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Comment by Waterluvian | Hacker News Reader

I think this makes sense from the perspective of a worker and what their fears are.

I think it’s probably much simpler: money isn’t cheap anymore and everyone overhired for a long time.

Do layoffs actually motivate workers though? I feel like from the people I've spoken to that have experienced losing coworkers to layoffs, they just kind of disconnect.

I don’t think it’s about motivation. I thinks it is about saying employees have been making too much noise past couple years with their union talk, WFH, pay inequality, etc so this is going to be the year of fear for your job.

> money isn’t cheap anymore

I know nothing about economics but I wonder if it’s time to ease up on the interest rates. Inflation might not be due to too much money in the system but rather supply simply drying up as China economy circles the drain. Maybe it’s a good idea to let money be cheap again so people could quickly set up alternative non-China suppliers to relieve the supply pressure. But then again I know anything about economics so add salt as required.

The economy is hot. Money is being allocated away from the jobs that powered that last decade’s tech boom; we’re feeling that in Silicon Valley. (It doesn’t help how expensive commodity talent is in the Bay Area. Unless you’re doing AI or something tremendously collaborative, you’ve probably already built the systems that enable your team to phone in from anywhere.)

If money is being allocated away from tech, where is it going to?

Government, healthcare & construction from the last report: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm

Don’t let a “crisis” go to waste.

The point is that isn’t what’s happening. From the workers’ perspective it’s a convenient narrative.

The truth is, as usual, messier: constrained executives are confronted with targets they don’t know how to meet, and so start shoving round pegs into square holes.

And very seldom suffer themselves for their choices.

Sure. Yes. Wealth insulates. Firing the CEO before a lay-off is stupid; it means every hire is a job risk. If we want that, Europe has it better figured; socialise the risk of unemployment.

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