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Comment by jklein11 | Hacker News Reader

"The report said worry about an economic slowdown was the main driver of companies' layoff intentions."

Has anyone seen this happen in practice? Any HNer who is management have to lay people off because their executives say “we have no problem getting capital right now but we think it might become more difficult in the future.”

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Not really. The only time I saw something like this was as a contractor at a certain Fortune 500 company. As each fiscal year was approaching the end and budgets were running close, they'd quickly lay off all the contractors. They'd then be aggressively hiring contractors once they were in the new fiscal year.

I never quite understood that one. Feels like the churn would be more costly than keeping those contractors onboard for a month.

Not even contractors sometimes.

I've seen full-time employees laid off at one point, given severance, told not to look "too hard" for a new job, companies reported numbers, and hired back the same people in the same roles a few months later.

Hopefully at a higher rate to make up for lost $$?

Part of the deal with contractors is they're not supposed to be working there for years at a time, otherwise they're employees. Those layoffs might be justification for cycling people out to avoid having to convert them.

Adobe used to lay people off pretty much every winter to make their Q4 numbers look better, then hire many of the same folks back a few months later. It sucked. From what I've heard they don't do this is as much now that their business is subscription-driven.

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