Hey there! Great question. I definitely do think people were pushed — there’s even evidence of it happening at a bunch of companies like Google, Facebook, etcetera. Some of these companies implemented harsher performance reviews and set a mandatory percentage of employees who needed to be put on performance-improvements plans (aka PIPs). PIPs are often a first, required step before being fired at many companies.

I reported a story with my colleague Kali Hays about how this practice is really beneficial for employers, while hurting workers: https://www.businessinsider.com/big-tech-using-quiet-layoffs-helping-companies-and-hurting-workers-2022-10?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=IAmA-comment

And here are some company-specific stories from Insider about what this looks like in practice:https://www.businessinsider.com/google-layoffs-performance-rating-jobs-2022-11?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=IAmA-commenthttps://www.businessinsider.com/meta-layoffs-doubles-target-lowest-performance-ratings-non-regrettable-attrition-2022-12?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=IAmA-comment

-DNS

I’m so sorry to hear that your family member was recently laid off.

This is definitely a tricky situation. I would advise people in this situation to acknowledge what the company said but to push back on that narrative applying to them — basically let your work speak for itself. Companies can say what they want (especially to appease stakeholders) but they can’t take away the work you’ve accomplished.

Here’s an example of it happening to former Reddit employees: https://www.businessinsider.com/reddit-job-cuts-employees-livid-company-painting-them-low-performers-2023-2?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=IAmA-comment

And to avoid getting low-balled — regardless if you’ve been laid off or not — do your research! There are a bunch of resources out there to help you find out how much you should be paid (levels.fyi, Insider does salary stories, Blind, and even job listings themselves after salary transparency laws). But I’ll also caution that compensation is starting to look much lower than before, given the tech industry turmoil (here’s a story my colleagues did on this btw: https://www.businessinsider.com/workers-laid-off-in-big-tech-have-to-take-jobs-with-less-pay-prestige-2023-2?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=IAmA-comment). So definitely just do as much research as possible and make sure that you keep advocating for yourself.

-DNS

Hey! This is a pretty big question. There are a few main factors fueling these layoffs, but the driving factor is that companies are trying to recover from their pandemic-fueled hiring sprees.

During the pandemic, tech companies were seen as way more valuable (on the stock market, with record-high prices) due to the sudden, virtual nature of everything. But now that people are increasingly in-person, their stock values (and thus their company values too) have gone down.

When things were really good at tech companies, they were paying top dollar for talent and staffing up at ridiculous rates. But they grew too much too quickly, so many are now downsizing.

But! Here’s the plot-twist — do these massive companies actually need to lay people off to become profitable? Probably not. But these massive cuts appease investors who are getting nervous about their investments not making them as much money.

To be ultra-clear, companies are still profiting. They’re just not profiting as much as Wall Street would like. So when one company is making cuts, it’s easier for other companies to justify doing so too.

Headcount change versus stock price change is a pretty good indicator btw of possibly predicting whether a company might cut headcount. I made this chart last year, but it remains a relevant metric: https://www.businessinsider.com/chart-shows-most-unsustainable-tech-company-compensation-plans-rsus-equity-2022-5?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=IAmA-comment

-DNS

Hey there! This is a bunch of questions haha, so I’m going to break it down with a bullet or so for each q

- I saw that article too. And it definitely matches up with what I’ve heard from my recent chats with recruiters.

- There are definitely negative impacts of these layoffs. And we’ve already started seeing that across companies. I think Twitter is an extreme but perfect example of this: things are breaking on the front-end, employee morale is pretty low, and entire (vital) teams are missing.

- The experts and tech industry people who I’ve chatted with have pointed a few major long-term shifts. Most notably, there’s a focus on efficiency over innovation (like how multiple Big Tech companies have shuttered their moonshot branches). But at the same time, they can’t ignore how the tech industry keeps innovating. Generative AI (thanks to ChatGPT) for example is a curveball that they definitely weren’t prepping for a few months ago. Yet a lot of these companies are now scrambling to react to it.

- I totally agree with your concerns. Cloud is getting hit pretty hard right now, and it ties back into your question about the negative effects of layoffs — this is definitely one of them. Within Big Tech alone, cloud spending has decreased a bunch (my teammate Paayal Zaveri wrote about it here: https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-amazon-google-cloud-business-lower-spending-growth-slowed-charts-2023-2?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=IAmA-comment) And it’s especially pronounced since digital transformation was such a buzzword during the pandemic tech boom. But optimistically, this cool-off likely won’t last forever. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella even predicted that the sector could rebound as soon as this year: https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-ceo-earnings-azure-slowdown-cloud-bounce-back-2023-1?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=IAmA-comment1

-DNS

I've just been informed by an anonymous source that Yiken is a song, not an artist.