I think that is the point: it does not feel accurate to say that "macroeconomic conditions are tough" or that you expect slowdowns while recording record levels of revenue, and yet company after company after company is using these imaginary tough headwinds to justify laying off 6-8% of staff, often while paying dividends or issuing stock buy-backs.
If it really is rising interest rates, then be honest. Say "due to rising interest rates, we are going to lay off 7% of staff... while buying back stock using our record profits."
And I don't understand why you would care about layoffs from the tech industry (of all people) anyway, it's one of the best industry today and will probably for a while still (forever?). Maybe one of those engineers can help his local tech shop instead.
I find people's tendency to generate outrage from nothing other than headlines to be very annoying.
Hearing how bad things are going to be for more than three months as they continue to not, in fact, be that bad, I started to wonder if they even believe what they're saying.
And if they do, that's fine, but then why use the money for buybacks/dividends rather than saving it for the downturn they're sure is coming?
Over hiring then laying some off shouldn't be a catastrophe in tech.
I also think people would have less issue with these layoffs if CEOs didn't make it sound like a short term critical business decision while being worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
They could be, or not. They seem to issue a preview release every two weeks or so[0], so they are clearly making progress on something.
While Apple did have a much smaller increase in headcount over the last few years, I wouldn't use Apple as an example while we're still in the midst of everything. In December, people were touting Google as an example of one of the layoff-proof companies. I didn't trust that logic, and I don't trust the logic that Apple is somehow immune when they're so closely tied into the tech industry. For example, I'm theorizing that a non-trivial part of their profits comes from supporting the developer ecosystem (who else buys max-spec Macs at scale?). Regardless of the underlying reason, mass layoffs and tightened budgets are going to dry up B2B profit streams.
But if you're Microsoft or Google? You're profitable. You're bringing in money hand over fist. Technically the high interest rates might benefit you because now you have more options of what to do with that giant pile of cash: you can lend it out and get a decent return!
So high interest rates maybe does justify layoffs in some cases. And even perhaps for GitHub specifically, though I'm not sure I understand the complex dynamics of how it generates value for Microsoft anyway...
Okay, but it has to mean more than “we wanted to do layoffs” because it’s being used to justify or explain why they wanted to do layoffs.
Many might just take the opportunity because "everyone else" is doing it.
That doesn't really mean anything other than they are all riding the same wave.
You are correct in everything you say in your first paragraph. That said, it's fair to say that "sharply rising interest rates" are also part of the macroeconomic environment. You can say that it was silly for all these tech companies and investors to think the free money spigot would go on for so long, but the key driver for all of the fall in tech company valuations and employment levels is rising interest rates.
> If there are problems, they are Gitlab problems, not macroeconomic problems.
Yet literally every big tech company I can think of has had similar levels of layoffs. If these were Gitlab-specific problems you wouldn't expect the slowdowns and layoffs to hit everyone.