> One wonders why Apple gets high praise for "hiring cautiously".
Have you not read this forum for the past week? It's been riddled with techies ragging on tech CEO's for "blaming the economy" and not blaming themselves for over-hiring.
The part I don't quite get (except insofar as it's an understandable emotional reaction) is why people are mad at companies hiring more people than they should have and then eventually laying them off a few years later. Would it have been better for those people if they were never hired in the first place, never had a few years of getting paid for extraneous work? Is the trauma of getting laid off really so great that they wish they had never been hired in the first place?
Okay, so the job wasn't the last of your career, you didn't get to commit the rest of your life to the company. But come on, it's not the 1950s anymore. People change jobs all the time, it's normal. If a company overhires for a few years then eventually corrects itself, that's the company screwing itself over but I think workers offended by this are getting emotionally over-invested. You got paid for your time and you got more out of the relationship than the company which never actually needed your labor in the first place. That's a win for you and a loss for the company, but not all good things can last forever.
It all depends. The main problem is that nearly every tech company is now doing mass layoffs nearly simultaneously. This could lead to long-term unemployment for many engineers, even driving some out of the industry altogether, which could wipe out any short-term salary gains of the past couple years.
Mass hiring distorts the entire job market. It draws people out of safer, more stable jobs. It draws people into the industry from other industries. It draws students into the industry, and into industry-related academic areas. If the gains were only short-term, that's not necessarily a good tradeoff for employees.
You're saying this as if there aren't any costs involved in taking a job and being laid off is free from any kind of negative effect. People aren't upset out of loyalty the company, they're upset because they have rent to pay.
Some fairly straightforward examples of why dumping tens of thousands of people into financial precarity isn't a positive or neutral action:
* Rent is still due at the end of the month. Hopefully you don't have too long left on your lease if you find a job in another city.
* Many companies seem to be doing it simply because they can, rather than out of any kind of financial necessity.
* Recent hires likely haven't recouped their relocation costs.
* Finding a new job is more complicated when the market has been flooded with literally hundreds of thousands of people in the same situation.
* People lose part of their social circle, especially bad for people who gave up their existing one when relocating.
* Many applicants, especially graduates, have had accepted job offers withdrawn, putting them in a financially precarious position where they've turned down other offers and now need to scramble to find a way to pay their rent.
The fact is that most people only ever have a few months at most to find a new source of income. Losing your job in an environment where finding a new one is more challenging than normal is going to be hugely stressful for most. To be honest, I find it really odd that you're totally unaware why someone losing their job might affect them negatively.
Have you not read this forum for the past week? It's been riddled with techies ragging on tech CEO's for "blaming the economy" and not blaming themselves for over-hiring.