Even the profitable ones too are under pressure to show YoY and QoQ growth. To make that happen, belt tightening has to happen. So take away is no one is growing or expected to grow in the coming year.
The startup I worked for before my current company sold services to health care systems. It was hit hard by Covid. Hospitals were losing money and not paying for new products or even old ones.
My CTO said specifically “we need everyone we have and we aren’t going to be successful by laying off people. We have a vision and we need you all to help execute it”. They were bought out less than 9 months later for 10x revenue. I had moved on to $BigTech by then after leading their “cloud modernization” efforts.
The profitable tech companies are using it as an excuse to get rid of dead weight. No one is going to come after Cook, Jassy or Nadella for short term revenue misses.
Facebook and Google still have founders who own more than 50% of the voting shares. No one can come after them.
You can say a lot about the big 5. But none of them can be accused of short sightedness.
