Oh, sorry you're shocked and sorry I don't have sympathy for tech workers that have the education, skills and connections to find cushy jobs that pay at the top percentile of wage earners in the U.S.

I'll save my sympathy for the homeless, hungry and bottom percentile earners that work hard at an honest living and scrape by everyday trying to feed their families. Sorry that my sympathy is too limited for you.

"Empathy" has been overused in this industry to the point of meaninglessness and virtue signaling.

Something tells me you don’t actually have empathy for the homeless and hungry though..,

Something tells me your comment is totally baseless. I could make the same claim about you, one internet stranger to another, and it would be worth just as much, that is, zilch.

Fwiw, I've volunteered at homeless shelters, sleeping overnight and make it a point to give at least a buck and say an encouraging word to any homeless people that I pass by, not that a buck will make a drastic difference, but to let them know I'm not totally ignoring them.

This comment is completely uncalled for and unrelated to the conversation at hand.

I think on HN, I see same exact logic applied to Twitter employees with $300k compensation as to an Amazon warehouse worker getting paid $16/hour; i.e., labor rights above anything else.

The crowd here is blind to this circumstantial disparity. Another blind spot is if you replace $300k engineers getting laid off with $100k managers getting laid of at say IBM, the tide reverses, no more empathy for managers! How dare we!

Save your sympathy? Sympathy isn't a coin purse from which you judiciously spend and save. It's just a perspective on how you choose to view the world. You get to choose -- are you going to view the world from the perspective of people first, or from some other more grotesque perspective like their value as employees or contribution to the GDP.

It's the easiest thing in the world to both think "my heart goes out to these people who have been suddenly disconnected form their income" and also to have a focus on those more in need.

It's just figure of speech. The meaning in this case is I choose to have sympathy for those that are really down and out not rich tech workers.

The main reason I choose not to have sympathy for them is because they are rich (comparatively) tech workers.

The main drivers of sympathy (at least for me) are how well you know or identify with someone and how dire their situation is.

I don't know anyone personally in Ukraine, but they have all my sympathy because their situation is truly horrible.

Likewise, I don't know any of the laid off Twitter workers. But their situation is anything but dire or even bad. They might think it is, but objectively, it is not. It might turn out to be the best thing to happen in their life actually. So no sympathy there.

Look, your scope of sympathy is different that mine. Yours includes rich laid off tech workers and mine doesn't. I think that's ok. You're comfortable with your boundaries and I'm comfortable with mine. I don't think I'm a bad person for it. If you think so, you're 100% entitled to your opinion. Let's leave it at that.