It's Normal

(Mondo illustration)

There is a new generation of investors who have never known a bear market, the kind that grinds you down, the kind that makes you swear that you will never buy stocks again.

There is a generation of workers who think that they are in such high demand that they can tell their bosses that they will work from home whether the bosses like it or not, and that the company needs to support certain political movements over the objections of some customers, suppliers, and maybe a few co-workers.

The environment is changing. High-flying stocks have crashed, inflation has raised the expense of living, and workers are being laid off. [bold added]

Tech workers used to asking for the moon are starting to hear an unfamiliar word as startups and giants such as Google and Microsoft get more cautious: No.

For much of the pandemic, tech companies big and small went on hiring sprees where would-be employees could name their price and expect rich, work-from-anywhere perks. Now, as fears of a recession loom, more employers are scaling back or freezing hiring, rethinking how many of their positions should be remote and in some cases even rescinding job offers.

Microsoft Corp. this week said it would lay off a small percentage of its staff, following earlier layoffs at Netflix, Coinbase Global Inc. and Twitter Inc. Alphabet Inc.-owned Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai also told employees this week the company would slow the pace of hiring for the rest of the year. And the head of engineering at Meta Platforms Inc., parent of Facebook, told his managers to identify and report low-performing employees to manage them out.

It's premature to say that layoffs will be widespread. My own take is that job markets have become normal.

The bottom 10% will be dropped, the top 20% will be promoted or hired away, and the fate of the rest will follow the fortunes of their companies. The workplace will be seasoned with a little fear that, if layoffs occur, finding another job may not be so easy. It's not new, kids, it's normal.