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Comment by hn_throwaway_99 | Hacker News Reader

Frustrating, layoffs seem to be back in full swing. I posted this comment just yesterday, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38945990, and since then HN had articles about Google layoffs, now Discord, and I also saw that FullStory had a pretty big layoff.

It really had felt like things had stabilized a bit (at least for software engineers) in the fall. Was that just the lull before the storm?

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I think many companies are anticipating a significant downturn in the economy and are trying to get ahead of it. Layoffs help stock prices almost immediately and management get bonuses for increasing the bottom line.

Workers are defenseless. Save your money in case you're laid off. Work less if they keep you on.

Let management be rewarded by nothing more than short term monetary gain. Don't give them extra productivity.

Cruise, Spotify, VMWare, and Unity were among the companies that had sizable (15%+ of a large group) layoffs before the end of last year. I don’t think it ever really stabilized.

VMWare's is because of M&A. I wouldn't classify it's layoffs for the same reason as Cruise, Spotify, and Unity.

But Cruise, VMWare and Unity's layoffs were all very much company-specific execution issues - I'd expect to see some layoffs like that even during boom times. Of that list only Spotify is really in the "we hired too much and now we're downsizing due to economic conditions" boat. In fact, I remember thinking "That sucks, this is the first one of those I've heard in a while" when the Spotify layoff was announced.