Live in the Bay, can confirm. The work culture here is toxic and evey time you turn around, companies are squeezing more work into less positions for the same pay.

This is correct.

The hand-waving is "tech overhiring"; it's an inaccurate meme.

The reality is copycat effect, just like the late 21, early w2 "price increases" across all economic sectors, which fueled the inflation fire. Companies with material and logistics components experienced greater costs during and following the pandemic. That chewed up their margins, so many raised prices to maintain those margins.

Many/most who didn't even experience cost increases of any kind copied the herd raising prices as a way to inflate revenues. And most got away with it because "everyone else is doing it." Especially when the bulk of the market is making the same move, the ones that didn't "need" to raise prices exploited the opportunity anyway. As such, 9% inflation.

And now that the Fed has applied a vise grip Federal Interest Rate, many companies are now facing unfavorable borrowing costs; so they close ranks and ride out the cooldown, while also preparing for a Recession, should it manifest fully.

And since the consumer market is dealing with higher costs but suppressed, stagnant wages, spending is cooling off.

Finally, the last link in the chain reaction is companies looking for additional cost cutting avenues. Since growth is largely on hold due to revenues shrinking and borrowing costs becoming unprofitable, they turn inward and cut labor. Fringe or luxury products or projects are suspended (or shelved) and the staff is shuffled to keep the most vital members (and/or favoritism). And even firms that don't need to adjust labor costs are cutting labor preemptively to maintain margins since revenues are down across the board.

Everyone is at risk as long as the Fed maintains the high rates, which has been a necessity of evil to reign in the decades of low rate borrowing and growth all while wages failed to keep pace.

When inflation reaches 7-9% while wages **rarely surpass 1-4% annually, if that that's a disparity and it has been out of control for 20+ years.

Have you looked at the stats? Tech companies hired way way more during covid than they've laid off so far.

Also they are beholden to the shareholder and have to pay big dividends or people will switch to bonds.

The government and fed create a lot of these situations. The corporations just do what is needed to win at the little game we've created.