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Comment by frob | Hacker News Reader

Elon Musk starred a fad. The other tech leaders had to get in on the fad or seem out-of-date. The thing about fads is you don't do them because they're useful or because you thought it out; you do it because everyone else is and you don't want to look stupid for being left behind.

Owners of tech companies aren't immune to the same foibles that drive all of us; they just have more money.

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It has nothing to do with Musk. Cisco, Verizon, HP etc have been slashing tens of thousands of jobs to please shareholders since before Musk knew what a 10-Q was.

Mass layoffs have been a fact of bigco life for ages. Tech layoffs seem novel in comparison, possibly because in the old days companies didn't have thousands of developers on the payroll.

No they do have a use or benefits, not for the employees though but for the corps, it is all supply and demand, once those employees who are mostly living paycheck to paycheck are let go, on a scale, you will have a lot of supply to further reduce the compensations or at least have the leverage when it comes to negotiations, so no WFH and the likes. Corps are never your friends or in your interests, unions are.

Blaming Elon for everything has reached a new level. I don't think you can be confident in this hypothesis, you would have to show that all these firms weren't reacting similarly because they had the same data and outlook. Twitter just went first.

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