this post was submitted on 25 Jan 2024
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Every day there’s more big job cuts at tech and games companies. I’ve not seen anything explaining why they all seam to be at once like this. Is it coincidence or is there something driving all the job cuts?

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[–] tal@lemmy.today 2 points 11 months ago

Interests rates soared. Before the pandemic interest rates were ludicrously low, in other words it cost almost nothing to borrow money. This made it easier to spend on long term or unclear projects where the hope seemed to be “get enough users, then you can monetize.” Once interest rates rose, those became incredibly expensive projects, so funding is now much more scarce. Companies are pulling back on bigger projects or, like reddit, trying to monetize them faster. Startups are also finding it harder, so fewer jobs.

Note that this also impacted other projects that take a lot of capital up front, then provide a return over a very long term. There was a nuclear power plant project with NuScale in Utah that got shelved over this; with interest rates suddenly going from way low to way high, the economics get upended.

I'd bet that in general, infrastructure spending dropped across the board.