Even if they exist for the good of their employees, should they employ everyone until they run out of money, or should they operate competitively? Having billions of dollars, or even being profitable, has no relationship to sustainability of carrying extra employees in a competitive market. I don't expect you actually want to have a discussion though.

> should they employ everyone until they run out of money

I dont know that, but I know they should keep their employees if they made 13 billion in profit last year. I would like to understand if this is anything apart from greed.

The idea that companies only exist to make money for the owners/shareholders is not a law of nature. Heck it’s not even a very old idea but is probably about 50 years old.

The fact that so many commenters here seem to think it’s akin to a law of nature is an absolutely fascinating study in the effectiveness of propaganda.

Propaganda for what?

There must be some maxim like "reality is the best propaganda" that's already out there

Most developers at Google, the rest of FAANG, startups, etc. get a big part of their compensation as stock. They _are_ shareholders and profiting handsomely from it so of course they're firmly aligned with the pro-shareholder, pro-corporate viewpoint.

Yet, somehow, people are failing to understand this and attributing it to propaganda? To tweak the parent poster's words, the fact that so many commenters fail to realize that is an absolutely fascinating study in how common ignorance is of how people's bread is buttered, even their own.

Slavery being bad is also not a law of nature. It's an agreed upon convention in society though. Ideas don't have to be intrinsically true for them to be powerful and acted on.

It doesn't matter what you accept of reject. The owners set the priorities not the workers or the general public.

The owners don’t operate in isolation, they live in society with other people.

That’s true, but so far society had supported free markets.

So why are you not the one that has to adopt to society?

Why are you in the comments if you don't even want to discuss anything? Me accepting and rejecting is in the context of an HN thread where people like to discuss things.

Does it matter what you accept or reject? The business’s owners determine the goals of the business.

> Only if your argument isn't companies exist only to maximize profit, that one I understand and reject

The fact that you do not like reality doesn't make it less real.

Companies are created to make money for founders and investors. And if they need to shed load to make those people more money, this is how it is going to be. You can always boycott Google and use/buy any of their products if it makes you feel any better about them firing people.

The whole system is made up, I prefer to make it a different way. That is why I reject it, and vehemently advocate for changing this. Advocacy requires me to point out the cruel and unnecessarily unfair nature of this sytem.

Even if they are entirely employee owned, having thousands of staff working towards goals that you're no longer trying to meet or are unproductive is a bad idea. You need to employ & deploy your people in a productive capacity (however that is defined, it could be pure research, not profit motivated).

Big tech expanded a LOT during the pandemic. Too much.

Google hired 30,300 people in 2022! (and 21k in 2021)

While layoffs are tough for everyone (especially those losing the job), if you expanded too fast, I think that an early reset is probably better than burning through more cash to deal with a bigger problem later, when you then might have to make deeper employee cuts than if you'd acted sooner.

After these layoffs Google will still be a LOT bigger than it was a year ago.

> While layoffs are tough for everyone

That's the thing though, its not tough for everyone. Its only tough for the employee, the employer gets more money. Its not tough for them at all.

Having had to sack 90% of staff that worked for me at one point, I'd disagree and say that it is pretty tough on both sides.

That said, I meant it was tough on all employees, not just those fired, to be going through layoffs.

Paying people to work on stuff that doesn’t doesn’t generate value is also tough on the employer.

Even if layoffs are the correct decision now, the company playing fast and loose with over expansion and thus their employees is absolutely worth criticizing and protesting over.

The company with billions of dollars in the bank will have teams of people assessing risk management. But apparently those assessments didn’t address the human risk of over hiring tens of thousands of people to such a degree that they ‘need’ to dispose of them at the first sign of trouble.

Other sectors of the economy didn’t see such drastic layoffs so they can’t claim it’s a widespread and unforeseeable problem. They made a risky bet that had a real human cost, and people are right to wonder what’s the point of mega corps if they’re not any better at this than a small or medium business.