I keep seeing this over hiring argument everywhere. What's the evidence for that?

And weren't the layoffs of 2023-24 supposed to correct that?

In my experience, in every big tech company for the past two decades, almost everyone always complained that they were understaffed to meet their goals/okrs.

IMO, the real explanation is:

- Some unprofitable companies don't want to raise money in a high interest rate world, and are using AI as a partial excuse, partial ambition to do layoffs to cut costs. Eg: NET

- Other companies are investing heavily into data centers (eg: META) and need to cut costs elsewhere to offset that.

And in both cases, there's some real productivity gains that they have already seen due to AI that will offset, plus they expect to see more gains as the remaining people will work harder and be more motivated to increase their productivity for job security.