So, funny story: remember how that Stanford professor described last years' layoffs as a "social contagion" exercise, where CEOs were just doing it because everyone else was doing it?
https://news.stanford.edu/2022/12/05/explains-recent-tech-layoffs-worried/
Well everyone get your surprised face ready but it was in fact a coordinated effort by execs, large shareholders and hedge funds to cover up mismanagement and suppress wages:
Did I say funny, I meant awful, typo sorry those keys are right next to each other.
In hindsight "Stanford business professor says these things just happen and nobody is to blame" should have been an obvious red flag.
Edit: I think this should be elevated to a general rule. Any economist or "professor of business" describing things in animal-behavior terms - instinct, herd, whatever - is prima-facie evidence a group of very rich people were up to some nefarious shit behind the scenes six months earlier.
@mhoye I mean, what the Stanford professor said about lay-offs being a really bad idea that usually harms both the company and the laid off employees is still true
Everything he said about why it happened is bullshit, of course. Unless you mentally substitute "social contagion" with "greed-inspired idiocy" or something 
(This is a recurring phenomenon in biz/economics studies. They can often demonstrate specific negative outcomes, but almost never positive outcomes or ultimate causes)
@mhoye But that Blind post is really interesting and does seem to support what a lot of us were thinking at the time.
@baldur I suppose that's true, but "layoffs are very bad and have awful human consequences" followed by "enh, y'know, sometimes these things just happen and they're nobody's fault", when they are in fact specifically the fault of some specific people for specific reasons is just giving those people intellectual and moral shelter and helping them escape accountability.
@mhoye Oh, I agree completely.
@jeff_abrahamson @baldur @mhoye
Oh yes, it is happening here in Europe as well, At least here in Germany. Worse is watching the Auto Industry implode, taking out of tech workers and skilled workers too. Sad.
You talk like it's a war waged on equal grounds by armies of like power and resolve...
What if someone was tipped off in advance of the layoffs. Then what? How do you "defend" against this attack?
Good point.
I don't know how it works in the USA, but in Canada, unions in tech jobs are mostly non-existent. Lots of work to be done before it's an effective protection.
@axnxcamr@mstdn.ca @mhoye@mastodon.social @Geoffberner@zeroes.ca @baldur@toot.cafe USA has practically no unions because that's a communist idea and Americans generally prefer to just suffer tremendously than use an idea created by The Enemy.
@axnxcamr @mhoye @Geoffberner @baldur In the States, very non-existent.
@mhoye @axnxcamr @Geoffberner @baldur I would also take this opportunity to mention that unions are unnecessary if you work for a worker coop. It's like the union *is* the employer. It also reduces the wealth inequality problem, since the shareholders are the workers instead of wealthy rent-collectors. Imagine if our employers actually worked for us.
@mhoye @axnxcamr @Geoffberner @baldur (But yes, if you can't work for a coop, unionization is the right choice.)
@axnxcamr @baldur @mhoye that's kind of my point. The problem here is that many employees believe their company's purpose is to solve tech problems, when the actual animating purpose of those in charge is to lord it over people like them. The tech solutions were always a means to that end. You can't resist something that you won't first acknowledge as reality.
I had misread your original point then, as we now are in total agreement!
Union.
The sides of capital and labor are only unequal as long as capital can divide and conquer. I’ve been thru strikes and lost work because of it, but in the long run I managed to retire on a pension 15 years ago only because of making sacrifices for the common good. Labor that looks out only for itself cannot fight against the concentration of wealth that capital has become, unionization is the only way labor doesn’t get swallowed up
@Geoffberner @baldur @mhoye Can I quote you on that?
@mhoye so what you're saying is that... incredibly rich people are animals?
@mhoye I am shocked, SHOCKED, there's gambling going on in here!
@mhoye do you remember around the time the layoffs started, there was a letter going around from a London hedge fund basically urging a company (Google?) to do this in order to “correct the market” or something. I forget the exact wording
@mhoye an economist was wrong? [surpisedPikachu.jpg]
@mhoye
Early this year the CEO of Salesforce said he was being pressured by hedge funds to lay off employees
@mhoye doesn’t this describe illegal collusion to suppress wage growth? Something tech companies have been dinged for in the past…
This kind of shit is why tech workers desperately need to unionize across the industry! The CEOs are absolutely unioned against us already, we have the receipts and we have the suppressed wages too!
They're replacing senior devs with complex inside knowledge of their business by bootcamp grads for 1/4 of the pay, and the trend of it has enshittified the entire Internet to the point where the whole system is collapsing!
