This is false in a broad sense - the majority of CEOs plan to increase headcount this year in spite of layoffs. You can find examples here and there where it is true, but in general it is not. There's tons of literature of this readily available, but here is an example from as recently as yesterday: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ceo-outlook-report-optimism-r...
> None of these layoffs are focused on laying off their most expensive people.
The people you see laid off tend to be newly hired at higher recent market rates or people who have been there a very long time, both of whom are either expensive in a relative sense or an absolute one.
But even that is besides the point. Even if you fire randomly you still see this benefit if you're a CEO.
This just means that companies are continuing to hirer. It doesn't mean that they plan on increasing headcount to above where it was before the layoff.
> “We expect to end 2023 as either roughly the same size or even a slightly smaller organization than we are today,” said Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg
> In a letter to employees, co-CEOs Aneel Bhusri and Carl Eschenbach said that Workday this month developed "a refreshed vision, strategy and core set of values that we firmly believe will pave the way for our next phase of growth." They continued: "These moves are not the result of overhiring, and in fact, we plan to increase the size of our global workforce in FY24." Workday's 2023 fiscal year ends today.
To name a few big ones.
The hiring the industry is planning to do is substantial, in a way that will likely cover, nearly cover, or more than cover the layoffs we've seen so far.
https://hrtechfeed.com/companies-plan-to-increase-their-hiri...
It's so weird to grasp at straws like this to carry water for CEOs who are never going to see you write this, and will never like you, without getting paid for it. 1300s serf mindset groveling at the feet of feudal lords. And it's everywhere.
If you're continuing to hire past these layoffs, and expanding plans to do so, it's to take advantage of the environment created by the layoffs. If there really was a fiscal crisis you'd also see mass hiring freezes, but we're not seeing that.
> “We expect to end 2023 as either roughly the same size or even a slightly smaller organization than we are today,” said Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/41-of-companies-pla...
I like my CEO, but it doesn't bother me if he doesn't know about me. He has much more important stuff to think about.
>without getting paid for it.
I don't care about money. I join companies to have fun working on their projects.
>you'd also see mass hiring freezes
Hiring has slowed down. Large companies are always going to want new people.
>“We expect to end 2023 as either roughly the same size or even a slightly smaller organization than we are today,” said Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
Meta's employee count has typically grown over 20% every year. This was also said before the layoffs were public knowledge.
The idea that its execs just decided to lay off a bunch of people for no reason just to wage some plausibly deniable class warfare doesn't really make sense to me.
If you have a hard time believing capitalists wouldn't literally do capitalism when they see a chance for it, I don't know what I can tell you really.
"I don't really see it" is a pretty... well it's something, that's for sure.
If you're a big FAANG-like company, you've seen workers make big gains in wages over the past year, and turnover rates have been increasing significantly during the great resignation. This isn't enough to sink you, but you don't like it, because it does eat into your margins a little. Of course you're still making massive profits, but workers getting any measure of power scares you. Imagine if this trend continues? Workers are only getting harder to find!
So what do you do? You can't walk up to all your CEO friends and say "Hey how can we go about paying everyone less? What if we all agree to lay off our expensive people at the same time? That way, we'll have a massive pool of workers to hire from that are all looking for jobs, and since they'll all be scared from having been laid off they'll happily take pay cuts. Additionally, it'll scare the hell out of the rest of the employees to see all their friends get blown up with no warning right in front of them. They'll want desperately to keep the jobs they have and won't leave!"
You can't say that because coordinated wage suppression is highly illegal (remember Apple and Google?). But wink/nod based wage suppression? Totally fine! If everyone just happens to fire their expensive workers at the same time but leaves no record of getting anyone to agree to it, it's perfectly allowed. This is not "copycat" behavior. This is all the CEOs recognizing what the game is and cashing in on it.
And better yet, there's nothing the tech workers can do about it! There are no real tech worker unions to speak of, and these companies know their workers have a highly libertarian bent who believe in the meritocracy myth, so there's no real risk of unionization no matter how bad things get. It's a pure win for them, with no real downsides, and the general consensus is that if they're smart they'll do this every so often to bring workers to heel. And given the pervasive attitudes about labor that I see among tech workers I don't see any reason to think that's wrong.