Hacker News Reader

Not just the past 2-3 years. Many people at google semi-half-joked-not-joked that they could cut half the staff without a single dollar of revenue disappearing back in 2014-2015 time period.

That was almost a bragging point for quite a while. It was definitely not hip to work on ads or even search.

Common at many companies. Revenue comes in and managers build their little empires, justifying it as they go.

The question is : why did these companies hire massively in the pandemic era ? It was clear that cautiousness was the best policy. Not in hindsight, but even at the time. Did tech CEOs suffer from a kind of mass hallucination?

I don't think that's clear at all. Social media is a competitive game and if all your competitors are staffing up, you're going to get left in the dust if you don't do the same. Cheap money was helicoptering from the sky in those days, so why not?

Yes, it was.

Times have changed though, the smart ones are getting with the program. The others will have their share price obliterated