When will collectively put down our keyboards and demand better?
@CodexArcanum @mhoye
This whole layoff fever is collusion to lower engineer wages. For so long this was a profession that was in demand and wages were livable. Without #Union #Solidarity the employers will rehire for less and expect more. It’s to be expected, they want the most reward they can get, no matter the human cost. The only way to win is by joining together.
@mhoye tysm for the article. Reminds me of this:
https://equitablegrowth.org/aftermath-wage-collusion-silicon-valley/#:~:text=In%20the%20mid%2D2000s%20there,other%20firms%20to%20join%20them.
@mhoye What?!?!?! No.... They would never...
*clutches pearls, looks for a fainting couch* 
@mhoye kind of also demonstrates that these were bullshit jobs to begin with. Does it matter if this work gets done? Nah, the real money is made when the ownership class goes to the market and puts everything on black
@mhoye What a shock! Corporate elites operating from short-term, narrow self interest. Sympathy is after all, a form of suicide to the typical CEO.
@mhoye unions. This is why they are needed.
Major wall st fund managers and stock holders started putting together a plan to put pressure on the wage and RSU growth. There were multiple leaks on Reddit (which is where I got the early wind of these planned industry wide layoffs) where hedge fund employees and staff were talking about dumping as high as 300-500K tech employees over year to put serious pressure on wage growth.
Is it just me, or does it seem like the coordinated laying off of people to manipulate the job market and people's wages should be a thing that isn't legal?
@mhoye I wouldn't be surprised if the guy who wrote this up was a low level AV tech, with better insight than the collective brainpower of some of the world's most successful tech executives.
@mhoye related
"Major investor calls on Google owner to ‘aggressively’ cut staff and pay"
@mhoye Everyone but Apple, that is. Not enough mismanagement to cover up there?
@dgavin Apple didn't over-commit themselves to a magical future of endless growth at the start of the pandemic.
@khleedril @mhoye No, they didn‘t. But they also didn‘t grow unreasonably during the early COVID phase.
@khleedril @mhoye @dgavin they seemed to turn up their noses at both blockchain and metaverse at least. Their take on AI is to leverage it to sell more iPhones as well instead of trying to make customer support worse.
So far Apple seems to be staying Apple, for better or worse.
@beeoproblem @khleedril @mhoye Apple never uses technology for technology’s sake. If it doesn‘t serve a purpose for the user and improve an aspect of our digital lives, they wait. If it can‘t be implemented in a way that respects users privacy they wait.
@mhoye unsurprisingly unsurprised
@mhoye This is why one should always sit in on board meetings.
However one can.
♬ 
@mhoye “Major wall st fund managers and stock holders started putting together a plan to put pressure on the wage and RSU growth.”
TCI via Christopher Hohn. When I read this on FT in Nov. ‘22 at the time ChatGTP was released it to me, was the trigger point for mass layoffs.
“#TCI Fund Management, the activist hedge fund helmed by U.K. billionaire #ChristopherHohn, touted a massive stake in #Google parent #Alphabet on Tuesday as he called on the company to cut costs by reducing its head count and paying workers less, becoming the latest high-profile investor slamming the formerly high-flying tech sector amid broader market weakness.”
@mhoye
How this isn’t outlawed yet???
Can’t a general attorney act on this, to preserve general interest, common good and public rights???
If you still needed a proof that that particular country is an undemocratic oligarchy, there you go…
@furansowa The short answer is that it's not collusion if you're rich enough.
@mhoye
So yes, the justice system does make differences.
That is the definition of partiality.
The rot is at its core then.
The notion isn’t difficult to get though.
La Fontaine, 17c., was already denouncing it : “Depending on whether you are powerful or miserable, court judgments will make you white or black.”
And +400 years later, the rich still can get away with such felony and perfidy…
@mhoye you mean to tell me having the same 100 people on a bunch of the boards with 2 major financial firms ( Black Rock Vanguard) connected the majority of our economy is bad for regular people?
@mhoye I'm always surprised whenever people talk about layoffs and forget to mention the Great Recession we've been under for the past 16 years.
Companies are hurting so they resort to fake hiring in order to pretend that they're growing. This ends up leading to layoffs.
What we need to do is think outside the box to get us out of this economic recession. It's not going to take votes. Dems & Reps are blinding the American people. It's going to take bold decisions on business leaders' parts.
@mhoye <It always has been astronaut meme>.
I feel like layoffs has never not been about poor management. I guess the new part is the coordinated part.
@pbone I don’t think that’s new either.
@mhoye think of the money companies could save if CEO's are replaced with AI.