Just my opinion.
I work in the industry for about 10 years.
At time when I began my career, every year, especially after new year, people collect their end year bonus, then quit, seeking job at another tech company, usually at higher pay rate (a jump in salary), for new graduated, the jump is high, usually 20% to 50%. It always happen every year.
But in recent 2-3 year, thing look bad. Corp layoff at end of year (with parting package instead of end year bonus), and people looking for job at the beginning of new year. Ahhh, something more, those who are layoff usually don’t get pay rise at their new post like old day.
Maybe the corp have found the way to turn the bargain in their favor.
What do you think.
Oh yeah, this is definitely part of “keeping the pay down” but that’s not really new.
A lot of it also has to do with the pandemic. Tech companies got seriously bloated during the pandemic and now that people are spending money on in person experiences instead of virtual ones, the industry is contracting back to normal.
I think these things are cyclical. There were significant tech layoffs at the end of the dot-com boom in the early 2000s. I believe there were layoffs in 2008 as well, but that was economy-wide.
Companies are always looking for advantages, so you aren’t wrong, but I’m not sure this is an outlier in the industry.
I also think that Covid resulted in a lot of corporate tech spending, tech investing and consumer tech purchasing. Now people are going dragged back into the office and people arent desperately trying to make not leaving the house fun. There was an artificial pump to the industry that a lot of people were hoping would be ongoing or a much slower taper than it has been.
Just another attempt in a very long chain of failed experiments to create automatons by removing the human factor from a human work force.
Jack Welch might not be the first; he’s certainly one of the biggest behind this trend. He’s also usually the one people cite for this. Mass layoffs are a huge part of moving “value” around the economy in ways that got huge in the late 70s and early 80s. The only people to see that “value” are the people who aren’t affected by layoffs.
