You’ve made some very good points, especially regarding bringing up all the other tactics they’ve done to increase the labor pool.

However, I’d like to point out that your very last statement is not entirely accurate. They do all of these things with the true end goal not being to depress wages, but to increase the value of their investments as much as possible and thus make as much money as possible. Of course, lowering costs (i.e. wages) is very often a major factor in that, but they aren’t just evil and intentionally trying to make tech workers poorer.

Now, with that being said, let’s switch context to all of the research you presented showing that layoffs more often than not harm the well-being (and thus, the value) of the company rather than helps it. With that in mind, if layoffs hurt the value of the company, and thus the value of investor equity, why would investors push for layoffs?

This now loops back to the point I was making in my earlier comment that you completely ignored: there is a very good chance that investors genuinely believe the conventional wisdom that layoffs will increase the value of their investments and profitability of the companies they have stakes in. Again, they aren’t calling for layoffs explicitly to suppress wages, they call for them because they think it’ll make them more money.

So, I’ll again ask the question which you still haven’t answered — what do you think is more likely?

A. That major stakeholders and decision-makers are pushing for layoffs due to an emotional response (getting scared because they see other companies doing layoffs, so they wonder “should we do that too?”), plus a genuine belief in the conventional wisdom that layoffs would increase their company value and profitability?

or,

B. That all of these layoffs are actually part of a massive conspiracy to explicitly lower wages in the industry, despite wages trending way up in the past few years?

Did you even read my comment?

Refer to the second to last section of my previous comment, as that has already directly addressed what you just said. Then answer the question I posed in that section. Then address the other points I have made. I’ve shown you the respect of addressing all the points you’ve been making instead of ignoring them, I expect you to do the same.

Thank you for providing sources and logical explanations. I was never saying that there definitely wasn’t coordination between VCs and tech executives to push for layoffs, I just get highly annoyed when people make grandiose, sweeping claims based off a single anecdote.

However, I still disagree with you on some fronts.

> I never said non-zero impact

You said “you think Andreessen Horowitz pushing an agenda has zero impact on the tech industry?”. Implying that they had some (i.e. non-zero) impact, which is vague, broad, and certainly does not mean “coordination to suppress wages”. I never said that they had zero impact, simply that the statement by itself doesn’t come close to proving widespread collusion for wage suppression.

> extremely profitable companies

You do realize that the majority of tech companies, especially startups, are not profitable, right? The modus operandi for startups and even midsize tech companies is to throw everything into growing as quickly and as widely as possible, profitability be damned.

Now, we may see that change as this economic environment has caused investor sentiment to shift towards prioritizing profitability over growth potential, but overall, the vast majority of tech companies who did layoffs are not profitable. Companies that are highly profitable, like Apple, Google, or Microsoft, have either not done any layoffs, or in Microsoft’s case, cut less than 0.5% of their staff.

> backed by research

Unfortunately, many tech execs and VCs don’t exactly make decisions based on scientific or empirical soundness. Your study itself say that the “conventional wisdom” is that layoffs automatically drives the stock price higher and increase profitability.

So, what do you think is more likely?

A. That major stakeholders and decision-makers are doing layoffs due to an emotional response (getting scared because they see other companies doing layoffs, so they wonder “should we do that too?”), plus a genuine belief in the conventional wisdom that layoffs would increase their company value and profitability?

or,

B. That all of these layoffs are actually part of a massive conspiracy to lower wages in the industry, despite wages trending way up in the past few years?

> found guilty in court

That is verifiably false. If you had read your own source, you’d know that there was never even a trial held, and the plaintiff companies in that case immediately settled. In American law, settlements are explicitly not an admission of guilt. Innocent companies settle all the time, because settling is very often far cheaper and less risky than fighting a big lawsuit in court.

Now, don’t get me wrong — I’m NOT saying that there isn’t anti-labor and anti-union efforts in the tech industry, as I know that those efforts are widespread in ALL industries in the hypercapitalist corporatocracy that is America. I’m just saying you can’t say they were “found guilty in court” of doing so.

My overall point is that you cannot say there is widespread collusion in the industry to suppress wages because there is simply no concrete, definitive evidence to prove that’s the case. All you are doing is speculating based off some statements made by some VCs, and a lawsuit from almost over a decade ago that never even went to trial. Granted, it is logically sound speculation, but it’s still just that: speculation.

No, no, no, don’t change the goalposts now. A “non-zero impact” is nowhere NEAR “coordination of wage suppression” like you claimed. And a single statement made is not evidence of “pushing an agenda”.

I also Googled “Andreessen Horowitz 50-75% layoffs” and could not find this alleged statement anywhere, so you need to provide evidence they even made this statement in the first place.

Even if that VC did make that statement, and even if they did try to push for layoffs, you need a LOT more evidence than that (which isn’t even evidence in the first place) to claim that there is a widespread collusion campaign to suppress wages in the entire industry.

Uh, no. One single VC making a ridiculous statement about layoffs is NOT evidence whatsoever that there is a “coordination” of “wage suppression” in the entirety of the tech industry lmao. That is an absurd logical leap.

It’s so clear in any of these layoffs threads to see who is actually in the tech industry and who is pulling random nonsense out their ass.

What are you talking about? Tech worker wages exploded over the pandemic. I’m in tech, and I personally almost doubled my total comp over the course of 1.5 years. Many people I know in the industry are still making significantly more money than they were pre-COVID.

These wave of layoffs is a clear direct result of massive over hiring from the COVID-induced tech bubble. Trillions in stimulus money, rock bottom interest rates leading to VCs being very generous with funding, and lockdowns causing a surge in demand for tech products lead to this bubble. Now that all of that is gone, costs have ballooned while revenue has not grown nearly as fast as expected.

This is simply a correction. If you look at historical headcount numbers for many of these tech companies, you’ll find that basically all of them still have WAY more employees (more than double in some cases) than they did pre-COVID, even after layoffs.

Yup, I work at a tech company that recently did layoffs. Our headcount post-layoffs is still up over 100% since 2021. You’ll find this is the case with many other tech companies that have done layoffs.

The industry as a whole experienced a COVID-induced bubble with all that stimulus money, rock bottom interest rates, and lockdowns causing huge surges in demand for tech. As a result, we massively overhired ahead of expected growth in demand and obviously in this economic environment, that growth never materialized, resulting in a massively increased cost-to-revenue ratio for many of these tech companies.

It sucks, and these overpaid execs really should’ve known that the bubble was temporary and been more conservative with hiring in the first place, but it’s understandable. And the overall takeaway should be: the tech industry isn’t crashing or dead, it’s simply corrected to where it should have been all this time if COVID never happened.