Tech layoffs - perspective is everything

We are only in the first weeks of 2023, and January has been already a record-breaking month for the whole tech sector in terms of layoffs, according to TrueUp over 70k people in tech have been fired (edit: 75k now).
Even as many companies (Microsoft amongst them) report record-breaking profits, cash on hand, and have successful investments (ex. MS and OpenAI deal) , let's take a look at why suddenly "its a thing" 🕵️, top 5 reasons:

• 🌪️ Uncertainty
  (inflation, gloom of recession, war, and supply issues)
• 🔍 Lack of "next-big-thing" (vision)
  (no promise of future gains, VR is a long shot, smartphones saturated the market, AI is the best bet)
• 👀 Peer pressure
  (competitors doing it, shareholders are expecting this)
• 📸 No PR damage
  (competitors did it so bad that anything is "better than Twitter" at this point)
• 📈 Overhiring
  (bad estimations)

With all the above we get what we have:

Current layoffs in FAANG look still more like a correction and not (yet) a major indicator for the tech sector. Take a look at the perspective with previous years:

This is the true cost of too-optimistic estimations & shareholder's pressure.

People.

Personal takeaway: sometimes we all need an Auriga - a person who will whisper "Memento mori" ("remember you are mortal") to our ear when we present our overly positive goals to others. Also asking "what if I'm wrong" is not a bad habit.

EDIT: This is a good visualization from Benedict Evans that it is a short-term correction, and not a new trend:

Side points

That are too short for an article but worth mentioning:

• Whole Twitter drama 👀, I'm still waiting to see the execution of Musk's product vision. I have high doubts about this, but it generates ripples in the tech bubble (also it amplified layoffs and how they are handled).
• Sundar Pichai emails staff saying he takes "full responsibility for the decisions that led us here"... well, those are just words.
• In terms of "taking full responsibility" there is nothing better than this scene of Silicon Valley.
• People at Google after 17 years at the company are finding out about being fired from a login page that doesn't let them through.
• Google argues that with its over 30,000 managers, it is impossible to have a better way of doing layoffs (keeping managers in the dark till the last moment).
• Slashing R&D projects that didn't capitalize - Amazon Prime Air, Google Fuschia, Microsoft HoloLens, and VR teams ...
• Tim Cook (Apple) agreed to cut his year bonus by 40%, many say this is the way of "taking responsibility" without firing people. However, it might have more with stock price performance than saving people from layoffs.
• Nintendo's CEO is refusing to fire people for short-term benefit, as it would hurt the company in the long run.