When all the people with money hired like crazy, was that a signal that... reality showed that they have no clue of whats coming. They just copy each other and in general have no clue about anything.

From my point of view, they hired because they had cheap money to invest and when they no longer had it, they fired. This is entirely rational, IMHO. You can't time the market. Perhaps not moral or ethical but I don't see anything that would signal they don't know what they're doing.

Hiring, onboarding, firing, and severance are all massively expensive in terms of money, time, employee morale, and company reputation. There's no evidence that this was long-term or even short-term rational.

You know how everyone whines about "a single bad hire is devastating" as a justification for whiteboarding, leetcode, etc.? Well, these were hundreds or thousands of bad hires for each company.

The other self-inflicted wound is that a hiring binge naturally raises employee compensation due to market forces, demand and supply. It's going to be difficult to undo the expectations that have been raised, to claw back the salary levels, because even if you lay off a bunch of people, the remaining employees are still making the higher compensation and will continue to expect it. If a company lays off a bunch of people and simultaneously attempts to cut employee compensation, they'll have a massive revolt on their hands. The damage has already been done, the compensation needle has already moved.

> If a company lays off a bunch of people and simultaneously attempts to cut employee compensation, they'll have a massive revolt on their hands.

Will have to watch Intel closely to see, but I hear the layoffs quelled revolt about the paycuts

When the pandemic hit, as a true leader, you would grab a history book and try to see what a pandemic means. How did people recover from it? How long did it last? Maybe even hire a historian, a virologist and maybe even a psychologist to help you understand what people really want (they don't want to commute and also don't want to do everything online). This is all stuff that somebody with money can afford.

You're mistaking business managers for true leaders.

I keep seeing this "free money" sentiment but I think that's actually evidence of what the other commenters are saying. People don't actually understand the financing and are literally just copying what they read about people having "free money" to hire

If you have ever worked at a company that did layoffs or rolled back benefits or salary in difficult economic conditions you will have witnessed a long-lasting malaise that affects morale further and hampers productivity.

There is nothing rational about creating that effect within your organization because "money is cheap".

> not that productive?

I don't get it, remote or not, if someone is not performing you can fire them. I mean, you can even make remote working contingent on a team's performance.