What's With All the Layoffs Lately?

People try to blame AI for all the layoffs in tech, but I think it’s something else entirely. Eventually, AI will come for jobs, but what’s happening now is entirely about money. Companies, profitable and not, can no longer get cheap money for growth. That’s it.

Especially if they’re a public company, where it seems like shareholders are infinitely more important than employees (regardless if we’re one and the same). It’s a sad development, that seems to be particularly cruel in the tech industry.

I heard Ben Thompson and Om Malik discussing on Ben’s Stratechery podcast how so many large tech companies have become critical to the funds used for almost everyone’s 401k, which gives the industry a large impact on essentially the Economy itself. I’m no analyst or economist, but this feels like it has a lot of truth to it.