I can't speak to Meta, but Saleforce and Amazon probably needed to hire during the pandemic to keep on with demand.
Amazon saw a massive spike in their ecommerce business due to lockdowns so they had to hire to ensure they had the labour to deal with all the extra orders and deliveries. And even with this extra hiring I remember my deliveries being delayed often in 2020.
Saleforce is a weird software company because my understanding is a lot of their staff are there to help clients with integrations, manage accounts and to upsell. Again, assuming Salesforce saw a spike in demand during the pandemic they probably needed more employees because of the nature of their business.
My guess is that Apple also had to ramp up manufacturing significantly during the pandemic to meet demand, but obviously they don't employee people directly to do their manufacturing which probably gave them more flexibility when it came to meeting pandemic demand without increasing head count.
For the most part I don't understand why people act like tech companies were hiring recklessly during the pandemic. Are people forgetting how much demand was pulled forward by stimulus and lockdowns? These companies were forced to hire or lose market share. That's really the only two options they had.
Personally I'd be blaming politicians and the Fed for creating an impossible economic environment to operate in. If you were a company in 2020 your demand was either skyrocketing from lockdowns or at zero because you were forced to close your business. There was no in-between. Tech employees as initial beneficiaries of lockdowns are only now seeing the impact of job losses, but these were happening on mass elsewhere in the economy while lockdowns were in place.
It's pretty hard to be in charge of a public company and say no to the shareholders who want you to take advantage of the sudden bubble in demand.
Companies would have been punished for not growing, and now they are being punished if they don't shrink.
Who created that perverse system of incentives? The Fed, by making a number of mistakes in the past decade that kept the economy overboosted, by boosting it even more during 2020, and then by taking drastic action to kill the monster they created.
Where this logic irritates me the most is in the housing market.
Similarly to those who blame companies for over hiring to meet pandemic demand, I've seen some people suggest the average home buyer was being reckless for buying a home during the pandemic, because "they brought the bubble!"
I guess it's strange to me how the Fed can pump every asset class to the moon, force companies to over hire to meet demand, and cause a huge inflationary problem for consumers – all while promising not to raise interest rates – then rug pull everyone but get no blame for any of it.
Instead I find I'm invited to blame the average business or home owner for being "reckless" for hiring to meet demand for buying a home for their family, while praising the Fed for "doing what's necessary"? Give me a break.
> I guess it's strange to me how the Fed can pump every asset class to the moon, force companies to over hire to meet demand, and cause a huge inflationary problem for consumers
There were no consumer inflation issues for the past decade. It took a once in a life time pandemic supply shock to cause those issues. You're being unfair.
It's easy to blame the fed for all your problems. The fact is inflation was stable and the economy was just fine prior to the COVID19 pandemic. I don't think any amount of rate raises prior to 2020 would have had any appreciable impact on what we're facing now. Most of these layoffs are happening in the tech sector. Others are healthy. This isn't an economy wide problem yet. It's hard to not blame the individual companies for poor management.
> Instead I find I'm invited to blame the average business or home owner for being "reckless" for hiring to meet demand for buying a home for their family, while praising the Fed for "doing what's necessary"? Give me a break.
The fact is if you want what you want and want it now, and everyone else does, you have to pay. It's easy to say "oh they should've raised rates in 2017 or 2014" in 2022. It was much harder to say back then.
> It's easy to say "oh they should've raised rates in 2017 or 2014" in 2022. It was much harder to say back then.
it's funny that you brought this up unprompted because this is the obvious counterargument - the fed really really should have been doing moderate tightening of the interest rate in 2017-2018-2019 and everybody knows it, even you. Everyone said it too, I completely do not get your "it was much harder to say it back then", this was specifically something that everyone said was a bad idea except for one individual (let's call him Individual Number One) who wanted to goose the economy to get numbers up for his re-election the following year, and instead leaned on the fed to cut interest rates instead, throwing gas onto an already-roaring fire. And then when the pandemic hit the fed had absolutely no room to maneuver.
There were plenty of times to raise rates even before the Trump administration. But there were no major negative impacts until the COVID19 pandemic.
The point is it's easy for us to say this now. Had the pandemic not occurred we'd maybe still be in the position we were in 2019. You can argue for resiliency but you can't time the market. You could argue rates should've been raised in 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19. If you optimize too much for resiliency, then you overcorrect and cause recessions, which no one wants. And there'd be people just like you parroting how "i told you they shouldn't have raised rates!"
Now let's look at the facts. Despite sharp rate increases, the economy still grew last quarter, inflation has is normalizing, and the job market outside of tech is still robust. Frankly, hard to think of a better outcome. The asset inflation prior to COVID19 was slightly problematic. But the inflation we face now has less to do with that and more to do with demographic shifts and larger societal changes that needed a spark to begin.
> There were no consumer inflation issues for the past decade. It took a once in a life time pandemic supply shock to cause those issues. You're being unfair.
Not really... Inflation began spiking in late 2020 / early 2021. It was completely foreseeable given how strong economic demand was and how quickly CPI was raising that inflation would be high in 2021. When CPI shot past 2% the Fed basically told businesses and investors not to worry about rates and that they were going to allow inflation to run hot and stimulate demand.
What you're saying suggests you don't understand what happen. Inflation surprised no one in 2021 the Fed was actively encouraging it for months while it was well beyond 2%. The Fed was basically telling people that if they had cash in the bank that they would continue to erode its value through inflation.
This is why businesses were scrambling to spend and there was high demand for hard assets like real estate. Its simple asset allocation. If you believe your cash is going to have negative real yields for the foreseeable future then you need to get out of cash and buy stuff which can benefit from the economic demand ASAP.
