HN never has news "Firm X set to hire 400 people". If the stock market followed HN - then there would always be deflation.

You're mostly correct but the beauty of talking in absolutes is that I just need to give one counter example. Y Combinator's darling (and still a source of confusion for me because I don't understand how it managed to be so successful against all odds) is Dropbox.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2813324

So to reiterate, I'm not saying you're wrong. HN and by extension most news reporting and aggregation seems to be negative. People think it is a work of public relations machinery when we hear positive news (and sadly they are also usually correct).

Don't quote me on this but I think in the original Matrix movie they talk about how they created perfect world for people but they kept rejecting it because they could tell it was not the real world or something. I think I'd feel cynical when I hear mostly positive news most of the time. Sorry, I can't help it. Even in this piece about dropbox five years ago… I was still suspicious about whether they'd continue to exist today. I mean they were paying Amazon for all that storage. I knew a lot of my college friends had drop box accounts but I didn't know anyone who paid for it. I still don't know more than three people who have paid for dropbox.

Modern Software companies do not survive by making the majority of there users pay. They survive by generating revenue from power users.

The simple fact is - the world operates on a network of debt and saving. So 400 jobs lost at blackrocks - means 400 new opening for green jobs in Australia.

Capital really does not live to stay in one place - it always wants to work. If you have 10 million dollars in the bank - you will be burning money just due to inflation.

>So 400 jobs lost at blackrocks - means 400 new opening for green jobs in Australia.

This is not necessarily true. People can and will hold onto their cash negating any growth of the market in the face of job losses, its not a zero sum game. In fact job layoffs can increase panic and increase hoarding of capital.

> If you have 10 million dollars in the bank - you will be burning money just due to inflation.

1-2% deflation can be better in certain market climates than investments which create jobs, or you put it in a safe investment such as bonds which is in some sense hoarding, you don't take on significant risk to create anything you just park your cash somewhere that it will not suffer losses from inflation. Both of these circumstances do not grow jobs or the market.

>1-2% deflation can be better in certain market climates than investments which create jobs

Agreed. Return ON capital is different from return OF capital.

> Capital really does not live to stay in one place - it always wants to work. If you have 10 million dollars in the bank - you will be burning money just due to inflation.

Yeah, I've heard people explain it to me before. I don't fully understand it but I appreciate the fact that inflation is not always a bad thing and neither are taxes.

For example, if the people who owned all the land wanted to leave it fallow then they'd have to pay the tax on it somehow so they have an incentive to not leave it fallow.

I guess similarly with inflation and capital. You can leave your money doing nothing but there is a penalty for doing so (because inflation).

I thought the new "darling" is Zenefits

From what I've read, zenefits is just outsourcing hr for efficiency and abstracting away complexity.

They may be shady as f* but I can wrap my head around them so they don't puzzle me.

This article sort of says that (Blackrock is expected to end the year having hired more than the 400 let go).

Mostly because firm don't hire 400 people at once, but they do let go of people en masse.

You are right, but do other sites feature these messages?

In contrast Hackernews has almost daily 'X is hiring for Y', where X is a YC company.

Negative news always attracts more human attention and hence clicks. That is why you see some of those disgusting images used in ads.

Doesn't Goldman Sachs fire the bottom 5% every year? This constitutes just 3% of BlackRock's employee head count.

The key is that these cuts flow from broader restructuring efforts, not performance.

Yeah but nobody here realizes that.

As a guy who has recently started to come out of debt and starting to prepare for pension and savings, the more I learn about the financial industry the more it scares me. It seems like a zero sum game and nothing more than sophisticated gambling.

Everything can be said to be "sophisticated gambling." Nothing is certain, and only those who don't understand finance believe that any financial instrument whatsoever is a certainty. And even outside finance: the job you took isn't certain, nor is the car you bought or the marriage you entered into. Finance has its problems but the gambling aspect isn't the root of it.

The difference is whether you are the house or you are getting screwed by the house. My guess, most people are not the house.

Except your "house" is undergoing layoffs.

It's not hard to manipulate markets. It IS hard to manipulate markets and make a profit!

It goes beyond gambling, it's far more feudal than that. Read Michael Hudson's book "Killing the Host."