None of these massive FAANG companies are anywhere near crashing.

Exactly this - if you're still making massive profits then layoffs are unnecessary.

You could just instigate a hiring freeze and let natural attrition run its course.

But that would involve having some balls and managing a business in a way that is good for everyone.

When all of these companies act together to influence the labor market, they can subsequently cut long-term costs due to the natural suppression it effects on wages. I'm seeing very significant reductions.

typically a company also refocuses where they spend effort or make changes how they operate and that leaves a lot of people without meaningful work that matters. not only will those people be demoralized, but those around them too, together with continue collaboration and communication complexity. waiting for that to organically resolve it self would be terrible leadership.

Many/most of these companies have a huge portfolio of projects underway and have lots of open headcount that they’re hiring for. What sense does it make to say cut an engineer from one org only to hire another one a month later for another org?

Literally no thought is given to redeploying the labor force against the new set of projects. Just cut and rehire. It’s the ultimate short-termism, lack of vision and lack of leadership. Ironically all of these companies blather on about leadership but fail to even demonstrate a scintilla of it. Leadership just means “plays political game competently” at these companies.

but they are all reporting record breaking profits.

Layoffs are about projected profits not past profits.

So the plane has been flying over valleys at record altitude and we see a couple of mountains ahead that we will easily clear. Despite being absolutely no where near crashing, let's throw a couple of crew overboard so that we can continue to climb to new heights and keep the hype engines of our overvaluation going?

There was one time that Kodak made record profits and now they exist in name only.

"Past performance is not indicative of future results"

These pat responses still elude whether future results are contingent upon drastic action. You simply cannot justify all actions by claiming past success is irrelevant.

You can't say it's all that matters either.

Maybe you missed the memo, but corporations are supposed to grow exponentially, for all eternity -- never mind the Laws of Thermodynamics (or any other sanity check, for that matter).

google’s profit not only dropped 34% in the last quarter, it is also the fourth consecutive quarter that their profit as dropped. if they didn’t change anything and just continued on, what do you predict the next 4 quarters would look like? what do you think the comp of those at google will look like taking into account that more than 50-60% of one’s compensation is equity?

and this is just one prominent example.

Layoffs seems more Like jettisoning the fuel or engines to save weight in that scenario.