Google had $60B in net income last year. Meta had $23B in net income last year. Amazon had -$2.7B in net income last year. The year before they had $33.3B. Tesla had $12.5B in net income last year. Ericsson had $1.8B in net income last year. Apple (who didn't do layoffs) had $95.2B in net income last year.

Sure, they can't achieve those record profits for four years in a row, but none are losing money soon.

I don't understand what net income has to do with anything. Profit, not income, is the only thing that matters.

net income is another word for profit (confusing I know)

That logic is also flawed. If you see a big slowdown coming, why would you continue making large acquisitions? Why sweep thousands of various ranks rather than tighten your ship carefully where it matters?

Because employees are primarily a cost vs output equation for public companies in particular (and that's even more true with gigantic firms). Acquisitions are broadly viewed as expanding shareholder value (whether accurate or not in a given situation).

The stock market tanked thanks to the Fed rate hikes. It's believed shareholders will respond positively to cost optimizations. So they'll try to hold the line on growth while boosting margins re cost centers.

It's quite straight-forward thinking as it pertains to getting a positive reaction from shareholders.

The question for that context is: are your cost centers well optimized, or can you trim staff (real-estate holdings, inventory, whatever)? That's a very common question that would be pushed at public companies by large institutional shareholders.

Big tech is extraordinarily bloated with labor. They frequently grow at almost comical rates in terms of adding unnecessary employees (they do it just because they can afford to hoover up the talent to keep it from their competition; one common path forward in the hierarchy for managers is to grow their staff count and expand their footprint), and pretty much everyone knows it. It happens with every fast growth era in tech.

We agree, staff trimming makes far more sense. However, what is happening isn't staff trimming.

Are there any papers regarding the labor bloat specific to tech? Everyone believing in something doesn't make it true so I would love to read more about that beyond the usual memes of "girls on tiktok posting about their day in tech".

Actually, this idea that it's done because of bloat signals something interesting. The reply above claims these layoffs happen because of the future potentially showing massive slowdown - however, why are we trusting what these companies feel about the future when they got their pandemic move completely wrong? They thoroughly believed (apparently, so they say in their layoff emails...) that this growth was going to continue, so obviously they don't have the best grasp on how to make decisions for the future. Entirely negating the above reply that this is due to impending slowdown.