the 200 dollar Claude sub.
> Is it just the CEO Zeitgeist?
This is quite likely a big part of it. There's a lot of herd behavior in the financial markets. A few companies fire a bunch of people, stock price goes up, others follow suit.
Also, in many cases, this isn't something that anyone pays attention to on an ongoing basis, because very few execs have the mandate to do it at a large scale, and their attention is scarce. So in practice, it tends to be done at intervals, and doing it when other companies are also doing it gives cover.
Your comment is wildly out of context.
This specific company is now the 5th most profitable company on the planet and its FOSS projects are pitiful and 99% fully self serving.
...or 2 years ago they agreed that employees should return to the office for at least 3 days per week, of course only as a temporary measure before full RTO?
> TBH the "ZIRP overhiring" seems like the most likely real reason. I could never understand how all these companies could hire so many people for so much money, only to have them work on later-to-be-canned open source projects.
I agree this is the root cause, also a big reason for inflation are all these do-nothing white collar management/tech jobs subsidized by the post-pandemic money printer with fat paychecks burning holes in their pockets. Of course these companies tried to use the free money to grow when they could, now they want to fix the balance sheets. And AI is a great excuse, especially if you're in the business of selling AI products!
It's why Trump wants to turn the money printer back on, inflation be damned, because mass unemployment due to belt tightening would be politically even worse than inflation.
The value of money halved in the past 5 years.
Salaries did not double in that same time.
That's why they're doing this. They can. Laissez-faire is the current regime of capitalism we live in.
> Global economy doesn't look that terrible.
It doesn't? I was born in the 90s (so admittedly 2008 was before I started working), but the economy is looking the worst it's been in my lifetime to me.