The current flood of layoff news from FAANG level companies is surprising, sad, and pathetic.
As others have posted, they could keep the people on but they aren't, probably because it isn't financially optimal in the short term to do so. The two problems I see with that are (1) the loss of institutional knowledge, morale, and attractiveness as a place to work mean it is financially suboptimal in the long term, but companies right now are only thinking 1 quarter ahead (maybe 2); (2) it takes time to ramp up, get acclimated, and execute a vision - that clock resets for each position when someone is released and the a new hire is added back later.
It used to be that when you worked for one of the new big corps (FAANG and those like them) it represented some security.
Now I am saddened to see them adopting the big consulting corp model, where you can get released at will and staff is constantly being optimized for the current task set/direction/clients.
As others have posted, they could keep the people on but they aren't, probably because it isn't financially optimal in the short term to do so. The two problems I see with that are (1) the loss of institutional knowledge, morale, and attractiveness as a place to work mean it is financially suboptimal in the long term, but companies right now are only thinking 1 quarter ahead (maybe 2); (2) it takes time to ramp up, get acclimated, and execute a vision - that clock resets for each position when someone is released and the a new hire is added back later.
It used to be that when you worked for one of the new big corps (FAANG and those like them) it represented some security.
Now I am saddened to see them adopting the big consulting corp model, where you can get released at will and staff is constantly being optimized for the current task set/direction/clients.