Comment by trollbridge | Hacker News Reader

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Comment by trollbridge | Hacker News Reader

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Odd how they are simultaneously having large layoffs even as reporting record revenues.

The question is where the profits are.

Amazon - 14,000 layoffs; significant

Microsoft - 14,000 (multiple rounds); significant

Meta - 600 layoffs; insignificant for company size

Google - "Several hundred layoffs"; insignificant for a company size

Apple - No layoffs

Source: https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/24/tech-layoffs-2025-list/

Google's Youtube unit is doing soft layoffs.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45766368

Also every one of them has hundreds of thousands of external contractors which are not reported anywhere.

And offshoring is also a huge cost-cutting effort everywhere.

The layoffs at Amazon and Microsoft are not due to lack of profits. They’re massively profitable right now.

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/MSFT/microsoft/ebi...

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AMZN/amazon/ebitda

They're "massively profitable" because they're laying off large portions of a major cost center - labor - and backloading uncoming data center construction costs. As those come due, and labor needs rise again, that profit disappears.

yes, these companies have a track record of disappearing profits :)

They have a track record of cornering a market and abusing their position, and also still somehow not being able to balance expenses and revenues to turn a profit that pleases shareholders. You get to decide if that's a problem with the company or the shareholders, I guess.

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