Often it doesn't make sense. They need to cut, so they cut. They need to spend, so they spend. They need to hire, so they hire. Is this usually consistent? No. They acquire companies and later shut them down. They hire tons of people then fire them, then later have to hire back people and start up projects that duplicate what they bought but later killed and then realize that the competition is in that market so they start it up again, but in a worse way. They allocate time and money into major moonshot projects and internal efforts and later kill off those projects they invested tons of time and money into. Startups are sociopathic in many ways.

As I learned long ago, don't expect venture-backed and post-IPO startups to act "logically". It's all a big hustle and a scramble for market share and whatever other metrics. There's a lot of collateral damage along the way, employees and customers be damned.

Startups aren't a "meritocracy" and management teams don't operate by best ideas win. Markets are brutal, management teams are opportunistic and often self-serving, investors are focused on growth at all costs and hitting metrics, and companies don't operate in ways that suit logic. They suit the needs to capture markets or do whatever they do to get ahead. Sometimes ethically, sometimes not.

Most of HN is information free. Water cooler banter with 1:20 posts offering anything insightful.

And yet here you are

1:20 is better SNR than most interactions...

Don't forget, you're here forever

It becomes information-full when you add:

C: The calculation that caused this was probably some black-box political battle that was won by Manager A, and lost by Manager B. It was probably decided based on personal preferences and biases of decisionmakers, as well as on who was friends with whom. Decisionmakers that run private corporations make these kinds of decisions all the time, and any attempts at reading the tea leaves, or the chicken entrails, to try to predict or explain these decisions is likely a waste of your time. If you'd like these decisions to be made in the open, you need democracy and transparency, which is not something that's is selected for in the modern business world. This is not a value judgement of the modern business world, it is just a descriptive statement about it.

Oh, there's certainly information. It's conversation steering for some, mind expanding for others, and the hinting tasks the brain with reconciling this question with present understanding. Neurotransmitter flux is being steered one way or another.

The overlap between "people who know what's happening" and "people who post on HN" is not always as high as one might hope.