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Comment by pydry | Hacker News Reader

It surprises me how many people are so sanguine at how synchronized the layoffs were.

"Oh, they all over hired and now they all have to cut back" Why all?

The fact that they are marching in lockstep is suspicious. It points to collusion to lower wages, something that has happened before.

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All it really implies is that they imitate each other, which is something humans generally do, including the management at large firms.

If so, doesn't that say something about the low quality of the current crop of CEOs?

A smarter CEO might not go on a hiring spree just because everyone else does; or conversely might hire when others are firing as they know they'll get some good quality developers at a lower price.

And if the goal is to drive down wages, they could have experimented with different practices, such as across the board wage cuts, but instead they're all pursuing layoffs.

Do people actually think many or most CEOs are high-quality executives?

If Federal reserve did not explicitly say that its objective was to drive down wages, you could have escaped to that kind of thinking to escape cognitive dissonance. But its not so. The entire financial segment of the economy is collaborating to drive down wages.

https://mronline.org/2022/05/26/u-s-federal-reserve-says-its...

> The fact that they are marching in lockstep is suspicious. It points to collusion.

Or… twitter took all the flak and everyone else is downsizing now because of that.

And it seems that everyone over invested in labor because everyone was over investing in labor.

Was it collusion when everyone over hired?

I don't think it is collusion, but I do think it is an emergent shared strategy. Take advantage of more urgent layoffs at Facebook to flood the market with talent, push down wages for new hires, and set a new baseline for industry-wide compensation that lets you depress ongoing compensation for your existing employees. And do this without irrecoverable damage to your business capabilities by only firing 5-10% of the company.

A strategy which will be all the more effective if you agree it beforehand and synchronize.

I agree, but that fact is not an substitute for actual evidence of the alleged practice occurring. My strategy of daytrading would be more effective if I had insider information, but that doesn't mean I was insider trading just because I was doing well.

If you agree that this isnt cast iron proof and you agree that it is nonetheless suspicious then you are simply agreeing with what I said.

I have to agree with you there. I don’t have evidence, so it’s a bit of a conspiracy theory, but something is off.

There is one economy, likely heading into recession. There is one war that was supposed to be over quick, but is now looking as though it will spread and go in an unknown direction.

The fact that many companies see this and are preparing for harder times does not require collusion. It simply requires common sense.

If, perhaps:

* The tech layoffs were more spread out over the last year of the war instead of heavily concentrated.

* They were more aligned with the general economy rather than each other

* They were weren't concentrated in very profitable companies that have consolidated their position in the wider economy.

* They hadn't been caught colluding to lower wages before.

I'd be less suspicious. None of these are the case though.

It's likely opportunistic. Sentiment is important for stakeholders. When others in the market are doing it and improving ratios, shareholders are going to ask questions if you aren't doing the same. It's also the ideal time as your employees that stay do not blame the company but rather the market and you can maintain a positive culture, the staff you want to keep are also less likely to jump ship as they presume others are not hiring in this market.

Big organisations scenario plan and it's likely they had an emergency retrenchment plan up their sleeves in case they needed it, which can explain how they were able to execute so fast. It also explains why there are some strange decisions taken.

Ah, like they never[0] colluded before on things?

[0]: https://phys.org/news/2015-09-415m-settlement-apple-google-w....

> There is one war that was supposed to be over quick, but is now looking as though it will spread and go in an unknown direction.

Where will it spread? Have I missed something?

Is there a point at which Russia would consider other countries directly arming, training, assisting Ukraine to be an act of war?

If that point does exist, then either it has to be avoided, which would require knowing where that line between indirect defensive support, and direct action is. Or the point will be crossed and other nations are then involved directly in the war.

Thus far, US/NATO have tried to not cross that line so as to avoid turning it from a proxy engagement to an actual war directly involving US/NATO. As we see countries sending more and better weapons now, there is of course a higher risk that the line is crossed.

So this is speculation and not new information from intelligence sources, right?

We could say with equal confidence that Ukraine is already breaking Russia’s budget and they would not want to escalate.

  > So this is speculation and not new information from intelligence sources, right?

It seems like you're defensive and have set out with an end in mind. That being said, yes intelligences sources have repeatedly warned about escalation and currently there is disagreement on which tanks can/should be sent. Lavrov has also just warned about being on the verge of a much bigger conflict now based on the newest developments[1].

Or maybe it's nothing and Ukraine will crush Russia in a few weeks and we all go back to our over-inflated salaries and all is well in the world. I don't pretend to know the future, you asked a specific question and were given a specific answer. I have no desire to debate the future with you, but maybe we can both agree that in any war there is a risk of it spreading, since we've seen it happen repeatedly throughout history.

And if we can't even agree on that, then we've probably take the discussion as far as we can on here.

[1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/lavrov-warns-that-the-w...

To further update this, the German Foreign Minister just stated in reference to the recent decision to send tanks to Ukraine: "But the most important and the crucial part is that we do it together and that we do not do the blame game in Europe, because we are fighting a war against Russia and not against each other.”

"because we are fighting a war against Russia" ~Germany's foreign minister. Think about the significance of this statement made yesterday.

https://www.anews.com.tr/economy/2023/01/24/german-foreign-m...

I would say this is an example of the war beginning to spread, yes?

likely heading into recession

People have been saying this for a year at this point and we've seen temporary GDP losses turn around and become GDP growth above expectations. Inflation numbers have been basically at target for the past six months. I'm not so sure that a recession is so inevitable at this point.

There have been articles here before, imagining that China's state and corporate control is an advantage over the democratic free market in the US.

If FAANG executives wanted the same level of integration as China's CCP companies, it would not be difficult to obtain. The top guys could simply make an encrypted phone call between the tribal leaders of Big Tech and in a couple hours all come to the same conclusion.

Probably don't need to do that cause they all believe the same ideals. The beliefs inspire the same actions, at roughly the same time-frame anyway.

Simultaneous action simply is a fact of life, particularly more-so lately. Information is so readily available, just reactions alone happen in a much shorter time delta than before.

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