[Info-vax] VSI employee retirements

[Neil Rieck]

On Wednesday, January 25, 2023 at 1:41:55 PM UTC-5, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> On 1/23/2023 7:34 AM, Neil Rieck wrote: 
> > On Sunday, January 22, 2023 at 8:47:09 PM UTC-5, David Turner wrote: 
> >> I heard from an old friend and Dealer in the VSI neighborhood that 
> >> a few more got their pink slips a few weeks ago. This has got to be 
> >> unnerving for the employees 
> >> 
> >> Does anyone have any real idea of what's going on there? 
> >
> > Not sure what is specifically happening at VSI but the number of 
> > layoffs in the whole tech sector are unnerving. Some claim it hasn't 
> > been this bad since the sub-prime mortgage scandal (2008) while 
> > others reference the dot-com crash (2001).
> There has been significant layoffs, but it is my impression 
> that it has been mostly in some specific areas not across the board. 
> 
> Most industries are not laying off but actually still hiring 
> (JP Morgan and American Express are examples of companies 
> actually hiring more IT people). 
> 
> Everybody is nervous about the risk for a recession. Because 
> there has been so much talk about it. But it has not really 
> shown up yet. And if inflation keeps dropping and central 
> banks stop hiking interest rates then it may never come (for now). 
> But many are worried. What if inflation starts going up again. 
> What if the war in Ukraine escalate. What if China attacks 
> Taiwan. What if the house in the US won't raise the debt ceiling 
> and US federal defaults. 
> 
> But some specific areas has been hit hard. I see at least 3 areas 
> having had to layoff a lot of people including IT people: 
> 
> A) Startups without a solid business model especially 
> in crypto and other fintech. When interest rates 
> went up then their VC funding dried up and they are 
> toast. 
> 
> B) Companies or parts of companies with specific problems. 
> Mortgage divisions in banks has been down-sizing because 
> number of mortgages are dropping due to high interest rates. 
> M&A divisions in banks and capital funds has been down-sizing because 
> number of deals are dropping due to high interest rates. 
> Facebook has problems because the Metaverse is not catching on. 
> Twitter has problems because of lack of relevance (everybody 
> talks about Elon Musk, but Twitter would have had massive 
> layoffs also without Musk - Musk buying Twitter just cause 
> it to be done "the Musk way"). 
> 
> C) Companies that has been on a non-stop hiring spree 
> the last 5-10 years. Amazon, Google, Microsoft etc.. 
> Their business has not plunged into a hole, but growth 
> has slowed/stopped. And they need to stop hiring. And 
> they realize that during the hiring frenzy they may have 
> hired too many, hired the wrong skill sets, hired at the wrong 
> geographical locations, hired at too high compensation 
> level etc.. So they make cuts to adjust. 
> 
> Arne

Adding to your points,

I thought it a little odd that Microsoft announced it was laying off 10,000 employees on Jan-18
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/18/microsoft-is-laying-off-10000-employees.html
then announced a $10 billion dollar investment in OpenAI on Jan-23
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-01-23/microsoft-makes-multibillion-dollar-investment-in-openai

While it might make sense to some, imagine how it affects employees (and their families) who just received a pink slip.

Neil Rieck
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.
http://neilrieck.net
http://neilrieck.net/OpenVMS.html