Nobody can convince me that big corps are not taking part this "trend" of firing people with the purpose of rehiring them later and keep the compensation of the workforce in check.
As many comments have already pointed out, all these companies are sitting on a huge cushion of money, and if you have money the best moment to invest is during a crisis. Companies realized a long time ago that they should find ways of lowering salaries, now the big moment finally came it seems.
It's always been a big game of follow the leader, one tech company lays off 5000 workers then a next company lays off 5000 workers because if it's good for company A it must be good for company B. It's no different than when Yahoo told all their workers they had to come into the office and all the tech companies tried to drag their workers back into the office, they just didn't want to miss the trend. In a year everyone will be hiring again and companies will be screaming about needing more skilled (and cheaper) workers but for now it's just the semi-annual culling of the herd.
That's an interesting point of view. It would make economical sense for big corps to act as a labor market cartel, and the fact that they are all laying off together is a suspicious coincidence.
As is too often the case, the cost of getting caught with their hands in the cookie jar are dwarfed by the savings over time so no reason to think they will avoid doing similar things in the future.
This is the real take away, imo. It seems like a controlled, insider effort to combat wage growth.
I essentially didn’t get a pay raise after a year of stellar performance reviews because of inflation, and with these layoffs I’m no longer in a position of bargaining power to ask for more.
As many comments have already pointed out, all these companies are sitting on a huge cushion of money, and if you have money the best moment to invest is during a crisis. Companies realized a long time ago that they should find ways of lowering salaries, now the big moment finally came it seems.