Scared of layoffs? Want to fight back? An Introduction To Class Warfare For The Software Engineer
Scared of layoffs? Want to fight back? An Introduction To Class Warfare For The Software Engineer
How it is now in your best interest to act.
Note this write up is far from perfect buts it's a pretty good article to get normie coworkers a bit more class conscious
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There's a lot of weird stuff going on with the layoffs. Maybe the motivation is compensation but I have a feeling it's a confluence of things. From what I've been observing a lot of the layoffs seem to be in unprofitable business units. At the same time companies are dumping a ton of investment into generative AI and the salaries in that space are even crazier. So possibly what's happening here is these companies are making a bet that GenAI is the next big thing and they're shutting down or scaling back unprofitable businesses to pay for it. In other words AI is taking jobs but not in the way people thought it would.
I don't think it's that complex really - in economic downturns big companies do mass layoffs. It's standard capitalist behavior to do cuts during recessions and hire more during booms.
It's similar logic to keeping the unemployment rate at ~4%
The Federal Reserve raised rates specifically to cause layoffs and discipline labor. It wasn’t even a secret.
Jacobin: To Fight Inflation, the Fed Is Declaring a War on Workers
In fact, Powell recently screamed the quiet part out loud, making clear the largest central bank in the world is in fact an adversary to workers, when he declared that his goal is to “get wages down.”
When the Fed raises their rates, the wealthy move their capital from the economy to risk-free, high-yield US Treasury notes, which cools the economic system, which causes layoffs. It also causes loan interest rates to go up, which pops the cheap money bubble.