> The fact is inflation was stable and the economy was just fine prior to the COVID19 pandemic. I don't think any amount of rate raises prior to 2020 would have had any appreciable impact on what we're facing now.
I'm actually of the opinion that monetary policy was appropriate prior to 2020. I'm not someone who believes interest rates have been too low since the GFC although I'm aware this is a common talking point of people critical of the Fed.
The way I see it the Fed has a duty to keep inflation at their 2% target. The supportive monetary policy prior to 2020 was in pursuit of this goal and therefore appropriate imo so long as we care about that 2%. I disagree with what they did in 2021 and beyond precisely because they didn't do their job and disregarded their 2% inflation target in pursuit of keeping demand high.
> Most of these layoffs are happening in the tech sector. Others are healthy. This isn't an economy wide problem yet. It's hard to not blame the individual companies for poor management.
It's a tech problem for a reason though. Tech is naturally more interest rate sensitive than other sectors due to the funding and growth dynamics, but other rate sensitive sectors like real estate are also suffering. But the largest reason tech over invested in 2021 was because demand that was being pumped into the economy was largely being pushed into tech because of lockdowns.
I'm also of the opinion this will spread into the broader economy later this year and the full cost of the Feds mistake has not yet been felt.
> The fact is if you want what you want and want it now, and everyone else does, you have to pay.
I guess I don't really understand what you're saying. I mean do you think it was just all a coincidence or something? Why do you think people and business all suddenly wanted to buy things at the same time? Can you think of any reason why that might of happened?
Maybe people's cash was being erode by negative real yields? Maybe the government was stimulating demand via QE and fiscal stimulus? Maybe the Fed was buying hundreds of billions of dollars of assets while inflation was running above 2%? Maybe the central bank was explicitly telling people that they would continue to erode their purchasing power and couldn't give a damn about their inflation target?
Honestly it's hard for me to even understand how someone can even blame stock investors, crypto investors, real estate investors, tech companies, bond investors, consumers, etc all for being too greedy without even questioning why they were all so suddenly so greedy at exactly the same time.
> It's easy to say "oh they should've raised rates in 2017 or 2014" in 2022. It was much harder to say back then.
As I mentioned, this is opposite to the position I hold. Rates prior to 2020 were mostly appropriate imo and if anything I believe monetary policy should have been more accommodative.
It's easy to say now change policy in the throes of the COVID pandemic. But in reality this move would've created economic shock on top of a supply shock and during a public health crisis. That simply isn't sound and is extremely reactive. And it's hard to say this would've had any impact at all on inflation, which was tied to factors external to fed policy.
The fed should be cautious by making any changes. I believe the fact they didn't rush to judgement has led to a much better than normal situation.
> Inflation began spiking in late 2020 / early 2021.
If by late 2020 / early 2021 you mean April (Q2), then sure. Pretty broad range there when there wasn't spikes in inflation until then.
20/20 in hindsight. A lot of people saying they should've done X or Y. It's easy to say that from behind the desk commenting on HN, all due respect.
> I'm also of the opinion this will spread into the broader economy later this year and the full cost of the Feds mistake has not yet been felt.
I've been hearing this all year from certain political entities. Maybe your blind squirrel will find a nut this year, but so far all the doomsday predictions have continually gotten pushed back. The job market is extremely strong, growth was still strong. If we go into a slight recession, I have to ask, so what?
> The fed should be cautious by making any changes. I believe the fact they didn't rush to judgement has led to a much better than normal situation.
The Fed was not cautious during the pandemic. Not at all! They dropped interest rates to near zero, massively increased QE, and shot the stock market over the moon. Then they sat there watching inflation spiral out of control in the misguided hope that it was "transient" before finally clamping down harder than they would have needed to if they had done the right thing in the first place.
It was a massive overreaction, and a significant change in policy (at least in degree if not in character, especially because the lack of emphasis on inflation policy), and they did it in a hurry before they had a chance to really figure out what was happening. Now we all have to suffer for it -- and the impact of inflation on American families should not be handwaved away or minimized.
Back in 2021, people like Larry Summers were also dismissed for making "doomsday predictions" that turned out to be true. He wasn't the only one who noticed -- but he was the only left-leaning economist brave enough to challenge the new administration by saying what a lot of them already knew. This isn't hindsight -- people knew the Fed was wrong years ago.
Amazon saw a massive spike in their ecommerce business due to lockdowns so they had to hire to ensure they had the labour to deal with all the extra orders and deliveries. And even with this extra hiring I remember my deliveries being delayed often in 2020.
Saleforce is a weird software company because my understanding is a lot of their staff are there to help clients with integrations, manage accounts and to upsell. Again, assuming Salesforce saw a spike in demand during the pandemic they probably needed more employees because of the nature of their business.
My guess is that Apple also had to ramp up manufacturing significantly during the pandemic to meet demand, but obviously they don't employee people directly to do their manufacturing which probably gave them more flexibility when it came to meeting pandemic demand without increasing head count.
For the most part I don't understand why people act like tech companies were hiring recklessly during the pandemic. Are people forgetting how much demand was pulled forward by stimulus and lockdowns? These companies were forced to hire or lose market share. That's really the only two options they had.
Personally I'd be blaming politicians and the Fed for creating an impossible economic environment to operate in. If you were a company in 2020 your demand was either skyrocketing from lockdowns or at zero because you were forced to close your business. There was no in-between. Tech employees as initial beneficiaries of lockdowns are only now seeing the impact of job losses, but these were happening on mass elsewhere in the economy while lockdowns were in place.