
Ask HN: Has there been a spike in layoffs or belt tightening recently? - thewarrior
What are people seeing in the tech sector anecdotally ? I’ve been reading about layoffs at Mozilla, Intel, Quora, StubHub, 23AndMe, Oyo.<p>It seems to be the start of a down trend.
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mdorazio
I work on the tech side of vehicle manufacturing and while white collar
layoffs haven't hit yet, it's getting bad. See [1]. Freight movement is down
significantly and trucking companies are going bankrupt all over the place.
Truck order forecasts for 2020 are _way_ down from a year ago, and passenger
car isn't looking too hot either. This likely won't spill into the
advertising-based SV tech economy for a while, though.

[1] [https://www.businessinsider.com/trucking-companies-
bankrupt-...](https://www.businessinsider.com/trucking-companies-bankrupt-
list-truckers-react-to-industry-bloodbath-2019-7)

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PaulHoule
I think some of the looser outfits in the Bay Area are being shook out. For
each one of those names there were problems in terms of product-market fit.
(e.g. Intel can't get 10 nm to market)

In the bigger economy I am concerned by the pause in 737 production which must
be hitting suppliers, employees, their families, businesses they frequent, the
state welfare budget, etc.

At the higher end of higher ed in the US we recruit foreign students, faculty,
and staff who become part of our networks and it would be unhealthy for us if
any sort of foreigner such as Chinese, Muslim, African or otherwise did not
feel comfortable here.

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mixmastamyk
Have been quite a few negative economic indicators in the last six months or
so, but not particularly decisive. Hard to say which way the trend will go.

It’s an election year so the government will stop at nothing to avoid a
recession however.

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tropo
Being an election year, many people in the government would stop at nothing to
cause a recession.

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mixmastamyk
The Fed and to some extent the Prez are "the deciders," and we know which
direction they'll support. But, you probably know that already.

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tropo
Yes, exactly opposite to each other. They are not friends.

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mixmastamyk
No, the fed supports the incumbent government by smoothing the business cycle.
Even Volcker had tacit support.

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gaspoweredcat
ive heard intel are carving staff like nobodys business but i assumed that was
because theyve been losing so much ground to amd amongst other things

i think if they fail to pull something significant out of the bag very soon
they could be in serious trouble, especially if the likes of apple decide to
make the switch to amd chips, sure they just posted better than expected
revenue but were only just seeing the start of amds rise

