<story><title>Tech layoffs keep stacking up</title><url>https://twitter.com/HayekAndKeynes/status/1541760176826499073</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>hn_throwaway_99</author><text>The thing that seems &lt;i&gt;so&lt;/i&gt; weird to me about the current state of the economy is that you have lots of &amp;quot;smart people&amp;quot; shouting pretty loudly &amp;quot;A recession is coming! Is going to be bad! We may already be in one!!&amp;quot; I don&amp;#x27;t remember any recession - not the early 90s recession, not the .com bust, not the Great Recession - having anywhere near so much foreshadowing. Sure, there were people during the .com boom saying &amp;quot;Umm, you know, &amp;#x27;eyeballs&amp;#x27; don&amp;#x27;t pay the bills and at some point you need to actually make money&amp;quot; and during the 00s housing bubble &amp;quot;I&amp;#x27;m not even sure lenders are using the &amp;#x27;can you fog a mirror&amp;#x27; test anymore when making loans&amp;quot;, but it wasn&amp;#x27;t particularly widespread, and large sections of the economic and policy elite actively downplayed the possibility of recession.&lt;p&gt;Now though, I see the exact opposite. Tech moguls, central bankers, VCs, etc. etc. have been warning &amp;quot;this is going to be really bad&amp;quot; now for months. But, in actuality, it&amp;#x27;s not &lt;i&gt;that&lt;/i&gt; bad (yet). Yes, inflation is really bad, but unemployment was 3.6% in May. It still feels like many companies are having a very difficult time hiring and keeping workers.&lt;p&gt;So why the difference? I don&amp;#x27;t want to go into &amp;quot;conspiracy theory territory&amp;quot;, but I do think it&amp;#x27;s pretty undeniable that there is a marked difference in &amp;quot;warning levels&amp;quot; between the current time and recessions in the past 40 years.</text></item><item><author>htormey</author><text>All this panic about tech layoffs seems a little premature given we haven’t even begun to see the impact of rates hikes on quarterly earnings yet. Many companies still have open recs and budgets to keep hiring.&lt;p&gt;I work at a company that just laid off 18% of the workforce (Coinbase) including many people in engineering. The day this happened my email, LinkedIn, Twitter inboxes exploded with companies asking me if I knew of anyone looking for a job or if I myself had been impacted.&lt;p&gt;I reached out to many of my former colleagues who had been impacted to see if they needed help. All had multiple interviews in flight and were not having trouble finding jobs.&lt;p&gt;Aside from many crypto companies the inbound jobs were from many public and private companies and spanned many industries.&lt;p&gt;I expect tech layoffs to get worse and the white collar job market to tighten towards the end of this year and 2023.&lt;p&gt;I expect the main driver for this will be cost reduction at public and private companies in the lead up to earnings or quarterly reports. Main cost for a tech company obviously being labor.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>willcipriano</author><text>That&amp;#x27;s because this recession is going to be manufactured. Powell was clear, wages are rising too fast for the feds liking so they are going to crash the ship into the rocks.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;mronline.org&amp;#x2F;2022&amp;#x2F;05&amp;#x2F;26&amp;#x2F;u-s-federal-reserve-says-its-goal-is-to-get-wages-down&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;mronline.org&amp;#x2F;2022&amp;#x2F;05&amp;#x2F;26&amp;#x2F;u-s-federal-reserve-says-its...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Tech layoffs keep stacking up</title><url>https://twitter.com/HayekAndKeynes/status/1541760176826499073</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>hn_throwaway_99</author><text>The thing that seems &lt;i&gt;so&lt;/i&gt; weird to me about the current state of the economy is that you have lots of &amp;quot;smart people&amp;quot; shouting pretty loudly &amp;quot;A recession is coming! Is going to be bad! We may already be in one!!&amp;quot; I don&amp;#x27;t remember any recession - not the early 90s recession, not the .com bust, not the Great Recession - having anywhere near so much foreshadowing. Sure, there were people during the .com boom saying &amp;quot;Umm, you know, &amp;#x27;eyeballs&amp;#x27; don&amp;#x27;t pay the bills and at some point you need to actually make money&amp;quot; and during the 00s housing bubble &amp;quot;I&amp;#x27;m not even sure lenders are using the &amp;#x27;can you fog a mirror&amp;#x27; test anymore when making loans&amp;quot;, but it wasn&amp;#x27;t particularly widespread, and large sections of the economic and policy elite actively downplayed the possibility of recession.&lt;p&gt;Now though, I see the exact opposite. Tech moguls, central bankers, VCs, etc. etc. have been warning &amp;quot;this is going to be really bad&amp;quot; now for months. But, in actuality, it&amp;#x27;s not &lt;i&gt;that&lt;/i&gt; bad (yet). Yes, inflation is really bad, but unemployment was 3.6% in May. It still feels like many companies are having a very difficult time hiring and keeping workers.&lt;p&gt;So why the difference? I don&amp;#x27;t want to go into &amp;quot;conspiracy theory territory&amp;quot;, but I do think it&amp;#x27;s pretty undeniable that there is a marked difference in &amp;quot;warning levels&amp;quot; between the current time and recessions in the past 40 years.</text></item><item><author>htormey</author><text>All this panic about tech layoffs seems a little premature given we haven’t even begun to see the impact of rates hikes on quarterly earnings yet. Many companies still have open recs and budgets to keep hiring.&lt;p&gt;I work at a company that just laid off 18% of the workforce (Coinbase) including many people in engineering. The day this happened my email, LinkedIn, Twitter inboxes exploded with companies asking me if I knew of anyone looking for a job or if I myself had been impacted.&lt;p&gt;I reached out to many of my former colleagues who had been impacted to see if they needed help. All had multiple interviews in flight and were not having trouble finding jobs.&lt;p&gt;Aside from many crypto companies the inbound jobs were from many public and private companies and spanned many industries.&lt;p&gt;I expect tech layoffs to get worse and the white collar job market to tighten towards the end of this year and 2023.&lt;p&gt;I expect the main driver for this will be cost reduction at public and private companies in the lead up to earnings or quarterly reports. Main cost for a tech company obviously being labor.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tootie</author><text>I think you&amp;#x27;re misremembering. The 2001 and 2007 crashes were very widely foretold. The current recession risk concensus seems pretty weak to me right now. That&amp;#x27;s just perception but the popular joke goes something like &amp;quot;economists have predicted 8 of the last 3 recessions&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;The risk of an unexpected recession is much worse than a warning that doesn&amp;#x27;t come true so warnings are always pessimistic. Risk right now still feels 50&amp;#x2F;50. The next CPI report after the major Fed action will be watched very closely.</text></comment>